HatzivassiNATO Assessmentsliou of the Soviet Union Images of the Adversary NATO Assessments of the Soviet Union, 1953–1964 ✣ Evanthis Hatzivassiliou Analyses of the Cold War have long included discussion of the ri- val military alliances—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact—but the availability of new archival material in recent years, especially from the former Soviet bloc, has greatly enriched the discussion. Of the two alliances, NATO is, perhaps, the more complex case.1 A voluntary union of sovereign states that found themselves in different geopolitical con- ditions (the most powerful member being an ocean apart from the weaker, more exposed ones), NATO was not a supranational body that could make or dictate decisions,2 and yet it was crucial in determining the policies of the West. Special attention has been paid on its internal crisis of the 1960s, when Charles de Gaulle’s France withdrew from the integrated command of the alli- ance.3 The larger part of this scholarship examines the national policies of the 1. The view has also been expressed that the Warsaw Pact Organization “cannot be called an alliance in the classical sense, since Moscow had full military control of the area.” See Odd Arne Westad, “Secrets of the Second World: The Russian Archives and the Reinterpretation of Cold War History,” Diplo- matic History, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Spring 1997), p. 269. This article will not expand on the important problems of theory or terminology or on the differences between a voluntary alliance and the quasi- imperial character of Soviet control of Eastern Europe. Still, the article shows that the nature of NATO as a voluntary union of countries enjoying a signiªcant degree of autonomy from the major partner of the alliance substantially affected the nature of the analysis and the conclusions of the re- ports that are the subject of the article. 2. See this point, regarding the nature of the alliance, in John G. McGinn, “The Politics of Collective Inaction: NATO’s Response to the Prague Spring,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Fall 1999), pp. 111–138. 3. See among others, James Ellison, The United States, Britain and the Transatlantic Crisis: Rising to the Gaullist Challenge, 1963–1968 (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Andreas Wenger, “Cri- sis and Opportunity: NATO and the Miscalculation of Détente, 1966–1968,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Winter 2004), pp. 22–74; N. Piers Ludlow, The European Community and the Crises of the 1960s: Negotiating the Gaullist Challenge (London: Routledge, 2006); Maurice Vaïsse, Pi- erre Melandri, and Frédéric Bozo, eds., La France et l’OTAN, 1949–1996 (Paris: Editions Complexe, 1996); Frédéric Bozo, Deux stratégies pour l’Europe: De Gaulle, les Etats-Unis et l’alliance atlantique, Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 11, No. 2, Spring 2009, pp. 89–116 © 2009 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 89 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws.2009.11.2.89 by guest on 01 October 2021 Hatzivassiliou member-states within the NATO context, but new studies have also appeared on the alliance’s functions as an organization—for example, its initiatives on propaganda and psychological warfare.4 The nature of NATO as a multilat- eral defense structure and as a forum for the projection of national policies makes it an interesting subject for research. The recent release of a large part of its archival material greatly facilitates the process.5 This article presents the conclusions of the NATO study groups on the non-military aspects of Soviet power—especially economic growth, the politi- cal system, and the prospects of Soviet policy—during the Khrushchev era. The analysis focuses on the documents of the International Staff and will not include NATO’s views on the military balance. This issue was handled also by the alliance’s Military Committee and involved a different set of consider- ations. The article is not a study of Soviet policy itself (for which information can be found in specialized works6), but on NATO’s perceptions of Soviet po- tential. The emphasis will be placed on the memoranda submitted to the North Atlantic Council (NAC) by the Working Group on Trends of Soviet Policy, the Committee on Soviet Economic Policy, the Committee of Political Advisers, the Committee of Economic Advisers, and the Atlantic Policy Advi- sory Group. These memoranda formed the basis for the discussions in the ministerial meetings of the NAC. The work of these bodies began in 1951–1952 amid the stalemate in Ko- rea, when it became clear that the Cold War would be a long process, the out- come of which would be decided by the long-term evolution of the relative strength, economic and political as well as military, of the two worlds. