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In March 1972 the Leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet MueRecognitionller in Return for Détente? Recognition in Return for Détente? Brezhnev, the EEC, and the Moscow Treaty with West Germany, 1970–1973 ✣ Wolfgang Mueller In March 1972 the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), Leonid Brezhnev, unexpectedly suggested that the Soviet Union might be willing to recognize the European Economic Community (EEC). Until that point, the Soviet Union had refused to recognize the EEC and had regularly and vigorously attacked it as a “community of monopolists” and a stalking horse for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Brezhnev’s predecessor, Nikita Khrushchev, had conveyed similar signals re- garding possible recognition in 1962, but he never turned the idea into reality. In contrast, some ten years later, Brezhnev inspired the start of negotiations between the EEC and the Soviet bloc’s Council of Mutual Economic Assis- tance (CMEA). This article draws on Soviet archival documents as well as Western and Russian publications and memoirs to analyze the background, circumstances, and consequences of Brezhnev’s initiative. The article gives special attention to the following questions: What convinced Brezhnev and his colleagues in 1972 to change their hitherto uniformly negative assessment of the EEC? Was this change the result of a major policy reassessment or simply a byproduct of other considerations? How was the initiative linked with broader Soviet foreign policy goals? Why was it not ultimately successful? In answering these questions, the article traces the external and internal factors that inspired the Soviet initiative, including the EEC enlargement process, East-West détente, CMEA integra- tion, Ostpolitik, and Soviet and East European economic and political develop- ments. The ªrst section brieºy summarizes Soviet attitudes toward West Euro- pean integration up to 1969, analyzing Khrushchev’s abortive attempt to reach an agreement with the EEC in 1962. The article then sets the context for Brezhnev’s initiative of 1972, assessing the state of relations between the USSR and the EEC as well as contemporaneous CMEA responses to West European Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 13, No. 4, Fall 2011, pp. 79–100 © 2011 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 79 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JCWS_a_00167 by guest on 25 September 2021 Mueller integration. The third section explores how Brezhnev’s policy toward the EEC was linked to other issues in 1972, particularly his effort to secure ratiªcation of the 1970 Moscow Treaty with West Germany. The ªnal sections of the article discuss Soviet policy toward the EEC in the wake of Brezhnev’s speech and ex- amine the reasons for the new strategy’s failure. The History: The USSR and West European Integration through 1969 In 1970 the EEC and the USSR could look back on more than a decade of tense non-relations. Since the era of Iosif Stalin, Soviet-bloc propaganda out- lets had denounced West European integration, and Soviet politicians had disparaged the EEC as a “trust of capitalists,” a “closed bloc” leading to dis- crimination in international trade, and the “economic foundation of NATO.”1 The Soviet Union had tried to thwart EEC integration in two ways. First, the Soviet-bloc media had depicted integration as an attempt by U.S. “imperialists” and West German “revanchists” to enslave European workers, turn Western Europe into a colony of capitalist monopolies, and prepare for war against the Soviet Union. Second, Soviet leaders had called for an increase in East-West or “all-European” cooperation, as for instance in the United Na- tions Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), in place of EEC integra- tion.2 Not until the 1960s did Soviet foreign policymakers ªnally realize that the integration process could not be halted and that the EEC would not fall apart in the near future, despite long-standing predictions by Soviet-bloc pro- paganda. The community’s development seemed positive overall, and al- though Khrushchev had boasted about his aim to “catch up and surpass” Western economies, the Eastern bloc’s share of world trade in the mid-1960s stagnated at a meager 9 percent. In the same decade, EEC foreign trade reached 20 percent of the global total, as the community became the world’s largest importer of goods and its GDP grew by roughly 25 percent from 1958 through 1965. Real wages also increased, which made it increasingly difªcult for the Italian and French Communists to emulate the Soviet Union in 1. See, for instance, A. S. Namazova and B. Emmerson, eds., Istoriya evropeiskoi integratsii 1945–1994 (Moscow: Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Universal History, 1995); and Mikhail Narinskii, “La construction européenne vue par l’URSS de 1948 à 1953,” in Saki Dockrill et al. eds., L’Europe de l’Est et de l’Ouest dans la guerre froide 1948–1953 (Paris: PUPS, 2002), pp. 61–72. 