[This paper was prepared for the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars seminar marking the launch of Central
Intelligence Agency’s historical document collection: “Wartime Statutes–Instruments
of Soviet Control,” at the Wilson Center, Washington, DC, April 5, 2011[i]]
The CIA’s document
collection on the Wartime Statute sheds new light on Romania’s behavior during
the latter Cold War, revealing why the rest of the Warsaw Pact viewed it, in
the words of one Gauck Institute researcher, as ein feindliches Bruderland – an enemy fraternal country.[ii]
The image of purposeful insistence that emerges from this document collection
is decidedly different from that circulating, and found persuasive by many
Western analysts, at the time.[iii]
During the 1980s especially, Soviet disinformation was relentless in depicting
Romanian defiance as mindless and ridiculous, casting Ceausescu especially as a
buffoonish contrarian engaged in opposition for opposition’s sake.[iv]
The purpose of this disinformation was to distract attention from the
underlying cause and precise nature of that defiance, thus also discouraging
sympathy and support for the Romanian position either from the West or from
within the Bloc.
In fact, ending
Soviet military control and reining in Soviet aggressiveness was a principal
goal of Romanian policy in the post-Stalin era. It motivated a campaign for the
withdrawal of Soviet troops and advisers during the 1950s and early 1960s. When
Moscow placed Pact armies on alert while bypassing national authorities during
the 1961 Berlin Crisis, it prompted Bucharest to end the training of its
officers in Soviet institutions as a means of breaking the extra-national chain
of command. And it provoked public denunciations when Moscow did so again
during the Cuban missile crisis, this time resulting in a purge of Soviet
influence and agent networks, the formation of an anti- KGB/anti-GRU
counterintelligence unit, and an extraordinary pledge to President Kennedy that
the Romanians would not join the USSR in offensive operations against the
United States. As their prime minister publicly complained, the Unified Command
of the Warsaw Pact had “ordered all of the armies of belonging to this group of
forces to be placed in a state of alert”:
There is an
article 3 in the Warsaw Treaty text binding all signatory countries to mutual
consultation regarding important international issues. I ask you, would not
these problems warrant such consultation? Or, at least, would not the order to
place member state armies on alert status require prior consultation? ...The
orders were given, the actions implemented, and no one was consulted. At least,
we were not.[v]
Henceforth,
Romanian defiance hinged upon the protection of national sovereignty, blocking
new assertions of Soviet control when necessary, and rolling back that control
where possible. As a Romanian delegation informed Chinese leaders in 1965,
while “the armies of the other socialist countries of Europe are currently
subordinated” to Soviet military command, their goal was to do away with that
state of affairs – to ensure that “no supranational control existed” over the
Non-Soviet members of the Warsaw Pact.[vi]
Peace-Making as Offensive
Strategy
As part of this
effort Bucharest maintained that neither the United States nor NATO represented
an offensive military threat in Europe that would justify the Kremlin’s
“chain-ganging” methods. According to the April 1964 ‘Declaration of Independence,’
negotiation rather than confrontation was the ideologically correct way of
redressing threats and tensions, and healthy interstate relations were possible
only if freed from ideology and based on the principles of equality, national
sovereignty, mutual respect, and non-interference in the domestic affairs of
other states.[vii]
Cooperation with capitalist states was not only ideologically-justifiable, but
an imperative of peaceful coexistence, redefined in Bucharest as relating to
the achievement of peace rather than the furtherance of class warfare by means
other than military.
At the start of
1965 Party First Secretary Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej reacted to Soviet demands for
tighter integration in response to NATO’s deployment of multilateral forces in
Europe by calling for disarmament, a ban on nuclear weapons in Europe, and a
collective security system – all regular features of Romania security policy
for the next quarter century.[viii]
Such calls also made regular appearance in Soviet propaganda. The difference
being that Bucharest was constantly seeking ways and means of implementing them
in the real world.
Romania argued its
positions and justified its ‘democratizing’ and ‘demilitarizing’ initiatives by
interpreting literally the egalitarian – and, for Moscow, completely
propagandistic – terms of the 1955 Warsaw Treaty and subsequent Pact documents.
In this lonely fight within the Soviet alliance against the war hysteria Moscow
employed to justify its imperious claims of command privilege, Romania appeared
the eternal optimist regarding the international situation, and bore the brunt
of coordinated attacks from all of the other Pact members for its trouble.
Virtually every attempt to “strengthen integration” because of what Moscow
claimed to be an increasingly dangerous international environment was met by
Romanian counterargument that the key to defusing tensions lay in unilateral
reductions in military expenditures, arms and troops; in unilateral withdrawals
of troops from foreign bases; in renouncing offensive military strategy –
including the both the use and threat of force; in sincere negotiations with
the West; and in the dissolution of the two military alliances.
