Brezhnev's Crimea Meetings in the 1970S

PARALLEL HISTORY PROJECT ON NATO AND THE WARSAW PACT (PHP) Brezhnev's Crimea Meetings in the 1970s Jordan Baev and Anna Locher (eds.) Leonid I. Brezhnev and Todor Zhivkov (Jordan Baev et al (eds), Bulgaria and the Cold War, 1956-1989 [CD-ROM] Sofia: Cold War Research Group-Bulgaria, 2002) PHP Publications Series Washington, D.C. / Zurich August 2003 This publication is part of a publications series by the Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact (PHP). The PHP provides new scholarly perspectives on contemporary international history by collecting, analyzing, and interpreting formerly secret governmental documents. Since its establishment in 1999, the project has collected thousands of pages of material on security-related issues of the Cold War, published a large number of online documentaries on central issues such as mutual threat perceptions and alliance management, and organized several major international conferences on war planning, intelligence, and intra-bloc tensions. Further information is provided at the PHP Website: www.isn.ethz.ch/php. Table of Contents 1) Introduction, by Jordan Beav ............................................................................1 2) Sample Documents ..........................................................................................6 Please note: This issue of the PHP Publication Series offers highlights from a much larger online document collection. Please consult the PHP website for all the documents in their original language and other features: http://www.isn.ethz.ch/php/collections/coll_16.htm. The PHP has published a number of document collections on various aspects of the security- related history of the cold war: http://www.isn.ethz.ch/php. Parallel History Project (PHP) Brezhnev's Crimea Meetings in the 1970s 1) Introduction, by Jordan Beav The "Crimean Meetings" of the Warsaw Pact Countries' Leaders Personal contacts often play a key role in the relations among the countries. Unofficial meetings between monarchs, presidents and secretaries-general during a hunt or a sports event, at seaside and mountain residences, at a "business" breakfast or a midnight cocktail have settled complicated bilateral problems and regional crises. Issues that the wearisome official negotiations with their methods of the "traditional" diplomacy have not managed to do. In the Warsaw Pact history such examples of informal relationship were the animated discussions during the notorious "Crimean meetings" of the East European guests with their Kremlin hosts. In contrast to some very formal meetings of the Warsaw Pact, where usually official speeches were delivered and preliminary specified documents were signed, the talks in the summer residencies of the Soviet leaders in Yalta and Sochi were far more open and spontaneous. It is well known that even in the times of Joseph Stalin a series of important talks were implemented in informal settings. Thus for example, in June 1946 during a "comradely" meeting with his Balkan guests - Josip Broz Tito and Georgi Dimitrov, "the Kremlin's master" discussed the issues of the so-called "South Slav Federation" and the necessity to accelerate the hit against the "bourgeois opposition". Three years later during the celebrations of his seventieth anniversary at private talks with Mao Zedong and Kim Ill Sung, Stalin examined the views of the Asian comrades on the final solving of the "Korean problem". Stalin's successor, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev was fond of such informal meetings, too. On 2 October 1958, for instance, at a Plenary meeting of the CC of the BCP the Bulgarian communist leader Todor Zhivkov informed his colleagues: Comrades, during my vacation a month ago at his invitation I visited Comrade Khrushchev for a week in the Crimea where he was resting. At this meeting Comrade Khrushchev and I had an opportunity to exchange views on a number of issues, or, so to say, to "set our clocks to the correct time"...[1] On 23 July 1961, Nikita Khrushchev invited for another long discussion Todor Zhivkov, the French Communist leader Maurice Thorrez and other foreign guests in his government residence in Sochi, in the Crimea. A year later, on the opposite side of the Black Sea coast, in a state Bulgarian residence near Varna, the Soviet leader got at the idea of deploying missile bases in Cuba as opposed to the deployment of US missiles "Jupiter" in Turkey. In principle, no official records were kept of the "friendly and informal" talks of such kind and the information about their agenda is very scarce. Leonid Brezhnev, however, was exactly the "Kremlin's host" who tried to turn the organization of annual "friendly" discussions into tradition during the summer vacations in Crimea in 1971. The first three discussions were multilateral and a series of important actual topics of the international situation and the mutual cooperation were discussed there. At the first multilateral meeting on August 2nd 1971 in Crimea the Czechoslovak and the Polish leaders Edward Gierek and Gustav Husák reported the measures for overcoming the inner social crises in their own countries. 