10. We therefore conclude:
(a) The Soviet Union has shown that it will use its armed forces within Eastern Europe to preserve a Communist regime which they consider vital to basic Soviet political, military and economic interests. Both the West and Eastern Europe must assume that Soviet readiness to use force for these purposes in the Warsaw Pact area will remain valid for the foreseeable future.
(b) The Soviet action in Czechoslovakia was, however, a defensive one inside the area covered by the Warsaw Pact. It has probably succeeded in removing both a political and a potentially serious military weakness in the central sector of the Pact’s area of responsibility. We do not believe that because the Soviet Union used force in Czechoslovakia she will be more willing to use it in areas of East-West confrontation, such as the Mediterranean or the Middle East. But the Russians could use force again in Eastern Europe even if this provoked a reaction from NATO countries, and many areas of uncertainty in the Soviet attitude towards the use of force have emerged from this crisis. However, there is no reason to believe that the strategic balance between the East and the West has changed.
(c) In the short term, the Soviet grip on Eastern Europe has been tightened by the demonstration that Soviet leaders are prepared to use military force where their interests are threatened with erosion. This demonstration will be a discouragement to liberal movements inside and outside the ruling East European Communist Parties. It has buttressed the Old Guard regimes at the expense of widening the gap between the Party leaderships and the public, especially in Poland. In Hungary, Kadar’s policy of reform and national reconciliation has been seriously threatened, and Rumania’s freedom of manoeuvre has been limited by her need to emphasise her solidarity with the Warsaw Pact.
(d) In Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union will seek to use its position of strength to reimpose acceptance of the full range of Soviet requirements by the Dubcek regime. The latter will try to fulfil the minimum Soviet demands while protecting the population from the full rigours of direct Soviet rule – although it may lose some of its popularity with the people in the process. But it must be recognised that the Soviet Union has the power to remove Dubcek at any time, and to replace him and his colleagues by more pliable leaders.
(e) The Soviet grip on Eastern Europe is so important to the Russians that it is unrealistic to expect major changes in Eastern Europe except in the context of some significant change in Soviet attitudes. There may be some spontaneous evolution in the Soviet Union and, in the longer run, pressures from Eastern Europe will begin to have an effect on the Soviet Union. Nationalism will be an increasingly powerful force. Among the young people of Eastern Europe a process of growing resentment against the existing order may appear which may ultimately be expressed by methods of protest already used by the younger generation in the West. Economic pressures, which in Czechoslovakia opened the way to the political and social reform movement, will continue to be exerted on Communist leaderships in the direction of greater efficiency, more freedom of action and individual responsibility including increased trade and contacts with the West. There will, therefore, be continuing pressure in Eastern Europe towards both economic and political liberalisation with which the Soviet Union will be confronted, and these pressures may in the long run find outlets which the Soviet Union will no longer use force to block.
(Signed) EDWARD PECK
Chairman, on behalf of the
Joint Intelligence Committee
(A)
Cabinet Office, S.W.1.
2nd December 1968
Annex to JIC(68) 54 (Final)
THE SOVIET GRIP ON EASTERN EUROPE
INTRODUCTION
1. The aim of the paper is to assess the importance to the Soviet Union of Eastern Europe, and the ways in which the Soviet Government will seek to maintain its grip in the relatively short term. The paper deals with the political, military and economic requirements of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, factors influencing their fulfilment and the implications of likely Soviet policies for the countries in the area and for East-West relations. Likely trends are assessed against the background of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
GENERAL FACTORS
The Background to Soviet Policy in Eastern Europe
2. Since the end of the Second World War, when the Soviet Union came into military possession of Eastern Europe, successive Soviet governments have established a number of requirements in Eastern Europe corresponding to the political, military and economic policies of the Soviet Union of the time. Each Soviet Government chose its requirements within the framework of the Soviet Union’s right to “super-power” status, and of the ever present Soviet claim that Eastern Europe should be acknowledged as the Soviet Union’s main “sphere of interest” – rather as the “Monroe Doctrine” has been applied by the United States in relation to the New World.
3. After eight years of Stalin’s rule of Eastern Europe as an extension of the Soviet Union, with its emphasis on police methods and economic exploitation, Khrushchev spent much time and energy attempting to “rationalise” Soviet political domination of the area. By relaxing Stalinist rule, reorganising the military forces of the East European countries within a multi-national alliance, and by encouraging each state to remove the worst features of Stalin’s economic system, Khrushchev appeared to be searching for a workable relationship between the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe which would guarantee absolute political loyalty to the Soviet Union without the need to hold down the area by brute force. Like Stalin’s before it, however, the Khrushchev leadership had its failures, and in 1956 resorted to military invasion to keep Communism in power in Hungary.