As the Romanians
explained to President Johnson in 1967, even their mediation of third- party
conflicts was motivated by the desire to rid themselves and the rest of Eastern
Europe of Soviet control, allowing each to be “master in its own house.” In the
presence of crisis and tension, their prime minister explained, an unnamed
power invariably tried to force them “to get together, to renounce some of
their sovereignty and some of their independence and to obey the command of
another state,” endangering that which “Romania has won, and which they wish to
preserve at all costs.”[ix]
The rather strong
impression one gets from much of this documentation is that of the Soviets and
their subordinate allies fleeing from the Romanians and their initiatives –
holding secret meetings to coordinate their positions against Romanian
opposition, cancelling official meetings when Soviet purposes might be stymied
by Bucharest, suddenly dropping the main discussion items from meeting agendas
in the face of Romanian counterproposals, circulating “no discussion”
instructions against Romanian initiatives, and frequently stipulating that news
of these differences be kept from a broader public. As an exasperated Gomulka
pronounced during one heated debate, “it was not the six parties that were
trying to put pressure” on the Romanians, “it was they who were putting
pressure on the six parties.”[x]
The 1966 PCC Meeting in Bucharest
When the Soviet
loyalists refused to consider Romanian objections, initiatives or proposals
Bucharest was not bashful about going public with them. According to a
Hungarian report, for example, already during the February run-up meetings to
the 1966 PCC Romania made clear its view that the “main flaw” of the Warsaw
Pact arose from the regular violation of its basic principles – “among others,
the principle of consultation” – by Soviet authorities, as in the missile
deployments to Cuba, nuclear disarmament proposals submitted to the United Nations,
the exclusion of Albania, and orders given by the Soviet Commander-in-Chief of
the Unified Armed Forces (CCUAF) moving armies of the member states to alert
status on his own authority.[xi]
Romania “urged compliance” with the Treaty, “demanded consultation in every
issue [including even nuclear policy] that concerns the member states,” and
insisted that the Pact represent coalitional interests and practices.[xii]
Regarding the
Wartime Statute in particular, Bucharest insisted that decisions be made
collectively, remained “adamant that the plans and measures” of the CCUAF take
effect only “after the approval of the government of the member states,” and
“firmly held” to their view that non-Soviet officers should be eligible to serve
as CCUAF and Chief of Staff, and that the two “should not belong to the same
armies.”[xiii]
The Romanians likewise deemed the position advocated by all other members –
that wartime command should rest with Soviet commanders and institutions – as
“irreconcilable with the sovereignty of the member states.”[xiv]
When Moscow
excluded the Romanian proposals from consideration or discussion, Bucharest
leaked them to the New York Times.[xv]
The main topic of the 3-point agenda for the 1966 PCC meeting, which Brezhnev
took pains to underscore at the beginning of that gathering, was to be the
approval of the Soviet statute proposal.[xvi]
When the Romanians circulated their own statute proposal nevertheless, the
Soviet delegation simply dropped the point from the agenda.[xvii]
An internal
discussion of the Hungarian Politburo laid out Moscow’s dilemma. On the one
hand, the Romanians refused to renounce positions that “subverted and impeded”
efforts “to strengthen the Warsaw Pact,” and those positions frequently
prevailed.[xviii]
As one Hungarian Politburo member complained:
[A]s we can see
from the Western press, the Romanians have leaked everything that happened
there and have described it as a great political victory, as a Romanian
victory. And in some respects, especially as far as the Warsaw Treaty and
Comecon are concerned, they are right, their position has prevailed.[xix]
On the other hand,
Romania’s departure from the Pact was excluded from consideration “because of
the larger context.”[xx]
The other Pact members thus resorted to “alternative” informal methods to
strengthen the alliance and Soviet control over it, concealing their moves as
much as possible from Romania, and especially from Romanian veto.
Intra-Bloc Coalition-Building
Efforts
Another element of
Bucharest’s strategy entailed the more or less constant search for likeminded
leaders in Eastern Europe. Along with the passive influence exerted by its
example, active efforts to build counterbalancing coalitions within the Pact
were a regular feature of Romania’s modus operandi, occasionally threatening
catastrophe for Soviet strategy.[xxi]
Prague’s July 1968 “Gottwald Memorandum” echoed Bucharest’s terminology of
independence, sovereignty and equal rights and reflected the same logic that
led to the development of its independent national defense strategy.[xxii]
Romanian discourse was also resonant in the criticism of General Václav Prchlik
against the stationing of Soviet forces on Czechoslovak territory, as well as
in his calls for the freeing of security policy from “erroneous and obsolete”
ideological premises; for ending submissive subordination to a variety of
Soviet “marshals, generals, and lower-ranking officers”; and for instituting a
“genuine equality” in alliance decision-making, including those concerning
nuclear weapons policy.[xxiii]
As
Foreign Minister Gromyko informed the Soviet Politburo during the Prague
Spring, Czechoslovakia was rapidly becoming a “second Romania,” which, in the
“best” of cases, would mean “the complete collapse of the Warsaw Pact.”[xxiv]
Romania went so far as to offer Prague the assistance of its Border Guard
personnel to help counter Soviet charges that the Czechoslovak frontiers were
wide-open and allowing a massive influx of Western agents disguised as
“tourists” – an ironic charge given that Moscow used exactly that method for
the August 1968 invasion.[xxv]
In a 38-page
report on Romanian behavior during and after the crisis, the East German Stasi
reported that the Romania leadership “placed considerable hope in the events in
Czechoslovakia because it was expecting that they would radiate outward to
other socialist countries as well,” specifically Hungary and Poland, where
“similar forces” were also believed by Bucharest to be elaborating “more independent
national policies.”[xxvi]
Active measures to combat these efforts – such as Janos Kádár’s attempt to
persuade Dubček that Romanian aid was treacherously given, in order to “find
allies against the Soviet Union, against CMEA [Council for Mutual Economic
Assistance], and against the Warsaw Pact” – became the order of the day.[xxvii]
As the documents
in the collection presented here suggest, Moscow had clear cause to worry about
Romanian influence or, worse, possible collusion with the Polish senior officer
corps. Although apparently unable to shift the policy pursued by their defense
minister and party leadership, the Polish General Staff thought almost exactly
as the Romanians regarding the irreconcilable nature of Soviet military control
and national sovereignty.[xxviii]
The 1978 PCC Meeting in Moscow
At the 1978 PCC
meeting Romania rejected outright Soviet claims of a world hurtling towards
war, and of an arms race entirely provoked by the USA and NATO. The world,
according to Ceausescu, was actually becoming less dangerous.[xxix]
The West, he insisted, had not increased its arms expenditures (and certainly
not at the rate the Warsaw Pact had). The Soviet military – whether by
