Khrushchev's Cold War

by Aleksandr Fursenko

  These hopeful developments in London provoked a policy review in Moscow. Both the Foreign Ministry and the Soviet intelligence community were asked to update their assessments of where the crisis might be going.

  The Soviet intelligence community responded with a series of very alarming reports. On September 20 the KGB distributed a report on the measures that France and the British would take in the event of an outbreak of hostilities with Egypt.99 A few days later the KGB learned of a Western plot to assassinate Nasser that the Kremlin took so seriously that two KGB officers were flown to Cairo to assist Nasser’s security detail.100 The KGB’s source is not known, but the warning was grounded in fact. Eden had made it known to his top advisers—and perhaps indirectly to Soviet intelligence—that he supported an assassination attempt if it could rid him of his Nasser problem. “I want Nasser murdered, don’t you understand?” Eden had told a senior Foreign Office official on an open telephone line.101 In early October representatives of the Secret Intelligence Service, Britain’s external espionage organization, flew to Washington to confer with the CIA on how the Americans could assist them in overthrowing Nasser. The CIA, however, turned down any participation in an assassination attempt.102

  Meanwhile the Soviet military intelligence service, the GRU, reported on a significant Western military buildup in the eastern Mediterranean. The Soviet military, which did not discount the possibility that the United States might ultimately assist an Anglo-French assault on Egypt, included the powerful U.S. Sixth Fleet in its tallies of Western strength. But the most significant military deployments observed in the region since August were by the British and the French. Since July 26 the British had increased the number of their troops in the area from twenty-seven thousand to forty-five thousand and the French, who had not had any soldiers there before, now had six thousand. There were three British aircraft carriers patrolling the area, whereas there had been only one in that part of the Mediterranean before. Equally noteworthy was the major increase in Britain’s local airlift and sealift capabilities. The GRU detected eight more British transport planes and more than a tripling of British transport ships. Much of this military capability had been put on display in a major exercise called Septex 2 held on September 13 and 14 to train for an invasion from sea and air. In addition, the Soviets noted that as part of a strategy to wear down the Egyptians psychologically, the British had increased the air traffic of their bombers between bases in Great Britain and the island of Malta.103

  Khrushchev’s diplomatic specialists were less alarmist about the situation than were the Soviet intelligence services. The political assessments of the Soviet Foreign Ministry presented a mixed picture of likely scenarios. A crisp analysis of the British political scene in late September informed the Kremlin that Eden led an increasingly divided government in the crisis.104 The Soviet paper noted that opponents to a military action included Foreign Secretary Lloyd and Eden’s political rival, Rab Butler. In Parliament the Tories faced a Labour Party that was solidly opposed to military action, though the party was itself split over whether or not the Suez Canal should be internationalized. The Soviet Foreign Ministry understood that Eden was committed to decisive action but left open the possibility that the opposition was becoming too strong. Evidence for this was that it had been three months since British warships left port headed for the Mediterranean and no attack had followed. It appeared likely that London would not act without some kind of UN sanction.

  A similar Soviet study of the French political leadership, however, was much less sanguine. There was still remarkable unity in Paris behind a policy of dealing harshly with Nasser.105 Soviet analysis identified three reasons for the determination of the French: the anger of French stakeholders from across the party spectrum who had lost their investments when the canal company was nationalized; the role of Jews in French public life, in all parties but especially in the ruling Socialist Party; and a sense that if Nasser prevailed in the Suez, then little Nassers would be encouraged in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. Using the Hitler analogy, the French political elite believed in a parallel between the nationalization of Suez and the Nazi remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936. Nasser had to be stopped here before the situation got worse.

