Part 6: Research Notes, Book Reviews, Responses, and Updates

COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT BULLETIN 265

RESEARCH NOTE:DOCUMENTING THE EARLYSOVIET NUCLEAR WEAPONS

PROGRAM

by Mark Kramer

Two recent developments pertaining tothe early Soviet nuclear weapons program—the declassification of an edict promulgatedby Josif Stalin in August 1945, and theissuance of a directive by the Russian gov-ernment in mid-1995—are worth noting.Each development is covered here briefly,and the relevant documentation is providedat the end.

The Establishment of Beria’sSpecial Committee

Exploration of the basic processes in-volved in nuclear fission began in the SovietUnion well before World War II, and seri-ous work aimed at building nuclear weap-ons was initiated at a top-secret researchfacility in Moscow, known simply as Labo-ratory No. 2, in early 1943. Over the nexttwo years the Soviet nuclear bomb programwas spurred on by intelligence disclosuresabout the Manhattan Project in the UnitedStates, but it was not until after the fightingended—and the technical feasibility ofnuclear weaponry had been vividly demon-strated by the bombs dropped on Hiroshimaand Nagasaki—that an all-out program waslaunched in the USSR. On 20 August 1945,the supreme leader of the Soviet Union andchairman of the wartime State Defense Com-mittee (GKO), Josif Stalin, formed a nine-member “Special Committee” under theGKO’s auspices to oversee the whole So-viet bomb effort. The Special Committeewas placed under the direction of Stalin’stop aide, Lavrentii Beria, the notorious se-cret police chief. The edict that Stalin issued(No. GKO-9887ss/op) to establish the Spe-cial Committee and its two main subordi-nate organizations was declassified and pub-lished in the July-August 1995 issue ofVoenno-istoricheskii zhurnal (“Military-Historical Journal”), pp. 65-67. The fulltext is provided below in translation.

Several points about the document areworth noting:

First, Stalin’s edict placed the SpecialCommittee under the control of the GKO,the supreme organ in the Soviet Union dur-

ing World War II. When the GKO wasdisbanded on 4 September 1945, the SpecialCommittee was recast as a “Special Commit-tee of the USSR Council of People’s Com-missars.” (The Council of People’s Com-missars was itself renamed the USSR Coun-cil of Ministers in March 1946.) Shortly afterBeria’s arrest on 26 June 1953, the SpecialCommittee of the USSR Council of Minis-ters (as it was then known) was dissolved,and the staff and organizations under itscontrol were transferred to the newly formedMinistry of Medium Machine-Building.

Second, the edict provided for the cre-ation of a Technical Council, which was toreport directly to the GKO’s Special Com-mittee. Until now, Western experts such asDavid Holloway had thought that the Tech-nical Council was set up as an integral part ofthe newly-created First Main Directorate ofthe Council of People’s Commissars (anentity that is discussed below).1 A close lookat Stalin’s edict shows that on this pointHolloway was incorrect. The TechnicalCouncil was established as a separate bodyunder the Special Committee, not under theFirst Main Directorate (which itself was sub-ordinated to the Special Committee).

Third, of the nine members of the GKO’sSpecial Committee, five were also membersof the 11-man Technical Council. The ex-ceptions were Beria, Georgii Malenkov,Nikolai Voznesenskii, and MikhailPervukhin. (N.B.: Nikolai Voznesenskii,the director of the State Planning Commit-tee—known as Gosplan for short—shouldnot be confused with the distinguished physi-cist Ivan Voznesenskii, who was a memberof the Technical Council.) It stands to reasonthat the three senior political officials on theSpecial Committee—Beria, Malenkov, andNikolai Voznesenskii—would not have beenincluded on the Technical Council, butPervukhin’s absence is somewhat more puz-zling, since he was in charge of the USSR’schemical industry at the time. The TechnicalCouncil consisted predominantly of re-nowned physicists: Igor Kurchatov, PyotrKapitsa, Abram Ioffe, Abram Alikhanov,Yulii Khariton, Isaak Kikoin, and IvanVoznesenskii. The other four members in-cluded a radiochemist, Vitalii Khlopin, andthree highly capable industrial managers andengineers: Boris Vannikov, AvraamiiZavenyagin, and Vasilii Makhnev.Zavenyagin, among other things, had been adeputy to Beria at the People’s Commissariat

for Internal Affairs (NKVD) since 1941,serving with the rank of general.

Fourth, Vannikov was appointed chair-man of the Technical Council, and Alikhanovwas appointed the scientific secretary of theCouncil. The text of Stalin’s edict does notbear out David Holloway’s assertion (inStalin and the Bomb, p. 135) that Pervukhin,Zavenyagin, and Kurchatov were appointeddeputies to Vannikov on the Council. Infact, Pervukhin, as noted above, was not onthe Technical Council at all. Zavenyaginand Kurchatov were members of the Coun-cil, but were not listed as deputy chairmen.

Fifth, the other new subordinate organcreated by Stalin’s edict—a First Main Di-rectorate of the Council of People’s Com-missars—also was placed under Vannikov’ssupervision, and Zavenyagin was appointeda first deputy. Vannikov and Zavenyaginthus enjoyed the distinction of serving on allthree of the main bodies created by Stalin’sedict. Four officials who were not on eitherthe GKO’s Special Committee or the Tech-nical Council were appointed deputy headsof the First Main Directorate: NikolaiBorisov, the deputy chairman of Gosplan;Pyotr Meshik, the head of the NKVD’s eco-nomic directorate and deputy head of the“Smersh” Main Counterintelligence Direc-torate; Andrei Kasatkin, the First DeputyPeople’s Commissar for the Chemical In-dustry (which Pervukhin headed); and PyotrAntropov, a geologist and deputy memberof the GKO. Antropov was placed in chargeof a commission responsible for the explora-tion and mining of uranium.

Sixth, the document was forthright aboutthe need for the Soviet Union to ensureaccess to foreign sources of uranium, in-cluding deposits “in Bulgaria, Czechoslova-kia, and other countries.” Although it didnot specifically mention eastern Germany asa source of uranium, the Soviet zone inGermany (which was transformed into theGerman Democratic Republic in 1949) be-came the largest supplier by far for theSoviet bomb program. The importance ofuranium in Soviet policy toward Germany inthe late 1940s should not be underestimated,as Norman Naimark points out in his recentbook, The Russians in Germany: A Historyof the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1995), pp. 235-250.2

Seventh, the GKO’s Special Committeewas given almost unlimited discretion over

266 COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT BULLETIN

its own funding and operations, a sign of theoverriding priority that Stalin attached to thedevelopment of nuclear weapons. An entiredirectorate was set up within Gosplan toensure that all necessary resources wereavailable. Despite the ravages of the war andthe need for mass reconstruction, no ex-pense was spared in the drive to build anuclear bomb. Although the extravaganceof Beria’s efforts proved troubling to someof the participants, their objections were onpractical, not moral, grounds. Pyotr Kapitsacited this matter (as well as his sharp per-sonal differences with Beria) when he wrotea letter to Stalin in November 1945 asking tobe removed from the program. Kapitsaargued that the path chosen by Beria was“beyond our means and will take a longtime,” and he insisted that a “methodical andwell-planned” program would enable theSoviet Union to build nuclear weapons“quickly and cheaply.”3

Eighth, Stalin’s edict specified the needfor increased espionage vis-a-vis the U.S.nuclear program. Until this time, responsi-bility for Soviet foreign intelligence hadbeen spread among several agencies (andthe NKVD’s role in the process was verylimited), but the edict gave Beria direct con-trol over all nuclear espionage carried out bySoviet intelligence organs, including thePeople’s Commissariat on State Security(NKGB, later renamed the Committee onState Security, or KGB), the IntelligenceDirectorate of the Red Army (RUKA, laterrenamed the Main Intelligence Directorate,or GRU, of the Soviet General Staff), andother unspecified intelligence bodies. Cop-ies of this part of the edict (Point 13) weredistributed to Vsevolod Merkulov, thePeople’s Commissar for State Security, andFyodor Fedotovich Kuznetsov, the chief ofthe RUKA. (Incidentally, the mention ofKuznetsov’s surname on the distribution listconfirms, for the first time, that he was headof Soviet military intelligence in the 1940s.Kuznetsov is described in Soviet militaryreference works as having been the deputychief of the General Staff from 1943 to 1949,but he was never explicitly identified as headof the RUKA.)

Both Merkulov and Kuznetsov had beenoverseeing a massive operation to gain intel-ligence about nuclear weapons technology,as the newly released “Venona” documentsamply show (for more about these docu-ments, partially decrypted Soviet intelligence

cables recently declassified by the U.S. Na-tional Security Agency, see below).4

Merkulov had been giving periodic reportsto Beria before August 1945 about the tech-nical progress of the Manhattan Project andabout the prospects of locating adequatestores of fissionable material. In mid-Octo-ber 1945, shortly after the GKO’s SpecialCommittee was formed, Merkulov sent afollow-up report to Beria, which drew onelaborate information supplied by the spyKlaus Fuchs in June and September. Thereport provided a detailed technical over-view of the design, dimensions, and compo-nents of a plutonium bomb (the type of bombdropped on Nagasaki). In subsequentmonths, Merkulov and Kuznetsov contin-ued to furnish invaluable data about bombtechnology and uranium supplies. The in-clusion of Point 13 in Stalin’s edict is onefurther indication of the crucial role of intel-ligence in the Soviet nuclear bomb program.

The Russian Government’sMay 1995 Directive

On 17 February 1995 Russian PresidentBoris Yeltsin issued a decree “On the Prepa-ration and Publication of an Official Compi-lation of Archival Documents Pertaining tothe History of the Development of NuclearWeapons in the USSR.”5 This decree (No.180) was published in the 1 March 1995issue of Rossiiskaya gazeta, and an Englishtranslation was provided in the Spring 1995issue of the CWIHP Bulletin (p. 57). Thedecree stipulated that certain archival mate-rials were to be released for an official com-pilation (sbornik) of documents (presum-ably a single volume) on the Soviet Union’spursuit of nuclear weapons between 1945and 1954. It did not, however, provide forany broader declassification of materialsrelated to the early Soviet nuclear program.

The February 1995 decree indicatedthat a Working Group was to be establishedwithin one month (i.e., by mid-March 1995)to begin considering which documents mightbe released for an official compilation. ThisWorking Group, formed under the auspicesof the Russian government’s Commissionfor the Comprehensive Solution of the Prob-lem of Nuclear Weapons, was not actuallyset up until 24 May 1995, some two monthsbehind schedule. Directive No. 728-R,signed by Russian Prime Minister ViktorChernomyrdin and published in Rossiiskaya

gazeta on 7 June 1995 (p. 5), listed 20individuals who were given responsibilityfor “studying archival documents and devel-oping proposals concerning their declassifi-cation” for an official anthology.6 The fulltext of that directive, including the 20 mem-bers of the Working Group, is featured be-low.

The combination of Yeltsin’s decreeand Chernomyrdin’s directive provides somecause for concern. The announcement ofplans for an official anthology is a welcomestep, but unless it is followed by a moresystematic declassification of archival ma-terials, the proposed anthology will giveonly a very limited—and perhaps mislead-ing—depiction of the early Soviet nuclearweapons program. Unfortunately, judgingfrom the instructions approved by Yeltsinand Chernomyrdin, it appears that, at leastfor now, no broader release of documents isunder consideration.

The composition of the Working Groupalso does not bode well. The affiliations andbackgrounds of most of the 20 membersimply that archival openness will not betheir paramount concern:

*** The panel is chaired by LevDmitrievich Ryabev, a first deputy Ministerof Atomic Energy. Ryabev has decades ofexperience in the Soviet/Russian nuclearweapons program, including several years(beginning in 1986) when he served as headof the Ministry of Medium Machine-Build-ing, the body now known as the Ministry ofAtomic Energy. (Although Ryabev cur-rently is only a first deputy minister ratherthan a minister, his retention of a senior postin the former Soviet nuclear weapons com-plex is a sign of his trustworthiness andpolitical acumen.) As an institution, theMinistry of Atomic Energy has been ex-tremely wary of releasing documents thatwould shed any light on Soviet nuclear weap-ons developments. Ryabev has been amongthose who have expressed the need for “greatcaution.”

*** One of the two deputy chairmen ofthe Working Group, G. A. Tsyrkov, is also asenior official in the Ministry of AtomicEnergy. Like Ryabev, Tsyrkov has beenleery of divulging any information aboutSoviet nuclear technology and design prac-tices.

*** Of the other 18 members of theWorking Group, five are senior officialsfrom the Atomic Energy Ministry and five


are high-ranking military officers from theMinistry of Defense, including the GeneralStaff. The Defense Ministry, like the AtomicEnergy Ministry, has been highly skepticalas an institution about the merits of releas-ing documents for scholarly purposes. Rus-sian military archivists have been especiallydisinclined to release items pertaining tonuclear weapons, ostensibly because of con-cerns about nuclear proliferation. (Thispolicy can be taken to ludicrous extremes.When I worked in the Russian General Staffarchive in the summer of 1994, I was toldthat all documents pertaining to nuclearoperations—just operations, not technol-ogy—would be sealed off until the year2046. I asked why that particular year waschosen, but no one seemed to know.)

*** Other members of the WorkingGroup include senior officials from the For-eign Intelligence Service, the Federal Secu-rity Service, the Department for the DefenseIndustry, and the State Technical Commis-sion. (The first two bodies are the mainsuccessors to the Soviet KGB, and the lasttwo bodies are under the jurisdiction of theRussian President’s apparatus. The StateTechnical Commission is housed in the samebuilding as the General Staff of the RussianArmed Forces.) These four agencies havehardly been noted as champions of archivalopenness. Documents held by the ForeignIntelligence Service and Federal SecurityService, in particular, have been kept tightlysealed away. The role of these two agenciesis bound to be critical in the release ofdocumentation, whether for an official an-thology or for other purposes. The ForeignIntelligence Service archive houses the mostsensitive documents on the role of espio-nage in the Soviet nuclear weapons pro-gram, and the Federal Security Servicearchive contains documents generated bythe Special Committee headed by LavrentiiBeria from August 1945 until his arrest inlate June 1953 (see above). So far, there islittle indication that access to either agency’sdocument holdings will be expanded.

However, two factors may induce theForeign Intelligence Service and FederalSecurity Service to be more willing to re-lease documents about nuclear espionage:First, the U.S. National Security Agencyhas begun declassifying some of its hugecollection of “Venona” transcripts of inter-cepted Soviet communications from 1939through 1945. The initial batch, released in

July 1995, contained numerous documentsthat shed light on the activities of Sovietspies in the Manhattan Project. The disclo-sure of these materials may erode the tradi-tional secrecy about such matters in Mos-cow. Second, some officials in the Russiansecurity and intelligence organs may want torelease sensitive documents to spotlight therole of espionage in the Soviet nuclear andthermonuclear bomb projects. A fierce de-bate emerged in Russia in the early 1990sabout the relative importance of espionageversus indigenous scientific achievements inthe Soviet nuclear/thermonuclear programs.Most observers in both Russia and the Westnow agree that information provided by So-viet spies was vital in accelerating the con-struction of the first Soviet fission bomb, butthat espionage was of much less importancefor the Soviet thermonuclear program. If therelease of documents could show that theextent of Soviet nuclear spying was evengreater than previously thought, the RussianForeign Intelligence Service and FederalSecurity Service might be somewhat lessaverse to the prospects of declassification.

*** Two heads of research institutesspecializing in the history of science andtechnology—V. V. Alekseev and V. M.Orel—are included on the Working Group,but even if they are inclined to press forgreater openness (which is by no meanscertain), they will be far outweighed by offi-cials from the nuclear weapons complex andmilitary establishment.

*** Rudolf Pikhoya, the director of theRussian State Archival Service (Rosarkhiv),is the only panel member from Rosarkhiv.Even if Pikhoya seeks the release of as manydocuments as possible—and it is far fromclear that he will—his influence on the Work-ing Group is inherently limited, despite hisposition as a deputy chairman. The mostvaluable documents on the early Sovietnuclear weapons program are stored in ar-chives outside Rosarkhiv’s jurisdiction.

*** The presence of Yulii Khariton onthe Working Group is encouraging, but itmay be largely symbolic. Khariton, who wasborn in 1904, was one of the key physicists inthe early Soviet nuclear program, and is theonly living member of the Technical Councilthat was established in August 1945 to adviseBeria’s Special Committee (see above).Khariton has given lengthy written and oraltestimony over the past few years about theearly Soviet nuclear and thermonuclear bomb

programs, and he provided useful informa-tion to David Holloway for the book Stalinand the Bomb. No doubt, Khariton is moreinclined than the other panel members tourge the release of extensive documentation,especially materials that would shed light onthe role of espionage versus indigenous sci-entific achievements. But because he is inhis early 90s, it is unlikely that he will be ableto play a central role on the Working Group.

Quite apart from obstacles posed by thecomposition of the Working Group, it ispossible that the Russian government’s di-rective (and Yeltsin’s decree) will go largelyunimplemented. Several impressive-look-ing decrees and directives about the declas-sification of archival materials have beenissued by Yeltsin and the Russian govern-ment over the past two years, but very littlehas come of them.7 Now that the politicaloutlook in Russia is so uncertain, there islittle chance that the archival situation willimprove anytime soon. If anything, theincreased strength of Communist delegatesin the Russian parliament could lead to fur-ther restrictions on access to major reposito-ries.

If an official anthology of documentsabout the early Soviet nuclear weapons pro-gram is eventually published, it undoubt-edly will contain many interesting and valu-able materials. Even the release of indi-vidual documents can add a good deal to thehistorical record (see above). But in theabsence of a wider declassification of rel-evant items, the one-time compilation of anofficial anthology will not reveal as muchabout early Soviet nuclear developments asone might hope.

1. David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The SovietUnion and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1994), 135. Holloway’s book isby far the best source available on the early Sovietnuclear program.2. See also Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, 174-180.3. P. L. Kapitsa, Pis’ma o nauke (Moscow: Moskovskiirabochii, 1989), 237-247. On Kapitsa’s withdrawalfrom the program, see Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb,138-144.4. Some new details about spies in the ManhattanProject are also available from Harvey Klehr, John EarlHaynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, eds., The SecretWorld of American Communism (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1995), esp. 216-226. In addition, seeHolloway, Stalin and the Bomb, 82-88, 90-95, 102-108,129, and 137-138.5. In Russian: “O podgotovke i izdanii ofitsial’nogosbornika arkhivnykh dokumentov po istorii sozdaniiyadernogo oruzhiya v SSSR.”6. The directive was published under the rubric “Sbornik


arkhivnykh dokumentov” (A Compilation of ArchivalDocuments).7. For one such decree, approved in September 1994,see “Yeltsin’s Directive on Declassification,” which Itranslated and introduced in CWIHP Bulletin 4 (Fall1994), 89, 100. For a more recent, though similar,directive adopted by the Russian government, see “Obustanovleniya poryadka rassekrechivaniya i prodleniyasrokov zasekrechivaniya arkhivnykh dokumentovPravitel’stva SSSR,” Sobranie zakonodatel’stvaRossiiskoi Federatsii (Moscow) 9 (27 February 1995),1539-1542.

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DOCUMENT 1:

TOP SECRETSPECIAL DOSSIER

STATE DEFENSE COMMITTEEEDICT No. GKO-9887ss/op

20 August 1945Moscow, the Kremlin.

On a Special Committee Under the GKO’sAuspices

The State Defense Committee orders:

1. That a Special Committee be formedunder the GKO’s auspices consisting ofC[omra]des.:

1. Beria, L. P. (chairman)2. Malenkov, G. M.3. Voznesenskii, N. A.4. Vannikov, B. L.5. Zavenyagin, A. P.6. Kurchatov, I. V.7. Kapitsa, P. L.8. Makhnev, V. A.9. Pervukhin, M. G.2. That the GKO’s Special Committee

be empowered to supervise all work on theuse of atomic energy of uranium:

— the development of scientific re-search in this sphere;

— the broad use of geological surveysand the establishment of a resource base forthe USSR to obtain uranium, as well as theexploitation of uranium deposits outside theUSSR (in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, andother countries);

— the organization of industry to pro-cess uranium and to produce special equip-ment and materials connected with the use ofatomic energy; and

— the construction of atomic energy

facilities, and the development and produc-tion of an atomic bomb.

3. That a Technical Council be createdunder the GKO’s Special Committee to con-duct a preliminary examination of scientificand technical matters submitted for reviewby the Special Committee, as well as anexamination of plans for scientific researchand accounts for it, plus technical designs ofinstallations, structures, and facilities for theuse of atomic energy of uranium. The Coun-cil will consist of the following:

1. Vannikov, B. L. (chairman)2. Alikhanov, A. I. — academician (sci-

entific secretary)3. Voznesenskii, I. N. — corresponding

member, USSR Academy of Sciences4. Zavenyagin, A. P.5. Ioffe, A. F. — academician6. Kapitsa, P. L. — academician7. Kikoin, I. K. — corresponding mem-

ber, USSR Academy of Sciences8. Kurchatov, I. V. — academician9. Makhnev, V. A.10. Khariton, Yu. B. — professor11. Khlopin V. G. — academician4. That a special directorate be orga-

nized under the USSR Council of People’sCommissars—the First Main Directorate ofthe USSR CPC, subordinated to the GKO’sSpecial Committee—to exercise direct su-pervision over scientific research, develop-ment, and design organizations and indus-trial enterprises for the use of atomic energyof uranium and the production of atomicbombs.

5. That the GKO’s Special Committeebe obligated to devise a work plan for theCommittee and the First Main Directorate ofthe USSR CPC and measures to carry outthis plan, and to present it to the Chairman ofthe GKO for approval.

6. That the GKO’s Special Committeetake operative measures to ensure the fulfill-ment of tasks assigned to it under the presentedict; that it promulgate directives requiringfulfillment by agencies and departments;and that when a government decision isneeded, the GKO’s Special Committeeshould presents its recommendations directlyfor the approval of the Chairman of theGKO.

The GKO’s Special Committee willhave its own staff and funding estimates andan expense account at the USSR State Bank.