2. Wolfgang Mueller, “The Soviet Union and Early West European Integration, 1947–1957: From the Brussels Treaty to the ECSC and EEC,” Journal of European Integration History, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Spring 2009), pp. 67–85. 80 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JCWS_a_00167 by guest on 25 September 2021 Recognition in Return for Détente? demonizing European integration. The Italian Communist Party, in particu- lar, pressed for a less hostile position.3 Another unpleasant surprise for Soviet leaders was the British decision to apply for EEC membership—a step that Soviet economists viewed as marking a new phase of European integration.4 Confronted with these challenges, Soviet ofªcials in the summer of 1962 opted for a new approach involving three main elements. First, Soviet attacks against the EEC were intensiªed, as were attempts to deter new countries from joining the EEC and to persuade the community’s existing members to leave. In May 1962, Khrushchev tried to convince the president of Mali, Modibo Keita, to give up his country’s association with the EEC; in June he called on the Italian prime minister, Amintore Fanfani, to quit the European bloc; and in July he informed the Austrian chancellor, Alfons Gorbach, that the Soviet Union disapproved of the neutral country’s attempt to gain an asso- ciation with the EEC. Another part of this offensive against the EEC was a new Soviet initiative in the UN against “closed trade blocs” and for coopera- tion within the UN Economic Commission for Europe.5 Second, in addition to discouraging EEC integration, Khrushchev sought to push forward the Eastern bloc’s own economic integration. From the time the CMEA was created in 1949, it had served as a Communist re- sponse to the Western economic challenge, and in 1962 the CMEA member- states approved Khrushchev’s proposal to implement the “basic principles of socialist division of labor.”6 The third (and most sensational) element of the new course was Khrush- chev’s offer to establish direct relations between the Eastern bloc and the EEC.7 Even before he made an explicit overture, he and Soviet political com- mentators had acknowledged that the EEC was a “reality” and that its econ- omy had grown, a position outlined in the “32 Theses on the Imperialistic In- tegration in Western Europe” published in Pravda on 26 August 1962. Within the Eastern bloc, the second and third elements of the new Soviet approach likely entailed a quid pro quo. Poland and Hungary, both heavily 3. Gerda Zellentin, Die Kommunisten und die Einigung Europas (Bonn: Athenäum, 1964), pp. 108– 113. See also, Silvio Pons, “The Italian Communist Party between East and West, 1960–64,” in Wilfried Loth, ed., Europe, Cold War and Coexistence, 1953–1965 (London: Frank Cass, 2004), pp. 98–107, esp. 101–102; and Maud Bracke, “From the Atlantic to the Urals: Italian and French Communism and the Question of Europe,” Journal of European Integration History, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2007), pp. 33–53. 4. A. Arzumanyan, “Novaya faza evropeiskoi ‘integratsii,’” Pravda (Moscow), 23 May 1962, p. 5. 5. Bernhard Schalhorn, “Sowjetische Westeuropapolitik,” in Dietrich Geyer, ed., Osteuropa-Handbuch Sowjetunion Außenpolitik, Vol. 2, 1955–1973 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1976), pp. 61–145, esp. 100–102. 6. Renate Damus, RGW: Wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit in Osteuropa (Opladen, Germany: Leske, 1979), pp. 272–278. 7. N. S. Khrushchev, “Nasushchnye problemy razvitiya mirovoi sotsialisticheskoi sistemy,” Kommunist, Vol. 39, No. 12 (1962), pp. 3–26, esp. 7–10. 81 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JCWS_a_00167 by guest on 25 September 2021 Mueller dependent on the export of agricultural products to the West, seemed particu- larly eager to establish relations with the EEC as it prepared to erect common trade barriers.8 But the Soviet Union had reason to be concerned about the fate of the CMEA if the smaller members came under pressure from the EEC. This might be one of the reasons that the Central European states agreed on Soviet supranational planning schemes: to get Soviet consent for contacts with the EEC. However, when French President Charles de Gaulle vetoed Britain’s bid to join the EEC in 1963—a decision hailed by the atheist Khrushchev as a “gift from heaven”—most of the Soviet proposals vis-à-vis the EEC lost mo- mentum.9 Although evidence from Soviet archival documents is murky, the failure of the British application seems to have been the main reason for the subsequent inactivity on the Soviet side. Because the West had failed to move into the predicted “new phase of capitalist integration,” no Soviet action was deemed necessary, and no direct contact between the CMEA and the EEC was instigated. The EEC Commission offered a reduction of European tariffs for Soviet crabmeat and vodka to try to lure Moscow and the East Europeans into establishing representations in Brussels and entering into direct negotia- tions, but these attempts were of no avail.10 Nor did the Soviet Union put much effort into fostering a true “socialist division of labor” in the Eastern bloc.
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