  The Kremlin reached no conclusions over what the French and especially the British intended to achieve at the Security Council discussions that started on October 5. Foreign Minister Shepilov, who headed the Soviet delegation, warned at the UN that the French and British might simply be looking for a pretext for war. He suggested that the Europeans were already prepared to tell their people: “‘You have urged us to appeal to the UN. We have done so, but, as you see, it is powerless. It can do nothing. Other steps must be taken. Egypt is guilty. Crucify it!’” 106

  Nasser had no doubt of London’s and Paris’s sinister intentions in New York. Anticipating a breakdown in the talks, he spent the first days of October trying to hedge his bets with both Moscow and Washington so that at least one of them would be prepared to come to Egypt’s defense. On October 7 Nasser asked Khrushchev via the KGB chief in Cairo whether “in the event of an attack on Egypt, the Egyptian government could count on the Soviets dispatching volunteers and submarines.”107 Meanwhile he sent two of his key aides, Ali Sabri and Mohamed Heikal, to meet with Kermit Roosevelt of the CIA, who was considered a secure back channel to the Eisenhower administration.

  Sabri and Heikal told the CIA that Nasser wanted U.S. help to ward off both British military intervention and further Soviet penetration of his country. Cairo was skeptical of British diplomacy, assuming that London’s maneuvering in the Security Council was designed to provide a pretext for war. Eden’s Conservatives wanted to be able to show the Labour Party that they had done all they could to seek a diplomatic settlement. Meanwhile Cairo argued that Moscow was hungry to play the role of Egypt’s savior. Nasser wanted the Americans to advise their British friends not to introduce a hostile resolution in the Security Council. The effect would be a Soviet veto, which would only increase Egypt’s debt to Soviet diplomacy. Sabri explained that economic pressures had already forced Nasser much closer to the Soviet Union than he had hoped to be. “He is no longer able,” the Egyptian representative explained, “to adhere to his policy of limiting Egyptian trade with the communists to 30% of her trade in any one commodity.”

  If the Eisenhower administration found that it could not play a helpful role in the corridors at the UN, the Egyptians hoped that at the very least Washington would be willing to share CIA estimates of British intentions in the Middle East. For all his anxiety over what Eden might do next, Nasser had no firm information on which to predict the future course of the crisis. He assumed, wrongly, as it turned out, that the United States had to have a better sense than he did of what their British ally was up to.108

  Events at the United Nations over the next few days led both superpowers to believe that they could safely ignore Nasser’s concerns.109 By October 12 the foreign ministers of Egypt, France, and Great Britain had reached a tentative agreement on six principles that would govern Egypt’s management of the canal. Perhaps because he had not received any reassurance from Moscow or Washington, Nasser had instructed his foreign minister, Mohammed Fawzi, to agree to the French and British demand that Egypt “insulate” the canal from politics. This was exactly the undertaking that Moscow had been urging on the Egyptian government since August. Nasser refused to let Fawzi say whether Israel would again be denied the use of the canal. But Egypt’s acceptance of the general policy of letting the use of the canal be handled apolitically satisfied the French and British negotiators. Egypt also agreed to recognize a users’ association so long as disagreements between it and the canal management could be handled by arbitration. Although Egypt intended to collect the tolls itself, Fawzi promised that Cairo would negotiate an agreement that set aside a portion for canal improvements. The Egyptians proved so flexible that at one point Shepilov, who had been kept outside the Egyptian-French-British discussion
s, cabled home his concerns that Cairo might be making too many concessions out of fear of a military attack.110

  With agreement reached at the United Nations on the six principles, both Washington and Moscow began to assume that war in the Middle East was much less likely. On October 12, in a televised meeting with a group of ordinary Americans organized by the Eisenhower/Nixon campaign, Eisenhower expressed his optimism that war could be averted over Egypt: “The progress made in the settlement of the Suez dispute this afternoon at the United Nations is most gratifying. Egypt, Britain and France have met, through the Foreign Ministers, and agreed on a set of principles on to negotiate; and it looks like here is a very great crisis that is behind us. I don’t mean to say that we are completely out of the woods, but I talked to the Secretary of State just before I came over here tonight and I will tell you that in both his heart and mine at least, there is a very great prayer of thanksgiving.”111

  Both Eisenhower and Khrushchev had major concerns that prevented them from giving their full attention to the events in the Middle East. On November 6 Americans would be going to the polls to reelect Eisenhower or to elect his Democratic challenger, Adlai Stevenson. Khrushchev had more than one challenger. The situation in Poland and Hungary had worsened since midsummer, and the Kremlin was spending most of its time thinking about how to avert a breakdown of authority in the Communist states. It was an unusual moment in the Cold War. Neither superpower wanted a crisis, and both Eisenhower and Khrushchev hoped—for their own reasons—that a way could be found for the Western Europeans to resolve their differences with Nasser peacefully.