7. That the GKO’s Special Committeedefine and approve for the First Main Direc-

torate of the USSR CPC the level of funding,the size of the workforce, and the volume ofmaterial-technical resources that it requires,so that USSR Gosplan can include theseresources in the spending category listed as“Special Exenditures of the GKO.”

8. That the chairman of USSR Gosplan,Cde. N. A. Voznesenskii, organize withinGosplan a directorate to help carry out theassignments of the GKO’s Special Commit-tee.

That the dep. chairman of USSRGosplan, Cde. N. A. Borisov, be placed incharge of the aforementioned directorate,and that he be relieved of other work forGosplan and the GKO.

9. That the financial expenditures andupkeep of the GKO’s Special Committee, ofthe First Main Directorate of the USSRCPC, of the First Main Directorate’s scien-tific research, design, and engineering orga-nizations and industrial enterprises, as wellas the work carried out by other agencies anddepartments at the behest of the Directorate,are to be included in the union budget throughthe category “Special Expenditures of theGKO.”

That financing of capital constructionfor the First Main Directorate be carried outthrough the State Bank.

That the First Main Directorate and theinstitutes and enterprises under its auspicesbe freed from the registration of staffs infinancial organs.

10. That Cde. B. L. Vannikov be con-firmed as the deputy chairman of the GKO’sSpecial Committee and director of the FirstMain Directorate of the USSR CPC, and thathe be discharged from his duties as People’sCommissar of Munitions.

That the following be approved asdeputy directors of the Main Directorate:

— A. P. Zavenyagin — first deputy— N. A. Borisov — deputy— P. Ya. Meshik — deputy— P. Ya. Antropov — deputy— A. G. Kasatkin — deputy.11. That the First Main Directorate of

the USSR CPC and its enterprises and insti-tutes, as well as work carried out by otheragencies and departments for it, are to becontrolled by the GKO’s Special Commit-tee.

Without special permission from theGKO, no organizations, institutes, or indi-viduals have any right whatsoever to inter-fere in the administrative or operational ac-


tivities of the First Main Directorate and itsenterprises and institutes, or to demand in-formation about its work or work carried outat the behest of the First Main Directorate.All records of such work are to be directedonly to the GKO’s Special Committee.

12. That within 10 days the SpecialCommittee be instructed to provide recom-mendations for approval by the Chairman ofthe GKO concerning the transfer of all nec-essary scientifc, design, engineering, andproduction organizations and industrial en-terprises to the First Main Directorate of theUSSR CPC, and to affirm the structure,organization, and number of workers on thestaffs of the Committee and the First MainDirectorate of the USSR CPC.

13. That Cde. Beria be instructed totake measures aimed at organizing foreignintelligence work to gain more completetechnical and economic information aboutthe uranium industry and about atomicbombs. He is empowered to supervise allintelligence work in this sphere carried outby intelligence organs (NKGB, RUKA, etc.).

Chairman of the State Defense CommitteeJ. STALIN

Distributed to Cdes.:Beria, Molotov, Voznesenskii,

Malenkov, Mikoyan: all points; Borisov:8, 10; Zverev, Golev: 9; Meshik,Abakumov, Antropov, Kasatkin: 10;Pervukhin: 1, 10; Merkulov, Kuznetsov(RUKA): 13; Chadaev: 4, 9, 10, 11.

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DOCUMENT 2

Directive of the Government of theRussian Federation

No. 728-r, Issued on 24 May 1995 inMoscow

To implement the decree “On the Prepa-ration and Publication of an Official Compi-lation of Archival Documents Pertaining tothe History of the Development of NuclearWeapons in the USSR,” issued on 17 Febru-ary 1995 by the President of the RussianFederation:

1. A Working Group of the Govern-ment Commission on the ComprehensiveSolution of the Problem of Nuclear Weap-ons (referred to hereinafter as the Working

Group) is to be set up to study archivaldocuments connected with the history of thedevelopment of nuclear weapons in the USSRand to devise recommendations for theirdeclassification. The Working Group is toconsist of the following:

L. D. RYABEV — first deputy Ministerof Atomic Energy of the Russian Federation(director of the Working Group);

R. G. PIKHOYA — director ofRosarkhiv (deputy director of the WorkingGroup);

G. A. TSYRKOV — head of a maindirectorate in the Atomic Energy Ministry ofRussia (deputy director of the WorkingGroup);

V. V. ALEKSEEV — director of theInstitute of History and Archaeology of theUrals Division of the Russian Academy ofSciences;

V. I. ANIKEEV — deputy head of adirecorate in the Foreign Intelligence Ser-vice of Russia

V. V. BOGDAN — chief of affairs at theAtomic Energy Ministry of Russia;

A. A. BRISH — senior designer at theAll-Russian Scientific Research Institute ofAutomation, Atomic Energy Ministry ofRussia;

V. N. VERKHOVTSEV — head of acommand sector in a main directorate of theGeneral Staff of the Russian FederationArmed Forces;

G. A. GONCHAROV — departmenthead at the Russian Federal Nuclear Centerand the All-Russian Scientific Research In-stitute of Experimental Physics, Atomic En-ergy Ministry of Russia;

Yu. V. GRAFOV — deputy head of adirectorate of the Navy;

S. A. ZELENTSOV — consultant for amain directorate of the Defense Ministry ofRussia;

E. A. IVANOV — deputy head of asection in the Department of Defense Indus-try, Administrative Staff of the Governmentof the Russian Federation;

A. P. KALANDIN — deputy chairmanof the State Technology Commission ofRussia;

N. I. KOMOV — senior specialist in amain directorate of the Atomic Energy Min-istry of Russia;

V. N. KOSORUKOV — senior engi-neer in a main directorate of the DefenseMinistry of Russia;

A. A. KRAYUSHKIN — head of a

directorate in the Federal Security Service ofthe Russian Federation;

B. V. LITVINOV — senior designer atthe Russian Federal Nuclear Center and theAll-Russian Scientific Research Institute ofExperimental Physics, Atomic Energy Min-istry of Russia;

V. M. OREL — director of the S. I.Vavilov Institute of the History of NaturalScience and Technology, Russian Academyof Sciences;

V. A. PIDZHAKOV — deputy head ofthe Central Physics and Technical Instituteat the Defense Ministry of Russia;

Yu. B. KHARITON — honorary re-search director of the Russian FederalNuclear Center and the All-Russian Scien-tific Research Institute of Experimental Phys-ics, Atomic Energy Ministry of Russia.

2. Within three months, the AtomicEnergy Ministry of Russia, the Defense Min-istry of Russia, the State Committee on theDefense Industry of Russia, the Federal Se-curity Service of the Russian Federation, theForeign Intelligence Service of Russia,Rosarkhiv, and the Russian Academy ofSciences will prepare, and present to theWorking Group, lists of archival documentsproposed for declassification and for inclu-sion in an official compilation of archivaldocuments pertaining to the history of thedevelopment of nuclear weapons in the USSRduring the period through 1954.

3. In the third quarter of 1995, theWorking Group will determine a thematicway of dividing archival documents pro-posed for declassification in accordance withestablished procedures and for inclusion inan official compilation of archival docu-ments pertaining to the history of the devel-opment of nuclear weapons in the USSRduring the period through 1954, and willprepare a general list of these documents.

4. In the fourth quarter of 1995, theState Technology Commission of Russia, inconjunction with the Atomic Energy Minis-try of Russia, the Defense of Russia, theState Committee on the Defense Industry ofRussia, the Federal Security Service of theRussian Federation, the Foreign IntelligenceService of Russia, Rosarkhiv, and the Rus-sian Academy of Sciences will, on the basisof established procedures, arrange for thedeclassification of archival documents per-taining to the history of the development ofnuclear weapons in the USSR during theperiod through 1954, drawing on the list


specified in Point 3 of this directive.5. The Atomic Energy Ministry of

Russia is responsible for providing organi-zational and technical support for the activ-ity of the Working Group and for the prepa-ration of materials needed to publish anofficial compilation of archival documentspertaining to the history of the developmentof nuclear weapons in the USSR during theperiod through 1954.

6. The Russian Committee on the Pressand Publishing, in conjunction with theAtomic Energy Ministry of Russia, is toensure the publication in 1996 of an officialcompilation of archival documents pertain-ing to the history of the development ofnuclear weapons in the USSR during theperiod through 1954. Funding is to comefrom outlays in the Federal budget for theperiodical press and publishing outlets.

Chairman of the Government of theRussian Federation

V. Chernomyrdin

******

RESEARCH NOTE:SECRET EAST GERMAN REPORT

ON CHINESE REACTIONSTO THE 1956 HUNGARIAN REVOLT

Introduced and Translatedby Mark Kramer

Following are excerpts from a docu-ment prepared by a senior East Germandiplomat, H. Liebermann, a few weeks afterSoviet troops crushed the revolution in Hun-gary in 1956. The full report, entitled, “Berichuber die Haltung der VR China zu denEreignissen in Ungarn,” is now stored in FileNo. 120, Section IV 2/20, of the former EastGerman Communist party archives, knownas Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massen-organisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv(SAPMDB, or SAPMO), in Berlin. (A copyof the document was recently located at theBerlin archive by Christian F. Ostermann, aresearcher currently based at the NationalSecurity Archive in Washington, D.C., andprovided to the author by CWIHP.)

Liebermann’s six-page report, compiledat the request of the East German ForeignMinistry, traces Chinese press coverage ofevents in Hungary from late October to mid-November 1956. The portions translatedhere pertain to coverage through November

3. After that date, Chinese press reportswere virtually identical to the coverage inother Communist countries, all of whichcondemned the Hungarian revolution andstrongly supported the Soviet invasion. UntilNovember 2, however, the Chinese presswas bolder and more evenhanded in its treat-ment of the Hungarian crisis than the otherEast-bloc newspapers were, as Liebermann’sreport makes clear. The East German diplo-mat even expressed anxiety about the detailof Chinese coverage, saying that “they wouldhave been better off leaving out” some of themost vivid descriptions of the revolutionaryferment. Liebermann left no doubt that thekind of reports featured in the Chinese presswould have been unacceptable in East Ger-many.

The concluding paragraph of Lieber-mann’s report is intriguing insofar as it re-veals high-level East German concerns aboutChina’s efforts to establish a “‘special posi-tion’ within the socialist camp” and aboutBeijing’s general commitment to the Com-munist bloc. Although Liebermann assuredhis superiors that China “stands solidly be-hind” the socialist camp and “is not takingup any sort of ‘special position,’” the veryfact that he had to rebut these accusationsimplies that some officials in Eastern Eu-rope already sensed that the “steadfast alli-ance” between the Soviet Union and Chinamight one day be called into question.

Thus, the document is valuable in show-ing how even a seemingly arcane item fromthe East-Central European archives can shedlight on the dynamics of Sino-Soviet rela-tions.

No. 212/02/ Peking, 30 November 1956

Reporton the Stance of the People’s Republic of

China toward the Crisis in Hungary

The first report in the Chinese press about thecrisis in Hungary was published on 27.10.56. Itshould be noted that up through 2 Nov. thisinformation was published without commentary,for example in the foreign policy section of“People’s Daily” on pages 5/6. Nevertheless,through daily published reports (except on 30Oct., when nothing about Hungary was publishedin “People’s Daily”) the PRC informed the Chi-nese people in detail about the crisis in Hungary.This information, however, was not enough toprovide a clear picture of the crisis. This situationremained essentially unchanged until the forma-tion of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government.

The form of reporting in the Chinese press wasobviously geared toward the Chinese reader. Eventhough the Chinese people were following thecrisis in Hungary very closely, it is quite naturalthat for the Chinese people the crisis seemed moredistant than it did for, say, the peoples of theEuropean People’s Democracies. In addition, theAnglo-French aggression against Egypt at thattime was given priority coverage in the Chinesepress. This explains why until the formation of theRevolutionary Workers’ and Peasants’ Govern-ment, much more information about Hungaryappeared in the Chinese press than in the GDRpress. Under the special conditions of the PRC,they can pursue this type of reporting without fearthat it will cause agitation and disquiet among theChinese people of the sort one can detect amongsome of the GDR citizens currently here in Pe-king. Although the Chinese press during the earlydays was factual and objective in its reports on thecrisis in Hungary, there were some things re-ported in the press that they would have beenbetter off leaving out, even if one takes account ofthe special conditions in the PRC. Two exampleswill suffice to illustrate this point. 1) The “People’s Daily” on 1 Nov. quoted thefollowing passage from a speech by Nagy: “Thecontinual growth of the revolution in our countryhas brought the movement of democratic forces toa crossroads.” 2) The “People’s Daily” on 1 Nov. also reportedthat Nagy on 30 Oct. had commenced negotia-tions with representatives of the armed forcescommittee of the freedom fighters and the revolu-tionary committee of the revolutionary intelligen-tsia and students. A clear statement about the crisis in Hungarywas published in a lead article in the “People’sDaily” on 3 Nov. In this lead article, which coversthe Soviet Union’s declaration on ties with social-ist countries, a portion concerns the crisis inHungary: “The Chinese people are wholeheart-edly on the side of the honest Hungarian workersand on the side of the true Hungarian patriots andresolute socialist fighters for Hungary. We aredismayed to see that a small group of counterrevo-lutionary conspirators are exploiting the situationwith the aim of restoring capitalism and fascistterror and of using Hungary to disrupt the unity ofthe socialist countries and undermine the WarsawPact.” . . . Judging by the stance of the PRC toward thecrisis in Hungary, one again can confidently em-phasize that the PRC stands solidly behind thecamp of socialism and friendship with the SovietUnion. It is also clear that the PRC is not taking upany sort of “special position” within the socialistcamp, as certain Western circles would have pre-ferred. The stance of the People’s Republic ofChina toward the crisis in Hungary was no differ-ent from the stance of the other socialist countries.

(H. Liebermann)


“A VOICE CRYINGIN THE WILDERNESS”:

THE PROFESSIONAL’S REVENGE

by David R. Stone

Georgii Markovich Kornienko, Kholodnaiavoina: svidetel’stvo ee uchastnika [The ColdWar: Testimony of a Participant] (Moscow:International Relations, 1995).

After a Soviet fighter plane shot downKorean Air Lines flight 007 in September1983, Georgii Kornienko was assigned byhis superior Foreign Minister AndreiGromyko to prepare TASS’s official pressrelease on the incident. In particular,Gromyko instructed Kornienko to claimthat the Soviet Union had absolutely noknowledge of the fate of the airliner, thoughthe Soviet leadership was quite certain thatit had indeed shot down the plane. Kornienkovehemently protested that the truth of thematter would inevitably come out and thatthe best course was to reveal just that: theSoviet Union had shot down an unidentifiedintruder in the full conviction that it was anAmerican spy plane. Gromyko was indeci-sive, but invited Kornienko to call KGBhead Yurii Andropov to state his case. InKornienko’s opinion, Andropov was pre-pared to accept an honest account of theevent, but was swayed by Defense MinisterDmitrii Ustinov, long-time master of Sovietdefense industry, and the Soviet militaryleadership. At the meeting to make the finaldecision, Ustinov won this internal battleand Kornienko was only “a voice crying inthe wilderness.” The consequences provedKornienko right; a human tragedy was turnedby the Soviet leadership’s short-sightednessand the Reagan Administration’s intensecriticism into a public-relations disaster forthe USSR.

Moments like these, in which politicalleaders ignore at their peril the advice oftheir professional advisors, recur frequentlyin Kornienko’s memoirs. Covering his overforty years of serving the Soviet state fromjunior translator in intelligence work toDeputy Foreign Minister, Kornienko’s ob-servations are those of a Soviet patriot intenton settling scores both with the West andwith his Soviet comrades. It is perhaps auniversal failing of memoirs that they em-phasize those times when the hero-author isright and all about are mistaken; Kornienko’s

are a sterling example, concentrating par-ticularly on moments when diplomats’ pre-rogatives were violated, whether by partyfunctionaries, military officers, or the high-est leadership of the Soviet state. AfterHenry Kissinger’s April 1972 visit to Mos-cow, in which he worked closely withKornienko, the innocuously bland final state-ment noted that talks had been “open andproductive.” N. V. Podgornyi, Chair of thePresidium of the Supreme Soviet and thusnominally Soviet head of state, objected tothis positive spin on Soviet-American rela-tions despite his complete ignorance of di-plomacy. Only Kissinger’s acquiescenceavoided more serious diplomatic conse-quences. Still later, as political instability inAfghanistan grew at the end of the 1970s, theuniversal opinion within the Soviet ForeignMinistry against military intervention wasdisregarded—Andropov and Ustinov even-tually browbeat Gromyko into agreeing to aninvasion, Kornienko informs us, producing abloody and ultimately frustrating war withdisastrous consequences at home and abroad.

Despite these tales of underappreciateddiplomats, Kornienko’s book is surprisinglyunrevealing about the inner workings of So-viet foreign policy; while discussing Ustinovand Andropov’s pressure on Gromyko forintervention in Afghanistan, he never satis-factorily explains why they themselves hadabandoned the general conviction that mili-tary intervention in Afghanistan was a ter-rible idea. Extraordinarily cagey, he neverdraws upon personal experience or Sovietdocumentary evidence when a Western sec-ondary source will do. Personal observa-tions in his work serve either to prove hisown acuity and point up the mistakes ofothers or to disparage the talents and charac-ter of those Kornienko worked with. Hismemoirs produce the impression thatKornienko had no friends, was particularlyunimpressed by Brezhnev, Ford, and Reagan,and of all those he dealt with admired onlyGromyko and Andropov. This does notmean that Kornienko’s book is without value,but it must be used to understand the mind-set and mental world of a member of theSoviet foreign policy elite, not to find newfacts and revealed secrets.

Kornienko’s first three chapters, on thesources of the Cold War, on the Eisenhowerpresidency, and on Kennedy and Khrushchev,offer very little that is new or especiallyinteresting to students of the Cold War.

Though he claims to have based his accountson his own experiences and on his conversa-tions with other Soviet diplomats, in particu-lar Gromyko, the reader finds little from aninsider’s point of view. As a low-rankingdiplomat, Kornienko may indeed have seenand done little worthy of reporting. Even so,an occasional personal glimpse of life inSoviet intelligence and the diplomatic corpsslips through. Kornienko relates, for ex-ample, that hawkish officials in the KGB,hoping to present Stalin with a translation ofGeorge Kennan’s seminal 1947 Foreign Af-fairs article, “The Sources of Soviet Con-duct,” in which “containment” was trans-lated as “suffocation,” pressured Kornienkoto spice his translation. The cooler heads ofKornienko and his fellow translators suc-ceeded in standing up for the integrity of thetranslator’s art.

These earlier chapters are most note-worthy for the general theory Kornienkooffers of the Cold War and its origins, whichhas a direct bearing on his interpretation ofhow the Cold War ended. For Kornienko,there were no vast impersonal forces orinevitable class contradictions dictating thegrowth of U.S.-Soviet rivalry. Neither classstruggle nor geopolitical necessity mandatedconfrontation. Soviet policy in Eastern Eu-rope was also no obstacle to normal rela-tions, as Kornienko argues that Americanmethods in Japan did not differ from Stalin’smethods in Eastern Europe. (Poles andCzechoslovaks might be puzzled here attheir implicit inclusion in the camp of de-feated Axis powers.) Instead, the Cold Warstemmed from the pragmatic Roosevelt’suntimely death and his replacement by theideologue Truman. Kornienko notesTruman’s notorious suggestion that the Na-zis and Soviets be left to kill each other off;he likes it so much he repeats it twice.Kornienko asks rhetorically, “Was anotherpath possible? It seems to me yes. ButTruman consciously rejected it.” That is,confrontation was a specific political choice,and one for which the Soviets bore at leastsome measure of responsibility, for “if theAmerican side said ‘A’ in the Cold War, thenStalin didn’t hold himself back from saying‘B’.” Since the West never seriously under-took an end to the Cold War, when the endfinally did come under Gorbachev, the onlypossible explanation was unilateral Sovietsurrender.

Chapter 4 on the Cuban missile crisis is

BOOK


nearly as frustrating as the first three in termsof lacking new revelations. Kornienko ap-proves the document collections that havebeen published since the advent of glasnost,but does not enrich the story they tell withany significant new information of his own.Despite serving as a counselor in the SovietUnion’s Washington embassy during thecrisis, Kornienko tells us little of his ownexperiences. He does relate (as does then-Soviet ambassador Anatoly F. Dobrynin inhis recently published memoirs) that theSoviet embassy was kept in complete igno-rance of the installation of Soviet missiles inCuba, and was in fact unwittingly used topass along disinformation.

The meat of Kornienko’s story is hisrole in one of the key moments of the crisis:Khrushchev’s two letters to Kennedy, thefirst of 26 October 1962 promising with-drawal of Soviet missiles in return for anAmerican pledge of non-intervention inCuba, the second of the next day addition-ally demanding the corresponding with-drawal of American missiles from Turkey.According to Kornienko, his own detectivework played a central role in Khrushchev’sdecision to sharpen his demands. Sovietintelligence sources reported a conversationwith an American journalist on his immedi-ate departure for Florida to cover the immi-nent American invasion. Hearing these re-ports as well as taking into account theheightened alert status of American armedforces, Khrushchev accordingly acted to calmthe situation by sending his first letter.Kornienko himself knew the journalist,scheduled lunch with him (itself provingthat the journalist was not due for immediatedeparture), and convinced himself that theearlier intelligence reports of imminent in-vasion had been mistaken. Armed withKornienko’s information, Khrushchev feltprepared to drive a harder bargain with theAmericans.

Chapter 5 on the prelude to détente andChapter 6 on détente itself offer slightlymore. Détente came not from any alter-ations on the Soviet side, but from Nixon andKissinger’s decision to undertake a morepragmatic and conciliatory policy towardsMoscow. In early 1972, Kornienko workedclosely with Henry Kissinger on the “BasicPrinciples” statement on Soviet-Americanrelations. Despite being at the heart ofpolitical decision-making at the highest lev-els, Kornienko strays from standard accounts

of the most important stages of détente—Kissinger’s secret visit to Moscow, Nixon’sMoscow summit and Ford’s Vladivostoksummit with Brezhnev—only to commentbitingly on Brezhnev and Ford’s lack ofmental ability, or to claim that Kissingerdeliberately scheduled meetings in Moscowto keep his deputy Helmut Sonnenfeldt awayfrom discussions on the Middle East (alleg-edly due to fear of Sonnenfeldt’s “zionistinclinations”).