Soviet Requirements in Eastern Europe under Brezhnev and Kosygin
4. Brezhnev and Kosygin and the collective leadership which they head have presided over some important changes in Soviet policy, including the development of capabilities aimed at effecting a Soviet presence overseas, but in East European affairs their approach appeared to differ little at first from that formulated by Khrushchev. Brezhnev and Kosygin began by accepting the East European leaderships inherited from Khrushchev, even though one of them, the Rumanian, was showing signs of deviation along nationalist lines in foreign and economic policy. As time went on, the Soviet leadership somewhat hardened its ideological line in Eastern Europe. Dismay at the decline of Communism as a doctrinal inspiration both inside the East European Parties and in the Parties of Western Europe became a feature of the Soviet outlook. Moreover, the increasing outspokenness of East European and Soviet intellectuals and the ideological apathy prevalent in West European Communist Parties led the Soviet leaders to seek ways of injecting new life into the movement as a whole – a trend reflected in the Karlovy Vary conference of Communist Parties in 1967 and the theses prepared for the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution in November 1967.
5. Whatever the motives for this new emphasis on ideology, its relevance to Soviet requirements in Eastern Europe is undeniable, for it buttressed the Soviet Union’s political needs. These requirements represent the Soviet view of their vital interests in Eastern Europe, and may be summarised as the retention in power in each East European country of a loyal Communist Party which should:
(a) exercise absolute control of all political power in the country, and, in conjunction with Soviet experts, dominate all security and intelligence activity;
(b) entrust all key Party and government posts to Party members enjoying the confidence of the Soviet Union;
(c) control education, the press, radio and television;
(d) maintain well-trained national armed forces of unquestioning loyalty to the Soviet Union, and accede to all Soviet requests for the use of national territory and resources for Soviet or Warsaw Pact military purposes, accepting, at all levels, Soviet military appreciations of Western intentions and Warsaw Pact capabilities;
(e) maintain an efficiently-run economy and external trade policy capable of supporting a rising standard of living, sub
ject always to using methods in conformity with Soviet practice and interests; co-operate with the Soviet-sponsored Council for Mutual Economic Aid (CMEA);
(f) support the general line of Soviet foreign policy, particularly with reference to the German question, nuclear policy, and assistance to established Communist states involved in hostilities, e.g. North Vietnam;
(g) support the Soviet Union’s position in intra-Bloc disputes;
(h) keep current trends towards intellectual freedom within bounds, retaining censorship to prevent the dissemination of non-Communist and “anti-Soviet” views.
6. The Soviet view of its military requirements in Eastern Europe is primarily concerned with the security of the Soviet Union’s open Western frontier, but is also concerned with the deployment of Soviet forces in Europe in the most advantageous position to fight a European campaign should hostilities break out. The Soviet Union requires in essence that the East European governments should do everything in their power to support the Soviet forces, and actively assist them in achieving their peacetime and wartime aims which may, in greater detail, be listed as follows:
(a) in peacetime:
(i) to maintain the political status quo in Eastern Europe, providing a buffer zone between NATO and the Soviet Union.
(ii) to continue the division of Germany on a permanent basis in order to safeguard the Soviet Union against the consequences of a re-emergence of German military power.
(iii) to command and control the Warsaw Pact forces, and direct the co-ordination of their training and equipment.
(iv) to control the air defence of the area.
(b) in wartime:
(i) to defend the territory of the Soviet Union by ensuring that ground and air operations are conducted as far to the West as possible.
(ii) to destroy NATO forces and occupy NATO territory.
(iii) to protect Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union from air attack.
Complicating Factors in Soviet Policy towards Eastern Europe
7. Before the introduction of the Czechoslovak reform programme, most of the East European governments were by and large fulfilling these requirements. But the process was greatly complicated by pressures arising from the special interests and requirements of the East European countries, and their bilateral relations with the Soviet Union and with each other. The Russians did not consistently treat them all in the same way. Soviet objectives in Eastern Europe were also variable, as were the tactics they pursued: for example, there were periods when deviation from standard Soviet practice in individual East European countries led to harsh Soviet reactions, while on other occasions the Soviet leaders seemed to be prepared to acquiesce in nationalist or even liberal manifestations in certain countries, mainly in economic affairs.
8. The German problem is at the heart of Soviet policy towards Eastern Europe. It is a cardinal point of Soviet policy that the German population in Central Europe should remain divided, and the Russians therefore promote the claim of the East German regime to be a second German State. The continued existence of West Berlin as an outpost of the West under allied occupation is a source of strain between the Russians and the East Germans, who sometimes appear to be trying to manoeuvre the Russians into policies designed to make the Western position in the city untenable. The Russians are generally prepared to permit the East Germans to engage in minor harassment, and on occasion have themselves taken part in such activities. But although the Russians have in the past undertaken more serious measures against West Berlin and the access routes, there have been no recent signs that they want a major crisis over Berlin or a confrontation with the allies over allied rights in the city.