intention or inattention – had statistically misrepresented the situation. And
his country could never accept any subordination to a supranational military
authority that contravened the provisions of the 1955 Warsaw Treaty.[xxx]
Rather than accepting Warsaw Pact Commander-in-Chief Marshal Viktor Kulikov’s
justification for the proposed Wartime Statute, and – according to the Romanian
leader – thereby escalating the arms race, fueling global tensions, and
impoverishing the world, Ceausescu insisted instead on the need “to open the
perspectives for real policies of disarmament, and for avoiding, with all
decisiveness and with the highest sense of responsibility, being drawn into the
arms race.”[xxxi]
The other Pact
members, in unison, demanded approval for the Statute using an argument worthy
of Lewis Carroll – that they had achieved the unanimity required for such
decision by the 1955 Treaty amongst themselves, and that Romania was now at
fault for failing to join their “unanimity.”[xxxii]
Back home in Bucharest, the Romanians described Kulikov’s report on the Statute
“as an emanation of Soviet militarist circles” designed to draw “the member
countries into a dangerous arms race” and to “transfer the command of their
troops to the Soviet General Staff,” thereby undermining the independence and
sovereignty of the non-Soviet allies and clearing the path “for interference in
the domestic affairs of our states by the Soviet Union”.[xxxiii]
Ceausescu had openly
warned the other Pact members at the 1978 PCC meeting that he would go public
with Romanian objections if they were not taken into account. He now did so,
offering tantalizing information on the secret statute while repeatedly
declaring his country’s refusal to submit to it. Pointedly, he also referred to
NATO as the model of intra-alliance democratic procedure allowing for
differences among members, and underscored Romania’s “traditionally friendly
relations” with many NATO states, “which have always aided us in our struggle
against foreign domination,” thus giving Romanians “no reason” to regard them
as a threat.[xxxiv]
In the course of
1978 Moscow alleged to other Pact members that Romania was betraying Warsaw
Pact military secrets to the West.[xxxv]
As Brezhnev stated to Honecker several months before the PCC meeting:
“Basically, [Ceausescu] is a traitor,” and only the “devil knows what else he
might possibly do.”[xxxvi]
According to the Stasi, the Romanian Army was cooperating closely with the US
military, particularly along intelligence lines, for “clearly anti-Soviet”
purposes such as “infiltrating, from the military perspective, into the Warsaw
Treaty system over the long term.”[xxxvii]
Indeed, by 1979
Romania was procuring Soviet military technology for the US in a clandestine
operation with the CIA and Pentagon that ran up until December 1989.[xxxviii]
On the other hand, the Warsaw Pact was by no stretch of the imagination an
alliance freely joined, based on a common military interest. And Romania’s
guerrilla war against this instrument of Soviet control was a far cry from
treason against friendly partners.
Two Illusions: Romanian
Conformity and Shared Opposition
While capturing
the dynamics of Soviet behavior rather well, the US intelligence community was
somewhat less accurate in discerning the intent of non-Soviet Warsaw Pact
members – understandably so given their secondary importance in the context of
the Cold War. US reliability assessments, although repeatedly footnoting
Bucharest’s persistent rejections of Soviet command authority and offensive
strategy, typically concluded that Romania would participate in a Soviet-led
offensive nevertheless, at least in the initial stages.[xxxix]
US assessments held to this conclusion even when stipulating that Romania’s
possible role was “unclear,” since it “balked at any participation” in offensive
operations whatsoever.[xl]
The argument for this inclusion was apparently based on Soviet control
mechanisms that did not, for the most part, exist in the Romanian case.
The benefit of the
doubt given in US assessments to General Jaruzelski’s alleged resistance to
Soviet demands and national orientation rested on similarly questionable
footing (and the inaccuracy of those assessments has now been confirmed by
post-1989 revelations regarding Jaruzelski’s attitude towards Soviet military
intervention and apparent recruitment by Soviet intelligence in the 1940s.)
According to Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski, the CIA’s principal source in Poland at
the time, Jaruzelski unequivocally rejected Bucharest’s offers of solidarity
and “the course of becoming independent of the USSR which Romania had chosen to
follow.” The general dismissed Romanian support for any type of independent
Polish stance within the Pact as “counter-revolutionary plot.” Instead, Kuklinski
informs us, the general joined in Soviet-coordinated anti-Romanian
countermeasures, forbade social contacts with Romanian officers, and even went
so far as to willfully misrepresent Romanian policy to higher political authority.[xli]
Jaruzelski’s refusal to consider Romanian offers, and especially his distortion
and downgrading of Romanian positions to Polish political chiefs, reinforces
the image emerging from these documents of top East European military leaders
recognizing the supremacy of Soviet command over that of their own party and
state leaderships.
These documents
broaden our understanding of Romania’s dogged defiance beyond the Cold War-era
stereotypes that portrayed it as shallow grandstanding and treacherous
deception. They go a fair distance in explaining Moscow’s evident need to
stigmatize the leadership and the country in such a manner as to disqualify
serious consideration of their policies during the 1980s. And they further
suggest that although Kremlin leaders may have had the party and military
chiefs of East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria snugly in
their pocket, they may not have had the same degree of control or certainty
regarding senior officers below the highest-level – and most clearly did not in
the case of Poland. The image of Romanian inconsequence projected by Moscow
apparently concealed a genuine fear of contagion.
1980: Romania’s Post-Statute
Strategy
Refusing to accept
the Statute, Romania circulated their own line-by-line revision that would have
transformed the alliance from one of subordination to the Soviet High Command
into a genuine coalition of partners, reflecting closely the concerns of the
Polish General Staff (and probably those of other military officers within the
Pact). Bucharest also redoubled efforts to impose an approach to international
security that would render the Statute superfluous. It called even more
frequently for specific unilateral freezes and reductions to jumpstart
disarmament; it called for the “reduction of foreign troops stationed on the
territories of the European states”; and it stressed repeatedly “the need to
restrict the military character of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, in order to create
the necessary conditions for their disbandment.”[xlii]
At the Warsaw
Pact’s 10th Committee of Defense Ministers (CDM) meeting in
Bucharest, Ceausescu responded to Soviet Defense Minister Marshal Dmitriy Ustinov’s
claims of “heightened tensions” and “reinforced aggressive preparations by
NATO, and especially by the USA and the FRG,” by pointing out that the “other
NATO states had not fulfilled their projected arms increases,” and that “the
necessity of cutting military budgets” remained the goal of “utmost
importance”:
If we fail to
catch up with the capitalist states, if we do not raise living standards and
meet the cultural needs of our people, then even missiles will do us no good.
