VII. Meeting of the PCC, Warsaw, 19-20 January 1965
Editorial Note
The first PCC meeting since the 14 October 1964 ouster of Khrushchev, it was also the first one to be called at the initiative of a member state other than the Soviet Union - in this instance East Germany. Ulbricht had originally proposed it as early as 24 January 1964 in response to Khrushchev's suggestion that the Warsaw Pact members should consult about common policies, particularly regard to the forthcoming session of the UN Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee.
Ulbricht's chief concern was not only NATO's Multilateral Force project (MLF), which he alleged would give West Germany access to the unrestricted use of nuclear weapons, but also the different ways in which the Soviet Union and Poland proposed to deal with the project. Khrushchev, in an apparent bid for Washington's support against China's nuclear ambitions, had signaled willingness to tolerate the MLF, satisfied that the US provided sufficient safeguards against German abuse of nuclear weapons.[1] Polish leader Władysław Gomułka was appalled at such complacency. His recipe for countering the MLF was the plan, known under his name, to freeze nuclear armaments in the area embracing both German states, Poland, and Czechoslovakia - a variation on the earlier "Rapacki Plan" by Poland's foreign minister. Opposing the Gomułka plan as not conducive to the GDR's full international recognition, the East Germans tried to sidetrack it by proposing to ban all nuclear weapons from both German states. Gomułka dismissed such a proposal as mere propaganda because of its unacceptability to the West.
Khrushchev, increasingly irritated by Gomułka's original ideas on foreign policy, which included lecturing him about the need to repair Soviet relations with China,[2] supported Ulbricht's proposal to convene the PCC. Khrushchev's diminished authority showed in his offering to abstain from the usual Soviet practice of preparing materials for the meeting in advance and expressing a desire for no fixed agenda. The Czechoslovak party chief, Novotný, also wanted to meet, and include a discussion on China. So did, emphatically, the Romanians, having recently sent to Beijing a delegation, headed by prime minister Ion Gheorghe Maurer, thus positioning themselves to the role of mediators.
Romania's leader Gheorghiu-Dej, however, found the proposed April date inconvenient, pleading a "series of urgent commitments." These turned out to include especially the proclamation that month of what became known as his country's "declaration of independence."[3] This daring public statement urged, among other goals questioning Moscow's undisputed leadership of international communism, the signing of a non-aggression pact between the Warsaw Pact and NATO as a step toward their eventual abolition and the creation of a nuclear-free zone in the Balkans. Frustrated in their original plan for convening the PCC, the East Germans then pressed for holding a foreign ministers' meeting first, but neither gathering took place as long as Khrushchev remained in power. At least he satisfied them by concluding with them the treaty of "friendship and mutual assistance" that accorded the GDR a status already enjoyed by all other members of the Warsaw Pact.
No sooner was Khrushchev overthrown than Ulbricht, on 20 October, renewed his PCC proposal, suggesting to meet as early as the end of November. In stressing the urgency of the meeting, he described the MLF as an imminent threat, to be countered by the alliance as a bloc by coordinated diplomatic action calculated to influence NATO's individual members. The GDR promptly produced drafts of a common declaration against the nuclear arming of West Germany and an international treaty against proliferation of nuclear weapons. It further proposed a consultation of foreign ministers to prepare the PCC meeting.
Brezhnev endorsed Ulbricht's initiative as suitable to provide a forum to rally the Warsaw Pact allies behind the foreign policy decisions adopted by the October 1964 plenum of the Soviet party central committee. In fact, the allies' priorities had begun to diverge as never before. Kádár opposed pressing the West too hard on the MLF, lest NATO become more united just as the Warsaw Pact was becoming more disunited. He mainly wished the PCC to show that the alliance was still "alive." Gomułka hoped for action to end the row with China. Novotný wanted more time, suggesting postponement of the meeting. So did Gheorghiu-Dej, warning disingenuously that adopting a common position against the MLF would prompt the Western nation to close their ranks and finalize it. Not wishing to unnecessarily antagonize governments that Romania had been trying to cultivate, he advised to await the outcome of NATO's December ministerial.
The East Germans agreed unhappily to the postponement while contesting the Romanian reasoning. So did the Poles who, in addition, suspected that Romanian pleas to re-invite Albania to the PCC might be an excuse for Bucharest to boycott the meeting in the likely event the Albanians would refuse to come, thus wrecking the event. East Germany continued to advocate a preparatory conference of foreign ministers that would focus on how to block the MLF. The conference eventually took place at the deputy foreign minister level, shortly before the crucial NATO ministerial opened in Paris.
Polish deputy foreign minister Marian Naszkowski grasped that the MLF would alter the East-West political balance regardless of how it might influence the military balance. Indeed, the increased political weight the MLF would give to Bonn was also the East Germans' main concern while they beat up the dead horse of nuclear-armed West German "revanchism." Ulbricht actually urged Brezhnev not to have supreme commander Marshal Grechko deliver a report to the PCC, lest the meeting give an impression of being overly concerned with military matters. The East Germans succeeded in limiting the agenda - at least formally - to common policy on the MLF.