9. The Poles and the Czechoslovaks have deep and persistent fears of German militarism which created a genuine interest in the protective shield of the Warsaw Pact. But fear of German power has not been felt to the same extent in Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria, and even in countries where such memories were bitter, the anti-German bogey has been used so intensively and indiscriminately in Soviet propaganda that some of its credibility may have been wearing thin – especially with the younger generation. This diminishing credibility may have added to the doubts which always existed about the degree to which the Soviet Union really feared a West Germany which had no access to nuclear weapons, was a full member of the NATO alliance, and had accepted the same limitations on its military policy as all the other members of the alliance.
10. Contradictions and uncertainties in Soviet policy in Eastern Europe also arose as a result of Rumania’s successful defiance of Soviet rulings on relations with West Germany and Israel, on military liabilities under the Warsaw Pact, as well as on obligations towards CMEA. While Soviet relations with Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria were more stable, there were in each case specific issues on which the Soviet leaders were obliged to pay attention to national peculiarities and interests which worked against a uniform application of Soviet requirements in Eastern Europe. Some of these individual peculiarities were associated with potential struggles for power and succession problems in the leaderships of the Communist Parties, and others with the varying degrees and types of pressures brought to bear on these leaderships by their populations. In all these factors the force of nationalism in East European countries has played an important role.
11. Economic problems also brought their contradictions to the ruling Parties’ attempts to fulfil Soviet requirements. Soviet insistence on the primacy of Soviet economic interests and models clashed to some extent with the kinds of economic reform which most of the East European countries realised were necessary, both for internal economic progress and for external trade. The lack of any authority in CMEA to enforce its decisions on member countries has enabled the Soviet Union – as the dominant partner – to derive maximum benefit from the organisation, particularly in the sphere of foreign trade. Apart from Rumania, whose dispute with CMEA was on important issues of principle, none of the other East European countries has sought – or indeed was in a position – to abandon CMEA or disrupt its arrangements. Their efforts were directed rather towards improving the existing machinery. Amongst the proposals put forward were more rational specialisation of production, improvement of foreign trade pricing and the system of payments settlement through some form of rouble convertibility, and a general tightening up of discipline with regard to intra-CMEA commitments and obligations.
12. Military requirements were of vital importance to the Soviet Union, but evidence of the period before the Czechoslovak crisis suggests that contradictions similar to those in the political and economic fields were less obvious. With the exception again of Rumania, which had no frontier with a NATO country, all the active members of the Warsaw Pact appeared to be fulfilling Soviet military requirements, and Soviet satisfaction with the military scene may be deduced from the fact that the last significant change in the number of Soviet forces in the area took place in 1958.
The Soviet View of the Czechoslovakia Reform Programme
13. The Czechoslovak liberalisation programme and the political, military and economic developments in the country which stemmed from it can be summarised under three main headings:
(a) official acts of political, economic and social reform;
(b) personnel changes at the highest level in the Party, the government and the armed forces;
(c) semi-official and unofficial activity by liberal elements anxious to quicken the pace of reform in the country.
14. There seems little doubt that the Soviet leaders believed that elements of this programme threatened the monopoly of decision-making of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, and exposed a lack of will-power on the part of the Dubcek leadership to maintain orthodox Party rule in the country. The Russians’ decision to go ahead with the military occupation of the country may have been directly connected with Soviet interpretations of Dubcek’s intention to reorganise the whole structure of the Czechoslovak Communist Party at the September Party Congress, and the probability
that this Congress would elect a liberalising Central Committee of the Party which would be its constitutional authority for at least two or three years. The Russians appeared to believe in any case, that the atmosphere in which the Dubcek reforms were being debated and put into effect (including the relaxation of censorship) was contributing to loss of control over the country by the Party, and made reforms which could be tolerated under Kadar’s more orthodox and cautious leadership in Hungary, for example, difficult to support in Dubcek’s Czechoslovakia. Some of Dubcek’s actions may have suggested to the Russians that if they were carried to what the Soviet leaders saw as their logical conclusion, Czechoslovakia would cease to be a member of the Soviet bloc, cease to adhere to the basic tenets of Marxism-Leninism as interpreted in the Soviet Union, and would be either unable or unwilling to meet the full range of Soviet military requirements. In this connection, it is important to recognise that Soviet actions were as frequently based on their leaders’ interpretation of the possible consequences of Dubcek’s methods and intentions as with actual measures which his regime had put into effect.
The Future of Soviet Policy towards Eastern Europe
15. There is no doubt that the Soviet Union regards Eastern Europe as of vital importance to her and that she will seek to maintain her grip there. As they look ahead and consider the growth of Chinese power, the Russians will see no reason to alter this assessment. The Soviet Union’s future policy towards Eastern Europe in the light of the occupation of Czechoslovakia, both in the short and the longer term may conveniently be grouped under three headings: political, military and economic.
THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK
The Soviet Union
16. The most immediate effect of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia was the removal of all doubts that the Soviet Union was and will be prepared to use its military forces to uphold its political and military requirements within the area covered by the Warsaw Pact. Despite a brave and ingenious display of non-military resistance by the Czechs and Slovaks, the Soviet military moves were swift and efficient, and put the Soviet government in a position from which it could exercise a decisive influence on events in Czechoslovakia.
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