COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT BULLETIN Issue 5 Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C. Spring 1995 COLD WAR CCRISESRISES POLAND, 1956 POLAND, 1980-81 Khrushchev, Gomulka, and the “Polish October” Soviet Policy During the Polish Crisis by L.W. Gluchowski by Mark Kramer Eastern Europe was central to Soviet foreign and defence policy The prolonged crisis in Poland in 1980-81 was one of the most throughout the Cold War. After World War II, and especially from intriguing episodes of the Cold War, but until very recently almost 1947 onward, the Soviet military and security forces, together with no primary sources relating to the crisis were available. That local communist elites, constructed the most integrated alliance problem has greatly diminished over the past few years. This article system of the Cold War period. Soviet state institutions of control will draw on new archival materials and memoirs from Russia, also helped to reconstruct the mili- Poland, Germany, and Czechoslova- tary and security forces of states dev- HUNGARY AND POLAND, 1956 kia to provide a reassessment of the astated by World War II. Their aim Khrushchev’s CPSU CC Presidium Meeting Soviet Union’s role in the Polish cri- was to secure communist regimes in on East European Crises, 24 October 1956 sis. The article will begin with a brief postwar Eastern Europe dedicated to review of some of the most important defend the Soviet Union’s western Introduction, Translation, and Annotation new sources, and will then analyze the frontier. To ensure loyalty, unifor- by Mark Kramer decision-making calculus in Moscow mity, and quality, Soviet military in 1980-81. The third part will take up and security officers were recruited The document below has been translated from a 19- the controversial question of whether, to staff or to advise the East Euro- page Czech manuscript entitled “Zprava o jednani na UV and under what circumstances, the pean military and security forces.1 KSSS 24. rijna 1956 k situaci v Polsku a Mad’arsku” Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact This pattern applied in particular to (“Account of a Meeting at the CPSU CC, 24 October allies might have invaded Poland in continued on page 38 1956, on the Situation in Poland and Hungary”). The December 1981. manuscript, which is stored in Fond 07/16, Svazek 3, at The discussion here is based in part on a longer chapter about the SUDOPLATOV RESPONDS: the Central State Archive in Prague (Statni ustredni archiv, or SUA), is one of many items in the Czech Polish crisis in my forthcoming book The Authors of Special Tasks on Soviet policy in Eastern Europe, Reply to Critics— see page 155 archives that shed valuable new light on the Soviet Union’s response to the crises in Poland and Hungary in 1945-1991. Further coverage of the continued on page 50 continued on page 116 KOREA, 1949-50 CUBA, 1962 To Attack, or Not to Attack? The Crisis and Cuban-Soviet Relations: Stalin, Kim Il Sung, IN THIS ISSUE: Fidel Castro’s Secret 1968 Speech and the Prelude to War 1953 GDR Uprising 10 1956 Hungarian Crisis 22 by Philip Brenner and James G. Blight by Kathryn Weathersby The Yeltsin Dossier 22 Imre Nagy Reassessed 23 On 25 and 26 January 1968, Cuban leader The historical record of the Korean War has 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis 58 Fidel Castro gave an extraordinary 12-hour recently been greatly enriched by Russian Presi- KGB Documents 58 speech before the Central Committee of the dent Boris Yeltsin’s presentation to President Diplomatic Cables 58 Cuban Communist Party on the history of Cuba’s Kim Young-Sam of South Korea, during the Soviet-Cuban Talks 59 relationship with the Soviet Union. It is well Warsaw Pact “Lessons” 59 latter’s visit to Moscow in June 1994, of 216 1980-81 Polish Crisis 116 known that the relationship in the six years after previously classified high level Soviet docu- Soviet Documents 116 the Cuban Missile Crisis was turbulent. But the ments on the war from Russian archives. The Honecker’s Appeal 124 disclosure of this speech, kept secret at the time, collection totals 548 pages and includes docu- Carter-Brezhnev helps clarify how important the Missile Crisis ments from the period 1949-1953. Most of the Correspondence 140 was in setting the stage for the turbulence. documents are ciphered telegrams between Response 155 The Cuban government recently declassified continued on page 2 continued on page 81 2 COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT BULLETIN KOREAN WAR Document #1, the minutes of a conver- questions of military formation and supply. continued from page 1 sation between Stalin and Kim Il Sung in From Kim’s statement in Document #6 pre- Moscow and Pyongyang, and between Moscow on 5 March 1949, sets the stage, sented