The consultation of the deputies fostered discord. The Romanians had their way in pushing through the invitation of Albania and blocking any public condemnation of the MLF, ostensibly not to encourage NATO to proceed with its implementation. Not only did Romanian veto frustrate the plan to prepare in advance the PCC declaration, but disagreements also prevented the deputy ministers from issuing its own communiqué - an ominous precedent for the future.
By the time the PCC finally convened in January, the NATO meeting in Paris a month earlier had already effectively disposed of the MLF, albeit for reasons other than the objections the Warsaw Pact had against it, thus depriving the main item on the PCC's agenda of much of its urgency. The East German memoranda on NATO's "aggressive forward strategy" and the FRG's sponsorship of "covert warfare" lost their poignancy, causing the participants to focus on the draft of a non-proliferation agreement that the GDR had prepared in consultation with Moscow. This subject remained relevant because of its implications for relations with China, a vocal critic of attempts by the superpower to restrict the development of nuclear weapons by other countries.
Poland supported the non-proliferation proposal but regarded it insufficient for Europe's security needs. It launched its own plan for European security, which took a leaf from Molotov's original scheme of 1954, updated by Khrushchev a year later, but went beyond. Gomułka urged a conference of European states, including the United States because of its deployment of nuclear weapons on European soil. He envisaged an agreement between the nuclear states and others that would lead to a collective security system implicitly downgrading the predominance of both superpowers. Gomułka pointedly reminded Ulbricht that the quest for such a system must not be limited to the recognition of the GDR and its borders.
The proposed declaration on non-proliferation prompted criticism by Romania, thus inaugurating its regime's systematic dissent on political, in addition to economic, issues that would last until the alliance's end. In their bid for mediating the Sino-Soviet conflict and bolstering their status as a result, the Romanians criticized the draft as unacceptable to the Chinese. During the protracted debate, they went so far as signaling their refusal to sign a non-proliferation treaty that had been consulted with China.
Kádár proposed to canvass Beijing's opinion by restoring the participation of Chinese observers at Warsaw Pact meetings. Brezhnev and others vainly appealed to the Romanians to preserve unity. In the end the declaration on non-proliferation did not pass, thus limiting the published PCC documents to a communiqué. On the last day of the meeting, the Soviets and their followers took the unprecedented step of convening separately, to discuss strategy against China without the Romanians. They agreed to summon a meeting of the world's main communist parties to isolate China and check its influence.
Among other disruptions that marred the PCC gathering was a 21-page letter received from Tirana, appealing to other Warsaw Pact members to condemn the Soviet Union for its hostile acts against Albania. It enumerated extravagant conditions that the Albanians wanted to be met before they would agree to resuming participation in the alliance: restitution by the Soviet Union of all the damage it caused Albania, resumption of diplomatic relations, and - toeing the Chinese line - the annulment of the 1963 nuclear test ban treaty as well as the equipment of all Warsaw Pact countries with nuclear weapons. In response, the alliance made Albania's exclusion from its deliberations final.
The Hungarian proposal for the creation of a Warsaw Pact council or committee of foreign ministers responded to the advocacy of their regular meetings, pursued by East Germany in an effort to rally the allies behind its drive for international recognition. Poland agreed with this incipient attempt at the alliance's institutionalization but Romania thwarted it, affirming its preference "for consultations, but against the creation of organs." To Brezhnev's regret, the Romanians also refused to consider the creation of the Warsaw Pact's general staff. The remaining countries - Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria - contributed little to the PCC's deliberations.
Soviet presidium member and KGB chief Yuri Andropov had reportedly wanted the committee to take the initiative for improved relations with Western Europe, but Gromyko with the rest of the presidium vetoed a draft document to that effect.[4] In any case, the meeting marked a reversal of Khrushchev's attempted policy of accommodation with the West by de-emphasizing the role of conventional military forces. In a trend-setting statement to the PCC, Brezhnev, on the contrary, envisaged their increased utility. "In our opinion," he said, the alliance must respond to what he described as the West's political, economic, and ideological offensive by perfecting "the conventional weapons owned by the socialist countries and by arms deliveries to assist people threatened by imperialist aggression" in the Third World.
Brezhnev's thesis that détente required more rather than less pressure, including military pressure, on the capitalist West was questioned by Gheorghiu-Dej; it nevertheless became the guiding principle of the new Soviet leadership.
Vojtech Mastny
Notes
[1] Douglas Selvage, The Warsaw Pact and Nuclear Nonproliferation, 1963-65, working paper no. 32 (Washington: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2001), pp. 20-21.
[3] Statement on the Stand of the Romanian Workers' Party Concerning Problems of the World Communist and Working Class Movement (Bucharest: Agerpress, 1964).
[4] Georgi Arbatov, The System: An Insider's Life in Soviet Politics (New York: Random House, 1992), p. 115.