The point is to solve economic problems, and then all other problems will
resolve themselves.[xliii]
Seeking to exploit
common European interests that non-Soviet members held apart from the USSR,
Ceausescu insisted on the participation of all Pact members in working out a
concrete program for security, détente and peace in Europe, and especially in
advancing the disarmament process – a process theretofore left to the complete
discretion of Moscow.[xliv]
Bucharest, which refrained
from portraying the United States, NATO and West Germany as enemies in its
domestic propaganda and media since the 1960s, now actively combated the
enemy-imaging of the West within Warsaw Pact councils as well, often leveraging
alliance declarations and communiqués to exclude demonizing references to the
US in particular, while insisting that the blame for global tensions be equally
shared between the two blocs.[xlv]
Such an approach denied the justifying threat behind Soviet efforts to enforce
tighter integration and subordination among its allies. By stressing the shared
responsibility of the Warsaw Pact members for creating international tensions,
it also established the logical basis for unilateral freezes, reductions, and
withdrawals, as an effective means of easing tensions, transitioning to
disarmament, and ending the Cold War.
The underlying
strategy was to render the Warsaw Pact and its Wartime Statute redundant by
shifting the focus of Pact members from military issues (since there was no
threat in Europe) to problems of socio-economic (and socialist) development.
Citing as authority earlier Moscow-approved declarations, which to the
Kremlin’s considerable regret proclaimed as goal the dissolution of both blocs,
Romania advocated an end to its own alliance – following up calls for reducing
the military character of both blocs with demands for the unilateral
disarmament of the Warsaw Pact – in effect hijacking the tactics and messages
that Soviet-controlled peace fronts directed against the West and turning them
inward.[xlvi]
1983: Andropov vs. Ceausescu
The contradictory strategic goals of
these erstwhile alliance partners was often very explicit – with Bucharest seeking
to dissolve the Pact and transcend the East-West confrontation while Moscow
sought to “man-up” its alliance in order to come out on top in the Cold War.
This contrast was perhaps most stark during Andropov’s effort to play up fears
of a US nuclear first- strike. The Soviet leader asserted the unequivocal
necessity of military countermeasures to prevent US superiority, dismissed “a
unilateral disbandment of the Warsaw Pact” as entirely out of the question, and
warned Pact members that such a possibility should not even be raised in
discussion, much less labeled a desired goal of the bloc allies.[xlvii]
Ceausescu responded by insisting the existing balance of nuclear forces had to
be reduced to a lower level, that unilateral reductions and withdrawals were
the key to making the transition to disarmament, and that concrete actions were
immediately necessary to reduce the military character of the alliances and
limit their activity as prelude to their much-desired dissolution.[xlviii]
By 1983 Romania
was overtly attempting to leverage Soviet policy towards an easing of East-West
tensions (and formal acknowledgment of its own independence) by threatening de facto withdrawal from the
soon-to-expire Warsaw Treaty. According to an East German report:
It has become
clear that [Romania] is already trying – with an eye to the formal expiration
of the Warsaw Treaty in 1985 – to loosen its ties with the alliance. That is
the aim of both the demand that negotiations with NATO about the “dissolution
of the blocs” should begin immediately and the initial refusal to confirm a
further term of office for the Supreme Commander of the unified Armed Forces.[xlix]
Behind the scenes
Bucharest was even more troublesome: advocating President Reagan’s “zero
option” in the Euromissile crisis and even encouraging the Czechoslovak and
East German populations to resist the deployment of Soviet weapons on their
territory, prompting East German intelligence to conclude – as Marshal Kulikov
had the year before and Marshal Grechko a decade before that – that the
Romanian leadership did “not at all take into account the interests and
security needs of the Romanian Socialist Republic,” much less those of the
broader socialist community.[l]
Bucharest was
adamant in maintaining that the “Soviet Union should refrain from further
stationing of rockets, because otherwise the international situation would be
made more tense”; that Moscow “should give up trying to include English and
French missiles” to break the deadlock in Soviet-US negotiations; and that the
preconditions for Romania’s “further cooperation, respectively, membership” in
the Warsaw Pact included conventions stipulating that “no troops are permitted
to enter the territory of another state without the approval of the legitimate
authority of that territory,” as well as separate conventions “covering all
legal, material, technical, financial and logistical questions” when troops of
one member legitimately entered the territory of another member.[li]
The Romanians underscored that their troops could be deployed abroad only in
defensive operations, and only after Bucharest had evaluated as legitimate the
“request for assistance from the country in question.” These conditions, they
announced, had already been “presented to Vice President Bush during his last visit,”
and now would be formally presented to the Warsaw Pact defense ministers as
well.[lii]
1985: Romanian Influence on
Gorbachev’s Security Transformation
During the first
quarter of 1985, Romania refused to even discuss an extension of the Warsaw
Pact unless the members considered proposals it had been submitting since the
beginning of the decade, including:
- Proposing and convening a Warsaw Pact-NATO meeting on arms reductions;
- Establishing a Warsaw Pact commission for discussing and making recommendations for the Soviet-American disarmament negotiations;
- Instituting a unilateral Warsaw Pact budget freeze in 1985-1986; and
- Initiating a reorganization of the PCC’s procedures and competencies.[liii]
As before, the Soviets and their
loyalist allies “refused to discuss the Romanian suggestions.”[liv]
Not surprisingly Romania continued to insist that Moscow cease including French
and
British missiles with those of NATO in negotiations with the US; that the
Soviets open their “package” of strategic ballistic weapons, intermediate-range
weapons, and space weapons and consider each of the contents separately; that
an agreement on removing intermediate-range missiles from the continent was the
absolute first priority for all Europeans; that the other Pact members should
be involved in negotiations regarding nuclear disarmament in Europe; and that
“the Warsaw Treaty countries should display a more positive approach at the
Geneva Disarmament Conference, the Stockholm Conference and the Viennese
negotiation, putting on the table a greater number of concrete initiatives.”[lv]
These positions foreshadowed the “new thinking” in foreign policy that Mikhail
Gorbachev launched more than a year later. Indeed, by openly combating the
Soviet military over their statistics, assessments and expenditures, Bucharest
not only “carried the water” for such a policy shift but also established the
beachhead for the policy innovation that, as Gorbachev repeatedly notes in his
memoirs, was obstructed chiefly by the theretofore unassailable control of the
conservative Soviet military establishment.[lvi]
Soviet party leaders rarely took on
their military leadership frontally. Romanian leaders had been doing so as
regular practice since the end of the 1950s.