1 Parallel History Project (PHP) Brezhnev's Crimea Meetings in the 1970s According to Todor Zhivkov's information, at that meeting he himself proposed the establishment of a "coordination center of the seven brotherly parties for struggle against the Maoist ideology".[2] Indeed, there were some foreseeable differences on this issue with the Romanian communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu. After returning from Yalta, Zhivkov informed his colleagues in the Bulgarian Politburo of Moscow's apprehension that "allied with each other and with China" Yugoslavia, Romania and Albania would eventually form a special group in the Balkans that might weaken the Warsaw Pact' Southern tier and would "openly or under cover" result into a regional Balkan bloc "based on anti-Sovietism". In Brezhnev's view, "Ceauşescu has gone too far" for which reason serious talks with him were on the agenda in order to help "the Romanians to realize that their actions had been wrong and injurious".[3] At the following multilateral meeting in the Crimea on 31 July 1972, one of the essential issues discussed was the topic of the further development and extension of the mutual economic cooperation and foreign policy coordination of the Warsaw Pact countries [4]. During the third multilateral meeting on 30-31 July 1973 a real scandal exploded. In his characteristic outburst of anger Nicolae Ceauşescu threatened that he would leave the meeting if Todor Zhivkov would not withdraw his critical remarks. The incident was overcome only with the imperative intervention of the Soviet host. This probably was one of the reasons, together with the aggravated health condition of Leonid Brezhnev, that during the following years the East European allies were not summoned for joint discussions, but were only invited individually and successively at intimate bilateral talks one by one in the Crimea. In 1974 since no such meeting was held, however, a briefer informal "comradely" meeting without an official agenda for it, was organized on 18 March 1975 in Budapest. It is indicative that in it all leaders of the Warsaw Pact countries except Romania participated. Leonid Brezhnev explained that he had been ill for a long time and that had been the reason he was not able to conduct the preliminary appointed meetings with Kádár, Honecker, Husák, Gierek and Zhivkov. Quite tersely, he mentioned a lot of impending tasks, emphasizing on the preparation of the European Conference on Security and Cooperation. At the end of the meeting, János Kádár expressed the joint "satisfaction" of those present at the meeting with the improvement of Brezhnev's health and their "wishes" that he would not get overworked in the future[5]. This episode is symptomatic and marks the beginning of the so-called period of "stagnation" in the Soviet domestic and foreign policy. From that moment on till his death in November 1982, Leonid Brezhnev was a rather decrepit and irresolute political figure, well suited to the aspirations of the "gerontocratic" state and party leadership of the Soviet Union who were interested to keep as long as possible the existing "status quo" of their unlimited personal power and privileges. The Bulgarian State Records preserved series of shorthand records, which reveal the most important moments of the confidential talks between Brezhnev and Zhivkov during the last years of Brezhnev's life. From 1976 till 1982 in the beginning of August each year, the Bulgarian leader, like the bigger part of his East European colleagues, left for "a brief vacation" in Crimea, where a compulsory discussion with Brezhnev was held. Among the leading issues, besides the development of the international situation and the US-Soviet relations, the discussion about the political and the economical situation in the Warsaw Pact countries as well as the problems of the bilateral relations was assigned a place of importance. Significant priority was given to the unsolved economic issues. In an amazing way, this reminds the sagacious phrase from the famous US movie of the seventies, "TV Network": "What do you think they are speaking about in Kremlin? Ideology? Not at all! They are discussing petroleum and credits, dollars and rubles..." 2 Parallel History Project (PHP) Brezhnev's Crimea Meetings in the 1970s At the meeting in Yalta on 14 August 1978, for example, Todor Zhivkov submitted to the Soviet leader a letter with a number of specific economic requests. The dialogue

Load more