Adenauer was also not worried by the Soviet note. He had already decided to reject the back channel approach through Kroll. He and Kroll had agreed that domestic factors had compelled Khrushchev to take this risky step. They assumed the Soviet leader was very keen to present a Western summit on Berlin as a trophy at the party congress in January. Why, Adenauer wondered, should Bonn help him out?68
A few days later Adenauer used Kroll to tell the Soviets that the November 27 note had destroyed any chance for fruitful discussions between Bonn and Moscow. The Soviet proposals regarding a free city of West Berlin were “100% unacceptable.” As long as Khrushchev insisted on this change in the status quo, the chancellor saw no way out of this problem.69
EISENHOWER’S AND Adenauer’s sangfroid hurt Khrushchev at home. In refusing to exhibit any fear, they were denying him the chance to achieve the changes he wanted in Central Europe short of war. Since no one in the Kremlin, including Khrushchev, wanted war, the six-month ultimatum was already beginning to look like a sure loser.
Even though Mikoyan shared paternity for this new Berlin policy, he emerged strengthened from the struggle with Khrushchev and was not harmed by the Soviet Union’s sudden international embarrassment. Within a week of the November 27 note Serov was gone. After one of Khrushchev’s key young allies, a post–June 1957 addition to the Presidium, Nikolai Ignatov, overplayed his hand trying to protect Serov, the remaining support for the KGB chief collapsed, and Khrushchev had to accept the inevitable on December 3.70
He was a poor loser. The day of Serov’s dismissal Khrushchev showed anger during a meeting with visiting U.S. Senator Hubert Humphrey. Describing Berlin as “a bone in my throat,” Khrushchev assured the American that the Soviets intended “to cut this knot which spoils relations between the four powers.”71 Eager to continue the pressure on Washington, Khrushchev wanted Humphrey to convey two messages to Dulles and Eisenhower: “Don’t threaten me,” and, equally important, “what are your counterproposals?”72
The Soviet leader was doing more than posturing for a visiting American legislator. He was not convinced that diplomacy would work without a period of extreme tension. Despite Mikoyan’s revolt and the toning down of the political challenge, Khrushchev had not reversed the decision to send nuclear missiles to East Germany. In December 1958 the Soviet Army deployed the twelve R-5 medium-range ballistic missiles in East Germany. The deployments were done in secret—indeed, it is not known how many of the Presidium members in 1958 were informed of them—though presumably Khrushchev intended at some point to let the Western world learn of this new nuclear threat in Eastern Europe.73 They would be pointing at London and Paris at the moment the ultimatum expired.
Mikoyan knew about the 1955 decision to deploy nuclear weapons to East Germany, which had been approved by the Presidium members of that time, but it is not clear if he was kept informed of the actual progress of Operation Atom. If he had been, he almost certainly would have opposed the idea as unnecessarily provocative. In December 1958 he was working hard to undermine the Berlin ultimatum and avert any crisis with the West. On December 17 the Soviet Foreign Ministry handed U.S. Ambassador Thompson a note, requesting visa assistance so that Mikoyan could make an “unofficial visit” to Washington as a guest of the Soviet ambassador, Mikhail Menshikov.74 Mikoyan was not in the habit of making private visits to capitalist countries, nor was Menshikov a friend of his. The Kremlin wanted Mikoyan to reduce the tension caused by Khrushchev’s maladroit treatment of the German problem by conferring with the Eisenhower administration. Seeing the value of a trip by this high-level Kremlin leader, Washington agreed.
To make sure the administration got the message, the next day the journalist Frank Holeman heard once more from his Soviet intelligence contact, Yuri Gvozdev, who had sent messages to him during the Iraqi crisis a few months earlier.75 The Soviet said that some positive comments Richard Nixon had made on a recent trip to London about the Soviet Union’s participation in the Second World War had been noticed by the Kremlin. Would Nixon be interested in visiting Moscow? Holeman thought he heard Gvozdev say that Moscow “would bid very high for [a visit] in terms of constructive proposals on Berlin.” The journalist thought he was getting “the straight dope.” After Khrushchev’s November 10 speech, at a time when Holeman thought things looked very bleak, the Soviet intelligence agent had told him, “[D]on’t worry about Berlin; there is not going to be any war over Berlin.” This time Gvozdev hoped for an answer in twenty-four hours, but Washington decided not to send a formal response. Apparently any future visit by the vice president would depend on how Mikoyan conducted himself in the United States.