Détente was short-lived. In Kornienko’sinterpretation, the beginning of the end wasthe 1975-76 Angolan Civil War; Carter’spresidency only furthered the deteriorationof U.S.-Soviet relations already begun andrepresented another missed chance at an endto the Cold War. The main obstacle toimproving relations, in Kornienko’s account,was not Carter’s concern for human rights,which was irritating but rather insignificantto Soviet leaders, but instead more concreteissues of international politics. While Carterhimself might have been prepared for a moreopen-minded approach to the Soviet Union,the Carter Administration, hamstrung byunnamed (but easily identifiable) hawkswithin its ranks, was not prepared for a fullsettlement. The United States’ fundamentalgoals still included superiority not equalityin arms control policy, and even the Carter-brokered Camp David accord only under-mined the chances for a general Mideastpeace via U.S.-Soviet joint action, Kornienkoalleges.

Chapters 8 and 9 cover the war in Af-ghanistan and the downing of KAL 007 asdiscussed above; Chapter 10 brings us to theReagan years and the beginnings of glasnost,for which Kornienko has saved his bitterestvenom. His target is not Stalin, Brezhnev, orany Western cold warrior, but his last twosuperiors: Mikhail Gorbachev and EduardShevardnadze. In Chapter 10 and his con-clusion, he presents the case for the prosecu-tion in Mikhail Gorbachev’s treason trial.Traitor is not too strong a word to expressKornienko’s evaluation of MikhailGorbachev, but Kornienko admits that blun-ders began before Gorbachev took power in1985. Chapter 10 first examines at the pre-Gorbachev decision to replace aging Sovietmedium-range SS-4 and SS-5 missiles inEurope with SS-20s. In keeping withKornienko’s general portrait of the lateBrezhnev years, in contrast with more effec-tive policy under Stalin and Khrushchev,

Soviet efforts in foreign policy were sabo-taged by bungling and short-sightedness.He tells us that West German ChancellorHelmut Schmidt suggested to AlekseiKosygin that the replacement SS-20s belimited to a quantity significantly less thanthe outgoing SS-4s and SS-5s, given thequalitative superiority of the new missiles,and that this policy be linked explicitly to anattempt to head off a new arms race inEurope. Kornienko, an invited guest at thePolitburo meeting that discussed Schmidt’ssuggestion, spoke above his station and outof turn to support this initiative. Ustinovchallenged him with the possibility of anAmerican arms buildup even after concilia-tory Soviet gestures. Even in this worst-caseoutcome, Kornienko believed, any tempo-rary advantage the Americans might gain inmedium-range missiles would be far out-weighed by the beneficial effects of theresulting strains in the Western alliance andstrengthening of Western Europe’s anti-nuclear movement. With Brezhnev too feebleto make his presence felt, and Gromyko’srefusal to speak up for Kornienko, Ustinovsimply proved too powerful. Once againKornienko, the lone voice of reason, had hisadvice unthinkingly disregarded, and theupgrade went forward as planned.

The second half of Chapter 10 exam-ines the fate of the SS-23 “Oka” missile.This is one episode of the Cold War whosesignificance is interpreted in radically dif-ferent ways on either side of the former ironcurtain. Barely noticed in the West,Gorbachev and Shevardnadze’s decision toinclude the SS-23 with its 400km range inthe list of intermediate range (that is, withrange 500 km and higher) missiles slated forelimination is the touchstone of Russianmilitary and conservative condemnation ofGorbachev, what one officer terms the “crimeof the century.” While the opposition toGorbachev can hardly argue that the elimi-nation of a single missile system was the rootcause of the downfall of the Soviet Union,they do see the case of the Oka as an exampleof all the worst in Gorbachev’s diplomacy:unpreparedness, unwillingness to listen toexpert opinion, and, most seriously, sacri-fice of Soviet national interests in the nameof agreement, any agreement, with the West.As Kornienko puts it, the inclusion of theOka under the provisions of a treaty that didnot concern it was “only one of the examplesof what serious consequences occur when


high-placed leaders ignore the competentjudgment of specialists and as a result sacri-fice the very interests of the state trying forone thing—to that much quickly finish thepreparation of this or that treaty and light offfireworks in celebration.”

The conclusion of Kornienko’s book, ashortened version of a case set forth earlierat greater length and in greater detail inNezavisimaia Gazeta (16 August 1994), iswhat his argument has been leading to allalong: the Gorbachev era as the epitome ofunprofessionalism in foreign policy. It is afull-fledged condemnation of almost everyaction undertaken by Gorbachev andShevardnadze from 1985 through the finalcollapse of the Soviet Union. In particular,Kornienko strives to discredit the idea thatGorbachev offered something truly new andrevolutionary in international politics. AsKornienko reminds us, it was Lenin whofirst enunciated the principle of “peacefulcoexistence” with the capitalist world (asanother form of class struggle), and Stalinactively endorsed the idea of coexistencewith the West as late as 1951. Ever since arough nuclear parity had been achieved inthe 1960s, reasonable people on each sidehad seen the need for an end to the arms raceand confrontation. Gorbachev’s innovationwas not living in peace with the West, butthe unilateral “betrayal of the Soviet Union’svital interests.”

Kornienko enunciates a number of spe-cific examples of Gorbachev’s craven be-havior—submission to the United Statesover the Krasnoyarsk radar station and So-viet acquiescence in the use of force againstIraq—but his most substantial commentsare reserved for the reunification of Ger-many. Kornienko, having passed over insilence the Soviet interventions in Czecho-slovakia and Hungary, takes pains to em-phasize the right of the German people toself-determination, free from outside influ-ence. His objection is to the manner inwhich this unification took place and thestatus of the resulting German state. Why,he asks, should Germany remain in NATOand why should NATO troops remain inGermany with Soviet troops completelyevacuated from Eastern Europe? The factthat Germany has stayed in NATO he at-tributes to the absolutely incompetent wayin which Gorbachev handled the Germanquestion, avoiding the enunciation of anyclear policy until too late, insisting on the

unacceptability of German NATO member-ship to George Bush in Washington only inFebruary 1990 and then concedingGermany’s right to remain in NATO withoutreceiving guarantees and concessions in re-turn.

Here Kholodnaia voina particularly suf-fers by comparison to Kornienko’s 1992collaboration with Marshal SergeiAkhromeev, former Chief of the GeneralStaff and one-time personal aide to MikhailGorbachev. This earlier book, Glazamimarshala i diplomata [Through the Eyes ofa Marshal and a Diplomat] (Moscow, 1992),covers in book-length form the Gorbachevyears which Kornienko discusses in a chap-ter. The lion’s share is Akhromeev’s work,and he was a much more sensitive and forth-coming observer, on occasion even reveal-ing the details of Soviet tactics in arms con-trol negotiations. While nearly as condem-natory of Gorbachev as Kornienko,Akhromeev as Chief of the General Staff wasin a position to truly appreciate the steadydecline of the Soviet Union under Brezhnevand the need for radical reform, though heparted company with Gorbachev on howprecisely reform needed to be implemented.(Akhromeev killed himself in the wake of thefailed coup of August 1991.) What Kornienkomisses in his evaluation of the Gorbachevyears is precisely how desperate Gorbachev’sposition was by the end of the 1980s. Withopposition to Gorbachev growing on all sides,an economy spiraling into free fall, Soviettroops on hostile ground in Eastern Europe,and the specter of nationalism haunting theSoviet Union, Gorbachev simply had noground to stand on. It is this last factor—nationalism—that Kornienko (and for thatmatter Akhromeev) consistently ignores. Itseems he imagines that a stable end to theCold War could have occurred with EasternEurope still occupied by Soviet troops, andhe never noticed that half the Soviet Union’spopulation was non-Russian.

Kornienko, then, continues to be a de-voted patriot of the collapsed empire heserved for four decades. While there is likelysome truth to his assertions that Gorbachevmight have driven marginally harder bar-gains with the West than he in fact did, thereal significance of any diplomatic triumphsGorbachev might have achieved is question-able. What can any diplomat achieve whenthe state he or she represents crumbles away?Kornienko can complain that his voice was

never heard, but the rejection of Soviet rulein Eastern Europe and the disintegration ofthe Soviet state itself are what truly demol-ished Soviet foreign policy. It is just theseevents that Kornienko cannot bring himselfto look at, and to ask whether he and hisfellow professionals bear any responsibilityfor them.

David Stone is a Ph.D. candidate in theHistory Department of Yale University.

* * * * *

CHEN HANSHENG’S MEMOIRSAND CHINESE COMMUNIST

ESPIONAGE

by Maochen Yu

Chen Hansheng, My Life During Four Eras[Sige shidai de wo] (Beijing: China Cultureand History Press [zhongguo wenshi chupanshe], 1988).

Post-Mao China has been marked by atransition from a combination of totalitari-anism and socialism to one ofauthoritarianism and a “socialist marketeconomy.” Along with this transition is thegradual “withering away of the state,” whichin turn has resulted in a looser governmentcontrol over publication on some historicalissues previously considered taboo duringthe Mao era. One of the most fascinatingnew academic interests in China is the sud-den surge of materials on Chinese Commu-nist intelligence, triggered by a massive “po-litical rehabilitation” of those Chinese Com-munist Party (CCP) intelligence veteranswho were vanquished in Mao’s ruthless cam-paigns.1 The publication of Chen Hansheng’smemoirs, My Life During Four Eras, is justone of the telling examples.

Chen Hansheng became an agent forthe Comintern in 1926 while a young profes-sor at Beijing University (p.35). His life asa communist intelligence official spans manydecades of the 20th century and involvessome of the most important espionage cases.Chen Hansheng’s memoirs add some newand revealing dimensions to the present un-derstanding of the much debated history ofChinese and international communism. Inan authoritative manner, this publicationhelps answer many nagging questions longin the minds of historians, chief among which


ders from Moscow. In 1935, when theSoviet Union was threatened by rising fas-cism in Europe and Asia, the CCP followedMoscow’s order to adopt a policy of a “UnitedFront” (Popular Front) with the Nationalistsin a joint effort to fight Japanese expansionin Asia. Yet, when Stalin stunned the worldby signing the Nazi-Soviet Pact in late Au-gust 1939, the United Front policy collapsedin China. Mao Zedong followed Stalin mostclosely among all the Comintern party chiefs,hailing the Hitler-Stalin deal as a majorvictory against the West and the partition ofPoland as necessary for the communistcause.6 In January 1940, Mao Zedong pro-claimed that “the center of the Anti-Sovietmovement is no longer Nazi Germany, butamong the so-called democratic countries.”7

The modus vivendi of communism and fas-cism in late 1939 created such intense fric-tion between the Chinese Nationalists, whohad been engaged in an all-out and bitter warwith the Japanese imperial army in China,and the Chinese Communists, who werefollowing Stalin’s rapprochement with Ger-many, whose ally was Japan, that in early1940, an army of communist troops wasambushed by the Nationalists in SouthernAnhui, an event which essentially ended thesuperficial United Front. Yet when Hitlerattacked the Soviet Union in June 1941,Stalin reversed his policy on the PopularFront: all member parties of the Comintern,both in Europe and in Asia, were now or-dered to fight fascism. Unfortunately, inChina this did not mean the re-establishmentof the former United Front against the Japa-nese, because the Soviet Union had alreadysigned the notorious Neutrality Pact withJapan. The Chinese Nationalists, not theJapanese, remained the CCP’s main enemy.

In fact, a stunning recent discovery atthe Japanese Foreign Ministry archives of asecret Soviet-Japanese treaty at the outset ofWWII reveals a deeply conspiratorial schemeworked out between Moscow and Tokyo.On 3 October 1940, Soviet and Japanesediplomats reached a secret deal that stipu-lated, “The USSR will abandon its activesupport for Chiang [Kai-shek; Jiang Jieshi]and will repress the Chinese CommunistParty’s anti-Japanese activities; in exchange,Japan recognizes and accepts that the Chi-nese Communist Party will retain as a basethe three (Chinese) Northwest provinces(Shanxi, Gansu, Ningxia).”8

Chen Hansheng’s memoirs has made a

significant contribution to reconnecting thisCCP-Moscow tie.

Was Agnes Smedley A Comintern Agent?Despite vigorous denials by Smedley her-self, Chen Hansheng discloses unequivo-cally that Smedley was no less than an agentof the Comintern (p.52). (Historian StephenMacKinnon has only established thatSmedley was Sorge’s mistress in Shanghai.)Further, we also know from Chen’s mem-oirs that Smedley was involved in everymajor step of the Sorge group’s espionageactivities. In fact, it was Smedley herselfwho recruited Chen into Sorge’s Tokyo op-erations (p.58). Recent Comintern archivesalso confirm Smedley’s identity as aComintern agent.9

Was Owen Lattimore A Communist Spy?Lattimore topped Senator Joseph McCarthy’slist of alleged communist spies in the early1950s. McCarthy accused Lattimore of notonly having manufactured a Far East policyleading to the loss of China to the commu-nists, but also of being a “top Soviet agent.”10

Chen’s memoirs provide surprising insightson this matter from the perspective of acommunist intelligence agent. After Chenfled from Tokyo to Moscow in 1935 toprevent the Sorge Ring’s operations fromexposure, Owen Lattimore, then the editorof the New York-based journal Pacific Af-fairs, the mouthpiece of the Institute of Pa-cific Relations (IPR), asked the Soviet Union,a member nation of IPR, for an assistant(p.63). In 1936, Moscow recommendedChen Hansheng to Lattimore, who readilyaccepted the nomination. Chen then went toNew York, this time under the direct controlof Kang Sheng, who was also in Moscow, towork with Lattimore from 1936 until 1939,when Chen was reassigned by Kang Shengto a Hong Kong-based operation.

However, Chen states in his memoirsthat Lattimore was kept in the dark as to histrue identity as a Communist agent directlydispatched from Moscow (p.64). Lattimore’sscholarly activities were only to be used as acover for Chen. Further, Kang Sheng spe-cifically instructed Chen that while in NewYork, his position at the IPR should only beused as a means of getting a salary; and thatChen’s real task was to help Rao Shushi, aComintern and CCP chief also in New York,organize underground activities (p.65).Therefore, Chen’s memoirs seem to clearLattimore from any complicity associatedwith Chen Hansheng’s secret operations in

are the following:To What Extent Were the Chinese Com-

munists Involved in Soviet-Dominated Com-munist International Espionage in China inthe 20th Century? Recent memoirs in Chi-nese, notably by Chen Hansheng and ShiZhe,2 suggest that the Chinese Communistswere deeply involved. In the 1930s and1940s, for example, as the Shi Zhe memoirsreveal, both the NKVD and GRU of theUSSR and the Department of InternationalRes. (OMS) of the Comintern ran a large spytraining school in Yanan; Chinese Commu-nist spies penetrated deep into the National-ists’ (GMD) wartime intelligence organiza-tions for Moscow.3 Chen Hansheng’s storyfurther illustrates this Moscow-Yanan tie.Chen was recruited by the Russians as aComintern intelligence agent in 1926. Oneyear later, the warlord Zhang Zuolin raidedthe Soviet Embassy in Beijing which wasbeing used as an intelligence base. This raidexposed a large international espionagescheme controlled by Moscow.4 ChenHansheng then fled to Moscow and returnedto China in 1928 to become a member of thewell-known Richard Sorge Spy Ring, thenbased in Shanghai. When Sorge was reas-signed by Moscow to Tokyo, Chen wentalong and worked closely with Ozaki Hozumiand others of the ring until 1935, when theunexpected arrest of a messenger from Mos-cow almost exposed Chen’s real identity.Chen sensed the danger and fled to Moscowagain (pp.61-62). For much of his early life,he was directly controlled by Moscow, andhighly active in international intelligence.Chen’s identity as a Comintern agent was soimportant and secret that Richard Sorge,during his marathon interrogation in Tokyoby the Japanese police, never gave out Chen’sreal name to the Japanese.5

What Was the True Relationship Be-tween the Soviets and the Chinese Commu-nists during WWII? Some historians haveminimized the extent and importance of therelationship between the Chinese Commu-nist Party and the Soviet Union during WorldWar II. Chen Hansheng’s memoirs andother recently available documents from vari-ous sources fundamentally challenge thisinterpretation.

Instead, these new publications showthat from the very beginning the CCP wasintrinsically connected with the internationalcommunist movement centered in Moscow.Every major step of the CCP followed or-


New York.Was Solomon Adler A Communist?

Solomon Adler, chief intelligence agent forthe U.S. Treasury Department in China dur-ing WWII, was also prominent onMcCarthy’s communist list. In the 1950s,Elizabeth Bentley, a courier of a Sovietapparatus in Washington, further identifiedAdler as a member of Soviet intelligence.11

Adler at the time denied Bentley’s accusa-tion. Surprisingly, in Chen’s memoirs, aswell as in some other recent Chinese docu-ments, Adler has resurfaced in Beijing as abona fide communist intelligence official.12

According to these sources, Adler moved toBeijing permanently in the late 1950s andhas since worked in various capacities inCCP intelligence. Today, he is identified inChinese documents as an “Advisor” to theExternal Liaison Department of the CentralCommittee of the CCP, the department thathandles such well-known figures as LarryWu-tai Ching of the CIA, who was arrestedby the FBI in 1983 for espionage, and com-mitted suicide in jail in 1986.

Were the Chinese Communists Part ofthe International Communist Movement orMerely “Agrarian Reformers” in the 1930sand 1940s? Chen Hansheng’s memoirsprovides much new information about theChinese Communist Party’s extensive in-ternational connections. Besides the Sorgeand Lattimore cases, Chen served as a chiefcommunist intelligence officer in HongKong in the late 1930s and early 1940s,running a cover organization funnelling hugeamounts of funds—$20 million in two anda half years—from outside China to Yanan,mostly for the purpose of purchasing Japa-nese-made weapons from the “Puppet”troops in North China, with considerableJapanese acquiescence.13 When wanted in1944 by the Nationalist secret police forpro-Soviet activities in Guilin (China), Chenwas rescued by the British and airlifted toIndia where he was miraculously put on thepayroll of British intelligence in New Delhi.Between 1946 and 1950, while undercoveras a visiting scholar at the Johns HopkinsUniversity in Maryland, Chen becameBeijing’s secret liaison with the CommunistParty of the U.S.A. (CPUSA) (p.81).14 Afterthe CCP took over mainland China, Chenwas summoned back from America toBeijing by Zhou Enlai in 1950 and hasremained a major figure in his own businessfor much of the rest of his life.

When Intellect And Intelligence Join,What Happens? Chen is a seasoned intelli-gence officer with high academic accom-plishment as an economic historian. Whilehis erudition has provided him with excellentcovers for intelligence operations, it was alsoto become a source of his own demise. Chi-nese intellectuals are frequently willing toserve the state, to be its ears and eyes, yet inthe end the state often turns against the intel-lectuals without mercy. Chen Hansheng’slife thus becomes a classic example of thissupreme irony. While in Moscow in 1935and 1936, Chen witnessed the bloody purgeof the intelligence apparatus in the SovietUnion by Stalin. Many of his Soviet com-rades, some of them highly respected schol-ars, including the former Soviet Ambassadorto Beijing who originally recruited Chen inChina in 1926, were shot by Stalin as traitorsand foreign spies. Chen wrote in raw pessi-mism about the Soviet purge, “I could notunderstand what was going on then. Yet itwas beyond my imagination that some thirtyyears later, this horrible drama would be re-played in China and I myself would be atarget of the persecution” (p.64). During theCultural Revolution, Chen did not escape theDictatorship of the Proletariat. From 1966 to1968, Chen was put under house arrest. Hiswife was tortured to death in late 1968. By1971 when Chen was allowed to leave the“thought reform” Cadre School in remoteHunan province, he had become almost com-pletely blind.

1. The most revealing case was the rehabilitation of PanHannian in 1982, after which a large amount of materi-als on Pan’s role as a Comintern intelligence chief inChina and CCP spymaster during WWII became avail-able for scholars. For more details, see the article by thisauthor, “OSS in China: New Information About An OldRole,” International Journal of Intelligence and Coun-terintelligence, Spring 1994, pp.94-952. Shi Zhe, Alongside the Great Men in History: Mem-oirs of Shi Zhe [zai lishi juren shengbian:shizhe huiyi lu]Beijing: Central Documents Press [zhongyang wenxianchupan she], 1991. Shi Zhe served as an OGPU (NKVDsince 1934) agent for nine years in the Soviet Union untilhe was dispatched from Moscow to Yenan in 1940. Hesubsequently worked as Mao’s intelligence aid in chargeof encoding and decoding the heavy secret communica-tions between Mao and Stalin during WWII, and as aChinese-Russian interpreter. Shi Zhe also was KangSheng’s deputy at the Social Affairs Department (SAD)and the chief liaison in Yenan between the NKVD teamand the SAD.3. Yan Baohang and others’ aggressive intelligencepenetration into the GMD, see the doctoral dissertationby this author entitled American Intelligence: OSS in

China (Berkeley, California, 1994).4. For an example of one Western country’s exploita-tion of this raid in uncovering communist spy rings inEngland, see Anthony Cave Brown’s biography ofStewart Menzies, “C,” published in Britain as SecretServant: The Life of Sir Stewart Menzies, Head ofBritish Intelligence, 1939-52.5. Stephen MacKinnon, “Richard Sorge, AgnesSmedley, and the Mysterious Mr. ‘Wang’ in Shanghai,1930-1932,” conference paper for the American His-torical Association, Cincinnati, 29 December 1988.6. Niu Jun, From Yenan to the World [cong yananzouxiang shijie] (Fuzhou: Fujian People’s Press, 1992),64-65; also Mao Zedong, Selected Works of Mao Zedong,vol. 2. (Beijing: People’s Press, 1961), 597-599.7. Interview with Edgar Snow, in Freta Utley, Odysseyof A Liberal: Memoirs (Washington, D.C.: WashingtonNational Press, 1970), 213.8. Bruce A. Elleman, “The 1940 Soviet-Japanese Se-cret Agreement and Its Impact on the Soviet-IranianSupply Route” (Working Paper Series in InternationalStudies, I-95-5, Hoover Institution, on War, Revolu-tion, and Peace), 1-39. Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and FridrikhIgorevich Firsov, The Secret World of American Com-munism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995),60-70.10. Senate floor speech by McCarthy, in Ralph deToledano, Spies, Dupes, and Diplomats (New York:Arlington House Press, 1967), 185.11. Text of testimony by Bentley, in Toledano, Spies,Dupes, and Diplomats, 132-133.12. See Adler’s photo in Chen’s memoirs, and SelectedShanghai Culture and History Materials [Shanghaiwenshi ziliao xuanji] 43 (April 1983), Shanghai People’sPress.13. For more details on this, see Maochen Yu, AmericanIntelligence: OSS in China.14. Many top leaders of the CPUSA, including EarlBrowder and Eugene Dennis, had served as Cominternagents in China. See Klehr, Haynes, and Firsov, SecretWorld of American Communism 8, 12.