  CHAPTER 5

  TWIN CRISES

  KHRUSHCHEV NEEDED the apparent calm in the Middle East. The pressure to make decisions about Eastern Europe left him with very little time or energy in early October 1956 to devote to Nasser and his problems. This did not reflect a weakening in Khrushchev’s enthusiasm for the Egyptian leader. He was still very proud that in little more than a year the USSR had become a factor in the Middle East by forging a relationship with the leading Arab nationalist. But Soviet vital interests were at stake in Eastern Europe, and the steadily deteriorating situation required immediate Kremlin action.

  In early October the Polish Communist Party restored the membership of Wladyslaw Gomulka, a popular reformer who had been jailed by Poland’s Stalinists. Gomulka was considered anti-Soviet, and his return signaled a dramatic weakening of Polish Communist leader Edward Ochab’s authority. These developments caused Moscow, out of renewed concern for the future of Soviet-Polish relations, to end its foot-dragging on some of Warsaw’s outstanding demands. Moscow was still paying only one-tenth of the world price for Polish coal, the country’s main export. The Poles were desperate for more foreign currency to purchase Western machinery and food.

  The reason for Soviet foot-dragging had been pure economics. If the Soviet Union stopped getting Polish coal at a discount, it would have either to pay more for the coal it used or to try to replenish its stocks through domestic production. Khrushchev’s summer tour of the coal-producing Donbass region had been discouraging. “The situation is awful,” he had reported to his colleagues when he returned to the Kremlin in late August.1 Despite the situation in the Donbass, which needed expensive improvements to become efficient, with Gomulka’s return to prominence in Warsaw Khrushchev thought he would have to give the Poles what they wanted. On October 4 the Presidium revised upward the price that the Soviet Union would pay for Polish coal.2

  The Kremlin understood that Ochab needed more than the concession on coal to retain control. Political pressure was growing within Poland to lessen its dependence on Russia. In September Ochab had requested that the Soviets withdraw their KGB advisers from the Polish Ministry of Internal Affairs. The Kremlin agreed to this request the same day it signaled its willingness to accept a higher coal price.3

  Meanwhile in Hungary the situation seemed, if anything, to have deteriorated even more than in Poland. As in Poland, the Hungarian leaders found they could not reform fast enough for the intelligentsia in the street. Moscow had tried to save the situation by forcing the removal of the hard-line party boss Mátyás Rákosi in July. But Rákosi’s successor was the weak-willed Ernö Gerö, who was so unsure of himself that he spent half of his short tenure in office outside Hungary, conferring with Tito in Yugoslavia, Mao Zedong in Beijing, and Khrushchev in the Crimea.

  Gerö underestimated the extent of Hungarian dissatisfaction with the Communist Party. Consequently the steps he took to calm the situation led instead to an acceleration of political change. In a desperate attempt to buy some legitimacy in the coffeehouses, Gerö permitted the remains of Lazlo Rajk to be reburied in Budapest. Rajk was a Hungarian Communist pioneer who had been executed in 1949 in the wave of purge trials that washed over Eastern Europe just after the war. In the tense atmosphere of 1956 Rajk became a popular symbol of the injustice of Hungary’s Stalinist regime. His posthumous return on October 6 touched off the largest political demonstration in Eastern Europe since the Soviets had established their iron rule.