The Kremlin’s policy toward Berlin was completely incoherent and potentially dangerous. Khrushchev had designed the Soviet response to the Suez and Iraqi crises, and the logic of Soviet actions reflected his own theories of what might work. But this policy on Berlin was a compromise that satisfied no Soviet policy maker. And now, with evidence mounting that the November 27 note was insufficient to force Western concessions, there were no particularly creative ideas in Moscow available to induce the West to come to the negotiating table. To those who did not know about Operation Atom, it seemed that the momentum that Moscow had gained following the Iraqi coup had been squandered. To those who did know about the missile plan, it was not clear how the appearance of twelve medium-range ballistic missiles north of Berlin could be incorporated into a workable political strategy. Khrushchev’s hope seemed to be that the general unease created by the ultimatum, eventually strengthened by the missiles in East Germany, would force the West to embrace the concept of a free city of West Berlin. That was a lot to hope given the history of NATO’s commitment to West Berlin since Stalin’s blockade. Mikoyan certainly thought so. Hopeful of fixing the mess, he headed to Washington, D.C.
CHAPTER 9
KHRUSHCHEV IN AMERICA
A YEAR THAT BROUGHT a major reversal of Khrushchev’s tactics in the Cold War began with the arrival in the United States of his chief foreign policy critic. Anastas Mikoyan had not been to America since 1936, when he was the first high-ranking Soviet official to visit the country. At that time he had come ostensibly on a mission to study U.S. canneries, though everyone knew that he was there to feel out what the U.S. government and the American people thought of the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin.1 The 1959 trip was equally unprecedented, though this time Mikoyan’s primary intent was not to learn something about America or Americans. As the first member of the Soviet elite to visit the United States since Stalin’s death, he was coming to lower the level of tension between the superpowers while explaining why Berlin was very important to the Kremlin.
The general importance of the trip was not lost on the Eisenhower administration, though no one in or around the White House grasped the significance of Mikoyan’s having made the trip himself. Neither the State Department nor the CIA, which lacked any spies or listening devices in the Kremlin, knew of the power struggle that had preceded the visit or that Mikoyan had been the leader of the faction that produced the watered-down version of Khrushchev’s Berlin policy.
Having worked hard to soften Khrushchev’s position, Mikoyan now hoped to soften Western interpretations of Soviet intentions. The Eisenhower administration provided him with excellent opportunities to do so. He was given private meetings with both the president and the secretary of state, at which Mikoyan presented a remarkably candid outline of the thinking behind Soviet foreign policy. Soviet leaders, he explained, were realists. He cited as an example the Kremlin’s relationship with Nasser, which he insisted could not be explained by ideology. Moscow was well aware that Nasser imprisoned Communists. Nevertheless, the Soviet Union and Egypt shared enough interests to make the relationship work.
For all his success at the end of 1958 in blunting Khrushchev’s aggressive policy on Berlin, Mikoyan was not an independent actor. He had to operate under instructions from the Presidium, and he carried with him a Soviet aide-mémoire on Berlin that reflected
the compromise position reached at the end of November. But he did what he could to telegraph to his hosts that there were some people in the Kremlin who had more patience for discussion on Berlin than Khrushchev. He stressed again and again that Khrushchev’s November 27 note was not an ultimatum, though he acknowledged that he could not single-handedly remove the deadline.
In making this attempt to move beyond polemics to settle the Berlin problem, Mikoyan lacked a feel for U.S. attitudes on the Berlin issue. Although he represented the Kremlin doves on Berlin, there were rigidities behind his tactical flexibility that limited how much common ground he could achieve in discussions with any American leader. He rejected the idea that East and West Berlin should be treated alike. In his mind East Berlin belonged naturally to East Germany, whereas West Berlin, because of its geographical position inside the territory of East Germany, could not belong to West Germany. Thus he could assert that the East Germans were within their rights to claim the Soviet zone of Berlin as their capital, while Adenauer had no right to control the combined former U.S., British, and French zones of that great German city. At the same time Mikoyan lacked any sense of the depth of Washington’s commitment to West Berlin. A long-time critic of Stalin’s misdeeds in international politics, he understood that the legacy of the 1948–1949 Berlin blockade complicated the resolution of the Berlin question. But Mikoyan did not grasp that the free city concept would be interpreted by U.S. leaders as tantamount to abandoning the residents of West Berlin.