Maochen Yu, who teaches history at the U.S.Naval Academy, is completing for publica-tion a revision of his Ph.D. dissertation onthe OSS in China during World War II.


THE 1980-1981 POLISH CRISIS:THE NEED FOR A NEW SYNTHESIS

by Mark Kramer

Robert Zuzowski, Political Dissent andOpposition in Poland: The Workers’ De-fense Committee “KOR” (Westport, CT:Praeger, 1992).

Ya. Ya. Grishin, Dramaticheskie sobytiya vPol’she, 1980-1981 gg (Kazan: Izdatel’stvoKazanskogo Universiteta, 1993).

Many books about the rise of Solidarityin Poland and the subsequent martial-lawcrackdown have been published in the West,but nearly all of them appeared in the earlyto mid-1980s. In recent years, particularlysince the collapse of Communism in EasternEurope, scholarly interest in the 1980-81Polish crisis has largely subsided. Althougha few laudable books about the origins ofSolidarity, notably those by Roman Laba(The Roots of Solidarity), Lawrence C.Goodwyn (Breaking the Barrier), andMichael H. Bernhard (The Origins of De-mocratization in Poland), were published inthe early 1990s, the large majority of West-ern scholars no longer seem interested inreexamining the dramatic events of 1980-81. Even in Poland only a handful of ex-perts, mainly those connected with the par-liamentary Committee for ConstitutionalOversight, are still devoting much effort to areassessment of the 18-month confrontationthat followed the emergence of Solidarity inthe summer of 1980. The dearth of academicinterest in the Polish crisis is ironic, for it isonly now, when the archives in Poland,Russia, and other former Communist coun-tries have become accessible and when alarge number of valuable first-hand accountsof the crisis have appeared, that a fuller andmore nuanced analysis of the events of 1980-81 is finally possible.

For that reason alone, the two booksunder review could have made a far-reach-ing contribution. Both were completed afterseveral of the former East-bloc archives hadbeen opened and after the initial spate ofmemoirs and other first-hand accounts of thePolish crisis had appeared. But unfortu-nately, neither author has made any use ofarchival sources. Although both draw on atleast a few of the new first-hand accounts,the use of this new evidence, especially in

Yakov Grishin’s narrative, is often prob-lematic. Robert Zuzowski’s volume pro-vides cogent insights into the origins andfunctions of the Workers’ Defense Commit-tee (KOR) and Grishin’s monograph has afew bright moments, but neither book offersas much as one might hope.

Zuzowski’s study of the origins, activi-ties, and consequences of KOR is enrichedby citations from a wide range of open andunderground publications. Of necessity, hisbook relies extensively on (and overlapswith) Jan Jozef Lipski’s acclaimed two-volume history of the Workers’ DefenseCommittee, which was first published in1983. Zuzowski’s analysis, however, hasthree advantages over Lipski’s book. First,as one would expect, Zuzowski is moredetached and critical than Lipski, whoseperspective as one of the co-founders andleading members of KOR was unavoidablyreflected in his lengthy account. Second,Zuzowski’s book extends chronologicallywell beyond Lipski’s, which ended withKOR’s formal dissolution in September1981. Third, Zuzowski uses his case studyof KOR to derive broader conclusions aboutthe nature and methods of political dissent inhighly authoritarian societies. His discus-sion of the term “intelligentsia” and hisoverall analytical framework are not alwayspersuasive, but his assessment provides auseful basis for historical and cross-countrycomparisons.

Hence, the overlap with Lipski’s bookdoes not really detract from Political Dis-sent and Opposition in Poland. A moreserious problem arises, however, from theoverlap with a recent book by MichaelBernhard (cited above), which was pub-lished at almost the same time as Zuzowski’smonograph. Bernhard’s volume, likeZuzowski’s, focuses on the origins and po-litical significance of KOR. Both booksdepict the Workers’ Defense Committee asa crucial factor in the rise of Solidarity and aleading influence on the opposition move-ment in 1980-81. This view of KOR’simportance has been accepted by many schol-ars, but it has been challenged in recent yearsby Roman Laba, who has claimed that Pol-ish workers, rather than Polish intellectuals,provided the overwhelming impetus for Soli-darity and were themselves responsible forshaping the union’s agenda. Laba’s publica-tions (including the book cited above) haveprompted spirited replies from Bernhard,

and the debate is likely to continue for manyyears to come.

Zuzowski devotes less attention thanBernhard to Laba’s thesis, and as a result hisbook leaves some key questions unresolved.For example, Zuzowski acknowledges thatwhen the decisive moment came in mid-1980, top KOR members were skepticalabout the prospects for achieving a genu-inely independent trade union. (Some KORofficials even hoped that striking workerswould not press too hard for this goal, lest itbecome a pretext for a harsh crackdown.)This is difficult to square with the author’scontention that “KOR significantly contrib-uted to the formation of Solidarity and to itsperformance, shaping the union’s program,structure, and strategy (p. 169). Nor doesZuzowski explain why so many workerswho had probably never heard of KOR andnever seen its publications were neverthe-less ready to demand a wide array of funda-mental political changes. It may well be, asboth Zuzowski and Bernhard argue, thatKOR decisively changed the broader milieuin which the strikes of 1980 occurred andthat this helped Polish workers eschew vio-lence and sustain an organized protest move-ment. But it is not clear that the evidenceproduced by Zuzowski is enough to contra-vene Laba’s basic point.

This reservation notwithstanding, thesurveys of KOR that Zuzowski and Bernhardprovide, combined with Laba’s earlier book,are about as far as one can go with non-archival sources. Both authors have done anadmirable job of poring over KOR’s publi-cations and other dissident works as well asrelevant secondary sources. Both havebrought new analytical perspectives to bearon their topic. Now that Zuzowski’s andBernhard’s books have appeared, other schol-ars who wish to write about KOR will haveto draw on recently declassified materials inthe Archiwum Akt Nowych and other ar-chives in Poland (materials not consulted byZuzowski or Bernhard) if they are going toadd anything of significance to the historicalrecord.

Zuzowski’s failure to make use of newlyreleased documentation is regrettable, butby no means wholly unreasonable. Severalfeatures of his book (e.g., his frequent use ofthe present tense to describe things thatceased to exist after 1989) suggest that hewrote most of the text in the 1980s before the

continued on page 294


1 September 1995To the Editor:

I read with great interest “TheSudoplatov Controversy” in the CWIHPBulletin (Issue 5, Spring 1995, pp. 155-158). In its own time I also read SpecialTasks with no less interest.

I believed earlier and now presume thatthe appearance of the recollections of sucha high-ranking employee of the StalinistNKVD is an outstanding event, no matterwhat they are like in terms of quality. In anycase, such recollections better than any-thing else characterize the era, and the story-teller. We can only be sorry that the recol-lections, of, for example, Lavrentii Beria,do not exist.

Of course, I cannot read without a smilePavel Sudoplatov’s “assertion” that in thedevelopment of my career I am obliged“through KGB connections.” This is adesperate (consistent with the time!) lunge,a relic of the past, at a time when it is alreadyimpossible, as was done in the Stalinisttime, to register innocent people as German,English, and other “spies,” and to makeshort work of them. Now this relapse of thepast is nothing more than an expressivecoloring on the portrait of Sudoplatov him-self. And it is evidence of the fact that myarticle offended him very much.

In Special Tasks the episode connectedwith Yaacov Terletskii’s mission to NielsBohr. My critical article, published in theBulletin (Issue 4, Fall 1994), touched onlyon that episode. Since I am not a specialistin Sudoplatov’s professional element, butdo have a definite conception of the Sovietatomic project and its history, in this letter,expressing myself, I will limit myself onlyto the mission to Niels Bohr.

I assert that nothing in Sudoplatov’sversion regarding this mission stands up toa comparison with the facts (reason for thetrip, significance for the Soviet physicists ofthe information which was brought; theshadow which Sudoplatov casts on NielsBohr, etc.), and it is a total hoax. Only thenaked fact that the trip to visit Bohr reallydid take place remains certain. But evenhere Sudoplatov is not the one who discov-

ered it: several years ago already ProfessorIgor Golovin mentioned this operation ofBeria’s department in the Soviet press.

I do not believe it possible here to dwellparticularly on Sudoplatov’s new fantasies,contained in his letter to the Bulletin andwhich repeat his Appendix Eight of the pa-perback edition of Special Tasks (p. 491).

In such a way as was already, for ex-ample, analyzed by me, it was shown that thereader should very, very critically regardSudoplatov’s “improvisations:” the princi-pal defect of the “recollections” was evidenteven in a “limited space.” Here the assis-tance and co-authorship in the drafting ofSpecial Tasks of such brilliant journalists asJerrold L. Schecter and Leona P. Schecter,and the fact that the flattering foreward tothis book belongs to the pen of the famoushistorian Robert Conquest, are powerless.

Of course, the point of view of theSchecters is interesting, when they assertthat “the battle in Moscow over Sudoplatov’smemoirs continues. On one side are Russianscientists who fear the downgrading of theirprestige and a threat to the medals theyreceived for building the atomic bomb” (Spe-cial Tasks, Addendum, Paperback Edition).And in “The Sudoplatov Controversy,” theyeven introduce a list of former intelligenceoperatives and historians who, evidently, donot know atomic technology professionally,but who applaud Sudoplatov. The truth,however, is that in the fact of the matter, the“battle in Moscow over Sudoplatov” endedlong ago. People understood that only spe-cialists, physicists-atomic scientists, are in aposition to resolve whether or not Niels Bohrgave atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.

Then why did the Schecters, while ig-noring the opinion of Russian physicists, notwish to listen, for example, to one of theleading U.S. authorities, the prominent par-ticipant in the American atomic project, Prof.Hans A. Bethe? In a recent article in Scien-tific American together with his co-authorsobserved: “Thus, the allegation that Bohrshared nuclear secrets with the Soviets isrefuted by Beria’s own account of the en-counter between his agent and Bohr.” (Sci-entific American, May 1995, p. 90.) Or doeshe too fear for his awards and prestige?

It will be useful to pose still one ques-tion. Was the U.S. government decision topublish in the summer of 1945 Henry Smyth’swell-known treatise “Atomic Energy forMilitary Purposes” really dictated by a wishto share atomic secrets with the Soviet Union?Especially since from the point of view ofinformativeness it exceeded by many timesBohr’s responses to Terletskii’s questions.Responding to this principal issue, it is easierto understand why the attempts to find non-existent “flaws,” from the point of view ofthe demands of secrecy, in Niels Bohr’sresponses, are continuing. And in preciselythe same way, it will become clear why theefforts to defend the indefensible fantasiesof Sudopatov are continuing.

Finally, let’s turn to the eloquent ac-knowledgment of the former Soviet intelli-gence officer Col. Mikhail Liubimov (TopSecret 3 (1994), 27): “Reading Sudoplatov,one ought to remember that in intelligenceactivity (possibly like science) there is aninclination to twist facts, particularly be-cause under the conditions of the totalitarianregime it was easy to do without fear ofconsequences. An intelligence officer oragent could meet and talk with Oppenheimeror with Fermi, who would not have had anyidea to whom they were talking, and thenlater they could give them a code name andwith dispatch submit the information to hissuperiors and cast their deed in bronze.” Atrusting man in the street could be misled bythe report on the meeting between Terletskiiand Bohr. But for Liubimov, who saw that“in every line (of the report) the traditional,old-fashioned character of the operation isrevealed,” it was as clear as two times twoequals four that “Sudoplatov would portraythe whole trip to Bohr as a colossal success,Beria would be pleased, and he will reporteverything to Joseph Vissarionovich (Stalin).And Kurchatov would not dare to articulateany doubts about the success of the opera-tion, [for] like other scientists, he is subordi-nate to the system. And just try to squealabout the organs.”

Sincerely,

Yuri N. Smirnov (Moscow)

R E S P O N S E

THE SUDOPLATOV CONTROVERSY (CONT.)

278 COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT BULLETINR E S P O N S ETo the Editor:

In the letter from the well-known KGBfunctionary Pavel A. Sudoplatov, publishedin the American journal Cold War Interna-tional History Project Bulletin (Issue 5, Fall1995, pp. 156-158), a suggestion or, rather,direct charge, is made against my colleagueof many years, Yuri Smirnov, all of whosescientific and literary efforts I have wit-nessed, that these efforts were in some wayconnected with the KGB. As is usual in suchcases, in place of evidence the letter pro-vides only murky references to a conversa-tion between Sudoplatov and his formercolleagues on this matter.

Fairly or unfairly, the reputation of theKGB, as well as that of similar agencies inother countries has always been very low.There has never been a better way to ruin aperson in the eyes of public opinion and hisclose friends than to suggest that he hasconnections with these services.

An unparalleled expert in the life ofRussian bureaucrats and behind the scenesdealings, the author Nikolai Leskov, de-scribed a similar intrigue in his story Admin-istrative Grace. In this story, a police offi-cial wishing to compromise a provincialpublic figure organizes what we would now

call a “leak” at the suggestion of a highly-placed church official. Simply put, havinginvited an opponent of the victim to visit himon some pretext, the police official slipshim, as if by accident, a specially-preparedletter which refers to payments receivedfrom the police department by the individualto be compromised.

In this and similar situations, the “patri-otic” attitude of these employees towardstheir agencies is touching. They of all peopleunderstand that the discovery of anindividual’s links to their services lead tocompromising him in the public’s eyes, andthat this works. It is not clear whether theyconsider that such actions strengthen thenegative image of their agencies. Perhaps,considering its own reputation to be beyondsalvage, this is of no concern to them.

Knowing Yuri N. Smirnov to be a histo-rian of science, who has objectively evalu-ated the contribution of our agents in obtain-ing “atomic secrets,” who neither dimin-ishes nor exaggerates this contribution,Sudoplatov and his colleagues, apparently,decided to “smear” Smirnov as a protectivemeasure.

As a colleague of Yuri Nikolaevich,who began to work with me 35 years ago andto this day is in constant professional and

social contact with me, I am in a betterposition than anyone else to say that YuriSmirnov is a professional atomic scientistwho received his training at Arzamas-16,who took part in the design and testing of the50-megaton nuclear bomb, who completedhis doctoral work under the direction of thewell-known scientist D.A. Frank-Kamenetsky. During the period in which heworked at the Ministry of Atomic Energy, hewas responsible for a major line of researchinto the peaceful use of nuclear explosions.

Such a list of accomplishments does notrequire any embellishments, and any profes-sional would be pleased to call it his own. Itwas entirely natural that Yuri Nikolaevich,as a possessor of such a rich and varied set ofexperiences, would turn his sights to thehistory of science, and particularly the his-tory of nuclear explosive technology. Theseefforts have borne fruit, as is witnessed byhis string of publications. He is recognizedamong historians of modern science, and noattempts by Sudoplatov and his colleaguesto blacken his reputation will stick.

Sincerely,

Victor AdamskyArzamas-16

THE KOREAN WAR:AN ASSESSMENT

OF THE HISTORICAL RECORD

On 24-25 July 1995, The Korea Society,Georgetown University, and the Korea-AmericaSociety sponsored a conference at GeorgetownUniversity in Washington, D.C. on “The KoreanWar: An Assessment of the Historical Record.”Papers were presented by leading scholars fromKorea, China, Russia, and the United States.

To obtain further information or to order theconference report or participant papers, contact:

The Korea Society1350 Connecticut Ave., NWSuite 204Washington, D.C. 20036Tel.: (202) 293-2174Fax: (202) 293-2184E-mail: [email protected]

The following conference papers are avail-

able for ordering:

1. Civil is Dumb Name for a War, by Dr. JamesMatray (18 pages)2. Russian Foreign Ministry Documents on theOrigins of the Korean War, by Dr. Kim Hakjoon(29 pages)3. Korean War of 1950-1953: Thoughts Aboutthe Conflict’s Causes and Actors, by Dr. ValeriDenissov (14 pages)4. Why and How China Entered the Korean War:In Light of New Evidence, by Dr. Jian Chen (16pages)5. Politics in Peril: The Truman-MacArthur Con-troversy and the Korean War, by Prof. RogerDingman (35 pages)6. Assessing the Politics of the Korean War, byDr. Evgueni Bajanov (23 pages)7. A Triangle of Kim, Stalin, and Mao in theKorean War, by Dr. Kim Chull-baum (27 pages)8. Notes on the Successive Strategies EmployedDuring the Korean War, by Gen. Sir AnthonyFarrar-Hockley (12 pages)

9. The Korean War Paradigm, by Col. Harry G.Summers (17 pages)10. China’s Military Strategy During the KoreanWar, by Dr. Shu Guang Zhang (33 pages)11. Military Objectives and Strategies of TwoKoreas in the Korean War, by Dr. Chang-Il Ohn(18 pages)12. The Soviet Role in Prolonging the KoreanWar, 1951-1953, by Dr. Kathryn Weathersby13. Assessing the Conclusion and Outcome of theKorean War, by Dr. Natalia Bajanova (13 pages)14. POWs, Soviet Intelligence and the MIA Ques-tion, by Mr. Paul Lashmar (14 pages)15. The Politics of Conference: The PoliticalConference at Geneva, April 26-June 15, 1954,by Dr. J.Y. Ra (31 pages)16. In Search of Essences: Labelling the KoreanWar, by Dr. William Stueck (22 pages)

There is a fee of $5.00 for the conferencereport and $2.50 per paper; checks can be madepayable to the Korea Society.


9 October 1995

To the Editor:

I read the essay “Poland, 1956:Khrushchev, Gomulka and the Polish Octo-ber,” by L.W. Gluchowski, and the accom-panying documents in CWIHP Bulletin 5(Spring 1995), pp. 1, 38-49, with enormousinterest, the reason for which will be evidentin a moment.

Upon completion of the reading, how-ever, I was thoroughly puzzled by what Isaw as a major omission from the author’sintroductory essay. Though the materialappears in the documents and in footnotes tothem, there is no mention at all in the bodyof the essay concerning one of the mostcrucial aspects that determined the ultimateoutcome of the confrontation between theSoviet and Polish communist party leadersin Warsaw. It concerns the movement ofSoviet military forces toward Warsaw, thecircumstances in which the Polish partyleadership learned of the movements, andthe threatened response of Polish militaryunits. It appears as a single line in Docu-ment 3 (p. 43), is amplified in Gomulka’srendition of the events to the Chinese inDocument 4 (p. 44), and in footnote 61,quoting Mikoyan’s notes. The threatenedresponse of Polish military units is not men-tioned in the documents at all, or by theauthor.

Gluchowski also quotes two of the com-ments in Khrushchev’s memoirs; the first—“...the people of Warsaw had been preparedto defend themselves and resist Soviet troopsentering the city...”—without asking what“Soviet troops,” from where; and the sec-ond—“...our own armed strength far ex-ceeded that of Poland, but we didn’t want toresort to the use of our own troops”— with-out pointing out that it is belied byKhrushchev’s outburst at the October 19meeting (quoted on page 40): “That numberwon’t pass here. We are ready for activeintervention....I would like the comrades tovoice their views on this matter: interven-tion or...”

It seems very likely, even obvious, thatKhrushchev gave the order for the move-

ment of Soviet forces based in Poland in hismeeting with Marshals Konev andRokossowski in the Soviet embassy on Octo-ber 19, also referred to in his memoirs (p. 41).The troop movements, which the Sovietsthen claimed were a long-planned army “ex-ercise” (p. 44), were certainly very muchlarger than the “one military battalion” (p.40) that Rokossowski admitted to putting“on alert” (p. 44). Gomulka’s phrase is “theSoviet Army stationed in Poland” (p. 44).

In 1980 or thereabouts, I was given adescription of the same climactic meetingbetween the Soviet and Polish leaderships bya former Polish party and government offi-cial who had before 1956 been close to thePolish First Secretary, Central CommitteeChairman and Prime Minister, BoleslawBierut. That rendition adds information be-yond that which appears in Gomulka’s de-scription to the Chinese party in Document 4.I recorded the comments at the time. Thenote which a Polish official handed toGomulka during the meeting with the Sovi-ets and which informed him of the Soviettroop movements resulted from informationreported to Warsaw by Polish military offic-ers (“colonels”). In addition, Polish AirForce General Frey-Bielecki requested per-mission to bomb the Soviet columns as theyconverged on Warsaw. Some Polish AirForce units apparently threatened such ac-tion whether they received authority to do soor not. (As I recall, Frey-Bielecki agreed tomake the request when some of his officersinformed him of those threats, telling himwhat they intended to do. With that, hedecided to approach the political leadership.)The Polish internal security forces were alsopreparing some sort of resistance. Gomulkawas the source of Khrushchev’s assessmentthat “the people of Warsaw had been pre-pared to defend themselves.” Gomulka ap-parently told him, in effect, “Leave us aloneand everything will be OK; if not, there willbe a popular uprising.” And the Russiansthought that the Poles would fight; in thewords of the Polish official, “All the Czechtraditions are different.”