Gorbachev and his advisors justly
warrant credit for grasping the wisdom of these positions, implementing them
against considerable odds, and thus changing the world. However, it would appear
that the creative minds behind the security transformation leading to the end
of the Cold War appeared in Bucharest before they did in Moscow.[lvii]
During 1985-1986 Romania continued
to present concrete proposals for unilaterally reducing Warsaw Pact troops and
expenditures and “giving members a greater say in the development of proposals
for nuclear arms control,” again meeting with staunch opposition from the other
Pact members.[lviii]
Bucharest quickly moved to exploit Gorbachev’s policy of engaging the West by
seeking to specify and extend what were still largely propagandistic
initiatives into concrete obligations. For instance, after welcoming the Soviet
call for the elimination of nuclear weapons by 2000, Bucharest added “a 50
percent reduction of armed forces, conventional weapons, and military budgets,
and the incremental dissolution of the Warsaw Pact by the year 2000” as well.[lix]
While some of these ideas eventually found their way into Gorbachev’s program,
at the time they “did not receive any support” from the other six allies.
1988-1989: Countering Efforts to
Restore Soviet Control
At the beginning
of 1988 Moscow launched a new push for strengthening the Warsaw Pact and
formalizing the Wartime Statute, using the familiar method of attempting to
force a fait accompli upon a
recalcitrant Romania.[lx]
Although Ceausescu expressed surprise that the USSR had not given up the
effort, he did consider it worthy of fuller discussion in the PCC. Not because
Romania found it any more acceptable then it had in 1966, 1978, or 1980, but
because eight years had lapsed since the Statute was seriously discussed, because
many of “the issues were forgotten,” and because a new clarification, now that
Moscow wanted to revivify the effort as part of a “restructuring,” would be
useful.[lxi]
Asked the purpose served by its formalization, Ceausescu linked Romanian security
strategy directly to the Statute, replying that the latter granted Moscow
command authority powers “until we do away with nuclear weapons and the military
blocs. This is its use!”[lxii]
Dusting off its
long-established stand on the national control of armed forces and
collaboration only along coalitional rather than subordinate lines, Romania
moved to decrease the Statute’s utility as an instrument facilitating Soviet
command powers. Fully cognizant of Kremlin practice in “taking a finger and
then swallowing the whole arm” – Bucharest refused even to respond to Soviet
General Staff requests for military data for use in Soviet-American
negotiations since doing so would constitute a de facto acknowledgement of subordination to Soviet military
authority. Instead, Bucharest provided data only to the appropriate coalition
authority from where, as Ceausescu explained to his political committee, the
Soviet military, as a member, could access and make use of it any way they
liked.[lxiii]
Romania’s July
1988 proposal for reorganizing the Warsaw Pact was a direct response to this
anachronistic effort to formalize the Wartime Statute and strengthen alliance
integration. The Romanians proposed that the PCC be broken out of the Warsaw Pact
and transformed into an all-European socialist organization refocused on
socio-economic priorities – to include Yugoslavia and Albania. The Pact itself
was to shift into a secondary, purely military, role and made more democratic
with biannual or even annual political-military leadership rotation, although
allowing for multiple Soviet terms as chief of general staff with the consensus
accord of the other partners.[lxiv]
Bucharest underscored that, in contrast to Kremlin goals of reinforcing the
alliance and Soviet control over it, its proposal was made on the basis of “the
special attention that socialist countries give to the questions of
disarmament, and the easing of tensions and cooperation in Europe and the
entire world, including the establishment of conditions for achieving the
simultaneous dissolution of NATO and the Warsaw Pact as quickly as possible.”[lxv]
Moscow’s
“preliminary conclusions,” circulated to its subordinate allies, noted
Romania’s “obvious” intention to reorganize the Pact “by separating the
political functions from the military ones,” and “changing the existing order
by providing for collective decisions on military development and the common
use of the armed forces in wartime.”[lxvi]
As in the case of Romania’s 1966 initiative, Soviet authorities rightly
concluded that the “proposals concerning the rotation of the chairmanship of
the military defense committee and the post of Supreme Commander aim at
weakening the now existing system of the alliance’s military organization.”
Consequently, discussion of the proposals was embargoed in formal Warsaw Pact
councils, while consultations over how to respond to them were carried out
secretly among the loyalist allies.[lxvii]
The 1989 PCC Meeting in Bucharest
The other six
partners did not reply with their coordinated refusals until a year later,
shortly before the July 1989 PCC in Bucharest. Acknowledging that there had
been no permanent Warsaw Pact political institutionalization because Romania
“would not tolerate” it, the Hungarian foreign and defense ministries noted
that Bucharest now sought “to strengthen political and economic cooperation
outside the framework of the Warsaw Treaty”; to prevent the creation of “a
supranational structure” injurious to “the sovereignty of the member states”; and
to introduce “concrete” measures for the “democratization of the mechanism of
military cooperation.”[lxviii]
According to the authorities in Budapest, the Romanians had “clearly” placed
“the Soviet leadership under great pressure” such that Moscow had been
compelled into “making a concession” over the issue of “the modernization of
the Warsaw Pact.”[lxix]
The July 1989 PCC
in Bucharest reflected in almost every detail Romanian positions persistently
advocated since the founding of the Warsaw Pact – many of which, although
constrained by Moscow to their propagandistic usage, had also been leveraged
into previous Pact communiqués, declarations and statements. Ironically,
Romania was pulling off its “Van Helsing” act – finally driving a stake through
the heart of this instrument of Soviet control – in the midst of a massive
disinformation campaign depicting it as developing and/or seeking to obtain
nuclear weapons, as advocating military interventions against its own allies,
as engaging in genocide, and as being a Soviet Trojan horse.[lxx]
Much of the
disinformation regarding Romanian behavior during the latter Cold War was
plausible because the regime in Bucharest held, apparently with full
conviction, two mutually exclusive sets of norms and values for foreign and
domestic policies. The former, inherited from pre-Communist (and pre-bourgeois)
elites, reflected the desire of a medium-sized state situated in a threat-rich
environment to transcend the status of object in international politics, and
owed its inspiration and argumentation to classically liberal international
legal theory. The latter, based on a variant of socialism that countenanced no
sharing of power by the proletariat’s dictatorship and no form of property
ownership other than that of the Party-state, blocked any hope of liberalizing
democratic or economic reform.[lxxi]
In conclusion,
this collection allows one of the clearest perspectives yet on the seriousness
and tenaciousness of the Romanian battle against Soviet hegemony within the
Warsaw Pact, while de-bunking previous assessments that the country and its
leadership had somehow been brought – or bought – back into line during the
1980s. At the same time, it promises further revelations through closer
examination of the precise nature – rather than merely the fact of – Romanian
defiance during the last decade of the Cold War.