So Mikoyan arrived with a confusing message for his American hosts. No, there was no ultimatum. Yet when he was pushed on how long the Soviets might wait for a resolution, his answer was disappointing: He urged the Americans to take seriously the need for bilateral negotiations and argued that six months “was a reasonable amount of time for a negotiation.” To Americans that sounded an awful lot like an ultimatum, even if the melody was more pleasing.
Consequently, Eisenhower and his foreign policy team found Mikoyan affable enough but were not favorably impressed by his visit. “I had hoped that he was prepared to talk constructively,” the president later recalled; “it was not so.” Mikoyan’s efforts to reveal what lay behind the zigzags of the Soviet Union’s Berlin policy seemed pointless.2 Some were even less impressed with the man. Eisenhower son’s, John, who by the end of his father’s second term had become an important confidant and adviser, characterized the second most powerful member of the Presidium as resembling “the man behind the counter in a meat market.”3 The younger Eisenhower also suspected that this ordinary fellow had a darker agenda. “Presumably,” he later wrote, “[Mikoyan] had been sent to begin muddying the waters.”4
The reception in Moscow when Mikoyan returned three weeks later was very different. Khrushchev overcame his frustration with the foreign policy debate over Berlin and hailed the visit as “useful” and “to our advantage.”5 He believed that much had been accomplished. First of all, a representative of the Soviet Union had been treated with respect by the Americans. The visits to the White House were unprecedented for a member of the Presidium. In the Kremlin, where the understanding of how a free press functions was never strong, they were equally impressed that U.S. newspapers had covered the event closely and seemed to trumpet Mikoyan’s efforts to start serious negotiations on Berlin. Yet on the big issues the Americans had promised nothing. At best there seemed to be some interest in Washington in a foreign ministers’ meeting, but Eisenhower remained firmly against a summit and did not waver in his commitment to the status quo in West Berlin.6 Nevertheless, the Soviet leadership convinced itself to proceed on the assumption that diplomacy might work.7
“The question of a summit hardly needs to be forced now,” Khrushchev announced to a full session of the Presidium after Mikoyan’s return.8 If the West suggested it, Khrushchev was prepared to allow the Soviet Union to participate in discussions at the foreign ministerial level, which he expected would ultimately “legitimate the idea of concluding a peace treaty with the GDR.” Mikoyan was now allowed to do something that he had clearly wanted to do throughout his American odyssey but for which he had lacked formal authorization. Khrushchev suggested that a press conference be arranged that afternoon at which Mikoyan could hint that the May 27 deadline might be extended.9 If there was to be an actual settlement of the German question, Khrushchev of course intended to negotiate the terms himself, but Mikoyan had earned the right to be the one to formally soften the ultimatum.
Khrushchev’s comments to his inner circle after Mikoyan’s return suggested that he was sorting through his thinking on the Berlin crisis, to separate demands that were a matter of principle from those that could be dropped.
In the wake of the Mikoyan visit Khrushchev began developing some ideas for potential concessions that might make a negotiation more appealing to the West. He was now prepared to assure NATO that Western troops could stay in West Berlin, so long as there was no buildup in either their size or their complement of weapons.10 This was an important change from the draft peace treaty that the Soviets had distributed to London, Paris, and Washington in January; it had said that all foreign troops would have had to leave the Germany within one year of the conclusion of the treaty.11
The survival of the German Democratic Republic was the irreducible minimum for Khrushchev. Its survival, he believed, depended on establishing formal borders in the east, which then reflected the great powers’ decisions at the end of the world war but lacked the force of a treaty commitment, and on eliminating NATO’s ability to violate East German sovereignty. Of all the annoying elements of the current situation in Berlin, what irritated the Soviet leader the most was the Western allies’ postwar right to fly into West Berlin without East German permission. No solution to the German problem would be acceptable if it let the three allied air corridors stand. Khrushchev was very sensitive to the issue of overflights. He hated the fact that American spy planes flew over the Soviet Union because these flights revealed the weaknesses in Soviet air defenses and invited attack from the West. Similarly the allied flights into West Berlin opened East Germany to surveillance. Yet even here Khrushchev indicated to his colleagues some willingness to negotiate a controlled form of air access. If Western planes first landed at GDR airports, where the passengers could have their visas checked, then these planes could continue on to West Berlin.