One might add one more point.Gluchowski never comments on the propos-als for union, although Khrushchev refers to

“...a number of comrades who are support-ers of a Polish-Soviet union...” (p. 40).

Sincerely yours,

Milton LeitenbergSenior FellowCenter for International and Security Stud-ies at Maryland (CISSM)University of Maryland (College Park)

MORE ON THE 1956 POLISH CRISIS

L.W. Gluchowski responds:

I would like to thank Mr. Leitenberg forhis thoughtful comments on my documen-tary essay, “Poland 1956: Khrushchev,Gomulka, and the Polish October,’” in theSpring 1995 issue of the CWIHP Bulletin.With regard to Mr. Leitenberg’s commentthat he was “thoroughly puzzled” by “amajor omission from” my “introductory es-say” concerning “one of the most crucialaspects that determined the ultimate out-come of the confrontation,” notably “themovement of Soviet military forces towardsWarsaw...[and] the circumstances in whichthe Polish party leadership learned of themovements,” I shall be brief. Any discus-sion about the military aspects of the Soviet-Polish confrontation of October 1956 isbound to be controversial at this early stageof archival research in Poland. In any case,I decided to let this set of documents speakfor themselves, and no less than six endnotesinclude extensive discussions of militarymatters during the crisis. Even Mr.Leitenberg acknowledges that “the materialappears in the documents and in the foot-notes to them.” Furthermore, in the body ofmy essay, I noted: “Three days in October[18 to 20] 1956 resolved four outstandingand interrelated conflicts of the de-Stalinization period in Poland.” The secondconflict I outlined reads as follows: “theSoviet threat to intervene militarily in theaffairs of the Polish Party ended with acompromise agreement on the part of theCPSU leadership and the PUWP leader-ship.” It is clear that I agree with Mr.Leitenberg: “one of the most crucial as-pects” of the confrontation in Warsaw had to

R E S P O N S E

280 COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT BULLETINR E S P O N S Edo with the threat of Soviet military inter-vention.

My first departure with Mr. Leitenbergcomes when he elevates “the circumstancesin which the Polish party leadership learnedof the movements” to some kind of specialmoment in the negotiations. We still don’thave enough Soviet evidence to draw Mr.Leitenberg’s conclusions. This is particu-larly true when we consider his comment:“It seems very likely, even obvious, thatKhrushchev gave the order for the move-ment of Soviet forces based in Poland in hismeeting with Marshals Konev andRokossowski in the Soviet embassy on Oc-tober 19, also referred to in his memoirs.” Inthis case, an omission on my part may haveresulted in the confusion, and I am gratefulto Mr. Leitenberg for bringing it to myattention.

In my attempt to edit out a number oflong historiographical comments about thedocuments from the essay I submitted to theBulletin, I deleted a remark about the reli-ability of Khrushchev’s memoirs on thePolish crisis, which was originally includedwith Molotov’s characterization ofRokossowski in the Felix Chuev interview(contained in One Hundred and Forty Con-versations with Molotov) cited in endnote28. I should have left in place the followingobservation:

This is another example of howKhrushchev’s memoirs are accuratein so far as the general atmosphereof the discussions are concerned,and at the same time confusing be-cause he again tends to take whatwere obviously a series of discus-sions and compress them into oneimportant conversation. Surely, asDocument 1 clearly shows,Rokossowski could not have gonewith Khrushchev to the Soviet em-bassy on 19 October [1956], al-though Khrushchev’s emphasis onRokossowski as a main source ofinformation for what was happen-ing in Poland at the time tells us a lotabout what everyone in Poland tookfor public knowledge: Rokossowskiwas Moscow’s man in Warsaw. ThePolish Minister of Defense was atthe Politburo meeting, held imme-diately after First Secretary Ochab

put the 8th Plenum on hold, to fur-ther discuss the Polish position to-wards Khrushchev, while the Sovi-ets went to their own embassy.Rokossowski attended all the meet-ings of the Polish Politburo duringthis tense period. The Stenographicreport of the 8th Plenum also notesthat Rokossowski attended all sit-tings of the 8th Plenum from 19-21October 1956. It would be difficultto imagine Rokossowski not attend-ing meetings of the only legal bod-ies that could force him from theleadership. Khrushchev probablydecided to let the Poles begin the 8thPlenum for a number of reasons,including the necessity of providingGomulka with the legal status heneeded to negotiate on behalf of thePolish side at the Belvedere talks.More important, Rokossowski wasa full member of the PUWP Polit-buro and Central Committee.Gomulka had to treat Rokossowskias part of the Polish negotiation team,at least officially, and no one oneither side would have suggested, atleast in public, otherwise.

Military aspects of the 1956 crisis, withwhich I have been grappling since 1986,have been among the most difficult issues todate to discuss with any degree of confi-dence. Documentary evidence, until re-cently, has been limited, while humanistsociology, brushed with rumors, hearsay,and unsubstantiated gossip, grows with ev-ery memoir. With some exceptions, thelatter part of the little story from the longBelvedere meeting recited to Mr. Leitenbergby his Polish source has a ring of truth. I canimagine, during the most heated moments,Khrushchev and Gomulka exchanging veiledthreats, using language that spawned imagesof heroic Polish resistance and Soviet mili-tary glory. Khrushchev and Gomulka werenot the quiet diplomatic types. But it wouldbe a leap to suggest that “one of the mostcrucial aspects” determining the “ultimateoutcome of the confrontation” was the “cir-cumstances in which the Polish party leader-ship learned of the [Soviet military] move-ments,” at least with the limited selection ofdocuments I included in my essay.

However, I will let Mr. Leitenberg and

the readers of the Bulletin decide for them-selves the merits of my case when I presentit in full, in a second documentary essay Ihave begun to put together, this time withEdward Nalepa of the Military HistoricalInstitute in Warsaw, before I was made awareof Mr. Leitenberg’s letter, for an upcomingissue of the Bulletin. Our documents includea series of reports prepared by Polish mili-tary counter-espionage (Informacja) offic-ers throughout the period of the crisis.

In my first essay I wanted to focus on thepolitical aspects of the crisis, particularly thebottom line positions staked out by the twokey personalities in this struggle: Khrushchevand Gomulka. Reflecting the tendency atthese high level meetings to focus on per-sonalities, both sides argued over the sym-bolic significance of Marshal Rokossowski’scontinued presence in People’s Poland. Al-most all other outstanding issues that di-vided the Soviets and the Poles were left forfurther negotiations. I am currently prepar-ing a list of the documents that cover thisvast subject. The documents I selected fortranslation or cited in the footnotes of myfirst Bulletin essay make up the most up todate collection on the Polish version of whathappened at the Belvedere Palace on 19-20October 1956. The Czech document record-ing a 24 October 1956 meeting at the Krem-lin, which outlines the Soviet version ofevents—a document introduced and trans-lated by Mark Kramer and published in thesame issue of the Bulletin (pp.1, 50-56)—helps to complete the documentary part ofthe whole puzzle, but more Soviet docu-ments are still required to draw less tentativeconclusions.

My thesis, not in dispute insofar as Mr.Leitenberg’s letter is concerned, is that thePolish crisis of October 1956 ended in apolitical settlement. Khrushchev made thefinal compromise which ended the standoff:Rokossowski’s future was left to the PUWPCC; and they later voted to oust him from thePolitburo. Both sides compromised andclaimed victory, although Gomulka cameout of the stormy negotiations especially ina strong position. Khrushchev, on the otherhand, managed, as I argue, “to put the Polishquestion to rest for almost 25 years.” TheSoviet compromise should not go unno-ticed.

Indeed, all this was accomplished at atime of great international tension, ideologi-


cal confusion, social unrest in the countrywhere the negotiations were taking place,and led by two leaders who still had tooperate within some kind of collective lead-ership framework. Other than “active inter-vention,” as Khrushchev called it, could theSoviet leader (or Gomulka for that matter)have guaranteed anything other than thethreat of military intervention during thetalks at the Belvedere Palace, without aprolonged and exhaustive period of face-to-face negotiation? We already know, forexample, that Khrushchev only knew whatothers had told him about Gomulka or thesituation in Poland, and that he was alreadysuspicious of half the Polish Politburo, whomhe met in March 1956. In fact, Khrushchevpositively despised Roman Zambrowski,the leading Gomulka supporter in the PUWPPolitburo at the time. Mikoyan’s warning toGomulka that he would “be pulled to the topby the Jews and then again they will drophim” was directed at Zambrowski, whoagain became the target of Soviet scornduring informal Soviet-Polish meetings overthe future of Soviet-Polish relations afterOctober 1956.

With regard to the second assertion byMr. Leitenberg; namely my refusal to dis-cuss “the threatened response of Polish mili-tary units” to the Soviet troop movements,which “is not mentioned in the documents atall, or by the author,” I will add this for themoment. The Soviet control of the PolishArmy, acknowledged in the body of myessay, extensively discussed in my foot-notes, and covered by Document 5(Khrushchev’s letter to Gomulka on 22 Oc-tober 1956), as well as the Soviet threat tointervene militarily in the affairs of thePolish party, cannot be separated. If anycommunist in Poland at the time can make aclaim to have threatened to go to battleagainst Soviet tanks and troops, who alsomarched with some Polish military unitstowards Warsaw, it was the commanders ofthe security troops under the command ofthe Polish interior ministry, and perhapssome individual Polish Army officers whoturned to them. But all these matters needfurther clarification. Edward Nalepa and Iwill try to sort through the myth and drawsome more appropriate conclusions in theessay we will present in a future Bulletin.

We will also try to put into context Mr.Leitenberg’s presentation of the observa-tions shared to him during a talk in 1980

with “a former Polish party and governmentofficial who had before 1956 been close tothe Polish First Secretary...Bierut.” At thisstage, I will only emphasize that this too is aproblem. How Polish communists, sharplydivided before October 1956, immediatelyafter the crisis, appropriated and transformedthe October events and then continued to re-invent the “Polish October” after each suc-cessive period of conflict during the ColdWar, is worthy of note.

I take full responsibility for a number ofmisprints that appear in the published text.Mr. Leitenberg’s final critical remark to me,“Gluchowski never comments on the [So-viet] proposal for union,” is one of the mostserious errors. Three separate letters withcorrections were sent to the Bulletin, but itappears the last one did not make it into thefinal text. The sentence from which Mr.Leitenberg cites (p. 40), where Gomulka isoutlining to the Polish PolitburoKhrushchev’s comments, should read as fol-lows: “They are upset with us because thePolitburo Commission proposed a new list ofmembers to the Politburo without a numberof comrades who are supporters of a Polish-Soviet alliance [not union—sojuszu polsko-radzieckiego]; namely, comradesRokossowski, [Zenon] Nowak, Mazur,Jozwiak.” The next two sentences shouldread: “I explained to them that we don’t havesuch tendencies. We do not want to break thefriendly relations [not alliance—zrywacprzyjazni ze Zwiazkiem Radzieckim] with theSoviet Union.”

Incidentally, Khrushchev’s comment toGomulka about Poland’s leading supportersof a Soviet-Polish alliance is closely relatedto Khrushchev’s previous comment, cited byGomulka in Russian: “The treacherous ac-tivity of Comrade Ochab has become evi-dent, this number won’t pass here.” It wasnot obvious to me when I prepared the firstessay, although I now hope to make my caseshortly elsewhere, but it appears thatKhrushchev’s anger, directed as it was to-wards Ochab, probably stemmed fromOchab’s September 1956 meeting with theChinese, as mentioned in Document 5, andsubsequent negotiations between Warsawand Beijing. Soviet-Chinese talks over Po-land appear to have led Beijing to demandfrom Moscow a more collective approach tothe way the Kremlin dealt with the WarsawTreaty Organization states. In a telegram toGomulka from the Polish ambassador to

China, dated 27 October 1956, StanislawKiryluk wrote:

...at two in the morning I was invitedto meet with the CPCh [CommunistParty of China] leadership. Talkswith Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, ChenYun lasted for three hours ... [TheChinese leaders stated:] “Between19-23 October a CPCh delegation ...in Moscow convinced Khrushchevabout the rightness of the politicalchanges in Poland ... Matters of in-dependent Polish activities cannotbe questioned despite the reserva-tions of the CPSU Politburo, whichhas become accustomed to methodsand forms of behavior that must beeliminated from relations within thesocialist camp.” Mao used, in thiscontext, the phrase “great powerchauvinism.” [See Archive of thePolish Ministry of Foreign Affairs,Collection of telegrams from Beijingin 1956, Telegram no. 17599, 27October 1956]

It appears the Chinese may also need tobe given some credit for the success of the“Polish October.”

Centre for Russian and East EuropeanStudies. University of Toronto25 November 1995

R E S P O N S E


MORE ON THE 1956 HUNGARIAN CRISIS

R E S P O N S E

23 October 1995

To the Editor:

The Spring 1995 issue of the Bulletin, asrich and as informative as ever, contains twostimulating articles by Professor JohannaGranville. Permit me to make a few com-ments on both.

In the first article—“Imre Nagy, Hesi-tant Revolutionary”—Professor Granvillecorrectly argues that Prime Minister Nagy, alifelong Communist, hesitated to side withthe revolutionaries during the early days ofthe 1956 Hungarian uprising (October 23-27); that he created a new, reform-mindedparty leadership that was more congenial tohis way of thinking only on October 28th;and that, finally, he embraced the revolution’smain demands of neutrality and politicalpluralism on November 1st, after he realizedthat Moscow had deceived him.

Alas, this is not a new interpretation,nor do the documents that follow ProfessorGranville’s article provide important newevidence to confirm it. Hence your claim,not hers, made in the Table of Contents Boxon p. 1—“Imre Nagy Reassessed”—is mis-leading. Ten years ago, and thus long beforethe archives opened, this is what I wrote inHungary and the Soviet Bloc, 1986, pp. 128-29 (all emphases in the original):

[I]t is one of the paradoxes ofpolitical life in Eastern Europe that,until the last days of this short-lived revolution, Nagy was the manMoscow counted on, and couldcount on, to save its cause in Hun-gary. Indeed, from the time of thefirst demonstration on October 23to October 31, Nagy could onlyenvisage a Hungarian future basedon Soviet tutelage. With Sovietconsent, he sought to make orderby promising ‘reforms,’ assumingthat the promise of such reformswould end the uprising.

Nagy’s first turning point cameon October 28 when he reached theconclusion that the party had to bechanged, too. He had come tounderstand—and the Kremlin con-

curred—that the time for reformhad passed, and his all but impos-sible historic mission was to rec-oncile Soviet power-political in-terests with those of a new—some-what independent and somewhatpluralistic—Hungarian politicalorder. He consulted with AnastasMikoyan and Mikhail A. Suslov,the two Politburo members whowere in Budapest, and with Yuri V.Andropov, the Soviet ambassadorto Hungary, to gain their approvalfor the transfer of the functions ofthe hapless Central Committee to anew, six-member party Presidium.So anxious was Nagy not to cir-cumvent Moscow that he calledthe Kremlin from Andropov’s of-fice that morning to obtain confir-mation of the authorization he hadjust received from the Soviet rep-resentatives in Budapest....

Only his second turning point,which came on November 1, signi-fied a parting of the ways betweenNagy and Moscow. Soviet troopshaving reentered Hungary the nightbefore, Nagy realized that morn-ing that the Kremlin was no longerinterested in finding a political so-lution to the crisis under his leader-ship. He felt betrayed. In vain hadhe consulted with the Kremlin; invain had he gained Soviet approvalfor every major measure he hadadopted between October 23 and31. The party was over. From theloyal Muscovite he had been all hislife, this is when Nagy became aHungarian revolutionary. On No-vember 1, acting for the first timewithout Soviet concurrence, hisgovernment declared Hungary’swithdrawal from the Warsaw Pactand the country’s neutrality. OnNovember 4, when its troopsreached the Hungarian capital, theSoviet Union overthrew the Nagygovernment and crushed the revo-lution.

To the extent this was a “reassessment”

ten years ago, Professor Granville’s articlemust be regarded as a “restatement” of thatinterpretation, albeit a useful one. I am notaware of a single scholarly book or articlepublished anywhere in recent years that hasclaimed that Nagy was anything but “hesi-tant.”

In her second article and in the docu-ments from the archives of the KGB that areattached to it—“Imre Nagy, aka ‘Volodya’—A Dent in the Martyr’s Halo?”—ProfessorGranville does offer a reassessment of Nagy’slife in Moscow in the 1930s. While thedocuments make wild claims, ProfessorGranville prudently and correctly indicatessome of the circumstances under which theywere released in mid-1989. She puts it well:“The story of how these materials came tolight is a story that has more to do withSoviet, Hungarian, and communist partypolitics amidst the revolutionary upheavalof the late 1980s and early 1990s than withhistorical or scholarly investigation” (p. 34).My purpose here is to add a few comments,including some new information on the roleof a key player, about how and why the KGBreleased parts of its file on “Volodya.”

On the basic issue at hand: Having readthe four KGB documents published by Pro-fessor Granville (pp. 36-37), and havingread fragments of others in 1991-92, I shareProfessor Granville’s suspicion that ImreNagy was almost certainly an informer forthe NKVD, the KGB’s predecessor, in the1930s. Like most other Communist exiles,Nagy was also a Soviet citizen and a memberof the Soviet Communist Party. He wasattached to the Soviet-dominated Commu-nist International.

However, the claims about the conse-quences of Nagy’s reporting made by KGBChief Vladimir Kryuchkov in his letter oftransmittal to the Soviet Central Committeon 16 June 1989 (p. 36) are almost certainlynot true. His suggestion that Nagy alone wasresponsible for the arrest, exile, or executionof dozens of high-ranking Communist ex-iles defies common sense. Nagy, after all,was hardly an important figure at that time;he did not even belong to the inner circle ofHungarian activists. He was a lonely man,writing on Hungarian agriculture in an ob-scure émigré journal no one read and com-

COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT BULLETIN 283R E S P O N S Ementing on the Hungarian-language broad-casts of Radio Moscow no one heard, letalone listened to. As one of his Muscovitecolleagues would observe many years later,even the leading émigrés “had nothing ofconsequence to do but they behaved as ifthey had. They practiced assiduously some-thing they referred to as politics, plotted oneanother’s downfall, and generally prancedand cantered and whinnied like superannu-ated parade horses at the knacker’s gates.”(Julius Hay, Born 1900: Memoirs [La Salle,Ill.: Library Press, 1975], pp. 218-19.) Giventhe atmosphere of suspicion prevailing inMoscow at the time, the Russian commis-sars did not trust information conveyed byforeign Communists.

Could Nagy, a nonentity among thenonentities, have been a petty mole, then?Yes. Could his reporting have contributed tothe bloody purge of foreign, especially Hun-garian, Communists in the 1930s? Yes.Could he have been directly responsible forthe arrest of 25 Hungarian Communistémigrés, of whom 12 were executed and therest sent to prison or exile? No. One: TheSoviet authorities were always both suspi-cious of and contemptuous toward all for-eign Communists; the NKVD surely did notrely on one such informant’s reports. Two:As Kryuchkov put it, the 1989 release of the“Volodya File” to Károly Grósz, GeneralSecretary of the Hungarian Socialist Work-ers Party (HSWP), was meant to be “expe-dient” and Grósz was to be advised “abouttheir possible use” (p. 36). Three: Given theKGB’s aptitude for falsifying documents,the authenticity of anything emerging fromits archives must be carefully scrutinized.

A few hitherto unknown details willamplify the skepticism implicit in thesereservations and supplement ProfessorGranville’s able account of the politicalcircumstances of 1989.

In 1988, KGB Chief VladimirKryuchkov flew to Budapest on a secretfact-finding mission. Long familiar with,and reportedly very fond of, Hungary, hestayed for several days. He met a few partyleaders, the head of the political police, andat least one mole the police had planted inthe country’s increasingly vocal democraticopposition movement. Judging by the ques-tions he asked and the people he met, hewanted to gain a first-hand impression ofthe bitter struggle that engulfed the HSWPleadership after the forced resignation of

János Kádár earlier that year and of thecharacter, composition, and objectives of thedemocratic opposition. His visit confirmedwhat he must have known: that the criticsboth inside and outside the party were gain-ing new adherents by using Imre Nagy’sexecution in 1958 to discredit not only Kádárand his associates but to undermine the wholepost-1956 Hungarian political order. As in1955-56, Nagy—a man Kryuchkov knewwhile he was the Soviet Embassy’s pressattaché in Budapest—had once again be-come the flag for the gathering storm.

I do not know if it was Kryuchkov whothen initiated the KGB’s search for informa-tion on Nagy’s past. Nor does it muchmatter. Both he and Grósz were anxious todiscredit Nagy in order to deprive the Hun-garian people—and the anti-Kádár, anti-Grósz reformers in the HSWP—of a symbolof courage and sacrifice, of a reformer whobroke ranks with Moscow. An astuteKremlinologist may also interpret their ef-fort as an attempt to disparage Nagy in orderto undermine Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s repu-tation.

I do know, however, who went over tothe headquarters of the KGB to authenticateNagy’s handwriting and pick up the newlyfound “Volodya File.” Accompanied byGyula Thürmer—Grósz’s special assistantfor Soviet affairs who, married to a Russianwoman, spoke excellent Russian—and pos-sibly by a “Third Man,” also from Budapest,the Hungarian in charge of the transactionwas Sándor Rajnai, the Hungarian Ambassa-dor to Moscow. Unlike the young Thürmerand the “Third Man,” Rajnai had long knownNagy and his handwriting very well indeed.For, in 1957-58, Lieutenant-Colonel Rajnaiof the Hungarian political police was respon-sible for Nagy’s arrest in and forced returnfrom his involuntary exile in Romania; forNagy’s year-long interrogation in a Budapestjail where even his presence was top secret;and for the preparation of Nagy’s equallysecret trial whose scenario Rajnai had drafted.(Loyal, competent, sophisticated, and ad-mired by his superiors and subordinates alike,this creative author of the last bloody Com-munist purge was subsequently richly re-warded for a job well done. After a longtenure as head of Hungarian foreign intelli-gence, he served as Ambassador to Romaniaand then—the top prize—to the Soviet Union.In the 1980s he became a member of theHSWP Central Committee as well.)