Endnotes
[i] The panelists included former CIA officer and
chairman of the National Intelligence Council Fritz Ermarth, former RAND
analyst and Radio Free Europe Director A. Ross Johnson, former RAND analyst and
security sector reform advisor to the Romanian Presidency, Larry L. Watts,
former CIA analyst Aras Pappas, Institute of World Politics Professor Walter
Jajko, Wilson Center History and Public Policy Program Director Christian
Ostermann, Harvard Cold War Studies Project Director Mark Kramer, and Parallel
History Project Coordinator Vojtech Mastny. The webcast – Warsaw Pact: Wartime Statutes – Instruments of Soviet Control – is
available at https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/warsaw-pact-wartime-statutes-instruments-soviet-control. The CIA document collection is accessible at http://www.foia.cia.gov/collection/wartime-statutes-instruments-soviet-control,
[ii] The term was coined by Gauck Institute researcher
George Herbstritt in “Ein feindliches Bruderland: Rumänien im Blick der
DDR-Staatssicherheit” [An Enemy Fraternal Country: Romania As Perceived By GDR-
State Security], Halbjahresschrift für südosteuropäische Geschichte, Literatur
und Politik (Berlin), no. 1 (May 2004). For Romania’s relations with the other
Pact members during 1955-1978, see Larry L. Watts, With Friends Like These: The Soviet Bloc’s Clandestine War Against
Romania, Bucharest, Military Publishing House, 2010.
[iii] For example, academic and government analysts participating
at a 1985 Woodrow Wilson Center/Kennan Institute conference on the Warsaw Pact
generally characterized Romanian opposition as exaggerated, overemphasized,
inconsequential, futile, and diminishing. The Warsaw Pact and The Question
of Cohesion: A Conference Report, Washington D.C., Kennan Institute for
Advanced Russian Studies/The Wilson Center, May 1985, pp. 25, 45-47.
[iv] To quote Marx: “No matter what you have to say it
makes no difference anyway. Whatever it is, I’m against it!” Groucho Marx in Horsefeathers, Paramount Pictures, 1932.
[v] Dennis Deletant and Mihail Ionescu, Romania and the
Warsaw Pact: 1955-1989, Cold War International History Project (CWIHP),
Working Paper #43, April 2004, p. 74, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/ACF368.pdf. Bucharest had leaked its opinion to the New
York Times that there was a need for “new ways” of reaching decisions
within the Warsaw Pact. The New York Times, 19 December 1964.
[vi] Stenographic
Transcript of Discussions Held with Chinese Communist Party Delegation to the
9th Congress of Romanian Communist Party, July 26, 1965, History and Public
Policy Program Digital Archive, ANIC, RCPCC, Chancellery, Folder 105/1965, pp.
2-15. Obtained and translated for CWIHP by Mircea Munteanu. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110017.
[viii] Speech by the Romanian Head of State (Gheorghe Gheorghiu
Dej),
19 January 1965, Courtesy of Parallel History Project on Cooperative Security
(PHP), www.php.isn.ethz.ch, by permission
of the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich on behalf of the PHP network.
(Hereafter: PHP)
[ix] Memorandum of Conversation, Washington, 26 June 1967,
Document 157, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968,
Volume XVII, Eastern Europe, http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v17/d157.
[x] Hungarian Minutes of Poliburo Meeting on Summit [Political
Consultative Committee] in Bucharest, 12 July 1966, PHP.
[xi] Hungarian report on meetings of deputy Foreign Ministers in
Berlin and deputy Defense Ministers in Moscow, 12 February 1966 in “Records
of the Meetings of the Warsaw Pact Deputy Foreign Ministers,” ed. by Csaba
Békés, Anna Locher, Christian Nuenlist. PHP, www.isn.ethz.ch/php, by permission of the Center for
Security Studies at ETH Zurich and the National Security Archive at the George
Washington.
[xii] Ibid
[xiii] Ibid
[xiv] Ibid
[xv] The Romanian positions were described in successive issues
of the New York Times, 14-18 and 22 May 1966 (16 May especially). See
also, The Times (London), 16 May 1966.
[xxi] In 1964, for example the Poles expressed their admiration
for Romania’s independent stance not only to Bucharest but also to Chinese
interlocutors. Transcript of a Third Conversation Between the Chinese
Premier (Zhou Enlai) and the Romanian Prime Minister (Ion Gheorghe Maurer),
10 October 1964, PHP.
[xxii] Memorandum of the Academic Staff of the Czechoslovak
Military Academies on Czechoslovakia’s Defense Doctrine, 4 June 1968,
Document No. 50 in Vojtech Mastny and Malcom Byrne, editors, A Cardboard
Castle? An Inside History of the Warsaw Pact, 1955-1991, Budapest, Central
European Press, 2005, pp. 270-278.
