Soviet Intelligence and the Cold War:"Small" Committee of Information,1952-1953

WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS

Lee H. Hamilton,

Director

BOARD OF

TRUSTEES:

Joseph A. Cari, Jr.,

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Steven Alan Bennett,

Vice Chairman

PUBLIC MEMBERS

The Secretary of State

Colin Powell;

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John W. Carlin;

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& Human Services

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PRIVATE MEMBERS

Carol Cartwright,

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Nancy M. Zirkin

SOVIET INTELLIGENCE

AND THE COLD WAR:

THE “SMALL”COMMITTEE OF

INFORMATION, 1952-53

VLADISLAV M. ZUBOK

Working Paper No. 4

Christian Ostermann,

Director

ADVISORY

COMMITTEE:

William Taubman

(Amherst College)

Chairman

Michael Beschloss

(Historian, Author)

James H. Billington

(Librarian of Congress)

Warren I. Cohen

(University of Maryland-

Baltimore)

John Lewis Gaddis

(Yale University)

James Hershberg

(The George Washington

University)

Samuel F. Wells, Jr.

(Woodrow Wilson

Center)

Sharon Wolchik

(The George Washington

University)

Washington, D.C.

Dezember 1992

COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT

i

THE COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT

WORKING PAPER SERIES

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This paper is one of a series of Working Papers published by the Cold War International

History Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

Established in 1991 by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Cold

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COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT WORKING PAPERS SERIES

Christian F. Ostermann, Series Editor

#1 Chen Jian, “The Sino-Soviet Alliance and China’s Entry into the Korean War”

#2 P.J. Simmons, “Archival Research on the Cold War Era: A Report from Budapest, Prague and Warsaw”

#3 James Richter, “Reexamining Soviet Policy Towards Germany during the Beria Interregnum”

#4 Vladislav M. Zubok, “Soviet Intelligence and the Cold War: The ‘Small’ Committee of Information, 1952-

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#5 Hope M. Harrison, “Ulbricht and the Concrete ‘Rose’: New Archival Evidence on the Dynamics of Soviet-

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#6 Vladislav M. Zubok, “Khrushchev and the Berlin Crisis (1958-62)”

#7 Mark Bradley and Robert K. Brigham, “Vietnamese Archives and Scholarship on the Cold War Period:

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#8 Kathryn Weathersby, “Soviet Aims in Korea and the Origins of the Korean War, 1945-50: New Evidence

From Russian Archives”

#9 Scott D. Parrish and Mikhail M. Narinsky, “New Evidence on the Soviet Rejection of the Marshall Plan,

1947: Two Reports”

#10 Norman M. Naimark, “‘To Know Everything and To Report Everything Worth Knowing’: Building the

East German Police State, 1945-49”

#11 Christian F. Ostermann, “The United States, the East German Uprising of 1953, and the Limits of

Rollback”

#12 Brian Murray, “Stalin, the Cold War, and the Division of China: A Multi-Archival Mystery”

#13 Vladimir O. Pechatnov, “The Big Three After World War II: New Documents on Soviet Thinking about

Post-War Relations with the United States and Great Britain”

#14 Ruud van Dijk, “The 1952 Stalin Note Debate: Myth or Missed Opportunity for German Unification?”

#15 Natalia I. Yegorova, “The ‘Iran Crisis’ of 1945-46: A View from the Russian Archives”

#16 Csaba Bekes, “The 1956 Hungarian Revolution and World Politics”

#17 Leszek W. Gluchowski, “The Soviet-Polish Confrontation of October 1956: The Situation in the Polish

Internal Security Corps”

#18 Qiang Zhai, “Beijing and the Vietnam Peace Talks, 1965-68: New Evidence from Chinese Sources”

#19 Matthew Evangelista, “’Why Keep Such an Army?’” Khrushchev’s Troop Reductions”

#20 Patricia K. Grimsted, “The Russian Archives Seven Years After: ‘Purveyors of Sensations’ or ‘Shadows

Cast to the Past’? ”

#21 Andrzej Paczkowski and Andrzej Werblan, “‘On the Decision to Introduce Martial Law in Poland in 1981’

Two Historians Report to the Commission on Constitutional Oversight of the SEJM of the Republic of

Poland”

iii

#22 Odd Arne Westad, Chen Jian, Stein Tonnesson, Nguyen Vu Tung, and James G. Hershberg, “77

Conversations Between Chinese and Foreign Leaders on the Wars in Indochina, 1964-77”

#23 Vojtech Mastny, “The Soviet Non-Invasion of Poland in 1980-81 and the End of the Cold War”

#24 John P. C. Matthews, “Majales: The Abortive Student Revolt in Czechoslovakia in 1956”

#25 Stephen J. Morris, “The Soviet-Chinese-Vietnamese Triangle in the 1970’s: The View from Moscow”

#26 Vladimir O. Pechatnov, translated by Vladimir Zubok, “‘The Allies are Pressing on You to Break Your

Will...’ Foreign Policy Correspondence between Stalin and Molotov and Other Politburo Members, September

1945-December 1946"

#27 James G. Hershberg, with the assistance of L.W. Gluchowski, “Who Murdered ‘Marigold’? New

Evidence on the Mysterious Failure of Poland’s Secret Initiative to Start U.S.-North Vietnamese Peace Talks,

1966"

#28 Laszlo G. Borhi, “The Merchants of the Kremlin—The Economic Roots of Soviet Expansion in Hungary”

#29 Rainer Karlsch and Zbynek Zeman, “The End of the Soviet Uranium Gap: The Soviet Uranium

Agreements with Czechoslovakia and East Germany (1945/1953)”

#30 David Wolff, “’One Finger’s Worth of Historical Events’: New Russian and Chinese Evidence on the

Sino-Soviet Alliance and Split, 1948-1959”

#31 Eduard Mark, “Revolution By Degrees: Stalin's National-Front Strategy For Europe, 1941-1947”

#32 Douglas Selvage, “The Warsaw Pact and Nuclear Nonproliferation, 1963-1965”

#33 Ethan Pollock, “Conversations with Stalin on Questions of Political Economy”

#34 Yang Kuisong, “Changes in Mao Zedong’s Attitude towards the Indochina War, 1949-1973”

#35 Vojtech Mastny, “NATO in the Beholder’s Eye: Soviet Perceptions and Policies, 1949-1956”

#36 Paul Wingrove, “Mao’s Conversations with the Soviet Ambassador, 1953-55”

#37 Vladimir Tismãneanu, “Gheorghiu-Dej and the Romanian Workers’ Party: From de-Sovietization to the

Emergence of National Communism”

#38 János Rainer, “The New Course in Hungary in 1953”

#39 Kathryn Weathersby, “‘Should We Fear This?’ Stalin and the Danger of War with America”

#40 Vasiliy Mitrokhin, “The KGB in Afghanistan” (English Edition)

Special Working Papers Series

#1 Mark Kramer, “Soviet Deliberations during the Polish Crisis, 1980-1981”

5

During the Cold War intelligence agencies of the two adversary blocks were the

surrogates for the huge armies, who stood still on the frontiers of the two adversary blocs in

Europe and elsewhere. Some have argued that diplomatic historians, who do not have access to

intelligence materials, know only the tip of the iceberg. They imply that we do not have a chance

of writing a definitive Cold War history, especially on the Soviet side, until the repositories of the

Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB) and Military Intelligence (GRU) have been

declassified.1 Some historians question whether this assumption. John Gaddis argues that few

events in the history of the Cold War would have come out differently had intelligence not

existed. Authors of a recent volume on the KGB contend that most of the Cold War crises,

"Soviet intelligence had been better, often vastly better, than that available to the West."2 But the

same book encourage one reviewer to remark that the ability Soviet Politburo "to make sense of

the political intelligence"..."was impaired by their own ideological blinders and an incurable

addiction to conspiracy theory."3 In other words Stalin and his successors had excellent spies but

it did not help them much to wage the Cold War.

Western historians and veterans of intelligence indicate the following problems in the

process of "estimative intelligence": first, the ability of intelligence analysts to distinguish between

correct and incorrect, relevant and irrelevant, information; second, analysts' perceptions and their

impact, for instance, on assessments of the adversary;4 and, third, how the relationship between

intelligence and the political leadership might lead to "political distortion" of assessments.5 6

These problems have been recently publicized by the Eastern counterparts. "The most difficult

task of intelligence," one veteran of Soviet intelligence remarked, "is not to obtain information,

1In the fall of 1991, it seemed that the KGB might begin disclosing its secrets. Rudolf Pikhoia, the head

of the Russian Committee on Archival Affairs, and Dmitri Volkogonov, a military adviser to the Russian

President, and head of a parliamentary committee responsible for transferring the KGB papers to archives, held

discussions about the release of information on KGB covert operations. But these talks quickly subsided, and the

intelligence agency, now serving the Russian government, is firmly in control of declassification policy. The

KGB's public relations office released some information on the Kennedy assassination and Lee Harvey Oswald in

particular, but this is nothing new: much earlier it published selected documents in order to improve its public

image or to refute allegations about its past activities. As for the GRU, it continues to elude public scrutiny and its

documents are completely classified.

2Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story (New York and London, 1990), 469.

3John Lewis Gaddis, "Intelligence, Espionage, and Cold War Origins," Diplomatic History 13:2 (Spring

1989): 191-212; "Inside the KGB: A Double Agent's Tale," Time (22 October 1990): 82 [a review of Andrew and

Gordievsky, KGB].

4See Raymond L. Garthoff, Assessing the Adversary: Estimates by the Eisenhower Administration of

Soviet Intentions and Capabilities (Washington, DC, 1991).

5Michael Handel, "The Politics of Intelligence," Intelligence and National Security 2:4 (October 1987): 1

and 13.

6Harold P. Ford, Estimative Intelligence: The Purposes and Problems of National Intelligence Estimating

6

but to get its findings and conclusions across to the leadership," especially "ones that contradict

leaders' deep-seated beliefs and perceptions."7 A veteran of the East German intelligence also

agreed that even the best information is not a guarantee against policy errors.8

The assumptions of political leadership, shaped by general world view, sense of threat and

image of an enemy played often the decisive role in the history before the Cold War. Two famous

cases are the inability of American leadership and intelligence to foresee the attack on Pearl

Harbor and the failure of Soviet intelligence to convince Stalin that Hitler was about to launch its

"Barbarossa." It is only reasonable to suppose that the Cold War was also strewn with blunders

and errors, although not so dramatic and disastrous. It is also clear that a comparative study of

Soviet and U.S. intelligence efforts during that period will provide us with many striking parallels.

There are some other interesting questions: Did the two adversaries imitate each other? To what

extent did each recognize the other's concerns as genuine and justified? Did each fairly assess the

other's intentions and seek to identify the sources of its insecurity? Did the culture or structure of

the Cold War impose its patterns, sometimes hysterical, sometimes weird and conspiratorial, on

each government regardless of its social, political and ideological origins? Could the same have

happened if both superpowers had been modern democracies?

These issues are far beyond the scope and

reach of this article. Its focus is on one case from the history of the Soviet intelligence: the "small"

Committee of Information (KI), an organization that survived the collapse of its larger

predecessor, "large" KI.9 The "top secret" files of the "small" KI, recently declassified, contain

memoranda to the members of the Presidium10 and top foreign policy officials. ls. They are

among the first evidence of Soviet "estimative intelligence" that became available to historians of

the Cold War.

The Origins of the KI.

The "large" Committee of Information was created at Stalin's order under the aegis of the

Soviet Council of Ministers in the early fall of 1947.11 A KI veteran told me Stalin had been

7Interview with Mikhail A. Milstein, January 1990. Milstein worked for the GRU in the 1930s and

1940s.

8Marcus Wolf, Po Sobstvennomy zadaniiu. Priznaniia i razduma [On One's Own Mission. Confessions

and Thoughts] (Moscow, 1992), 286.

9This organization has never been publicized in the Soviet Union. The first "introduction" of it to the

general public was recently made in: Boris I. Ilyichev, "Diplomaticheskaya sluzhba: Lyudi i mundiri" [Diplomatic

Service: People and Uniform], Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn 1 (1992): 115-127.

10At the XIXth Party Congress (October 1952), the Politburo was replaced by the Presidium of the Central

Committee, a larger body consisting of 26 full members and 11 associate members.

11Andrew and Gordievskiy give October as the month [KGB, xi].

7

impressed with the US National Security Act of that year, and he ordered the translation of all

available material about it. It is possible that he interpreted the creation of the unified Department

of Defense, the National Security Council (NSC), and the Central Intelligence Agency as

preparation for a future war with, or the "strangulation" of, the Soviet Union.12 Whether Stalin

emulated the Americans or not, he went much further: united under one umbrella agency all

foreign intelligence departments dealing with collection, operations and analysis.13 Until then

there was a well-established division between the "political intelligence," primarily concentrated in

the First Directorate of the State Security (NKVD and then MGB) and the "military intelligence"

run by the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) at the Soviet General Staff. The new umbrella

agency, KI, took a prominent place in Soviet bureaucratic structure: it was not just another

ministry, but was directly attached to the Council of Ministers and was chaired by Vyacheslav

Molotov, Deputy Prime Minister and minister of foreign affairs.

The archives of the "large" KI are still closed and its history is murky. A handful of

interviews and publications leave contradictory picture. Some inform us that Stalin's objective in

creating the KI may have been to wrest control over foreign intelligence from Lavrenty Beria and

top military officials and to centralize it under Molotov and himself. Indeed, old elites loyal to

Beria were cut into two parts: one stayed in MGB, another went over to KI. Other sources stress

that the main idea behind the KI was to bring multi-sources information to a common

denominator. They say that the Soviet leadership reacted to sharp differences in estimates among

various services.

The collapse of the "large" KI is as enigmatic as its origins. One possible explanation that

inter-service rivalry between the MGB and the GRU did not stop inside the KI, but took other

forms. The military intelligence officers had long complained that their "neighbors" from the State

Security took advantage of their networks without giving anything in return. At the same time

the output, the common denominator of the intelligence work, turned to be low. The control of

operations fell into the hands of non-professionals. In Washington, for instance, GRU resident

worked under ambassador Alexander Panyushkin who, at one point even took operational control

of the MGB residency. The initial benefits of the KI (screening of disinformation) were

12When in July 1947 the MGB translated for Stalin the famous "X Article" by George Kennan in Foreign

Affairs, its chiefs, guessing Stalin's mood, attempted to translate the word "containment" as "strangulation."

Analysts defended the correct translation and won. Georgi Kornienko, "U istokov kholodnoi voini," Novaia i

noveishaia istoriya 6 (December 1990): 122.

13Information on the origins and early history of the KI is quite limited. I conducted interviews with

several KI veterans, and I especially appreciate the detailed account given to me by George Kornienko, who began

his career as a translator at the Information Service of the MGB, was transferred to the KI in 1947, and worked

there through all its permutations until 1958. Soviet defectors from the KGB and the GRU also provide some

evidence. See Gordievsky and Andrew, KGB, 381-83, 415, 706; and Victor Suvorov, Inside Soviet Military

Intelligence (New York, 1984), 27-28.

8

overshadowed by disadvantages: "live," contradictory information from competing services was

reduced to one-dimensional, standardized messages.14

In 1948 the military command persuaded Stalin to allow the GRU to resume its separate

existence. MGB stations began to bypass the KI's central analytical staff and sent juicy bits of

information directly to Stalin. In addition Molotov lost Stalin's trust and accelerated the demise of

the "large" KI. When Molotov ceased to be its head, the KI, still autonomous, became affiliated

with the Foreign Ministry, instead of the the Council of Ministers.

The need for intelligence work, and especially the need to filter out unreliable or

"implanted" information, must have encouraged the Soviet leadership to preserve the central

analytical staff of the KI. Many career officials, especially senior ones, returned to their positions

in MGB, but the younger ones stayed on.

The KI staff now lacked some of its most experienced personnel. This was the case with

the department responsible for US affairs, most of whose officers now had little first-hand

knowledge of the United States. It was staffed mainly by recent graduates from the Moscow

Institute of International Affairs (IMO), men and women trained in foreign languages and history.

Of course, isolation of the Stalinist Soviet Union from the rest of the world affected their

intellectual horizons and thinking. They were "Stalin's children," their minds were often "clogged

and blunted" by the years of black and white propaganda.15 In contrast to their CIA counterparts,

few of them had been shaped by pre-World War II experiences. Virtually none of them had

doctoral degrees in international economy or modern history, not to mention jurisprudence,

political science, or sociology.

Still, at the start, the "small" KI prospered. Some of the experienced cadres stayed on,

including Ivan Tugarinov and Timofei Kuprikov.16 They ruled the younger staff with a stern hand

and edited their writings with a keen eye for the slightest error, either factual or political. The

young recruits learned on the job, by reading and translating Western articles.17

The "small" KI relied on informal contacts and bureaucratic channels left over from the

"large" KI. Despite its affiliation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, remained an autonomous

body, probably with a separate budget and a direct mail to the Old Square and the Kremlin. It was

entitled to receive all pertinent information from foreign intelligence. Also helpful was the fact

that its staff consisted of former young recruits of the MGB and GRU, who naturally maintained

14The ideas of this paragraph came from a conversation with Mikhail Milstein, 12 August 1992, Moscow.

15Georgi A. Arbatov, Zatyanuvsheesya vizdorovlenie (1953-1985): Svitdetelstvo Sovremnnika (Moskva,

1991), 53.

16B. Ilyichev, op. cit., 119.

17Interview with Georgi Kornienko, 22 December 1989.

9

and made use of their old ties with the intelligence community. Beyond that, KI staffers tried to

compensate for information gaps by means of better storage and organization. They developed the

best cataloguing and retrieval system in Soviet intelligence at the time. The team spirit of the

Committee was also high; interregional task forces and "indoor discussions" also helped

somewhat to deal with information shortages and contradictions.18 Many on the KI staff later

became part of Soviet foreign policy elite, among them Valentin Falin, Viktor Karpov, Lev

Mendelevich, and Georgi Kornienko.