By the time Rajnai “authenticated”Nagy’s handwriting in July or early Augustof 1989, Nagy had received—on 16 June1989—a ceremonial reburial at Budapest’sHeroes Square in front of hundreds of thou-sands of people while millions watched theevent live on Hungarian TV all day. Still,Rajnai clung to the hope that he could savethe regime in which he believed and his ownskin, too, by publicizing damaging informa-tion about Nagy—by portraying him as afalse pretender, a deceiver who sold out hisfriends and comrades, a Stalinist stooge.Only in this way could Rajnai help thehardliners in the HSWP, notably KárolyGrósz, to defeat such critics as Imre Pozsgaywho used Nagy’s name to gain politicalground. Not incidentally, only in this waycould Rajnai justify his own past and clarifythe meaning of his life. He told me as muchduring the course of some 40 hours of con-versation over several months in 1991 and’92.

As it happened, Rajnai forwarded the“Volodya File” to Grósz; it was translatedfrom Russian into Hungarian by Mrs.Thürmer. Grósz presented a verbal sum-mary, similar to Kryuchkov’s, to the HSWPCentral Committee on 1 September 1989. Inhis speech Grósz told the Central Committeeof Nagy’s direct responsibility for the arrestand sentencing of 25 leading Hungariancadres in Moscow and the execution of 12 ofthem. But then Grósz declined to open thefloor for discussion or answer any questions.The Central Committee resolved to send the“Volodya File” to the archives where it wasshelved. Oddly enough, even Grósz seemeddoubtful of Volodya’s political value at thislate date. “It is my conviction,” he declared,“that what you have just heard will not bedecisive when it comes to making the ulti-mate judgment about Imre Nagy’s wholelife.” (The text of Grósz’s speech was pub-lished on 15 June 1990—ten long monthslater—in the hardline Szabadság, a small-circulation Communist weekly edited byGyula Thürmer.)

In the end, Rajnai’s hope of saving theone-party Communist regime by publiciz-ing the “Volodya File” was dashed, and hisfear of being held accountable for the phonycharges he had concocted against Nagy in1957-58 turned out to be unwarranted. For,while the Hungarian Supreme Court in 1989declared the trial of Imre Nagy and hisassociates null and void, it declined to charge

284 COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT BULLETINR E S P O N S Ethose responsible for it. (Several Politburomembers deeply involved in the case, in-cluding Kádár’s Minister of Internal Af-fairs, were then—and are still—alive andwell. However, the chief prosecutor com-mitted suicide in the 1970s; János Kádár, themain culprit, died minutes before the Court“retried” and rehabilitated his nemesis; andthe head of the kangaroo court that had sentNagy to the gallows in 1958, who remainedunrepentant to the end, died in 1991.)

As for Rajnai, by the time we got ac-quainted in 1991 he had resigned his ambas-sadorship and retired. He was in semi-hiding, worried about retribution. A fewmonths after our last conversation in 1992, Ireceived a letter from him in which he askedfor my help in getting an American visa. Ihave since heard that he died abroad, not inthe United States, of natural causes. Perhapsso. But in his last years, the memory of ImreNagy appeared to consume his mind andcripple his will to live.

Sincerely,

Charles Gati

* * * * *

22 November 1995

To the Editor:

The articles by Janos Rainer and JohannaGranville in Issue 5 of the Bulletin make amajor contribution to our understanding ofthe Hungarian revolution of 1956 and theSoviet decisions relating to it. Both articlestend to conclude that the Soviet decision tointervene decisively to suppress the Nagygovernment was probably made in the pe-riod October 26-30. The documents avail-able to date do not answer the question, butI read them as consistent with a conclusionthat the Soviet decision was not made untilOctober 30-31—after the Hungarians haddisclosed their intention to declare neutral-ity and leave the Warsaw Pact. Mikoyan andSuslov, in their telegram of October 30, mayhave been reporting on their assurances toNagy as implementation of a deception plan,but why then would they say to their Polit-buro colleagues “If the situation deterioratesfurther, then, of course, it will be necessaryto reexamine the whole issue in its entirety.”

If a decision to intervene had been takenearlier, what was there to “reexamine in itsentirety”? Moreover, the Soviet public dec-laration of October 30 advanced a liberalinterpretation of Warsaw Pact relationships,and included an explicit promise to negoti-ate a possible complete Soviet military with-drawal from Hungary. That may, of course,have been intended only to deceive Hungar-ian, Western and world opinion. But if so, itwas a costly device—its brutal repudiationin practice a few days later was a seriousblow to the Soviet Union in the Westernsocialist world as well as in Eastern Europe.

I continue to believe what I first wrote ina RAND paper (P-984) on November 28,1956 (first published in Problems of Com-munism in January 1957, and later in mybook Soviet Military Policy): while Sovietcontingent preparations for possible inter-vention were no doubt underway, it was onlyon October 30-31 that the final decision tointervene was made.

On October 31, when Mikoyan andSuslov met with Imre Nagy and Zoltan Tildy,the latter rejected an offer to withdraw im-mediately all Soviet troops that had notearlier been present in the country. More-over, Tildy told Mikoyan that Hungary woulddefinitely repudiate the Warsaw Pact in anycase—that is, even if the Soviet leadersaccepted their demand to withdraw all So-viet forces immediately. (This was dis-closed in a monitored broadcast by [Hungar-ian Defense Minister] General Pal Maleteron November 1 or 2.) I believe that that wasthe final straw that tipped the decision tointervene. The new documents, while notconclusive, are consistent with that interpre-tation. We can hope that other documentsnot yet discovered or published will clarifythis matter.

I do not argue that the thesis I haveoutlined briefly above has been confirmed,but it has not been disconfirmed by the newevidence available, and in my view the newmaterial tends to substantiate it. I believe weshould continue to regard the question as anopen one.

Other important developments were alsooccurring, including the Anglo-French in-tervention in Suez on October 30 (which, asVladislav Zubok has pointed out, the Sovietleaders initially interpreted as blessed by theUnited States). Further attention should alsobe given to the intriguing comment in KGBChief Serov’s report of October 28, cited in

the Bulletin on pp. 30-31. In para. 5 (on p.31) he cites an alleged conversation by aKGB Hungarian source with some Ameri-cans (named but not identified) who werereported to have said that “if the uprising isnot liquidated in the shortest possible time,the UN troops will move in at the proposal ofthe USA and a second Korea will take place.”Nagy had told Andropov on November 1that Hungary was not only withdrawing fromthe Warsaw Pact immediately, but wouldseek UN and Big Four guarantees of itsneutrality. Did the Soviet leaders on Octo-ber 30-November 1 fear a U.S. intervention,possible under UN auspices circumventingtheir veto, if they withdrew? Perhaps newdocuments will clarify that issue.

In closing, I would like also to correctone small error in the translation of one ofthe documents. A report by Deputy MVDMinister Perevertkin on 24 October 1956, iscited (on p. 22 of the Bulletin) as saying thatthe Soviet intervention force at that timenumbered in all “128 rifle divisions and 39mechanized divisions”—which would havemeant almost the entire Soviet Army! Thefigures evidently refer to 128 rifle and 39mechanized companies, not divisions. Ascorrectly noted in the text of Mark Kramer’scommentary (on p. 51), the Soviet force inHungary on October 24 totaled some 31,500men drawn from five divisions in and nearHungary.

Sincerely,

Raymond L. Garthoff

COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT BULLETIN 285U P D A T EThe Update section summarizes items in thepopular and scholarly press containing newinformation on Cold War history emanatingfrom the former Communist realm. Readersare invited to alert CWIHP to relevant cita-tions. Readers should consult references inBulletin articles for additional sources.

Abbreviations:

DA = Deutschland ArchivFBIS = Foreign Broadcast Information Ser-viceNYT = New York TimesRFE/RL = Radio Free Europe/Radio LibertyVjZ = Vierteljahreshefte fuer ZeitgeschichteWP = Washington PostZfG = Zeitschrift fuer Geschichtswissenschaft

Russia/Former Soviet Union

Interview with Stalin granddaughter GalinaIakovkevnoi Dzhugashvili. (Yuri Dmitrievand Samarii Gurarii, “Syn Stalina” [Stalin’sSon], Trud, 31 May 1994, 3.)

1945 letter on postwar strategy from seniorSoviet diplomat I.M. Maisky to Stalin fromForeign Ministry archives printed. (“TheFiftieth Anniversary of the Conference ofthe Three Allied Powers in Yalta,”Diplomaticheskii Vestnik 3-4 (February1995), 78-79.)

December 1945 documents from RussianForeign Ministry archives illuminateMoscow’s refusal to join International Mon-etary Fund and International Bank for Re-construction and Development. (HaroldJames and Marzenna James, “The Originsof the Cold War: Some New Documents,”The Historical Journal 37, 3 (1994), 615-622.)

Gen. Dmitrii Volkogonov announces (2December 1994) plans to revise estimate oftotal Soviet deaths during World War II;says 44 Soviet soldiers and officers remainMIA from the 1956 invasion of Hungary,300 were still missing from the war in Af-ghanistan, and a Col. Udanov, missing inEthiopia in 1978, was reported to be aliveand working in a Somali stone quarry as lateas 1989. (RFE/RL Daily Report 229 (6December 1994).) Dispute over number ofSoviet deaths in World War II reviewed.(Boris Sokolov, “New Estimates of World

War II Losses,” Moscow News [English] 16(28 April-4 May 1995), 7.)

Stalin’s handling of Nuremberg trials as-sessed by historian Natalya Lebedeva.(“Stalin and the Nuremberg Trial,” MoscowNews [English] 11 (24-30 March 1995), 12.)

Russian evidence on Soviet-Italian relationsand the Italian Communist Party, 1944-48.(Elena Aga-Rossi and Victor Zaslavsky,“L’URSS, il PCI e l’Italia: 1944-1948,” StoriaContemporanea 25:6 (December 1994), 929-982.)

Problems of Post-Communism 42:5 (Sep-tember-October 1995) spotlights new find-ings from Soviet archives: Vladislav M.Zubok, “Soviet Activities in Europe AfterWorld War II,” pp. 3-8; Hope M. Harrison,“Soviet-East German Relations After WorldWar II,” pp. 9-17; Scott Parrish, “SovietReaction to the Marshall Plan: Opportunityor Threat?” pp. 18-24; and KathrynWeathersby, “New Russian Archival Mate-rials, Old American Debates, and the KoreanWar,” pp. 25-32.

Report on persecution and isolation of Rus-sians who returned from WW II GermanPOW camps includes April 1956 recom-mendation from commission headed by De-fense Minister Zhukov to relax measures.(Vladimir Naumov and Alexander Korotkov,“WWII POWs Condemned as Traitors,”Moscow News [English] 17 (5-11 May 1995),11.

Recounting of Soviet policy toward earlyCold War flashpoint on basis of CommunistParty and Foreign Ministry archives. (N.I.Egorova, “‘Iranskii Krisis’ 1945-1946 gg.po rassekrechennym arkhivym dokumentam”[“The Iran Crisis” 1945-1946 on the Basis ofDeclassified Archival Documents], Novaia iNoveishaia Istoriia 3 (1994), 24-42.)

Stalin’s postwar policy in Eastern Europeassessed. (Vadim Tarlinskii, “Sud’bafederatsii” [Fate of the Federation],Nezavisimaia Gazeta, 17 December 1993,4.)

Cominform reassessed on basis of party ar-chives. (G.M. Adibekov, “An Attempt at the‘Cominternization’ of the Cominform,”Novaia i Noveishaia Istoriia 4-5 (1994), 51-

66.)

Inquiry into events surrounding Stalin’s deathand struggle to succeed him. (Y. Zhukov,“Krelenskiie Laini: Stalin otetranili ot vlastib 1951 godu?” [Kremlin Secrets: Did Stalinstep down from power in 1951?],Nezavisimaia Gazeta, 21 December 1994,3.)

Beria’s letters from prison, 1953. (Istochnik4 (1994), 3-14.)

Party and state archives inform study ofKremlin power struggles, 1945-62. (Y.N.Zhukov, “The Struggle for Power in theSoviet Leadership from 1945 to 1962,”Voprosi Istorii 1 (1996), 23-29.)

Archival evidence yields new view on Beria’srole in post-Stalin power struggle. (BorisStarkov, “Koe-chto noven’koe o Berii”[Something New About Beria], Argumenty iFakty 46 (November 1993), 6.)

Nina Vacil’evna Alekseeva on her relation-ship with L.P. Beria. (Irina Mastykina, “YaByla Ne Liubovnitsei Berii, a Ego Zhertvoi”[I Was Not Beria’s Lover, I Was His Vic-tim], Komsomol’skaia Pravda, 25-28 March1994, 8-9; 8-11 April 1994, 6-7.)

Ex-CPSU official L.N. Efremov discussesmemories of Nikita Sergeevich. (ValeryAlekseev, “Takoi Raznoi Khrushchev” [TheVaried Khrushchev], Pravda, 16 April 1994,4.)

Son of G.M. Malenkov on father’s relation-ship with N.S. Khrushchev. (AndreiMalenkov, “Malenkov i Khrushchev,”Gudok [Whistle], 16 April 1994, 4; 19 April1994, 3; 20 April 1994, 3.)

Recollections of Russo-Ukrainian relationsunder Khrushchev. (Andrei Barkovskii,“Velikodushno, bez vsiakikh kolebanii”[Magnanimous, Without Hesitation],Rabochaia Tribuna, 22 January 1994, 3.)

Dissident perspective on 1956 Soviet inva-sion of Hungary. (Viktor Trofimov,“Neordinarnye otnosheniia” [Unusual rela-tions], Nezavisimaia Gazeta, 17 June 1994,4.)

Conversations recalled with Prime Minister


Kosygin. (Nikolai Sergeev, “VyzvalKosygin...” [Kosygin Called...], Trud, 17March 1994, 4.)

Recollections of Soviet policy-making from1950 on. (Oleg Grinevskii, “No SmolenskoiPloshchadi v 1950-kh godakh,”Mezhdunarodnaya zhizn’ 11 (November1994), 120-126.)

Previously unpublished 1963 interview withKhrushchev from CPSU CC archives.(“Vesloe ozhivelenie” [A Happy Revival],Komsomol’skaia Pravda, 27 November1993, 3.)

Account of Soviet officials’ reaction to as-sassination of John F. Kennedy. (MelorSturua, “22 Noiabria 1963 goda” [22 No-vember 1963], Nezavisimaia Gazeta, 20 No-vember 1993, 8.)

Documents on Khrushchev’s 1964 meet-ings with Danish leaders. (“About a 1964Visit to Denmark on the Highest Level,”Diplomaticheskii Vestnik 7-8 (April 1994),70-5.)

New CPSU CC documents on Soviet policytoward 1968 Czech crisis. (R.G. Pikhoia,“Czechoslovakia, 1968: The View fromMoscow: According to Documents of theCentral Committee of the Communist Party,”Novaia i Noveishaia Istoriia 6 (1994), 3 ff.)More Soviet documents on fall-out fromPrague Spring. (“‘Prague Spring 1968’ ech-oes...,” Istochnik 4 (1994), 95-99.)

Eyewitness account of 1969 assassinationattempt against Brezhnev. (MikhailRudenko, “‘I broneboinaia pulia dalarikoshet...’” [And the Armor-Piercing Bul-let Ricocheted...], Moskovskaia Pravda, 5October 1994, 4.

Khrushchev’s interrogation upon Westernpublication of his memoirs in 1970. (Istochnik4 (1994), 64-75.)

Previously classified KGB reports on Rich-ard Nixon’s visits to Moscow in 1959 and1972. (Ludmilla Velichanskaia et al., “Neznaiushchi broda Richard Nikson” [RichardNixon, Who Didn’t Know the Ford], Kuranty,12 August 1994, 7.)

U.S.-Russian scientific team blames Soviet

secret germ warfare plant for worst knownoutbreak of anthrax, near Sverdlovsk in Uralsin 1979. (’79 Anthrax Traced to Soviet Mili-tary,” NYT, 18 November 1994, A10.)

Story of search for rare German stamps togive Brezhnev on 1979 trip to GDR. (MikhailPogorelyi, “‘Tseppelin’ dlia Brezhneva”[Zeppelin for Brezhnev], Krasnaia Zvezda,7 May 1994, 6.)

Memoir of more than three decades inSoloviev Psychiatric Hospital. (MaiiaMikhailovna Korol’, “Sudby zhen sovetskoielity” [The Fate of the Wives of the SovietElites], Rosskiiskie Vesti, 20 May 1994, 5.)

Diplomat recalls negotiations leading to 1975Helsinki Accords. (Yuri Dubinin, “TheThorny Path to Helsinki 1975,” Novaia iNoveishaia Istoriia 4-5 (1994), 177-194.)

Excerpts from personal papers of late For-eign Ministry official, focusing on Sovietinvolvement in Afghanistan. (AnatolyAdamoishin, “Evreiskii Anekdot” [JewishAnecdote], Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 15 Sep-tember 1994, 5.)

Memories of Chernenko from his niece.(Aleksandr Khinshtein, “Ne uspel nichegodelat” [I Did Not Have Time to Do Any-thing], Moskovskaia Komsomolets, 25 De-cember 1993, 8.)

Police officer “S” recalls Soviet policy to-ward Sakharov. (German Orekhov,“Vospominania Sakharova” [Memories ofSakharov], Smena [Change], 14 December1993, 4.)

Behind the scenes in the Russian air trans-port authority in the late Soviet era.(Vozdushnyy Transport 4 (January 1995), 2-3, in FBIS-SOV-95-038-S (27 February1995), 13-17.)

Publications: Vladislav M. Zubok andConstantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’sCold War: Soviet Leaders from Stalin toKhrushchev (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-versity Press, forthcoming, Spring 1996);Michael Scammell, ed. and intro., TheSolzhenitsyn Files: Secret Soviet DocumentsReveal One Man’s Fight Against the Mono-lith (Chicago, Berlin, Tokyo, Moscow: edi-tion q, inc., 1995); Aleksandr’ G. Savel’yev

and Nikolay N. Detinov, The Big Five: ArmsControl Decision-Making in the Soviet Union(Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing,1995); A.M. Aleksandrov-Agentov, OtKollontai do Gorbacheva: Vospominaniyadiplomata, sovetnika A.A. Gromyko,pomoshchnika L.I. Brezhneva, Yu. V.Andropova, K.U. Chernenko i M.S.Gorbacheva (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyeotnosheniya, 1994); G.M. Kornienko,Kholodnaia voina: svidetel’stvo eeuchastnika [The Cold War: Testimony of aParticipant (Moscow: International Rela-tions, 1995); Vojtiech Mastny, The ColdWar and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years,1947-1953 (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, forthcoming, 1996).

Nuclear Weapons Issues:

Historian Zhores Medvedev on various as-pects of the Soviet atomic program, includ-ing the roles of prison labor and the KGB.(Zhores Medvedev, “KGB i SovetskaiaAtomnaia Bomba” [The KGB and the So-viet Atomic Bomb], Smena [Change], 24August 1994, 4; Medvedev, “Bomba ckleimom LON” [Bomb with the Mark ofLON (Camp of Special Significance)],Rabochaia Tribuna, 30 September 1994, 5;1 October 1994, 3; Medvedev, “The KGBand the Atomic Bomb,” Rossiia, 31 January1995, 6.)

Assessment of role of espionage in Sovietatom bomb. (Vladimir Skomorokhov, “FromWhere Was It Born, Our Atom?” Delovoimir [Business World], 22-23-25-28 June1994.) Interview with Prof. BalentinBelokon’ on debate over origins of Sovietatomic bomb. (Oleg Moroz, “Sovetskaia A-bomba: Sobstvennoe izobretenie ili plagiat”[The Soviet A-Bomb: Indpendent Inventionor Plagiarism], Literaturnaia Gazeta 26 (29June 1994), 10.) Several secret letters printedin commentary on book by ex-KGB officerPavel Sudoplatov. (Aleksandr Minkin,“Bomba” [Bomb], MoskovskiiKomsomol’ets, 29 June 1994, 1.)

Evidence from the archives of D.V.Skobel’tsyn. (Mikhail Rebrov, “Mog liSovetskii Soiuz pervym sdelat’ atomnuiubombu?” [Could the Soviet Union HaveBeen the First to Make an Atomic Bomb?]Krasnaia Zvezda, 30 April 1994, 5.)

S E C T I O N


Interview with Arkadii Brishch on his workon Soviet atom bomb. (Oleg Moroz,“Skopirovna byla ne bomba, a skhemazariada” [It wasn’t the Bomb that Was Cop-ied, It Was the Storage System],Literaturnaia Gazeta 36 (7 September 1995),10.)

New data on atomic bomb project fromfamily archives of Lt.-Gen. Boris L’vovichBannikov. (Mikhail Rebrov, “Atomnaiabomba: Kak nachinalsia otchet vremeni”[The Atom Bomb: How the CountdownBegan], Krasnaia Zvezda, 20 August 1994,7.)

Interview with I. Zavashin, director of“Avangard” factory at Arzamas-16, formerlysecret Soviet nuclear center. (VladimirGubarev, “Yuri Zavashin: Pontiatie ‘nado’my vpitali s molokom materi” [YuriZavashin: The Concept of “Must” We Im-bibed with our Mother’s Milk], Segodnia,28 September 1994, 9.)

Description of Soviet Air Force 1956 train-ing maneuver for nuclear war, in which 272troops were ordered to land at ground zero.(Aleksandr Kyrov, “Dernyi Desant” [TurfLanding], Rossiskaia Gazeta, 26 May 1994,7.)

Account of secret Soviet 1959 testing ofatomic weapons in Pacific. (Mikhail Rebrov,“Otriad osobnogo naznacheniia: Khronikaneob ‘iavlennoi ekspeditsii’” [An Order ofSpecial Significance: The Story of an Unre-ported Expedition], Krasnaia Zvezda, 7 May1994, 6.)