[xxiii] Mark Kramer, “The Kremlin, The Prague Spring, And the
Brezhnev Doctrine,” in Strategic Warning and the Role of Intelligence:
Lessons Learned From The 1968 Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia, Central Intelligence Agency Center for Intelligence
Studies and Historical Collections Division, April 13, 2010, pp. 30-33, http://www.foia.cia.gov/collection/strategic-warning-and-role-intelligence-lessons-learned-1968-soviet-invasion. See also Scânteia, 21 and 31 July 1968; Krasnaya
Zvezda, 23 July 1968; US Embassy in Prague, 24 July 1968, p. 2 point 6, CTK,
27 July 1968; Chronology of Czechoslovak Events: January-August 1968, 6 August
1968, pp. 16-17, Strategic Warning and the Role of Intelligence (2010).
Compare General Prchlik’s 15 July statement with that of Ceausescu on the same
day (Scânteia, 15 July 1968). As head of the Military Section of the
Czechoslovak Central Committee, General Prchlik was aware of proposals for
democratizing the Pact circulated by Bucharest since at least 1966, when they
were broadly reproduced in the New York
Times.
[xxiv] Carole Fink, Phillip Gassert and Detlef Junker, eds, 1968:
The World Transformed, New York and Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
1998. pp. 136-137. See also Matthew J. Ouimet, The Rise and Fall of the
Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Foreign Policy, Chapel Hill, University of
Northern California, 2003, p. 17. Budapest likewise believed that Czechoslovak
movement towards the Romanian model “would lead to the appearance of a ‘Little
Socialist Entente,’ based on nationalism and a closer collaboration between Yugoslavia,
Romania and Czechoslovakia.” Report of Hungarian HSWP delegations to the
Political Committee, 22 May 1968; Magyar Orszagos Leveltar (MOL), MKS, 288,
fund 5, folder 456, p. 52; Mihai Retegan, In the Shadow of the Prague Spring,
Iasi, Center for Romanian Studies, 2000, pp. 127-128.
[xxv] The offer was transmitted to the Czechoslovak Prime Minister
from his Romanian counterpart. Retegan (2000), p. 165. The offer was also
relayed by the Romanian Foreign Minister – and head of the UN General Assembly
at the time – to his counterpart. Betea (2008), p. 578. US Embassy from Prague,
24 July 1968, p. 2, point 5, Strategic Warning and the Role of Intelligence (2010), http://www.foia.cia.gov/collection/strategic-warning-and-role-intelligence-lessons-learned-1968-soviet-invasion; Pravda,
19 July and Pravda, Krasnaya Zvezda (Moscow) and Rabotnichesko
Delo (Sofia), 21 July 1968. Pravda reported the discovery of a
Western “arms cache” and claimed Moscow’s possession of NATO and CIA documents
for a “plot to subvert the East European countries, particularly
Czechoslovakia” several days earlier (July 19).
[xxvi] The Situation of the Socialist Republic of Romania and the
Imperialist Influence on This Country ̧7 February 1969, BStU, MfS, ZAIG
5481, S. 1-38, in Annex 5, Georg Herbstritt and Stejarel Olaru, Stasi si
Securitatea, Bucharest, Humanitas, 2005, pp. 259-287.
[xxvii] MOL, MKS, 288, fund 4, folder no. 92, ff. 13-33 as cited in
Retegan (2000), pp. 139-140. This theme had already appeared in Western media.
See e.g. “Czechs On Their Own,” The Economist, 4 May 1968.
[xxviii] 1956-11-02-Gen. Jan Drzewiecki’s Critique of the Statute of
the Unified Command, and Intelligence Information Special Report: 1979
Wartime Statute of the Combined Armed Forces, 28 November 1979, CWIHP, by
permission of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. In
contrast, Jaruzelski praised the Statute and condemned Romanian rejection
before his Soviet superiors. Twelfth Session of the Committee of Defense
Ministers of the Warsaw Pact Member States, 20 February 1980; Background
Information on the Development of the Unified Wartime Command System for the
Combined Armed Forces of the Warsaw Pact, 10 June 1983, pp. 8, 12, 15,
CWIHP.
[xxix] Minutes of Discussion of Report by the Supreme UAF Commander
at the PCC Meeting, December 1978, PHP.
[xxxiv] Ceausescu’s Address to the Central Committee, 29 November
1978; Ceausescu’s Address on the 60th Anniversary of the Unification of
Romania, 1 December 1978; Patrick Moore, “The Ceausescu Saga,” RAD
Background Report/275, Radio Free Europe Report, 20 December 1978, pp. 8,
12-13.
[xxxv] Benjamin Weiser, A Secret Life: The Polish Colonel, His
Covert Mission, And The Price He Paid To Save His Country, New York,
PublicAffairs, 2005, p. 178. Four years earlier CPSU CC deputy secretary Oleg
Rakhmanin alleged that Romania was betraying secrets to the Chinese as well.
Vojtech Mastny, “The Warsaw Pact as History” in Mastny and Byrne (2005), p. 42.
[xxxvi] Transcript, Meeting of East German leader Erich Honecker and
Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, Crimea, USSR, 25 July 1978, Document
8, “U.S.-Soviet Relations and the Turn Toward Confrontation, 1977-1980 – New
Russian & East German Documents,” CWIHP Bulletin, no. 8/9 (Winter
1996), p. 123.
[xxxvii] Operational Review Survey of the Socialist Republic of
Romania,
12 September 1978, BStU, MfS, Abt. X 22, S. 3-56, and Supplementary Annex to
the Material “Operational Review Survey of the R.S.R.”, 27 September 1978,
BStU, MfS, HA II 18663, S. 223-226 in Annexes 13 and 15, Herbstritt and Olaru
(2005), pp. 320-21, 335-37.
[xxxviii] Benjamin Weiser, “Ceausescu Family Sold Soviet Military
Secrets to U.S.” and “One That Got Away: Romanians Were Ready to Sell Soviet
Tank,” The Washington Post, 6 May 1990; Michael Wines, “U.S. Used
Romania To Get Soviet Arms,” The New York Times, 7 May 1990;
“Ceausescu’s Brothers ‘Sold Secrets To US’” Daily Telegraph, 7 May 1990.