The Crisis of Succession and Information

When Stalin died in March 1953 he left to his successors a deadlock in foreign policy,

backlog of vital problems and a dearth of ideas how to solve them. The tyrant maintained

deliberately maintained analytical vacuum below him deliberately. He reserved all final decisions

for himself and rationales for those decisions shrouded in secrecy. They were hardly discussed at

all (at least not in writing). Documents reveal the absence of "debates" in the Western sense of

the word19 -- even at the level of the Politburo. It could never function as a collective

decisionmaking body, and it never had a staff that could fulfill the coordination function

comparable to that of the NSC staff in the United States. The statistics of Politburo meetings in

the early Cold War period dispel any illusions we might have about its role in Soviet foreign

policy decisionmaking. Historian Yuri Aksyonov offers the following figures: only 7 Politburo

sessions took place in 1946, 10 in 1947, 7 again in 1948, 10 in 1949, and a record 16 in 1950.

Virtually all of these meetings dealt with cadre questions and reorganizations (in fact, the 10

sessions in 1949 were dedicated solely to the so-called "Leningrad affair").20

Stalin alone remained the person who defined all crucial directions of domestic and foreign

policy.21 Ad hoc panels of the Politburo (so-called troyki and shestyorki, depending on number of

people involved) were often formed according to the whims of the aging dictator, not the

expertise of Politburo members. In the end, Stalin left the governmental decisionmaking

18Ibid.

19No conferences or discussions on national security were sponsored by the Politburo until the nowfamous

effort of Yuri Andropov in 1983. It appears that no substantive internal debates on strategy, analogous to,

for example, Eisenhower's 1953 "Solarium" exercise, were held by the Soviet foreign policy making elite until the

first Scientific and Practical Conference in July 1988.

20Yu. S. Aksyonov, "Apogei Stalinizma: Poslevoyennaya Piramida Vlasti" [The Apogee of Stalinism:

Postwar Pyramid of Power], Voprosy istorii KPSS 11 (November 1990): 100-101. These figures refer to formal

Politburo sessions, at which minutes were kept, many other informal meetings also probably took place.

21Aksyonov, op. cit., 101.

10

mechanism in shambles, a situation Politburo member and future Premier Nikita Khrushchev

vividly portrayed in his memoirs.22

All important foreign policy information that were collected by the huge conglomerate of

Soviet intelligence services, distributed about several dozens highest officials. But the most

sensitive data was intended only to Stalin and Molotov, the latter often playing a role of the only

consiglieri to the leader of the soviet Union. Molotov's Sekretariat could barely cope with the

torrent of information. A veteran of the Sekretariat recalls that the staff worked 18-19 hours a

day. They had to prepare background material for Molotov's daily reports to Stalin after midnight

and stayed beyond that time to meet Molotov's and Stalin's requests for the next day. "The

amount of material and documents that reached the summits of power as then structured," the

Sekretariat veteran writes, "was too great for any single person to read, let alone digest." Stalin,

whose health was deteriorating after the Second World War, lacked time to read: he relied on

Molotov's reports and on special, very brief papers, where information was given only "in a

nutshell."23 As for Sekretariat officials, fatigue, even exhaustion, was the price they paid for this

system.

Stalin's death and the establishment of the "collective leadership" in Moscow were bound

to change this situation dramatically. The struggle for succession began immediately: at first frontrunners

were Lavrenty Beria and Georgi Malenkov. The latter strengthened his control over the

State Security, GULAG and foreign intelligence. He and Malenkov launched a set of initiatives in

domestic and foreign policy designed to stabilize the internal situation, distinquish them among

the rest of the post-Stalin leadership, and, finally, to lessen international tensions. A "peace

initiative," the most visible part of Malenkov-Beria activities, included a set of small concessions

and conciliatory steps: the end of harassment of foreign diplomatic community in Moscow,

dropping of territorial demands to Turkey, attempts to resume diplomatic relations with Greece

and Israel, and, finally, behind-the-scenes efforts to put an effective end to the Korean war.

What lay behind the "peace offensive"? One Western interpretation maintains that the new

Soviet leaders simply pursued a pragmatic policy of minor concessions, "individual small moves

necessary to create a climate of relaxation and coexistence." Molotov, Malenkov, and Beria were

incapable of transcending the Stalinist mentality of the Cold War, according to this argument, but

22"Everyone in the orchestra [the Politburo and its commissions] was playing on his own instrument

anytime he felt like it, and there was no direction from the conductor." [Strobe Talbot, ed., Khrushchev

Remembers (Boston, 1970), 297; see also Vernon V. Aspaturian, "The Stalinist Legacy in Soviet National Security

Decision-Making," in Jiri Valenta and William Potter, eds., Soviet Decisionmaking for National Security (London,

1984), 60-65.

23Vladimir Yerofeev, interview with the author, 14 August 1992.

11

they did not mind removing some of the consequences of "Stalin's capriciousness or

stubbornness."24 Another interpretation is offered by political scientists who use the case of

Soviet behavior in 1953-55 to illustrate the concept of GRIT (Graduated Reduction of

International Tensions) as a workable diplomatic strategy. "After Stalin's death," Deborah Larson

argues, "Soviet leaders recognized that the former dictator's bellicose policies had driven the

Western countries closer together and provoked West German rearmament." She writes that the

"Soviet government's first attempt to apply GRIT to U.S.-Soviet relations" was "in March-June

1953...."25

Both interpretations underestimated the momentum of power struggle that pushed some

Stalin's successors to challenge his legacy as vehemently as it induced the others to stand up in its

defense. Vyacheslav Molotov who regained its power positions and became the unique authority

on international relations in the Politburo (Presidium) was in the second group. He was supported

by a secretary Nikita Khrushchev. At first the "peace initiative" of Beria-Malenkov seemed to

define the Soviet foreign policy but after June, when Beria was arrested, the more "hard line"

Molotov became the political supervisor of the "small" KI and the main consumer of its

reports. As to the formal head of the KI, it fell to Andrei Gromyko, a forty-four year old protege

of Molotov, former ambassador in Washington and London and a Deputy Foreign Minister in

1953. The "small" KI began to send its products to a slighly broader circle: secretaries of the

Central Commitee and members of the Politburo (Presidium) of the Communist Party of the

Soviet Union, members of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers. What did these reports say

and how did they correspond with assumptions and worries of this important group of readers?

The fear of collision with the United States was an immediate concern of the Kremlin

rulers and, besides the calculations of the power struggle, the stimulus to support a "peace

initiative." New Secretary of State Foster Dulles was making bellicose promises to take the

"offensive" in the Cold War and to "roll back" Soviet influence in Eastern Europe. Stalin in the

last months of his life was scared of it and passed his fear to the subordinates. "We believed,"

recalled Khrushchev,

24David J. Dallin, Soviet Foreign Policy After Stalin (New Haven, 1961), 122.

25Deborah W. Larson, "Crisis Prevention and the Austrian State Treaty," International Organization 41:1

(Winter 1987): 58 and 33. At least two other scholars share this attitude: see Robert C. Tucker, "Research Note

on Stalin's Death," paper presented to the U.S.-Soviet seminar on the Cold War, October 1988, Athens , Ohio; and

Matthew Evangelista, "Cooperation Theory and Disarmament Negotiations in the 1950s," World Politics 42:4

(July 1990): 502-29.

12

that America would invade the Soviet Union and we would go to war. Stalin trembled at

this prospect. How he quivered! He was afraid of war. He knew we were weaker than the the

United States.26

The KI reports confirmed the impression that the United States intended to

launch, if not a premeditated attack, then a well-planned campaign of encirclement of the Soviet

Union with bases and alliances. In August 1952, the KI had reported on US moves to push

Austria toward a separate agreement with the West, a development that could lead to "a formal

integration of Austria into the aggressive bloc [NATO] with its territory becoming an American

military foothold in the center of Europe."27 At the same time Soviet intelligence, quoted by the

KI, reported on the efforts of the United States to gradually prepare "the creation of a politicomilitary

alliance in Northern Europe, spreading from Denmark to neutral Sweden and even

Finland."28 From the summer of 1952 on, the Soviet leaders were briefed on NATO preparations

to build airbases in Norway and Denmark.29 In Germany, as the KI report for December 1992

claimed, forces were regrouping that might soon form a new party--one "of an openly nationalist

and revanchist kind." "The possibility should be not excluded," the document read, "that, as the

military and economic might of German imperialism increases, these forces might come to the

forefront in West German political life."30 In all reports on West Germany, the KI repeated an

alarmist note: the United States and the other Western powers will soon begin losing control over

the Germans.31 Hopes that West Germany might seek accommodation with Moscow were clearly

overshadowed by apprehensions that "revanchists" might provoke a conflict that would in turn

trigger global war.

The arc of menace also reached to the south. In September 1952, KI analysts warned that

the United States had inspired a military coup in Egypt to "create conditions for drawing Egypt

into the [US] Middle East Command."32 Two months later Soviet diplomats in Kabul learned that

the Americans "were insisting on gaining the right to build airstrips and other military installations

in Afghanistan."33

The KI watchers closely followed the U.S. elections of 1952 and commented on their

possible international impact. Quite early they concluded that Dulles, not President Eisenhower,

26Jerrold Schecter and Vyacheslav Luchkov, eds., Khrushchev Remebers: The Glasnost Tapes (Boston,

1991), 100-101.