below, recording a conversation in Moscow and Beijing. The collection also revealing in a most intimate way the nature Pyongyang nine months later, it appears that includes notes of conversations among key of the relationship between Kim’s newly during another conversation between Stalin figures in North Korea, the USSR, and China; created state, the Democratic People’s Re- and Kim in March 1949, which may have letters from Kim Il Sung to Stalin; and public of Korea (DPRK), and its Soviet pa- occurred during a dinner or reception, Kim resolutions of the Soviet Politburo and Coun- tron. The conversation recorded in this re- asked Stalin about the possibility of attack- cil of Ministers. All of the documents are port was the first and only formal discussion ing South Korea and was rebuffed. Accord- from either the Presidential Archive or the between Stalin and the official North Korean ing to Kim’s account in January 1950, Stalin Foreign Ministry archives and, with a few delegation that travelled to Moscow in March had said that it was “not necessary” to attack exceptions,1 were unavailable to scholars 1949 to conclude the DPRK’s initial agree- the South, that North Korean forces could prior to their presentation to South Korea. ments with the USSR.4 This rare and intrigu- cross the 38th parallel only as a counterat- In July 1994, the Ministry of Foreign Af- ing glimpse of Stalin handling a petitioning tack to an assault by South Korean forces. In fairs of the Republic of Korea released Ko- vassal shows, above all, the importance to March 1949, American troops were still in rean translations of these documents and in both leaders of matters of economic develop- South Korea and the Chinese civil war was November 1994 the Archive of the Foreign ment and material supply. As is shown in still not resolved, which led Stalin to reject Policy of the Russian Federation (AVP RF) exhaustive detail in the thousands of pages of for the time being any military adventure on began granting permission to scholars to documents on post-war Korea in the Russian the Korean peninsula. read photocopies of the collection.2 Foreign Ministry archive, in the years prior Document #3 (a ciphered telegram from Unfortunately, these records represent to and during the Korean War, North Korea then-Deputy Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei only a portion of the top level documents on was utterly dependent economically on the Gromyko to the Soviet embassy in the war in Soviet archives, several of which Soviet Union. As a result of the collapse of Pyongyang on 11 September 1949) indi- (such as the KGB and Defense Ministry the Japanese empire, Soviet occupation cates that on 12 August 1949, Kim Il Sung archives) remain largely inaccessible to policy, and the civil war in China, North again raised the question of a military cam- scholars. The narrative of events we can Korea was cut off from its former economic paign against South Korea, this time in con- construct from these materials still has sig- ties with southern Korea, Japan and Man- versation with a Soviet official in Pyongyang, nificant gaps, especially for the several churia. Except for very limited trade with most likely Ambassador Shtykov. Docu- months immediately preceding the North Hong Kong and two Manchurian ports, in the ment #2 (a ciphered telegram of 3 September Korean attack on 25 June 1950. Nonethe- period prior to and during the Korean War 1949 from the Soviet ambassador to North less, these new sources reveal a great deal the Soviet Union was the only source of Korea to Soviet Foreign Minister A. more than has previously been known about supply and the only market for North Korean Vyshinsky) reveals that on September 3 the relationship between the Soviet Union goods. Kim again requested permission to attack, and North Korea, the decision-making sur- Furthermore, to an unusual degree, North this time claiming that South Korea was rounding the attack on South Korea, the role Korea was dependent on the Soviet Union preparing to attack DPRK territory. He of Mao Zedong in all stages of the war, the for technical expertise.5 Japanese colonial requested permission to make a roughly formulation of the communist positions at policy had permitted only a small number of equivalent counterattack and then added that the armistice negotiations, and the role of Koreans to gain higher education or manage- “if the international situation permits,” which Stalin’s death in bringing the war to an end. ment experience, and the politics of the occu- was no doubt a reference to possible Ameri- These documents, when examined to- pation from 1945-48 prompted most can reactions, they could easily seize control gether with the larger body of records de- northerners who possessed such skills to flee of the remainder of the peninsula.