Khrushchev believed that these concessions would bring some movement from Allied negotiators over the future of Berlin and the two Germanys. Why would NATO oppose them? Unless the West wanted to have West Berlin as a staging area for a forward attack on the Soviet Union or was determined to hand Berlin to Adenauer for some reason, Khrushchev believed that his proposals would satisfy Western concerns about the future of its enclave. Underestimating the symbolic importance to the Western powers of secured access to West Berlin, Khrushchev assumed that all he needed was an appropriate venue at which to make these proposals.
IN THE SPRING of 1956 Khrushchev and Bulganin had made a colorful trip to the United Kingdom, their first goodwill visit to a NATO country. As they were about to leave London, the two Soviets had invited then British Prime Minister Eden to make a return trip to Moscow. The Suez crisis had intervened, costing Eden his job, but the invitation still stood for Eden’s successor, Harold Macmillan, who was eager to make the trip. Facing a stiff electoral challenge early in 1959 and British public concerns about the implications of the Berlin troubles, Macmillan believed that he needed the trip. As Mikoyan was finishing up his tour of the United States, the prime minister sent word to Moscow that he thought the time was right to visit.
The timing of Macmillan’s request gave Khrushchev the chance to try out some of the possible compromises on West Berlin that he had been mulling over. Moscow responded positively to the British, and the visit was arranged for the middle of February.
Macmillan’s eagerness to see Khrushchev was not greeted favorably in Washington. President Eisenhower was worried about the damage the Briton might do in Moscow. So
too was Secretary of State Foster Dulles, who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer but remained at his post as long as he was physically able. The Americans recalled how inconsistent Macmillan, as chancellor of the exchequer, had been during Suez. At the start of the crisis he had shown bravado, telling Dulles at one meeting in August 1956 that “if we should be destroyed by Russian bombs now that would be better than to be reduced to impotence by the disintegration of our entire position abroad.”12 But ultimately it was Macmillan who started the cabinet revolt against Anthony Eden when it became clear that the British public and the U.S. government would not back the Anglo-French military intervention. Sensing that the British leader was so eager for political success in 1959 that he might be tempted to indicate a weakness in the Western wall of defiance on Berlin, Dulles went to London in early February to encourage resolve.
Macmillan was indeed already considering proposals that could be made to the Soviets on behalf of all the Western allies. At his meeting with Dulles he suggested that NATO might offer a “thinning out” of troops in Central Europe, a proposal that was similar to suggestions that the Soviets had been making for some time. He also made comments indicating that the United Kingdom might consider some form of recognition of East Germany. Although already going too far for either Dulles or President Eisenhower, Macmillan would at least stop short of proposing an allied withdrawal from West Berlin.13
Dulles’s visit to England did little to settle U.S. concerns that NATO’s unified front on the future of Berlin was in danger of dissolving once Macmillan reached Moscow. Completely unaware of the changing mood in Moscow—the U.S. government had missed the significance of Mikoyan’s comments at the January 24 press conference—and thoroughly dismissive of Macmillan’s abilities as a standard-bearer for NATO, the U.S. government moved decisively to undercut the British prime minister’s little summit. On the eve of Macmillan’s trip, it issued a harsh diplomatic note to the Soviets that reaffirmed that the Western powers “have no choice but to declare again that they reserve the right to uphold by all appropriate means their communications with their sectors of Berlin.” This diplomatic message was Washington’s formal response to the draft peace treaty that the Soviets had distributed in January. It signaled complete disagreement with the Soviet position without suggesting any alternatives. As far as Washington was concerned, the Communists had only themselves to blame for the tensions in Central Europe. Both “the persistent and flagrant denial to the East Germans of human rights and fundamental freedoms” and the Soviet Union’s “intention unilaterally to abdicate certain of its internationally agreed responsibilities and obligations in regard to Berlin” were the main causes of all the trouble there.14 As a sop to international opinion, the Eisenhower administration did suggest that talks take place among the foreign ministers of the big four.
Khrushchev's Cold War Page 29