2723 August 1952, KI, vol. 7, 224.

2824 November 1952, Ibid., vol. 10, 149.

2924 November 1952, Ibid., vol. 6, 55-60.

30"O planakh ob'edineniya revanshistskikh sil v Zapadnoi Germanii" ["on the Plans to Unify the

Revanchist Forces in West Germany'], 13 December 1952, Ibid., 70 and 84.

31 ?? Date ??,Ibid. vol 6, 11 and 36.

3212 September 1952, Ibid., vol. 8, 45.

3325 November 1952, Ibid., vol. 10, 177.

13

was the primary maker of Republican foreign policy. Dulles' declared policy of "roll-back"

appeared as

a resort to subversive or any other methods, regardless of international

commitments, with the goal of eliminating the People's Democratic regimes and

severing the Baltic republics from the USSR.34

Dulles' intention to banish George F. Kennan and his influence from the State Department was

taken as a bad omen--despite the fact that Stalin had inadvertently facilitated Ambassador

Kennan's departure by declaring him persona non grata in October 1952 for his reckless

comparison of Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany.35

What about Eisenhower and his promise to "go to Korea" to achieve a peaceful

settlement? Some KI officials felt Eisenhower wanted peace, but they were not sure by what

means.36 One report, dated 31 January 1953, argued that the Eisenhower administration "far

from heeding its electoral promises, intends to continue the Korean war, and even undertake acts

of overt aggression against the People's Republic of China. Its new strategic plan

envisages...engagement of KMT troops in Korea to prepare a large-scale spring offensive this

year." The report concluded also that "the government circles of the United States are discussing

use of the atomic bomb in Korea," although "the U.S. military leadership is not convinced" of the

weapon's effectiveness."37

Eisenhower, in the eyes of some Soviet leaders, including Khrushchev, still enjoyed some

credit as a hero of anti-Nazi Grand Alliance. But the KI experts were harsh to the General. Their

profiles described him as "ignorant...in political matters."38 His Administration will, the KI

concluded, adopt an "even more aggressive course" toward the "accelerated preparation of a war

for global domination." In particular, Eisenhower will proceed with greater vigor to rearm West

Germany "and make it a major pillar of its aggressive policy in Europe," since he was elected with

34"Predvibornaia bor'ba v SSha" [The Electoral Struggle in the United States], 16 August 1952, Ibid., vol.

7, 136.

35"O nekotorikh voprosakh vneshnei politiki novogo pravitel'stva SSha" [On Some of the Foreign Policy

Attitudes of the New U.S. Administration"], 31 January 1953, Ibid., vol., 12, 213-215. Kennan, while he was the

U.S. ambassador in Moscow, advocated negotiations with the Soviets over the future of Germany. He thought that

the Russians felt encircled and might be willing to strike a deal. See Melvyn P. Leffer, A Preponderance of

Power. National Security , the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, 1992), 461; and also George

F. Kennan, Memoirs, 1950-1963 (Boston, 1972), 105-44.

36?? DATE ??, KI, vol. 11, 97.

37[?? DATE ??, KI, vol. 12, 220, 222, and 223]. The KI analyst, Georgi Kornienko, was correct: such

discussions did, in fact, take place; see Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1952-1954, vol. 15, Korea,

(Washington, D.C., 1984), part 1, 770, 815, 817-818, 826-827; and Richard Betts, Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear

Balance (Washington, D.C., 1987), 37-41.

38"O kandidatakh v presidenti i vitse-prezidenti SSha' ["On the Candidates for President and Vice-

President of the United States"], 16 August 1952, KI, vol. 7, 150.

14

the support of a "group of Wall Street monopolies that have large investments in West German

industry."39

Before he died Stalin had been preparing a new and

particularly vicious clampdown on potential "fifth columns," including the Jews. . The KI report

on international reaction to the announcement of the Doctors' Plot in January 1953 referred to

"unofficial data, obtained from US communists." "American propaganda," it said,

to a great extent has managed to persuade the Jewish population in the United

States that there is an anti-Semitic campaign underway in the USSR.... American

ruling circles are widely exploiting the TASS announcement [on the "Doctors'

plot"] to promote the anti-Soviet campaign in the USA as well as in other capitalist

countries. The major goal of this campaign is probably to justify the subversive

and espionage activities of the United States against the countries of the

democratic camp.40

The report was sent to Malenkov and Molotov, but interestingly, Stalin's and Beria's name did not

appear on the distribution list.

After Stalin's death Beria was the first who suggested to cancel the purges. Malenkov and

Molotov supported this step.

The second biggest concern of the post-Stalin leaders was to avoid "any kind of disorder

or panic" in the Soviet Union and its satellite countries. Many in the Kremlin believed, and

Khrushchev later told about it openly, that weakness and indecisiveness which might encourage

Western powers to press the Soviet Union into unilateral concessions, especially on German

peace settlement. In the first weeks after Stalin's death the KI confirmed these suspicions. It

reported to the Presidium that the "American reactionary press has urged that the moment [the

succession crisis] be seized and the strategy of liberation implemented." The "ruling circles" of

the NATO countries

assumed that the death of Stalin would trigger domestic unrest in the Soviet Union

and would lead to a weakening of the USSR's international influence. The

reactionary press...is rife with speculation about the inevitable "crisis" in the Soviet

Union and "the protracted struggle for power."

39?? DATE ??, Ibid., vol. 12, 207; "Opolitike zapadnikh derzhav po germanskomu voprosu" [On the

Policy of the Western Powers on the German Question"], 6 May 1953, Ibid., vol. 16, 14 and 19.

40?? DATE ??, KI, vol. 12, 154 and 156.

15

Formation of the new ruling group, comprising Malenkov, Molotov, and others, analysts

concluded, "was a total surprise" to the West and "finished all hopes of weakening the Soviet

Union."41

In this light the Soviet peace initiative seemed a sound and timely measure, preempting

the most dangerous plans of the enemy. "New peaceful steps by the Soviet government," read one

report, "have frustrated Eisenhower's foreign policy plans and put him in a difficult situation."42

On April 16 Eisenhower addressed Soviet leaders in a major speech that indicated dangers

and costs of continuing the Cold War and hinted that, if certain concessions were made by the

Soviet side, it might lead to negotiations. The reaction in the Kremlin to this speech was not

unanimous or negative.43 Some preferred to look at the speech as a promising "probe," perhaps

even a sign of Eisenhower's peacefulness.44 The KI, on the contrary, reported that Eisenhower

had begun a propaganda counterattack in order to neutralize the Soviet peace offensive. The

analysts found the speech both "irritating and provocative." They wrote:

By putting forward for demagogic purposes its own 'peace plan,' the Eisenhower

administration in fact endeavors by all means to complicate unresolved

international issues and not to allow any reduction in existing tensions between the

Western powers and the Soviet Union, because that would inevitably impede the

fulfillment of American plans for war. The American "peace plan" evidently

pursues the goal of making it more difficult for the Soviet government to come

forward with specific new initiatives on the most important issues....45

The Georgi Kornienko, then a KI expert, told recently that they had been sure at that time that

a speech by Dulles two days after Eisenhower's speech meant to strengthen the President's

message and was a more blunt expression of US goals and intentions.46 Dulles demanded from

the Soviets virtual capitulation: a total revision of Stalin's policies, first of all in Eastern Europe.

They believed Dulles represented the powerful grouping of "resolute enemies of any attempts at

peaceful accommodations," including the Department of Defense, the CIA, and conservative

Republican Senators such as Robert Taft and William Knowland.47

When the new US ambassador, Charles Bohlen, arrived in Moscow, the Soviets greeted

him with suspicion. In Bohlen's profile, sent to the Presidium, analysts characterized him as a

hidden advocate of roll-back, and both a Germanophile and supporter of the division of Germany

4131 March 1953, Ibid., vol. 14, 269-270.

4225 March 1953, Ibid., vol. 14, 69-70.

43"The Chance for Peace," Department of State Bulletin 28:722 (27 April 1953): 599-603.

44See Georgi Kornienko's remarks at the Eisenhower Centennial Conference in Moscow, November 1990.

45?? DATE ??, KI, vol. 14, 272-74.

46Kornienko's remarks at the Eisenhower Centennial Conference; for Dulles' speech, see "The First 90

Days," Department of State Bulletin 28:722 (27 April 1953): 603-608.

47?? DATE ??, KI, vol. 15, 122-44.