Hidden history and environmental costs ofSoviet program of “peaceful nuclear explo-sions” (PNEs) from 1965-88 probed. (JudithPerera, “Revealed: 23 Years of Soviet Nuk-ing,” The Daily Telegraph (London), 8 Feb-ruary 1995, 16, in JPRS-TAC-95-001 (14February 1995), 27-28.)

Environmental impact of nuclear tests onTotskii proving grounds, and increased can-cer rates in city of Orenburzh, assessed byDuma representative. (Tamara Zlotnikova,“Zabytyi genotsid” [Forgotten Genocide],Nezavisimaia Gazeta, 14 September 1994,2.)

Soviet KGB head Kryuchkov noted disap-

pearance of several tons of uranium in 1989.according to German report. (Berlin DDP/ADN, 21 August 1994, in “Secret NuclearDepots Reported in FRG, East Europe, inFBIS-WU-94-162 (22 August 1994), 12.)

Publications: Thomas B. Cochran, Robert S.Norris, and Oleg A. Bukharin, Making theRussian Bomb: From Stalin to Yeltsin (Boul-der, CO: Westview Press, 1995).

Military Issues:

Dmitrii Volkogonov interviewed on searchfor missing U.S. military from World War II.(Valerii Rudnev, “Rossiia prodolzhaet iskat’”[Russia Continues to Search], Izvestiia, 28October 1993, 6.) U.S.-Russian commissionfrustrated by lack of evidence behind claimscaptured US pilots were held on USSR terri-tory. (“MIA’s from the cold war,” MoscowNews [English] 23 (10-16 June 1994), 14.)On 15 September 1952, Russia returns bodyof U.S. Air Force captain whose RB-29 re-connaissance aircraft was downed over theKurile Islands on 7 October 1952. (Reuterscited in RFE/RL Daily Report 178 (19 Sep-tember 1994).) Revelations on plight ofAmericans shot down over USSR, Vietnam,including case of B-52 crewman Lt.-Col.Robert Standervik. (Komsomolskaya Pravda,in FBIS-SOV-95-040 (1 March 1995).)

Detailed account of postwar Soviet subma-rine building program. (I. Spasskiy and V.Semenov, “First Soviet Submarine WithTurbine Power Plant (Design Project 617),”Morskoy Sbornik (Moscow) 7 (July 1994),65-69, in JPRS-UMA-94-053 (15 December1994), 19-23.

Report on early plans for development ofRussian “PKO” defense system. (AnatoliiDokuchaev, “The Russians Weren’t Shoot-ing American Satellites,” Krasnaia Zvezda,30 June 1994, 6.)

Report on 1955 disaster aboard battleshipNovorossisk. (Ol’ga Musafirora,“Herazgadannyi vzryv” [Unsolved Explo-sion], Komsomol’skaia Pravda, 28 October1993, 3.)

On 1962 Soviet naval campaign in Indone-sia. (Andrei Zhdankin, “Do voiny ostavalos’tri chasa” [There Were Three Hours LeftUntil War], Rossiia, 1-7 June 1994, 1.)

Naval commander on Soviet atomic subma-rine progream. (Ivan Gulaev, “K-27:Podvodnyi rekord 1964 goda” [K-27: The1964 Underwater Record], Krasnaia Zvezda,25 June 1994, 6.)

Investigation into 1970 fire aboard nuclearsubmarine “K-8.” (Vladimir Shigin,“Tragediia v Biskaiskom Zalive” [Tragedyin the Bay of Biscay], Moskovskaia Pravda,12 April 1994, 9.)

New data on disaster aboard nuclear subma-rine PL-574 which claimed 89 lives. (“Tainagibeli PL-574” [The Secret of the Disaster ofPL-574], Komsomol’skaia Pravda, 30 De-cember 1993, 7.)

Former vice-admiral recalls 1974 mine-sweeping operation in Gulf of Suez.(Aleksandr Apollonov, “6.000 chasov naminnykh poliakh” [6,000 Hours on theMinefields], Krasnaya Zvezda, 17 Septem-ber 1994, 6.)

Series on Pacific Ocean battles covered upby Soviet regimes. (Nikolai Burbyga,“Zhertvi heob iavlennykh voin” [Victims ofUnannounced Wars], Izvestia, 5 January1994, 6; 9 February 1994, 8.)

Reports on investigation of wreck of theSoviet atomic submarine “Komsomolets.”(Vladimir Svartsevich, “Poligon nasheisovesti” [Proving-Ground of Our Con-science], Nezavisimaia Gazeta, 11 August1994, 5-6; Kirill Dybskii, “Mstislav Keldysh’vernulsia ‘so shchitom’” [The “MstislavKeldysh” Returns “with the Shield”],Segodnia, 17 August 1994, 7.) Interviewwith Tengiz Borisov, former KOPRON di-rector, on new data concerning“Komsomolets.” (Eduard Lunev, “Posledniiparad ‘Komsomol’tsa’” [The Last Parade ofthe “Komsomolets”], Rossiia 25 (6-12 June1994), 6.)

New data on Soviet ballistic missile devel-opment. (Krasnaia Zvezda, 18 June 1994,6.)

Sino-Soviet Relations:

Correspondence printed between Stalin andMao from January 1949 reveals disagree-ment on tactics regarding potential media-

p

Update


tion of Chinese Civil War. (Sergei L.Tikhvinskii, “Iz Arkhiva Prezidenta RF:Perepiska I.V. Stalina s Mao Tszedunom vyanvare 1949 g.” [From the PresidentialArchives of the RF (Russian Federation):Correspondence of I.V. Stalin with MaoZedong of January 1949], Novaya i noveishaistoriya 4-5 (July-October 1994), 132-40.)

Newly released Soviet documents onMikoyan’s secret visit to Mao and CCPleaders, 31 January-7 February 1949. (AndreiLedovskii, “Secretnaia missiia A.I.Mikoyana v Kitai” [Secret Mission of A.I.Mikoyan to China], Problemi DalnegoVostoka 2, 3 (1995).)

New Russian evidence on Sino-Soviet rela-tions, 1949-52. (B. Kulik, “KitaiskaiiaNarodnaiia Respublika v period stanovleniia(1949-1952) (Po materialam Arkhivavneshnei politik RF” [The Chinese People’sRepublic in the Founding Period (Materialsfrom the Archive of foreign policy of theRussian Federation], Problemi DalnegoVostoka 6 (1994).)

Mao’s reactions to Khrushchev’s 20th PartyCongress speech, as told to Soviet ambassa-dor in Beijing. (P. Yudin, “Zapis besedy stovarischem Mao,” Problemi DalnegoVostok 5 (1994).

New information on 1971 crash of Lin Biaoduring flight from China. (Andrei Kosyrev,“‘Delo Lin Biao’: Zagadka PochtiRasreshena” [“The Lin Biao Affair”: TheMystery is Nearly Solved], MoskovskaiaPravda, 24 March 1994, 4; Yuri Dmitriev,“Poslednii polet kitaiskogo marshala” [TheLast Flight of the Chinese Marshal], Trud, 9April 1994; Ivan Iavnok, “Marshal Lin BiaoRazbilsia v Mongolii” [Marshal Lin BiaoDied in Mongolia], Krasnaia Zvezda, 7 May1994, 6.)

Interview with Li Iuzhan, Mao’s interpreterfor meetings with Khrushchev and Brezhnev.(Andrei Kabannikov, “Mao v okruzheniivragov i tantsovshchits” [Mao, Surroundedby Enemies and Dancers], KomsomolskaiaPravda, 6 January 1994, 14.)

Intelligence/Espionage Issues:

Former defenders of Rosenbergs say Venonadecrypts of KGB messages seem genuine

and indicate Julius Rosenberg indeed ranCommunist spy ring, though some key evi-dence of atomic espionage still lacking.(Walter Schneir and Miriam Schneir, “Cryp-tic Answers,” The Nation, 14/21 August1995, 152-53.)

Christine Keeler, call-girl who was key fig-ure in 1963 Profumo spy scandal in England,reportedly admitted for first time to havingbeen a Soviet spy. (British magazine OK, 4November 1994, quoted in RFE/RL DailyReport 211 (7 November 1994).)

Story behind publication of Yuri Shvets’sWashington Station: My Life as a KGB Spyin America. (Dmitry Radyshevsky andNataliya Gevorkyan, “The memoirs of aSoviet intelligence officer have created a bigpanic,” Moscow News [English] 16 (22-28April 1994), 14.)

Recollections of Andropov from ex-KGBcolleagues. (Aleksandr Cherniak,“Andropov—Izvestnyi i neizvestnyi”[Andropov—The Known and Unknown],Pravda, 15 June 1994, 3; Aleksei Grishin,“V ego stikakh bylo mnogo ostrykhslovochek” [In His Poems There Were ManySharp Words], Nezavisimaia Gazeta, 21 June1994, 6.)

Interview of Vladimir Barkovskii, whoworked with Soviet spies in London, on roleof espionage in development of Soviet atomicbombs. (Andrei Vaganov, “Sorok piat’ letnazad, 29 avgusta, byla ispytana pervala vCCCR atomnaia bomba” [Forty-Five YearsAgo, On August 29, the USSR’s First AtomBomb Was Tested], Nezavisimaia Gazeta,30 August 1993, 1.)

On the controversy over the book by ex-KGB officer Pavel Sudoplatov et al., SpecialTasks, and its allegations that prominentWestern scientists knowingly provided in-formation to Soviet intelligence. (VladimirNadein, “Proval po vsei semi:—Pochemunashemu velikomu shpionu ne posvoliliklevat’ v Amerike” [Malfunction of All Sys-tems:—Why Our Great Spy Was Not Al-lowed to Slander America], Izvestiia, 4 June1994, 5.) Lavrenti Beria’s son Sergo claimson Russian television no 15 July 1994 thatJ.Robert Oppenheimer secretly visited hisfather in the USSR in 1939; historians dis-miss story as absurd. (RFE/RL Daily Report

136 (20 July 1994).) Russian Academy ofSciences devotes meeting to discussion ofbook, various comments cited inLiteraturnaya gazeta on 27 July 1994. (RFE/RL Daily Report 145 (2 August 1994).)

Moscow publishers Mezhdunarodnyeotnosheniye to release six-volume history ofRussian foreign intelligence service, reportsTrud on 15 October 1994. (RFE/RL DailyReport 201 (21 October 1994).)

Interview with ex-KGB official Lt.-Gen.(ret.) Nikolay Leonov, author of SeditiousTimes (1994); comments on Ames case,KGB defectors, etc. (“KGB LieutenantGeneral Nikolay Leonov: Failure by Amesin the United States was Impossible: He WasBetrayed in Moscow,” KomsomolskayaPravda, 22 December 1994, 6, in FBIS-SOV-94-248 (27 December 1994), 17-19.)

Interview with Vladimir Stanchenko aboutSoviet and Russian espionage. (“The SpyWho Returned to the Cold,” Izvestiia, 2September 1994, 9.)

CIA’s record vis-a-vis USSR in Cold War’sclosing years assessed. (Walter Pincus,“Reagan Buildup at CIA Spawned CurrentWoes,” Washington Post, 29 December1994.)

KGB watched Russian National Unity Move-ment leader Aleksey Vedenkin for “keen-ness on fascist ideas” since 1981, authoritiessay; other report says Vedenkin probablybelonged to KGB. (Moscow RIA, 1 March1995, in FBIS-SOV-95-046-A (9 March1995), 3-4; also Moskovskiy Komsomolets,1 March 1995, 1, as “Article Links Vedenkinto KGB,” FBIS-SOV-95-055 (22 March1995), 20.)

Interview with ex-KGB double agent-de-fector Oleg Gordievsky on publication of hismemoirs; Sunday Times (London) publishesexcerpt with names of KGB sources. (“Ex-Spy Causes Uproar in Britain” and “TimesPublishes Names of British KGB Inform-ers,” Moscow News [English] 8 (24 Febru-ary-2 March 1995), 11; see also “KGB:Michael Foot was our agent,” The SundayTimes (London), 19 February 1995.)

New official publication, White Paper onRussian Secret Services (Moscow:

Update


Obozrevatel, 1995), on problems andachievements of Russian secret servicespublished. (Itar-Tass, 11 October 1995, inFBIS-SOV-95-196 (11 October 1995), 39-40.)

Publications: Oleg Gordievsky, Next StopExecution: The Autobiography of OlegGordievsky (London: Macmillan, 1995);Harvey Klehr, John Haynes, and FridrikhIgorevich Firsov, eds., The Secret World ofAmerican Communism (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1995).

Archival/Research Developments:

Complaints persist on difficulties of archi-val access. (Anna Repina, “Komu oninuzhny, eti tainy” [They are Secrets to thoseWho Need Them], Smena, 12 October 1993,4.)

Archive official’s report, based on a De-cember 1993 speech at RTsKhIDNI. (V.P.Kozlov, “Zarubezhnaia arkhivnaia Rossika:Problemy i Napravleniia Raboty” [ForeignArchives Relating to Russia: Problems andthe Direction of Work], Novaia i NoveishaiaIstoriia 3 (1994), 13-23.)

Russia and France complete first of series ofplanned archival exchanges. (“Archival FilesAre Returned to Russia from France,”Diplomaticheskii Vestnik 3-4 (February1994), 79.)

Archival regulations. (“Polozheniie obarkhivom fonde Rossiiskoi Federatsii” [TheState of the Archives in the Russian Federa-tion], Rossiiskaia Gazeta, 1 April 1994, 4.)

Sakharov’s archives open. (MarinaLebedeva, “Otkryvaetsia arkhiv Sakharova”[Sakharov’s Archive Opens], Izvestiia, 21May 1994, 4; Pavel Kol’tsov, “ArkhivSakharova v Moskve” [Sakharov’s Archivesin Moscow], Nezavisimaia Gazeta, 21 May1994, 6; Viola Egikova, “Zemlianoi val.Arkhiv Sakharova” [Earthern Rampart:Sakharov’s Archive], Moskovskaia Pravda,24 May 1994, 9.)

Interview with Rosarkhiv head R.G. Pikhoia.(Sergei Barshavchik, “Tseny nagosudarstvennye tainy v Rossii po-prezhdemy vyshe mirovykh” [As Before,the Prices on State Secrets in Russia are

Higher than the World Standard], NovaiaEzhednevnaia Gazeta, 1 September 1994.)

Russian presidential decree (no. 489-rp, dated22 September 1994) is supposed to lead tomassive declassification of materials morethan 30 years old. (“Decree to Reveal Se-crets,” Moscow News [English] 40 (7-13October 1994), 14.)

State Duma passes legislation on Freedom ofInformation giving citizens rights to stateinformation resources, reports Rossiiskie vestion 23 November 1994. (RFE/RL Daily Re-port 223 (28 November 1994).)

State Duma passes Russian “Federal Law onInformation, Informatization, and the Pro-tection of Information” on 25 January 1995;signed by Yeltsin on 20 February 1995. (Textin Rossiyskaya Gazeta, 22 February 1995,15-16, in FBIS-SOV-95-048-S (13 March1995), 29-37

Yeltsin signs decree no. 180 dated 17 Febru-ary 1995 to declassify and publish docu-ments on Soviet nuclear weapons programup to 1954. (“Yeltsin Opens Archives OnSoviet Nuclear History,” Washington Post,19 February 1995, A46; OMRI Daily Digest36:1 (20 February 1995); Rossiskaya Gazeta,1 March 1995, 14, in FBIS-SOV-95-058-S(27 March 1995), 1.) Commission formed toimplement decree; members listed.(Rossiiskaia Gazeta, 7 June 1995, 5, in FBIS-SOV-95-115-S (15 June 1995), 67.)

Russian government decree on declassifica-tion and archives adopted. (“Ob ustanovleniyaporyadka rassekrechivaniya i prodleniyasrokov zasekrechivaniya arkhivnykhdokumentov Pravitel’stva SSSR,” Sobraniezakonodatel’stva Rossiiskoi Federatsii 9 (27February 1995), 1539-1542.)

Interagency regional conference inNovosibirsk discusses need to protect secretinformation. (Vecherniy Novosibirsk, 19 June1995, 2, in FBIS-SOV-95-121 (23 June 1995),34.)

Probe of archival situation in Russia, recom-mendations, by panel of American scholars.(Norman Naimark, William G. Rosenberg,William Taubman, Kathryn Weathersby,Donald J. Raleigh, Gregory Freeze, and DavidRansel, “Discussion: Final Report of the

Joint Task Force on Archives, AmericanAssociation for the Advancement of SlavicStudies and The American Historical Asso-ciation, 1 April 1995,” Slavic Review 54:2(Summer 1995), 407-426.)

Interview with Rosarkhiv head R.G. Pikhoia.(“‘Rossiia atnositsoa l chislu belikikharchivnikh derzhav’” [“Russia Acts Towarda Time of Great Archival Power”], RossiiskiVesti, 22 June 1995, 7.)

Interview with head of the Russian Presi-dential Archives (APRF) AleksandrKorotkov. (“Dla chevo otkrivaiem ‘osobuyupapki’” [Why Open the “Special Files”],Krasnaia Zvezda, 9 August 1995, 2.)

Armenia

Document published purporting to confirmsecret collaboration between Dashnak party(Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF))and KGB during Soviet era. (Aragil Elec-tronic News Bulletin (Yerevan), 4 March1995, in FBIS-SOV-95-043 (6 March 1995),93.)

Ex-KGB officer describes work in 1980s.(Golos Armenii (Yerevan), 6 July 1995, 1-2,in FBIS-SOV-95-136 (17 July 1995), 92-94.)

Belarus

Belarus body aiding U.S.-Russian MIA/POW commission facing disbandment.(Yevgeny Sulyga, “About Traces of the Viet-nam War in the City of Minsk,”Komsomolskaya Pravda [Moscow], 28 Feb-ruary 1995, 1, 3, in FBIS-SOV-95-040 (1March 1995), 51-52.)

Estonia

Estonian government concerned by reportsof KGB documents being sold on blackmarket; Estonia’s Archives Department ac-knowledges loss of “thousands of files onthe activity of the KGB and other intelli-gence agencies.” (Interfax report of 20 No-vember 1994, in RFE/RL Daily Report 221(21 November 1994).)

Parliamentary committee reports results oftwo-year investigation of KGB activities inEstonia, including review of archives.

Update


(Tallinn ETA, 20 February 1995, iin FBIS-SOV-95-034 (21 February 1995), 99.

Law calling on ex-KGB agents in Estonia toconfess or face public exposure working“surprisingly well,” police say. (TallinnBNS, 3 April 1995, in FBIS-SOV-95-064 (4April 1995), 73.)

Latvia

Court finds Saeima deputy Roberts Milbergsnot guilty of having collaborated with KGB.(RFE/RL Daily Report 22 (23 November1994).)

KGB recruiter says current parliamentarianAndrejs Silins was listed as KGB agent in1972 without his knowledge. (Tallinn BNS,9 December 1994, in FBIS-SOV-94-238(12 December 1994), 86-87.)

KGB document found dating from 1982granting access to secret documents to presentday Defense League volunteer paramilitaryorganization head Johannes Kert, who sayshe cannot explain document. (Rahva Haal,21 December 1994, in Tallinn ETA, 21December 1994, in FBIS-SOV-94-246 (22December 1994), 52.) Estonian securitypolicy say KGB files refute allegations thatKert was linked to the KGB. (Tallinn BNS,24 January 1995, in FBIS-SOV-95-016 (25January 1995), 52.)

Controversy erupts in parliament over fateof unopened archives of Latvian KGB.(Tallinn BNS, 5 May 1995, in FBIS-SOV-95-087 (5 May 1995), 88.)

Lithuania

Mystery and controversy continue to sur-round status and fate of estimated 300,000files left behind by Lithuanian KGB.(Nikolay Lashkevich, “Lithuania: Who HasGot the KGB Archives,” Izvestiia (Mos-cow), 10 March 1995, 4, in FBIS-SOV-95-049 (14 March 1995), 103-105.)

Ukraine

Letters pertaining to 1969 arrest of Ukrai-nian activist Maj.-Gen. P.G. Grigorenko.(“Petr Grigorenko: Iz Khroniki Tavli” [Pe-ter Grigorenko: From the Chronicle of hisPersecution], Segodnia, 12 April 1994, 9.)

Ukrainian archives yield new data on 1986Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster.(N.V. Makovs’ka, “PolitichnaiaRetrospektiva Chornobyl’s’koi Katastrofi vDokumentakh” [A Political Retrospectiveof the Chernobyl Catastrophe in Documents],Arkhiv Ukrainy 1-3 (1993), 99-105.)

Detailed recounting of how glasnost in late1980s permitted freer airing of true dimen-sions of 1933 famine in Ukraine. (James E.Mace, “How Ukraine Was Permitted to Re-member,” The Ukrainian Quarterly 49:2(Summer 1993), 121-151.)

Czech Republic/Former Czechoslovakia

Czech parliamentary commission investi-gating late 1980 Warsaw Pact maneuversmay have had political overtones, but link topossible invasion of Poland still unclear.(Prague CTK, 8 February 1995, in “‘NoDirect Proof’ of 1980 Poland InvasionFound,” FBIS-EEU-94-027-A (9 February1995), 6-7.)

Government approves principle of openingStB (secret police files), Interior MinisterRuml denies it will lead to wave of lawsuits.(Prague CTK, 30 March 1995, in “RumlOutlines Provisions of Bill on StB Files,”FBIS-EEU-95-062-A (31 March 1995), 5.)

Former East Germany(German Democratic Republic)

Evidence on Soviet occupation of Germanyafter World War II. (Norman M. Naimark,“Die Sowjetische Militaradministration inDeutschland und die Frage des Stalinismus,”Zeitschrift fur Geschichtswissenschaft 43:4(1995), 295-97; Naimark, “The Soviets andthe Christian Democrats: The Challenge of a‘Bourgois’ Party in Eastern Germany, 1945-1949,” 9:3 (Fall 1995), 369-92; see alsoNaimark’s The Russians in Germany, citedbelow.