  The sight of thousands of Hungarians marching silently but eloquently in the streets of Budapest traumatized Gerö. “The situation in the country is significantly more complicated and acute than I had imagined,” he confessed to the Soviet ambassador, Yuri Andropov. “[T]he reburial of Rajk’s remains,” he said, “has dealt a massive blow to the party leadership, whose authority was not all that high to begin with.”4 In the summer Gerö had described the problem as limited to the Hungarian intelligentsia. Now the discord had spread to a major portion of the country’s workers and peasants. Not long after the demonstration for Rajk, the popular Imre Nagy, the Hungarian Gomulka, had his membership in the Hungarian Communist Party restored. Khrushchev now faced a serious challenge in two of his Eastern European client states.

  AS THE LEAVES changed colors on the trees in Washington, the Eisenhower administration watched the events in Eastern Europe with interest but made no serious attempt to assist the democratic forces in either Poland or Hungary. While Eisenhower hoped to avoid any foreign policy challenges before the November election, if there was going to be a problem, he expected that it would be over the Suez Canal, not the future of Poland or Hungary.

  The White House received some disquieting intelligence from the Middle East in early October that suggested that the situation was still unstable there. A U-2 flown in early October detected that Israel had recently acquired between fifty and sixty of the French-made Mystère IV-A jet fighters. According to the 1950 Tripartite Declaration governing actions by the three Western great powers in the Middle East, the French were supposed to inform the United States and Great Britain of any arms sales to either the Arab states or Israel. France had admitted to selling Israel twenty-four, not sixty of its top-of-the-line fighters.5 At least one of America’s NATO allies was not telling the truth about its military activities in the region.

  Despite this suspicious buildup in Israel, the administration held to the view that tensions were actually decreasing in the region. The British and the French seemed to be negotiating in good faith at the United Nations, and there were no traces of any Soviet, Egyptian, or Israeli misbehavior. By October 10 the CIA was telling President Eisenhower that “deliberate initiation of full-scale Arab-Israeli hostilities [was] unlikely in the immediate future.” More dramatically, two weeks later, on October 24, the watch committee set up within the U.S. intelligence community to alert the administration to changes in the Middle East spoke in terms of the “receding danger of hostilities over the Suez Canal.”6

  The U.S. intelligence community would be of little help to American policy makers in unraveling their allies’ plans for Suez. The most important decisions by the French and the British were now occurring in secret closed door meetings to which Americans were not invited and at which they did not have any spies.

  Even before the start of the Suez discussions at the Security Council, the French had returned to the path toward w
ar with Egypt that they had abandoned at the time of the London Conference. Frustrated by the pace of events in the region and unsure whether the Eden government could be trusted to act, Guy Mollet had turned to the Israelis in late September to design a two-pronged attack with the goal of toppling Nasser. On September 30 a high-level Israeli delegation, led by Foreign Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, arrived in Paris to confer with their French counterparts. The Israelis were prepared to launch an attack on Egypt with French assistance, so long as they could ensure that London would not go to Jordan’s assistance if hostilities also began along the Jordanian-Israeli border. The French, in turn, declined to be involved in a simultaneous attack on Egypt but promised additional tanks and half-track vehicles for the Israeli Defense Force. The two sides set October 20 as D-day for an Israeli attack.7

  Securing British support remained a precondition for the French to commit any of their forces. In early October the British government was more divided over whether to proceed with military action than at any time since Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. The protracted diplomacy of the summer and fall seemed to have taken a toll on official support for attacking Egypt. Two prominent cabinet members were now opposed to using force to resolve the issue of the canal. The foreign secretary, Selwyn Lloyd, who was never comfortable with a military solution, now saw real hope in the talks at the UN. In mid-October he believed he had reached an agreement with his Egyptian counterpart on a set of six principles to guide the settlement of the crisis, including the all-important Egyptian promise to insulate the canal from domestic politics. Lloyd’s preference for a peaceful settlement of the matter was also shared by the British defense minister, Walter Monckton. He had overseen a revision of the Suez military plan that postponed any possible British landing in Egypt until at least the spring of 1957.