16

in 1946-1947.48 This "blackballing," fair or not, left its traces. Later Khrushchev took even

harsher view of Bohlen. He believed the reports that identified Bohlen as a source of rumours

about Khrushchev's addition to alcohol. Vindictive Khrushchev called him "a shameless

reactionary who supported all the most hateful policies conducted by antagonistic forces in the

United States. He pulled every dirty trick he thought he could get away with."49

All these assessments, along with earlier negative outlooks of Eisenhower and Dulles

convinced the KI observers very early that there was no chance of normalizing relations with the

United States in the immediate future. "In reality the ruling circles of the USA would obviously do

everything to postpone negotiations with the USSR," the KI concluded, "for they fear that these

negotiations could lead to a fiasco regarding ratification of an European Defense Community

agreement and complicate the completion of aggressive US preparations for war against countries

of the democratic camp."50 In the situation of uncertainty and equilibrium between the Beria-

Malenkov group and the "hard-liners" this conclusion probably made a difference. In any case

nobody in the Soviet leadership took a risk of making overt approaches to the Eisenhower

administration.

Many in the West, including Eisenhower and Dulles feared that the Soviets would use its

peaceful initiative to split the United States from its allies in Western Europe, especially France

and Great Britain. These fears had serious grounds. At the 19th Party Congress in 1952 Malenkov

who was a keynot speaker there declared that "the antagonisms between the United States and

Britain and between the United States and France are becoming increasingly acute."51 In one of

his last interviews, Stalin had similarly predicted a rupture between the United States and these

two key European allies.52

In fact NATO had its obvious weak spots. KI analysts commented that the rhetoric of

roll-back in the US press and among conservative Republicans had alarmed "influential bourgeois

circles in England and France," especially the latter. The French, they wrote, viewed talks with

the Soviet Union as a viable alternative to the "ratification of military and political agreements

with West Germany."53 They believed the anti-German sentiments in France werw strong enough

to scuttle the European Defense Community (EDC), the plan to rearm the Federal Republic in the

48"B.N. Ponomarevu -- Spravka o Charlze Bolene" ["To B.N. Ponomarev -- On Charles Bohlen"], 25

March 1953, KOI, vol. 14, 192-197; "Dopolnitel'niye svedeniya o Bolene" [Additional Data on Bohlen"], 25 March

1953, KI., ?? volume ??, 204; and "Molotovu V. M. -- Spravka na Bolena" ["To V. M. Molotov -- On Bohlen"],

26 March 1953, Ibid., ?? volume ??, 221-26.

49Strobe Talbot, ed., Khrushchev Remebers: The Last Testament (Boston, 1974), 360.

50?? DATE ??, KI, vol. 14, 272-74.

51The speech appears in translation in Martin Ebon, Malenkov, Stalin's Successor (New York, 1953),

170.

52See Dallin, Soviet Foreign Policy After Stalin, 118.

53?? DATE ??, KI, vol. 14, 270.

17

context of an integrated West European force.54 In early April 1953, KI reported that Premier

George Bidault and Foreign Minister Jean Meyer had warned Eisenhower and Dulles that the

Assembly would not ratify the Paris EDC agreements if the Saar region were not returned to

France. Six months later, Soviet intelligence and foreign ministry officials were certain that the

"correlation of forces in the National Assembly excluded any possibility of satisfying the American

demand for quick ratification." At the same time the KI warned many times that, if the EDC failed

the United States and Eisenhower personally would support the creation of an independent

Bundeswehr.55

In retrospect, it is strange that Soviet diplomacy totally bungled this promising situation.

Had the Soviets agreed to sign a treaty on a neutral demilitarized Austria, they would have

thrown a monkeywrench into the plans of West German rearmament. After Khrushchev's victory

over Malenkov, Molotov and Kaganovich in June 1957, this inaction was attributed to Molotov's

dogmatism. According to secret files of the Party Control Commission, Molotov in 1953-1954

was strongly against the Austrian treaty. He was sure that the Americans who pocket Austria and

still succeed, by hook or by crook, remilitarize the FRG. In this case the KI analyses did not

coincide with assumptions of its primary reader and were discarded.

In another momentous episode the Committee happened to be into conflict with the

supreme boss of Soviet espionage, Lavrenty Beria who read many KI reports with keen and

malicious attention. Beria's plot to grab power implied the elimination of Molotov, his most

dangerous rival. Consequently, he attempted a major reversal of the existing foreign policy

associated with Stalin and Molotov. In addition Beria was probably less inhibited by the peculiar

mixture of Bolshevism and Russian nationalism that motivated Molotov.

Beria's first attempt related to Germany. On May 27 he, with Malenkov's silent

approval, told at the Presidium of the Council of Ministers that the German Democratic Republic

(GDR) was not even "a real state," that the "construction of socialism" there must be stopped,

and that the goal of Soviet foreign policy should be a unified, democratic, and neutral Germany.

He preempted Molotov's report, which supported cautious "socialization" of the GDR.56 There is

54On the Western side of this subject, see Rol Steininger, "John Foster Dulles, the European Defense

Community, and the German Question, " and Hans-Jurgen Grabbe, "Konrad Adenauer, John Foster Dulles, and

West German-American Relations," both in Richard H. Immerman, ed., John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of

the Cold War (Princeton, 1990), 79-108 and 109-32 respectively; Thomas Shwartz, America's Germany: John J.

McCloy and the Federal republic of Germany (Cambridge, 1991), 115-158; Frank Ninkovich, Germany and the

United States; TRansformation of the German Question Since 1945 (Boston, 1988), 87-106; and James G.

Hershberg, "Explosin in the Offing: German Rearmament and American Diplomacy, 1953-55," Diplomatic

History 16:4 (Fall 1992), 511-49.

5514 November 1952, KI, vol. 10, 68; and vol. 12, 19.

56See Sto sorok besed s Molotovim, 332-33[Need more bibliographic info.]; Nikita S. Khrushchev,

"Aktsia," in V. F. Nekrasov, ed., Beria: konets karyeri (Moscow, 1991), 262-63; Andrei A. Gromyko, Memories

(London, 1989), 318; the recently declassified records of the July 1953 Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee

of the CPSU in Izvestiia TsK KPSS 1 (January 1991): 157 & 163; and James Richter, "Reexamining Soviet Policy

18

no evidence what were Beria's calculations. Perhaps he expected that the FRG's Social

Democratic Party (SPD), then opposing Adenaur's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in

parliamentary elections, could become "useful idiots" in the Kremlin's hands: the SPD's calls for

reunification and its anti-American rhetoric seemed to make possible a tactical alliance with it.

Preparing for this step, Beria asked the KI to write an assessment of the SPD leadership and its

positions on foreign policy.

The KI analysts, who had access to the field reports of the MGB and GRU, decided that

an SPD government, "if it comes to power, will take a course to consolidate the division of

Germany."57 Beria--in an act that was truly rare--sent his comments back to the Committee's

analysts, expressing his understandable doubts. On 5 June 1953 a KI analyst replied that the SPD

and its chief, Kurt Schumacher, rejected all attempts of German communists and the GDR's

Socialist Unity Party (SED) to discuss a joint campaign against the Paris (EDC) and Bonn (FRG

remilitarization) agreements. The Social Democrats, it concluded, differed only tactically from

Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's ruling Christian Democrats, and their ultimate policy was the

same: to perpetuate the division of Germany and pursue FRG rearmament.58 Beria could hardly

have been pleased with this conclusion that put his proposal about Germany's reunification in a

bad light.

Beria's second effort focused on Yugoslavia. He, unlike Khrushchev, knew in the

leadership knew that Molotov had played a leading role in the 1948 break with Tito. So Beria

sent a secret emissary who proposed to Yugoslav Prime Minister Rankovic a secret meeting, and,

ultimately, the restoration of friendly relations.59 Later, when Beria was arrested, Molotov and

Khrushchev would call this ploy high treason.

But earlier in the spring the Presidium had quietly decided to stop the "hate-Tito"

campaign and directed the KI to take a fresh look at Yugoslavia, both its domestic and external

policies. The assessments drawn were clearly carried over from earlier memos on "the measures

taken by the Tito clique" to restore and strengthen "the fascist regime in Yugoslavia"60 -- probably

with an eye on Molotov's attitudes. "The Tito government," the KI concluded in June 1953, "is

maintaining a course toward the restoration of capitalist relations in the cities and villages." Since

this naturally undermined its popular support, "the dictatorship has to rely mostly on the armed

forces and the sprawling network of UDB (secret police)." In foreign affairs, moreover, the Tito

Toward Germany During the Beria Interregnum," Cold War History Project Working Paper No. 3 (Washington,

D.C., June 1992).

57"Pozitsii sotsial-demokraticheskoi partii ZApadnoi Germanii po osnovnim voprosam vneshnei politiki"

["The Positions of the SPD of West Germany on Major Foreign Policy Issues"], 21 May 1953, KI, vol. 16, 137.

58?? DATE ??, Ibid., vol. 17, 93-98; I could not find Beria's comments in the KI archives.

59Izvestiia TsK KPSS 1 (January 1991): 143 & 165.

604 October 1952, KI, vol. 9, 50-74; 28 January 1953, Ibid., vol. 12, 174-97.

19

government had become almost completely dependant on US "aid." That was why the Yugoslav

leadership, if still unready to fulfill all US demands and join NATO, "is seriously afraid lest any

rumors regarding, not to mention practical steps taken toward, normalization of Soviet-Yugoslav

relations displease US ruling circles."61

This was too much for Beria's patience. Upon reading the June report, he called on a

hapless KI official, and vented his rage. Terrified KI analysts waited for the axe to fall. But

fortunately for them, Beria had more serious troubles: on June 26 he himself was arrested, and

later that year he was shot.62

Soviet Defeats in Germany and Iran

The future of Germany was priority number one in the eyes of the collective leadership.