Debate continues on 1952 Stalin Notes andquestion of early opportunity for Germanunification. (Manfred Kittel, “Genesis einerLegende. Die Discussion um die Stalin-Noten in der Bundesrepublic 1952-1958,”Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte 41:3(1994), 355-389; Wilfried Loth, “Stalin diedeutsche Frage und die DDR,” Deutschland

Archiv 28:3 (1995), 290-298; GerhardWettig, “Stalin - Patriot und Demokrat furDeutschland?” and Loth, “Kritik ohneGundlagen. Erwiderung auf GerhardWettig,” Deutschland Archiv 28:7 (1995),743-750; Wettig, “Die beginnendeUmorientierung der sowjetischenDeutschland-Politik im Fruhjahr undSommer 1953,” Deutschland Archiv 28:5(1995), 495-507.

Stasi files disclose data on notorious terror-ist “Carlos” and lawyer now defending him,Jacques Verges. (Peter Sandmeyer, “TheJackal and the Villain,” Stern (Hamburg), 22September 1993[4], 202-204, in FBIS-WEU-94-185 (23 September 1994), 14-15.)

Social Democratic Party (SPD) chairRudolph Scharping seeks Stasi files to rebutcharges by Helmut Kohl and others that theSPD betrayed the goal of German unifica-tion in talks with GDR officials.(Sueddeutsche Zeitung (Munich), 8 Febru-ary 1994, 4, in “Scharping Rejects CDUAccusations of SPD-Stasi Cooperation,”FBIS-WEU-94-027 (9 February 1994), 31.)

Reports cite Stasi files showing Party ofDemocratic Socialism (PDS) politicianGregor Gysi collaborated with secret policeagainst his client, dissident RobertHavemann; Gysi denies charges. (“Meetingat ‘Ellen,’” Der Spiegel (Hamburg), 17 Oc-tober 1994, 21-26, in FBIS-WEU-94-201(18 October 1994), 23-25; “Gregor’s Re-ports,” Der Spiegel (Hamburg), 7 Novem-ber 1994, 26-30, in “Files Incriminate Gysifor Stasi ‘Collaboration,’” FBIS-WEU-94-216 (8 November 1994), 22.)

Charges lodged against couple for spyingfor Stasi against West Germany between1971 and 1976. (Berlin DDP/ADN, 27 Oc-tober 1994, in FBIS-WEU-94-209 (28 Oc-tober 1994), 18.)

Interview with Markus Wolf, former head ofGDR external intelligence service. (“EastGermany’s Old Spymaster Talks: So ManyRegrets, but Uncontrite,” NYT, 6 June 1995,A11.)

Publications: R.C. Raack, Stalin’s Drive tothe West, 1938-1945: The Origins of theCold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univer-sity Press, 1995); Norman Naimark, The

Update


Russians in Germany: A History of the So-viet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949 (Cam-bridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1995); Inventar der Befehle des OberstenChefs der Sowjetischen Militaradministra-tion in Deutschland (SMAD) 1945-1949(Munich: K.G. Saur, 1995); Wilfried Loth,ed., Die deutsche Frage in die Nachkriegszeit(Berlin: Akademie, 1994); Philip Zelikowand Condoleezza Rice, Germany Unifiedand Europe Transformed: A Study in State-craft (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1995).

Hungary

Recounting of case of school-teacher ar-rested in connection with show trials inHungary under Matyas Rakosi in Stalin’slast years. (Eva V. Deak, “A Show TrialCase History: The Story of GyorgyiTarisznyas,” The Hungarian Quarterly35:134 (Summer 1994), 75-91.)

Budapest Military Prosecutor’s Office on28 October 1994 presses charges againstthree army officers accused of killing un-armed demonstrators during 1956 events,according to MTI. (RFE/RL Daily Report207 (31 October 1994).)

Survey of international dimension of 1956Hungarian crisis, using new Eastern, West-ern, and Hungarian sources. (Csaba Bekes,“The 1956 Revolution and World Politics,”The Hungarian Quarterly 36 (Summer1995), 109-121.)

Recordings of Radio Free Europe/RadioLiberty broadcasts during 1956 Hungariancrisis discovered. (NYT, 24 October 1995.)

Newly-available Hungarian archives informaccount of Budapest’s role in 1968 Czecho-slovak crisis. (Istvan Vida, “Janos Kadarand the Czechoslovak Crisis of 1968,” TheHungarian Quarterly 35:135 (Autumn1994), 108-123.)

Government abolishes Historical Investi-gation Committee established by previousHungarian government to investigate “blankspots” in recent history, says radio Budapeston 22 December 1994. (RFE/RL DailyReport 241 (22 December 1994).)

Biographical interview with Akos

Engelmayer, Hungarian ambassador to Po-land, recounting influence of 1956, 1968,1970, etc. (“Ambassador with a Rucksack,”The Hungarian Quarterly 35:133 (Spring1994), 123-128.)

Publications: Die Ungarische Revolution1956 [findings of an Austrian-HungarianConference in Vienna, 6 April 1995] (Wien:Collegium Hungaricum, 1995).

Poland

Sejm considering State Secrets Bill barringrelease of information on intelligence activi-ties for 80 years, national security or defenseinformation for 40 years, and economic se-crets for 30 years; media, liberals, opposebill, which is returned to committee. (RFE/RL Daily Report 163 (29 August 1994).)Government and media agree new constitu-tion will guarantee freedom of information,press; parliament rejects restrictive secrecylaw. (Rzeczpospolita and Gazeta Wyborczareports, 25 October 1994, quoted in RFE/RLDaily Report 203 (25 October 1994).)

Ex-Soviet base near Szczecin seen aseconological hazard. (Glos Szczecinski , 1February 1995, 1, in JPRS-TEN-95-004 (28February 1995), 21-22.)

Russian Prime Minister Chernomyrdin on 9September 1994 meets Polish team investi-gating Katyn massacre. (Gazeta Wyborczacited in RFE/RL Daily Report 173 (12 Sep-tember 1994).) Polish president Walesa, atceremony marking 55th anniversary of Katynmassacres, calls on Russia to reveal fulltruth. (Warsaw TV, 3 April 1995, in FBIS-EEU-96-064 (4 April 1995), 32-33.) Crimi-nal probe begun in 1993 by Smolensk Mili-tary Prosecutor’s Office drawing to a close.(Komsomolskaya Pravda (Moscow), 29 April1995, in FBIS-SOV-95-085 (3 May 1995),6-7.) Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, andBelarusian prosecutors sign accord on coop-eration regarding Katyn investigations. (War-saw PAP, 31 May 1995, in FBIS-EEU-95-107-A (2 June 1995), 23.) Walesa speaks atKatyn. (FBIS-EEU-95-107 (5 June 1995),48-49.) Yeltsin sends message to ceremony.(Moscow Interfax, 3 June 1995, in FBIS-SOV-95-107 (5 June 1995), 9.)

Ministry of Internal Affairs considers open-ing up archives up to 1956. (Warsaw Polskie

Radio, 30 March 1995, in FBIS-EEU-95-061 (30 March 1995), 23.

Student groups demand release of secretpolice files on 1977 death of anti-govern-ment activist Stanislaw Pyjas. (RFE/RL DailyReport 41 (1 March 1994).

Publications: Tajne Dokumenty BiuraPolitycznego: Grudzien 1970 [Secret Docu-ments of the Politbureau of the Polish Com-munist Party (PUWP) on Events of Decem-ber 1970] (London: Aneks Publishers, 1991);Tajne Dokumenty: Biura Politycznego:PZPR a “Solidarnosc” 1980-1981 [SecretDocuments of the Politbureau of the PolishCommunist Party (PUWP). Party versus“Solidarity” 1980-1981] (London: AneksPublishers, 1992); Tajne Dokumenty BiuraPolitycznego i Sekretariatu KC: Ostatni rokwladzy 1988-1989 [Secret Documents of thePolitbureau of the Polish Communist Party(PUWP) and the Secretariat of the CentralCommittee: The Last Year in Power, 1988-1989) (London: Aneks Publishers, 1994);Andrzej Garlicki, Z Tajnych Archiwow [Fromthe Secret Archives] (Warsaw: PolskaOficyna Wydawnicza ‘BGW’, 1993); PawelMachcewicz, Polski Rok 1956 [The PolishYear 1956] (Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza‘Mowia Wieki’, 1993); Andrzej Garlickiand Andrzej Paczkowski, eds., ZaciskaniePetli: Tajne Dokumenty DotyczaceCzechoslowacji 1968 r. [Tightening of theNoose: Secret Documents ConcerningCzechoslovakia 1968] (Warsaw:Wydawnictwo Sejmowe, 1995); MichaelBernhard and Henryk Szlajfer, eds., Fromthe Polish Underground: Selections fromKrytyka, 1978-1993 (University Park, PA:Pennsylvania State Press, 1995).

Romania

Report on Soviet policy toward December1989 Romanian events, including letter fromShevardnadze to Gorbachev and minutes ofmeetings. (“On the Events of 1989 in Roma-nia,” Diplomaticheskii Vestnik (Moscow)21-22 (November 1994), 74-80.)

Appearing before “December 1989” parlia-mentary commission, President Ilescu de-nied allegations he sought Soviet assistanceon 22 or 23 December 1989. (Adevarul(Bucharest), 20 December 1994, 2, in FBIS-EEU-94-249 (28 December 1994), 17.)

Update


Controversy erupts over documents claim-ing past collaboration by Bishop LaszloTokes, ethnic Hungarian priest whose arrestsparked 1989 revolt, with RomanianSecuritate secret police [Romanian Intelli-gence Service, or SRI]. (Gyorgy Jakab,“UDMR Will Ask to See the SRI Files of AllPolitical Leaders,” Adevarul (Bucharest),29 December 1994, in FBIS-EEU-95-001 (3January 1995), 24.) Paper publishes pur-ported documents showing Tokes was paidSecuritate informer. (“According toRenasterea Banateana, Laszlo Tokes In-formed the Securitate Under the Name ofLaszlo Kolozsvar,” Curierul National(Bucharest), 31 December 1994, in FBIS-EEU-95-003 (5 January 1995), 19.)

Mongolia

Account of Soviet intervention in 1984 Mon-golian putsch. (Zorik Tsedenbal, “Novoe‘Delo Vrachei’” [A New “Doctor’s Plot”],Nezavisimaia Gazeta (Moscow), 2 March1994, 8.)

People’s Republic of China

[Ed. note: For detailed lists of recent sources,see the essays by Michael Hunt and ChenJian elsewhere in this issue of the Bulletin.]

Evidence on early wrangling between Chi-nese Communist Party (CCP) and Moscowover Soviet seizure of Chinese industrialequipment in Manchuria at close of WorldWar II. (Liu Guowu, “Zhanhou zhongsuliangguo chuli dongbei rewei chanyedejiufen” [The Argument Between China andthe USSR After the War Over How to Dealwith the Japanese Puppet’s Industry], Mod-ern Chinese History (Chinese People’s Uni-versity Publications Reprint Series) 1 (1995),100-104.

Reassessment of early stages of relations(and non-relations) between U.S. and PRC.(Thomas J. Christensen, “A ‘Lost Chance’for What? Rethinking the Origins of U.S.-PRC Confrontation,” The Journal of Ameri-can-East Asian Relations 4:3 (Fall 1995),249-278.)

Account of alleged attempt by Guomindang(Kuomintang) to murder PRC Premier ZhouEnlai in 1955. (Steve Tsang, “Research Note:

Target Zhou Enlai: The ‘Kashmir Princess’Incident of 1955,” The China Quarterly 139(September 1994), 766-782.)

Article based on CCP sources explores ZhouEnlai’s handling of the 1958 Taiwan Straitscrisis, including data on secret communica-tions between PRC and Taiwan. (LiaoXinwen, “Zhou Enlai yu heping jiejue taiwanwentide fangzhen” [Zhou Enlai and the Ini-tiative to Peacefully Solve the Taiwan Prob-lem], Dangde Wenxian [Party Documents]5 (1994), 32-38.)

Reassessment, using new Chinese sources,of Mao’s evolving views of U.S. (He Di,“The Most Respected Enemy: Mao Zedong’sPerception of the United States,” The ChinaQuarterly 137 (March 1994), 144-158.)

Publications: Michael H. Hunt and Niu Jun,eds., Toward a History of Chinese Commu-nist Foreign Relations, 1920s-1960s: Per-sonalities and Interpretive Approaches(Washington, DC: Asia Program, WoodrowWilson International Center for Scholars,n.d.); John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai,China’s Strategic Seapower: The Politics ofForce Modernization in the Nuclear Age(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,1994); Nicholas Eftimiades, Chinese Intelli-gence Operations (Annapolis, MDL NavalInstitute Press, 1994); Robert S. Ross, Nego-tiating Cooperation: The United States andChina, 1969-1989 (Stanford, CA: StanfordUniversity Press, 1995); Thomas J.Christensen, Useful Adversaries: GrandStrategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947-58 (forthcomingin 1996 from Princeton University Press).

Korean War

Soviet policy toward Korea immediatelyfollowing World War II assessed. (Kan InGu, “The Soviet Union’s Korean PolicyFollowing the Second World War (1945-1948), Vestnik Sankt PeterburgskogoGosudarstvennogo Universiteta 16 (1994),91-93.)

Soviet documents on the Korean War, in-cluding military reports to Stalin. (“The Par-ticipation of the USSR in the Korean War(New Documents),” Voprosi istorii 11(1994), 30-46.)

English translations of newly released Rus-sian materials, with commentary. (VladimirPetrov, “Soviet Role in the Korean WarConfirmed: Secret Documents Declassified,”Journal of Northeast Asian Studies 13:3(Fall 1994), 42-67.)

Kathryn Weathersby, “New Russian Archi-val Materials, Old American Debates, andthe Korean War,” Problems of Post-Com-munism 42:5 (September-October 1995), 25-32.

A conference on “The Korean War: AnAssessment of the Historical Record,” washeld at Georgetown University, Washing-ton, DC, on 24-25 July 1995, sponsored byThe Korea Society, Korea-America Soci-ety, and Georgetown University. Pleaseconsult the sponsors for copies of papersdelivered.

Publications: William Stueck, The KoreanWar: An International History (Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995); ShuGuang Zhang, Mao’s Military Romanticism:China and the Korean War, 1950-1953(Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas,1995)

Vietnam/Vietnam War

USSR sent 3,000 troops to Vietnam duringU.S. involvement there, and 13 were killed,writes former Tass correspondent, citing in-terviews with ex-Soviet ambassador I.Shcherbakov and other former officials. (APdispatch citing article Aleksandr Minaev inEkho Planety [Echo of the Planet], Novem-ber 1995.)

Vietnamese evidence on reactions to 1965U.S. peace overtures. (Robert K. Brigham,“Vietnamese-American Peace Negotations:The Failed 1965 Initiatives,” forthcoming inThe Journal of American-East Asian Rela-tions.)

Survey of PRC policy toward Vietnam War,using recently opened Chinese sources.(Chen Jian, “China’s Involvement in theVietnam War, 1964-1969,” The China Quar-terly 142 (June 1995), 356-378.)

Former Chinese People’s Liberation Armyofficial Zhu Kaiyin writes that Mao scaledback military aid to North Vietnam in late

Update


1960s because he believed weapons werebeing wasted. (Reported in Xinwen ziyoudaobao [Press Freedom Guardian], 29 Sep-tember 1995, 3.)

Publications: Ilya V. Gaiduk, The SovietUnion and the Vietnam War (Chicago: IvanR. Dee, scheduled for publication Spring1996); Commission for Research on PartyHistory, ed., Ho Chi Minh, 4th ed. (Hanoi:The Gioi Publishers, 1995); Ho Chi Minh,Prison Diary, 9th ed. (Hanoi: The GioiPublishers, 1994); Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap,Dien Bien Phu, 5th ed. (Hanoi: The GioiPublishers, 1994); Gen. Giap, Unforget-table Days, 3rd ed. (Hanoi: The Gioi Pub-lishers, 1994); Vien Su Hoc et al., Lich Su’Viet Nam, 1954-1965 (Hanoi: Nha XuatBan Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi, 1995); William J.Duiker, U.S. Containment Policy and theConflict in Indochina (Stanford, CA:Stanford University Press, 1994); XiangenWang, Zhongguo mimi da fabing: Yuangyue hang Mei shilu [China secretly dis-patched many troops: The real record ofsupporting Vietnam to resist America](Jinan: Jinan, 1992); Yinhong Shi, Meiguozai Yuenan de ganshe he zhanzheng, 1954-1968 [American intervention and war inVietnam, 1954-1968] (Beijing: WorldKnowledge, 1993).

Cuba/Cuban Missile Crisis

Piero Gleijeses, “Ships in the Night: TheCIA, the White House and the Bay of Pigs,”Journal of Latin American Studies 27:1(February 1995), 1-42.

Publications: Fabian Escalante, The SecretWar: CIA covert operations against Cuba,1959-1962 (Melbourne, Australia: OceanPress, 1995); Claudia Furati, trans. MaxineShaw, ZR Rifle: The Plot to Kill Kennedyand Castro: Cuba Opens Secret Files(Melbourne, Australia: Ocean Press, 1994);Carlos Lechuga, In the Eye of the Storm:Castro, Khrushchev, Kennedy and the Cu-ban Missile Crisis: The inside story byCuba’s former UN ambassador (Melbourne,Australia: Ocean Press, 1995); Mark White,The Cuban Missile Crisis (London:Macmillan, and New York: New York Uni-versity Press, January 1996).

Update

COLD WARINTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT

The Cold War International History Project wasestablished at the Woodrow Wilson International Cen-ter for Scholars in Washington, D.C., in 1991 with thehelp of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthurFoundation. The project supports the full and promptrelease of historical materials by governments on allsides of the Cold War, and seeks to disseminate newinformation and perspectives on Cold War historyemerging from previously inaccessible sources on“the other side”—the former Communist bloc—through publications, fellowships, and scholarly meet-ings and conferences. The project is overseen by anadvisory committee chaired by Prof. William Taubman(Amherst College) and consisting of MichaelBeschloss; Dr. James Billington (Librarian of Con-gress); Prof. Warren I. Cohen (University of Mary-land-Baltimore); Prof. John Lewis Gaddis (Ohio Uni-versity-Athens); Dr. Samuel F. Wells, Jr. (DeputyDirector, Woodrow Wilson Center); and Prof. SharonWolchik (George Washington University). Withinthe Wilson Center, CWIHP is under the Division ofInternational Studies, headed by Amb. RobertHutchings, and is directed by Dr. James G. Hershberg.Readers are invited to submit articles, letters andUpdate items to the Bulletin. Publication of articlesdoes not constitute CWIHP’s endorsement of authors’views. Copies are available free upon request.

Cold War International History Project BulletinIssues 6-7 (Winter 1995/1996)Woodrow Wilson International Ctr. for Scholars1000 Jefferson Drive, SWWashington, D.C. 20560Tel.: (202) 357-2967; fax: (202) 357-4439e-mail: [email protected]

Editor: James G. HershbergManaging Editor: P.J. SimmonsAssociate Editor: Bonnie SouthwickResearchers: Andrew Grauer, Mark Torok,Michelle King, Sara Kirchhoff, Anne Chiorazzi,Helen Christakos

POLISH CRISIScontinued from page 277

collapse of Communism. Although he addedsome observations about events through theend of 1991, he decided to proceed with thepublication of his book before he had con-sulted any newly opened archives. Thisdecision was unfortunate, but it was notinexcusable for a scholar who had alreadycompleted a manuscript and who would havehad to travel many thousands of miles towork in the former East-bloc archives, per-haps delaying the appearance of his book fora considerable time. The delay would havebeen worthwhile, but it was a judgment callfor Zuzowski in 1992, and he obviouslybelieved he should press ahead.

In Grishin’s case, the decision to forgoarchival research is far less explicable. Hisoverview of the Polish crisis covers veryfamiliar ground, and thus he should havedone his best to adduce new documentaryevidence. Grishin did not complete his mono-graph until early 1993, well after secret ma-terials in both Warsaw and Moscow had beenreleased and at the very time when sensitivefiles on the 1980-81 events were still freelyavailable at the former CPSU Central Com-mittee archive in Moscow. (Severe restric-tions were reimposed at the former CentralCommittee archive in April 1983, but thatwas after Grishin’s book was finished.) Al-though Grishin is based at Kazan Universityin Tatarstan, rather than in Moscow, he couldhave traveled to the Russian capital (andideally to Warsaw, too) at relatively littleexpense to consult the archives. His decisionto rely exclusively on contemporaneousnewspaper articles and on a few recent first-hand accounts largely negates whatever con-tribution his book might have made.

Perhaps if Grishin had pursued archivalresearch, he would have been able to comeup with a more sophisticated presentation.To be sure, his book is a vast improvementover the lurid Soviet-era publications on thePolish crisis (e.g., Georgii Korchadnze’sZagovor protiv Pol’shi), and Grishin’s dis-cussion of Soviet policy toward Poland in1980-81 is often insightful. But his book isa far cry from the scholarly standards thatmost Western (and, increasingly, many Rus-sian) analysts would accept. Grishin is pri-marily interested in showing why the Polishleader, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, was justi-fied in crushing Solidarity in December 1981.Grishin draws extensively and uncritically

on Jaruzelski’s own account, Stan wojenny:dlaczego (published in Poland in 1992), andhis book often seems little more than areprise of the memoir. Aside from reiterat-ing Jaruzelski’s arguments, Grishin’s othermain goal (as he declares without any subtletyin his introduction) is to depict Solidarity inas negative a light as possible. For polemicalpurposes his book may have some value, butfrom a scholarly standpoint it is sorely defi-cient.

It is a pity that neither of the books underreview takes advantages of opportunitiesafforded by the post-Communist era.Zuzowski’s analysis has much to recom-mend it, and even Grishin occasionally hasinteresting things to say, but an authoritativereassessment of the Polish crisis will requiredetailed and critical archival research.

Part 6: Research Notes, Book Reviews, Responses, and Updates

Documents

Transcript of Part 6: Research Notes, Book Reviews, Responses, and Updates