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, as the Soviet Union was becoming active in the periphery (which would later be termed the “Third World”), separate docu- ments were issued on Moscow’s policies on the Middle East, Africa, and Latin 1958–1969 (Paris: Editions Plon et Fondation Charles de Gaulle, 1996); and Georges-Henri Soutou, L’alliance incertaine: Les rapports politico-stratégiques franco-allemands, 1954–1996 (Paris: Editions Fayard, 1996). 4. Linda Risso, “‘Enlightening Public Opinion’: A Study of NATO’s Information Policies between 1949 and 1959 Based on Recently Declassiªed Documents,” Cold War History, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Febru- ary 2007), pp. 45–74. 5. On the NATO Archives, see Lawrence S. Kaplan, “The Development of the NATO Archives,” Cold War History, Vol. 3, No. 3 (April 2003), pp. 103–106. 6. For general works, see Thomas W. Wolfe, Soviet Power and Europe, 1945–1970 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970); Joseph L. Nogee and Robert H. Donaldson, Soviet Foreign Policy since World War II (New York: Macmillan, 1992); Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); Vojtech Mastny, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1996); and Odd Arne Westad, Sven Holtsmark, and Iver Neumann, eds., The Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, 1945–1989 (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1994). 90 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws.2009.11.2.89 by guest on 01 October 2021 NATO Assessments of the Soviet Union America. This article deals with the documents presenting economic and po- litical developments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Assessing a New Environment, 1953–1956 The question of Soviet policy in the post-Stalin era was raised in December 1952 by the Working Group on Trends of Soviet Policy, which stressed that the transfer of power in a totalitarian state could prove a delicate process.7 Iosif Stalin’s death in March 1953 brought Western insecurities to the fore- front. During the ministerial meeting of the NAC, in May, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles took the lead in stressing that despite declarations about peaceful coexistence the new Soviet leadership had changed only its tac- tics, not its aims. The USSR was, and would remain, a “total dictatorship.” Dulles’s colleagues from the other member-states expressed agreement.8 By late 1953 the NATO analysts were in a position to sketch a more de- tailed picture. In December 1953 the Working Group on Trends of Soviet Policy reported that the transition in the Kremlin had been successfully com- pleted. The new leaders had announced their intention to raise living stan- dards in the country and appeared willing to lessen international tensions through their advocacy of peaceful coexistence, the encouragement of East- West trade, the acceptance of high-level talks, and the Korean armistice. However, no change in the ideology, totalitarian structure, or ultimate aims of the regime could be traced, and Soviet preparedness for war remained at a high level. The working group noted some differences in the new regime compared to the Stalin era: no single ruler had emerged, and the prime minis- ter, Georgii Malenkov, was a primus inter pares, with Nikita Khrushchev, the ªrst secretary of the Communist Party (CPSU), as the second most important personality. The working group stressed that loyalty was to be toward the party rather than toward a speciªc individual. Some concessions to the Soviet public, such as the amnesty of many gulag prisoners, the termination of the “doctors’ plot” campaign, and the promise of a rise in the standard of living, were seen as part of the effort to consolidate the new regime. Still, uncertain- 7. North Atlantic Council (NAC) Memorandum, “Trends of Soviet Policy,” 1 December 1952, CM(52)116, in NATO Archives, International Staff, Brussels (hereinafter referred to as NATO Ar- chives). The memorandum noted that the Soviet government viewed the development of its economic strength “as the key not only to their own security but to the outcome of the ‘two worlds’ struggle.” During the discussion in the NAC, the British foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, and his French coun- terpart, Robert Schuman, asked that Chinese capabilities be taken into account as well. See NAC Ministerial Meeting Records, 16 December 1952, CVR(52)38, in NATO Archives. 8. NAC Ministerial Meeting Records, 21 and 23 April 1953, CVR(53)20, in NATO Archives. 91 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws.2009.11.2.89 by guest on 01 October 2021 Hatzivassiliou ties remained: “Beria’s fall, however, does suggest that genuine collective rule is incompatible with the totalitarian nature of the Soviet State.” Noting the earlier (since December 1952) deªnition that “‘peaceful co-existence’ is in fact no more than the Soviet name for the Soviet policy that we call ‘all mischief short of war,’” the working group called for caution, stressing that Moscow’s methods and tactics could “undergo considerable mutations in order to take advantage of circumstances.”9 These observations became the basis of NATO studies during the subse- quent years.