Molotov, as well as the majority of the Soviet rulers, sincerely believed that the rearmament of the

FRG presented the greatest challenge to Soviet national security. The Soviets did not view--as

they would later--the US presence in the FRG as a positive, stabilizing phenomenon. They never

doubted that Eisenhower and Dulles were in league with Adenauer against the GDR and Soviet

interests in Eastern Europe. But they expected Adenauer's Christian Democrat-Christian Social

Union (CSU) bloc to lose the September 1953 elections, meaning an SPD government in Bonn.

That, in turn, would amount to a serious blow to US influence in Europe and cause serious

discord in NATO.

Events in Berlin wrecked this scenario. On June 16-17, East Berlin workers began a

political strike which quickly generated demands for free elections and reunification. The revolt

was crushed by the Red Army; only Soviet bayonets saved the East German regime. These events

took the Eisenhower administration by surprise. But in the Kremlin, many saw the Berlin uprising

as ominous proof of the West's true intentions. New Times, a Soviet weekly created by Stalin to

disseminate abroad the Kremlin's views on international affairs, published on July 1 an article on

the "fascist provocation by foreign mercenaries," and warned that the "events in Berlin were a

serious warning sign that called for vigilance." Visits to Berlin by OSS-founder William

61Lev Mendelevich, "O vnutrennei i vneshnei politike yugoslavskogo pravitelstva" ["On domestic and

foreign policies of the Yugoslav government"], 2 June 1953, KI, vol. 17, 22-25.

62Interview with Kornienko, 22 December 1989; on Beria's arrest see V. F. Nekrasov, ed., op. cit., 262-

289; Thaddeus Wittlin, Commissar: The Life and Death of Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria (New York, 1972), 393-401;

and Victor Baras, "Beria's Fall and Ulbricht's Survival," Slavic Studies 27:3 (July 1975), 381.

20

Donovan, Eleanor Dulles, and other US personages were cited as undeniable proof that CIA

subversion had helped trigger the nefarious "events" of June.63

The KI reported on agitation and the activities of certain refugee organizations in the

FRG. Yet, the analysts still entertained hopes about the September elections. The KI reported

that US influence in the FRG was in decline, so Washington would be even more interested in

keeping Adenauer in power. The Social Democrats, if they were to win, "would conduct a policy

on a number of points [including the Bonn and Paris agreements] differently from the Adenauer

clique. That would mean deterioration of the US position in Western Europe and a sharpening of

contradictions in the imperialist camp."64

The CDU-CSU victory in the national elections on September 6 meant the

KI had some explaining to do. What they came up with was a striking contrast to the Soviets'

official explanation that US intervention in the election campaign had been decisive.65 In its

classified analysis, the KI cited an increase in nationalist passions, fanned by 6-7 million refugees

(including one million from the GDR); Adenauer's skillful exploitation of the June events in

Berlin; the growing economic might of West Germany; the "organic weakness of the democratic

camp" (the Communist Party in the FRG); the "treacherous policies of the Social Democrats"; and

the FRG's anti-democratic electoral laws.66 KI analysts implied that the FRG's allegedly domestic

situation made it much more difficult than in the past for the Soviets to manipulate West German

politics. Anyone in the Kremlin toying with the idea of German reunification could now see who

would rule in a reunified, democratic Germany.

The only glimmer of hope came from signs that the French cabinet might

be more interested than it had been in the past in opening direct consultations with the Soviets.67

But KI analysts later observed soberly that "from the very beginning the French government did

not wish to negotiate the German issue with the USSR in a businesslike way."68 It corresponded

with a conviction of Molotov who believed at the time that, despite squabbles amongst NATO

members, the Soviet Union faced a unified imperialist front. Any dissenting view, be it Malenkov's

or Khrushchev's, was discouraged by these assessments.

63Lev Bezymensky, "Kto i kak gotovil v Germanii den' Iks" ["Who Prepared X-Day in Germany -- and

How"], Novoe Vremya 27 (1July 1953): ??page number??

64"O pozitsii sotsial-demokraticheskoi partii Zapadnoi Germanii po osnovnim voprosam germanskoi

problemi" ["On the Position of the Social Democratic Party of West Germany on the Major Points of the German

Issue"], 7 August 1953, KI, vol. 19, 24 & 40.

65It indeed was a factor; see Grabbe, "West German-American Relations," 116-17.

66"O politicheskikh itogakh parlamentskikh viborov v Zapadnoi Germanii" ["On the Political Results of

the Parliamentary Elections in West Germany"], 14 September 1953, KI, vol. 20, 126-44.

67Ibid., 143.

6817 October 1953, Ibid., vol. 21, 57.

21

In the summer of 1953, the KI analysts also began to pay more attention to Iran.

The Soviet influence there was at its peak when Prime Minister Mossadeq began his

nationalization of British oil companies and, through Soviet ambassador, asked for Soviet aid or

at least moral support. Convinced thaat a communist coup was a real possibility, the United

States, together with the British, carefully prepared a preemptive coup, with the American

Embassy and military mission in Teheran serving as the hub of the conspiracy. Details of the U.S.

involvement remain classified even now,69 but Soviet intelligence was well aware of preparations

for a coup. The KI received data from the MGB and GRU stations in Teheran,

much of it quite accurate. The analysts knew that the Americans wanted to topple Mossadeq

because he had refused to join an anti-Soviet "aggression pact." They learned that US

ambassador Loy Henderson, the Shah, and various generals had been conspiring against the

Iranian Prime Minister since October 1952. General Fazlollah Zahedi was identified as a likely

candidate to succeed Mossadeq.70 Why then the Soviets did not take measures against it?

The answer, again, is that the correct intelligence had been ignored by the Soviet leaders.

In 1952 Stalin and Molotov rebuffud Mossadeq's pleas and the Soviet ambassador in Teheran was

instructed to treat Mossadeq not as almost an agent of influence of the United States and,

perhaps, of Great Britain too. KI memo on the Iranian crisis, dated late May, depicted Mossadeq

as a shrewd gambler who intended "to smash the national liberation movement and suppress

opposition elements around the Shah in order to create the conditions for further collusion with

American monopolies."

In summer of 1953 Mossadeq met with the Soviet embassador for the last time and frankly

laid out his plan: he needed a trade agreement with the Soviets to stem off British pressures to

reduce prices on Iranian oil. If you refuse, he added, I would have to open talks with Western

side. Under impression of this meeting a KI report in July admitted that Mossadeq might improve

relations with the Soviet Union in order to put pressure on Great Britain. But several days later

analysts on "the possibility of [Mossadeq's] capitulation to American and British demands."71 The

intelligence station in Teheran also told of a last-minute secret oil agreement between Mossadeq

and Great Britain. It found that the Iranian leader would not call for Soviet aid and support in

69See FRUS, 1952-54, vol. 10, Iran, 1951-54 (Washington, D.C. 1989): esp. 741-60. Despite this, the

circumstances and participants of the plot are well known; see Kermit Roosevelt, Countercoup: The Struggle for

the Control of Iran (New York, 1979); Richard W. Cottam, Iran and the United States: A Cold War Case Study

(Pittsburgh, 1988), 94-109; Mark H. Lytle, The Origins of the Iranian-American Allaince 1941-1953 (New York,

1987), 203-09; and U.S. Senate, 94th Congress, 2d Session, Final Report, Select Committee to Study Government

Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Supplementary detailed Staff Reports on Foreign and Military

Intelligence, Book IV(Washington, D.C., 1976), 45. in which the overthrows of leftist governments in Iran (1953)

and Guatemala (1954) are desrcibed as "two of the [Central Intelligence] Agency's boldest, most spectacular covert

operations."

70?? DATE ??, KOI, vol. 9, 77.

7118 July 1953, Ibid., vol. 18, 132.

22

case of a coup attempt. In view of this contradictory evidence, few people in the Kremlin could

contradict Molotov, who stoon on the old position.

"Now, as before," he lectured the ambassador, who cabled him

about the meeting, "you do not wish to understand the essence

in the relationship between the United States and England on this subject. "You should not forget

that Mossadeq prepared the decision about liquidation of British oil concessions at the behest of or

after clearing it with the United States so that to remove from the world market the strongest

competitors of American oil monopoly." Molotov dismissed all intelligence reports about U.S.

involvement into the anti-Mossadeq coup. "Americans, of course, can perform a role of friends of

the British and produce an impression of American pressure on the Iranian government on behalf of

the Britons."

It was vexed also by Mossadeq's insistence on cancellation of the Soviet-Iranian treaty of 1946 and

abrogation of Soviet concessions in the southern Caspian Sea.72

When General Zahedi seized power in Iran it evoked little concern among

the leaders in Moscow, reeling after the anti-Beria coup. KI analysts at first wrote that the

"correlation of forces" indicated the "weak position of the Zahedi government and the growth of

public discontent with the dictatorial regime of the military-monarchist clique."73 They also

recommended that Moscow repudiate the calls for accommodation from the Shah and the new

government; it would be better to shun them, to show the "Iranian people" that the Soviet Union

opposed a return to an "imperialist diktat." It took some time for Moscow to realize that

the removal of Mossadeq spelled the end of the special Soviet position in Iran and the beginning of

a US-Iranian alliance. By the end of November KI experts had to concede the Soviet defeat in

Iran. American influence in Iran (and Turkey) seemed established for years to come, while Soviet

economic concessions in Iran had been terminated.74

Guessing the Western strategy

In May of 1953 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill proposed to hold an early summit,

without an agenda, between Soviet and Western leaders. The Kremlin rulers could not agree on the

true intentions of the old statesman. Some of them, probably Beria and Malenkov, welcomed the

speech and gave it a good coverage in Soviet media. But Molotov and Khrushchev believed then

726 August 1953, Ibid., vol. 19, 21-23.

73"Vnutripoliticheskoie polozhenie i rasstanovka klassovikh sil v Irane" ["The Political Situation and

Correlation of Class Forces in Iran"], 14 November 1953, KI, vol. 22, 87.

74"Vneshnyaia politika pravitel'stva Zakhedi i vopros sovetsko-iranskikh otnoshenii" ["The Foreign Policy

of the Zahedi Government and the Issue of Soviet-Iranian Relations"], 23 November 1953, Ibid., vol. 22, 191-207.

23

and later that Churchill just wanted to exploit Soviet weakness to obtain concessions on Western

terms.

The KI estimates supported the cautious, alarmist interpretation. In May the KI reported to

the Presidium that Churchill and Eisenhower wanted to take a wind out of Soviet peace initiative,

preempt the idea of negotiations with Moscow and talk it to death.75

In the wake of the uprising in the GDR and Adenauer's electoral triumph a KI analyst

concluded that the US government "would undoubtedly step up its pressure on France and Italy in

order to obtain the quickest ratification of the Bonn and Paris treaties." It would also "speed up a

creation of [a] sovereign West German army." And "the Americans would be especially resistant,"

finally, "to Churchill's idea about a four-power 'summit' with an open agenda. It is becoming

increasingly difficult for the British government to push forward this proposal."76

By late October 1953 KI analysts had to admit that that they had painted Churchill's

intentions in the too Machiavellian light. They admitted that Churchill was a sincere and rare

advocate of detente in the West. "It has been proven from the documents," they acknowledged,

"that Churchill's proposal had reflected ... his real views." He declared in a recent speech, the KI

noted, that "We must do our best to avoid a slippery slope leading to war."77

The KI even reconstructed Churchill's intentions in the form of "a plan."

They believed it included the following points: first,

Between the European Defense Community, which would include a reunified

Germany, on the one hand, and the Soviet Union and the People's Democracies on

the other, a non-aggression treaty should be achieved. The United States, Great

Britain and Canada would stand as guarantors of this treaty;

and second,

The Soviets would agree to accept an alignment of the reunified Germany with the

Western powers; in exchange these powers and the all-German government would

recognize the Eastern border of Germany along the Oder-Neisse line--considering

it as the line dividing 'spheres of influence' between the USSR and the Western

alliance.78

7516 May 1953, KI, vol. 16, 111-112.

76?? DATE ??, Ibid., vol. 20, 139-140.

77"O pozitsiyakh zapadnikh derzhav po voprosu o 'garantiyakh bezopastnosti' Sovestkomu Soyuzu" ["On

the Positions of the Western Powers on the Issue of 'Security Guarantees' for the Soviet Union"], 22 October 1953,

KI, vol. 21, 112.

78Ibid., 114-115.

24

After the Berlin uprising and the elimination of Beria, however, a compromise along these

lines became unthinkable in the Kremlin. Nobody, including Molotov, Khrushchev and even

Malenkov was prepared to trade East Germany for any "security guarantees" from the West.

In the summer of 1953 Eisenhower concluded his "Project Solarium," a

series of in-house seminars on strategy in the Cold War, by opting for containment against

"liberation." For the Republican right wing it was a betrayal of electoral promises and "softness on

Communism." It is not known if the Soviet leaders had any information on this decision in the

White House, but to them American actions and intentions in summer-fall of 1953 were anything

but soft. KI reports worried that the Berlin uprising had been the beginning of a global Western

counteroffensive. "One can expect," warned one memorandum, "that the USA will attempt to

stage provocations in Korea analogous to those they had caused in Berlin."79 At the same time,

the KI reported on US plans "to establish military, political and economic control over Indochina,

and to exclude the influence of France there in the interests of American monopolies."80

Analysts also pointed to danger in the Balkans. "The Americans," they wrote, "believe the

creation of a Balkan alliance would strengthen the strategic position of NATO in the immediate

proximity of the People's Democracies and would provide for the Western powers an offensive

military grouping aimed at Central Europe." The KI feared that this alliance would become "a

tool of the Western powers to exert pressure on the People's Democracies--primarily on Albania

and Bulgaria." To the analysts it

represented a link [in the chain] of US government activities directed, according to

the 'policy of liberation' proclaimed by Eisenhower and Dulles, toward subversion

of the People's Democratic regimes in the countries of Central and South-Eastern

Europe.81

In early September, a KI memorandum claimed that the United States was seeking "to

turn Pakistan into one of its principal military bases on the borders of the Soviet Union and the

People's Republic of China." The Americans expected, according to the KI, that the addition of

Pakistan to their alliance system would force India to abandon its non-alignment policy.82 Indeed,

what appeared to the White House as a "defensive perimeter strategy," the Kremlin viewed as

continuing expansion of American influence.

79"Pozitsia SShA po koreiskomu voprosi posle peremira" ["The U.S. Position on the Korean Issue After

the Armistice"], 6 August 1953, Ibid., vol. 19, 18.

8010 July 1953, Ibid., vol. 18, 68.

81"O yugoslavo-greko-turketskom bloke" ["On a Yugolsav-Greek-Turkish Bloc"], 17 July 1953, Ibid., vol.

??, 74-75 & 77.

828 September 1953, Ibid., vol. 20, 36 & 38-39.

25

These assessments must have contributed to the Soviets' reluctance--after

their early favorable attitude--to go to Berlin for the quadripartite talks on Germany. In November

KI analysts reported to the Presidium that at the conference of foreign ministers of three Western

powers in London (16-18 October 1953),

more collusion took place among the Western powers, aimed at the disruption of

constructive talks with the Soviet Union....The Churchill government...did not

consider the current moment to be auspicious for negotiations with the USSR.83

The German desk of KI seconded the warning. "By putting forward a proposal to hold a

four-power conference on the German Question," it argued, "the Western powers are clearly

planning the failure of this conference in advance." To participate in the Berlin conference under

these conditions might help the West to discredit the Soviet peace offensive. If the conference

should fail, the United States would be able to argue that negotiations with the Soviets were

impossible and German rearmament was the only remaining option.84 This assessment was

essentially correct, as documents from the Eisenhower administration suggest.85

Against this backdrop, the only bright spot for the Soviets was the

detonation of what they called the first hydrogen bomb.86 Soviet intelligence officers and

diplomats reported with satisfaction that the Americans took it seriously and that in Western

Europe it enhanced fears of a disastrous future war.87 Malenkov was so enthusiastic about the

bomb that he revealed its existence on August 8 in his address on foreign and domestic policies,

several days before the device was tested. He took this opportunity to offer a skillful defense of

the peace initiative in front of the hardliners present, arguing that the Soviet Union now could

negotiate from a stronger position than ever. The relevant KI estimate reflected this attitude at the

top. "Announcements of the hydrogen bomb test and the new types of atomic bombs in the

Soviet Union enhanced even more the desire of the countries of Western Europe to agree with the

USSR on disputed international questions." Analysts even ventured to suggest that the Soviet Hbomb

had stopped the counteroffensive that the United States was preparing after the Berlin

uprising.88

83"O pozitsii pravashchikh krogov Anglii v otnoshenii peregovorov s SSSR po uregulirovaniyu spornikh

mezhdunaraodnikh voprosov" ["On the Position of the Ruling Circles of England Regarding Negotiations with the

USSR for the Settlement of International Disputes"], 23 November 1953, Ibid., vol. 22, 181 & 190.

84?? DATE ??, Ibid., vol. 20, 139-140.

85See FRUS, 1952-1954, vol. 7, Part 1 (Washington, D.C., 1986), 543, 670-72; Schwartz, America's

Germany, 284-87; and Hershberg, "Explosion in the Offing," 544-45.

86Although it was not a true thermonuclear "superbomb." See David Holloway, The Soviet Union and the

Arms Race (New Haven, 2nd ed., 1984), 24.

87Some results of this tracking were published in Pravda, 25 August 1953.

8822 October 1953, KI, vol. 21, 115.

26

Malenkov's power, however, was already slipping away. In his struggle

against Malenkov, Khrushchev had taken Molotov's side, and later accused Malenkov of lack of

character in dealing with foreign and domestic problems. Intelligence estimates of the KI, MGB,

and GRU served as arguments against "further concessions to imperialists." As the first year

without Stalin drew to a close, the United States, "as before," did not want "businesslike talks

with the USSR."89

Conclusion

What this first glimpse into the KI estimates tell us about the role of Soviet intelligence at

this moment of the Cold War? One can agree with Raymond Garthoff that it is difficult to judge

from the documentary record, even if supplemented by personal observation and experience, the

impact of intelligence assessment on policymaking.90 But the comparison of the KI record with

some available sources on the assumptions and attitudes of the Soviet rulers provide some

tentative conclusions.

The pressure of ideology and terror had considerable effect on the KI reporting. Stalin's

impact on the intelligence analysis was visible and highly damaging in many ways: in terms of

loaded phraseology and preconceived "theoretical" conclusions about international trends and

developments, but also in terms of hypercentralized organization and preprogramming to satisfy

the wishful thinking of the leadership. The experiment in the hypercentralization that brought the

"small" KI to life betrayed the desire of Stalin's leadership to reduce multi-voiced, contradictory

information about the world to combed, trimmed, and presented as a monochrome hard-line

picture.

It is obvious that sometimes the KI officials wanted to hedge the bet in their analysis or

even to tailor it down to Stalin's assumptions and expectations. Stalin's death and the struggle for

succession created a considerable room between intelligence estimates on one hand, and

assumptions and expectations of various political leaders on the other hand. When Stalin was alive

the KI experts, consciously or not, shared his fear of immediate American threat. Without him

they continued to keep their eyes on some imaginary "general line," but the absence of clear

consensus among the new leaders, in fact an acute struggle between some of them, made this

behavior irrelevant and, as in the episode with Beria, risky.

Declassified records of the U.S. foreign policy show that most of KI assessments were not

far off the mark, especially on American actions and intentions about NATO, Germany and

Eastern Europe. Some may even find these reports prescient. Indeed, Eisenhower and Dulles did

not want to negotiate with the Soviets and were more concerned about preservation of unity in

898 December 1953, Ibid., vol. 23, 49.

90Garthoff, Assessing the Adversary, 51.

27

NATO and West German rearmament. The KI correctly picked the seriousness of strains in

Western alliance. The continuity between the Eisenhower administration and the Truman

administration encompassed, in fact, low-risk, long-term efforts to erode Soviet control in Eastern

Europe. And the encirclement of the Soviet Union with bases and blocs did materialize, although

not to complete satisfaction of its architects.

Some American diplomatic historians might suggest that the KI reflected "legitimate"

security concerns of Moscow. They might wonder: Where were the signs of distorted,

ideologized prism, where was that specific Cold War mentality commonly attributed to Soviet

thinking of Stalin's era? Where is this "clogging of minds" by the years of Stalinism? The answer

can be simple. On each sides in the Cold War the intelligence estimates often looked fair and

justified because they reflected only one side of confrontational interaction. They did not and

could not take into account the legitimate security interests and concerns of an adversary, because

they commonly treated the other side as an implacable and ruthless enemy. The very methodology

of these estimates contains, as many know, the bias in favor of "worst case" analysis and

continuity, against a possibility of a radical departure from established patterns of international

behavior. From this viewpoint the KI assessments, however correct in substance, were part of the

diabolical mechanism of perpetuation of the Cold War. In 1953 they tended to discourage any

departure from Stalin's foreign policy. It certainly happened to Soviet policies with regard to two

crucial countries to the West and the South from Moscow.

How much did relations between the KI and the post-Stalin Soviet leadership differ from

the symbioses between the U.S. intelligence and political leadership? The main difference it seems

is in the absence of the intermediary analytical institutions like National Security Council or

National Intelligence Board which, with various degree of success inteprets the "raw" intelligence

data and compares assessments of various branches of intelligence., could not tell Party bosses

that their actions were wrong or had backfired. Nor could it suggest options for future actions.

Its analytical role was far more modest: the purification of data and removal of disinformation.

My interviews with KI veterans added another element to the picture of the top leadership,

what I call "informed ignorance." Soviet intelligence analysts competed for the ear of Politburo

members, especially that of Number One. This bureaucratic competition, among other things,

helped prohibit effective coordination of the information flowing to the top levels. As a result,

Stalin was both overwhelmed and ignorant at the same time, and the system itself resembled a

prehistoric dinosaur with huge physical mass, a long neck, and a tiny brain. Often Party leaders'

decisions were not the result of an analytical process--sorting out facts and factors and choosing

the optimal mix--but of heuristic reactions, based on selected events or even momentary moods.

28

, we can see that the war scare in the Kremlin was genuine. It was based only in part on

accurate intelligence about US actions and intentions; to a large extent it was based on actions

and intentions attributed by the Kremlin to Washington, Bonn, London, and Paris.

A distorted image of the adversary and its intentions was the most lasting legacy Stalin left to his

successors. It was the product of a consensus that did not die with Stalin. The KI documents

were largely written by a young generation of analysts who had imbibed Stalinist dogma so

thoroughly that it clouded their analyses, even after 5 March 1953 and even with access to the

best information about the West. They had to play by the rules of the game, but also they

believed in those rules. Only a strong, new despot at the top could challenge the existing

consensus on the causes and dynamics of the Cold War. But, as Beria found out too late, it was

difficult even for him to alter underlying assumptions when he wanted to do so for his own

tactical purposes.

The hypothesis about a Soviet GRIT strategy does not fare well in light of the KI papers.

The Soviet peace offensive was more the product of traditional Stalinist political infighting than of

the "new political thinking" of later days, which indeed serves as an example of GRIT. The

collective leadership was not prepared to go very far to meet Western demands, for it feared

imperialist "collusion"--another legacy of the early Cold War and Stalin's mentality. It preferred

to exploit short-term discord among NATO allies, invariably in a manner counterproductive to the

presumed long-term aim of detente with the West.

It was not only the substance of intelligence reports that affected--however marginally--decisionmaking in

the Kremlin. It was also the absence of analysis and the stifling weight of Stalinist political and

ideological preconceptions that hampered intelligence reports. Stalin's foreign policy remained,

with some minor exceptions, a "sacred cow" after his death. Even an improvement of relations

with Yugoslavia had to wait for two years and the bold action of Khrushchev. Consequently, no

assessment of past actions and mistakes had been made by that time.

There was no effective mechanism in the Soviet leadership to formulate and implement long-term tasks in

foreign policy. There was a virtual ban on policy planning and forecasting. Neither KI nor the

other intelligence bodies appear to have drafted anything close to the "National Intelligence

Estimates" presented to the US government. Although KI assessments were regular and covered

an exceedingly wide array of countries and issues, almost all of them bore the marks of ad hoc

writing and limited, disjointed vision. The reader is often puzzled by the endless incongruities, the

scarcity of analysis, and the surfeit of standard lines borrowed from official documents and

newspapers. Many insights and intuitions were correct, but they did not go far enough. They

were pieces of a puzzle that nobody put together. There were all too few attempts to project

intelligence into the future, and nobody formulated scenarios or guidelines for what might happen

29

in the next one to three years. KI intelligence was a perfect example of analysis without past or

future--even the German threat did not sufficiently stir Soviet imaginations to yield historical

parallels or predictions.

But if we return to the historians' debates, where can we suggest that KI intelligence had some, if not a

decisive impact on Soviet conduct? First, the Soviets were not prepared (either ideologically or

politically) to "pay a price" for detente with the United States. Still, in the spring of 1953, there

was enough confusion and turmoil in the Kremlin to allow the adversary some benefit of the

doubt. But intelligence assessments of Eisenhower, Dulles, and Bohlen, as well as of US

intentions in late summer and fall, tended to bear out the new Soviet leaders' fears that a

relaxation of tensions was impossible because of US hostility and US attempts to take advantage

of Soviet weaknesses.

Second, the attempts of Soviet diplomacy and propaganda to exploit "imperialist contradictions" were

primarily aimed at preventing West German rearmament. But the Soviets clearly overplayed their

hand, and they realized that fact after the bloody events of June 1953 in East Berlin. Mistaken

assessments regarding US involvement in those events no doubt contributed to their traumatic

impact on the Soviet leadership. Their worst fears about the Eisenhower administration's

"liberation" seemed vindicated. This intelligence strengthened arguments against German

reunification and in support of the East German regime. At the same time some minds in Moscow

concluded that the Berlin uprising rendered West German rearmament much more difficult to

forestall.

Third, Soviet intelligence on the Anglo-American plot in Iran contributed to prejudice against Mossadeq

and probably strengthened the hand of those who wanted to support the communist Tudeh Party

instead. As an indirect result, the Soviets lost their historic positions in this strategically important

country.

Fourth and finally, intelligence about reactions in the West to the Soviets' explosion of the "first hydrogen

bomb" helped reduce Soviet fears of a US political offensive after Berlin. The intelligence in this

instance was clearly tailored to the leadership's expectations. The result was a return to

diplomacy of strength that must have reduced the inclination of the Soviet rulers--however

questionable in the first place--to use small steps and concessions to improve the international

position of the country and break the diplomatic deadlock inherited from Stalin.