[xxxix] Warsaw Pact Forces Opposite NATO (NIE 11-14-79):
Volume I – Summary Estimate, 31 January 1979, pp. 63- 68; Warsaw Pact Forces
Opposite NATO (NIE 11-14-81), 7 July 1981, pp. 27-28, 30; Military
Reliability of the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact Allies (NIE 12/11-83), 28
June 1983, pp. 3-5, 7, 14, www.foia.cia.gov.
[xl] See e.g. Employment of Warsaw Pact Forces Against NATO (NI
IIM 83-10002), 1 July 1983, p. 9 (See also pp. 3- 4, 8), www.foia.cia.gov.
[xli] See Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski’s Q & A briefing to the
CIA, “Jaruzelski’s Attitude, Behavior and Style,” (Released in Part, Exemption:
HR70-14, 19 August 2008), p. 47, in “Preparing for Martial Law: Through the
Eyes of Colonel Ryszard Kuklinki,” CIA at www.foia.cia.gov.
[xlii] Czechoslovak Report on the Proceedings and Results of the
Meeting of the Political Consultative Committee of the Warsaw Treaty in Warsaw, May 14-15,
1980, 25 May 1980; Mladenov Report to the Politburo of the Central Committee
of the Bulgarian Communist Party, 27 May 1980, PHP.
[xliii] Report on the 13th CDM Session, December
1980, Courtesy of PHP, www.php.isn.ethz.ch, by permission
of the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich on behalf of the PHP network.
[xlv] Ibid; Speech by the General Secretary of the PCR (Nicolae
Ceausescu), 4 January 1983; Telex from Viktor Kulikov (Supreme Commander
of the United Armed Forces) to Heinz Hoffman (East German Minister of Defense)
of 14 October 1983, 14 October 1983, PHP.
[xlvi] Report by the Minister of Foreign Affairs (Petur Toshev
Mladenov) to the Politburo of the CC of the BCP, 27 May 1980, PHP.
[xlvii] Statement by the General Secretary of the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Comrade Yu. V. Andropov, 4 January
1983, PHP.
[xlviii] See e.g., Note Regarding the Documents Prepared for the
PCC Meeting in Prague, 3 January 1983; East German Report on and
Conclusions from the Meeting, January 1983, PHP.
[l] Informational Note Drawn Up by the Chief of Service
Referring to the Current Situation and Policy of Romania, 15 December
1983, BStU, MfS, ZAIG 6267, S. 9-11, in Annex 28, Herbstritt and Olaru (2005),
p. 364. See e.g. Memorandum of Conversation with Marshals Ustinov and
Kulikov concerning a Soviet War Game, 14 June 1982, Document no. 95 in
Mastny and Byrne (2005), p. 463; and Minute regarding the meeting between
Comrade Erich Hoenecker and Comrade Marshal Grechko, 17 November 1973,
BStU, MfS, SdM 1577, S. 50-56, in Annex 12, Herbstritt and Olaru (2005), p.
314-315.
[liii] Reports (3) by Hungarian Deputy Foreign Minister István
Roska on the Meeting of the Warsaw Pact Deputy Foreign Ministers, 9 January
1985, PHP.
[lv] Report by Hungarian Ambassador in Moscow Sándor Rajnai on
the Meeting of the Warsaw Pact Deputy Foreign Ministers, 1 March 1985;
Report on the Meeting of the Warsaw Pact Deputy Foreign Ministers, 8
March 1985, PHP.
[lvii] Less than two weeks before Chernenko’s funeral, Moscow was
categorically opposed to such an approach, championed only by Romania within
the bloc. See e.g. Report on the Meeting of the Warsaw Pact Deputy Foreign
Ministers, 8 March 1985, PHP.
[lviii] East German Summary of the Romanian Position at the
Forthcoming PCC Meeting, 19 October 1985; East German Report on the Proceedings
of the Meeting, October 1985; Evaluation of the PCC Meeting by the
General Secretary of the BCP (Todor Zhivkov), October 1985; Bulgarian
Report on the PCC Meeting, 27 October 1985; Information from the
Bulgarian Minister of Foreign Affairs (Mladenov) to the Politburo of the CC of
the BCP regarding the Bulgarian Position on the Romanian Proposal for the
Reduction of Warsaw Treaty Forces, 22 September 1986, PHP.
[lix] Speech by the Romanian Foreign Minister (Ilie Vaduva), 19 March
1986; East German Report on the Results of the PCC Meeting, June 1986, PHP.
[lx] Memorandum of Meeting of the Bulgarian and Romanian Deputy
Foreign Ministers regarding the CMFA Meeting in Sofia, 27 March
1988, PHP.
[lxi] Stenographic transcript of the meeting of the Political Consultative
Committee of the CC of the Romanian Communist Party, June 17,
1988, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, ANIC, Political
Executive Committee of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party,
no.1012, .1.7.1988. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110468.
[lxiv] Romanian Proposal for Warsaw Pact Reform: Letter of the CC
of the Romanian Communist Party, 4 July 1988, PHP.
[lxvi] Romanian Proposal for Warsaw Pact Reform: Information
Regarding the Romanian Proposal, 8 July 1988, PHP.
[lxvii] See e.g. Ibid; Memorandum on the Hungarian Position re:
the Reform of the Warsaw Pact’s Mechanisms, 6 December 1988; Joint
Memorandum of the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of National Defense on the
Future of the Warsaw Pact, 6 March 1989; Minutes of Meeting of the HSWP
Political Committee on 16 May 1989-Excerpt on WP Issues, 16 May 1989; Bulgarian
Proposal for the Improvement of Warsaw Treaty Structures Prepared for the
Bucharest Political Consultative Committee Meeting, 14 June 1989, PHP.
[lxviii] Joint Memorandum of the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of
National Defense on the Future of the Warsaw Pact, 6 March 1989,
PHP.
[lxix] Minutes of Meeting of the HSWP Political Committee on 16 May
1989-Excerpt on WP Issues, 16 May 1989, PHP.
[lxx] The campaign alleging such hostile nuclear and conventional
military intentions and activities towards Hungary was especially evident
during March-July 1989, and resurfaced briefly during Romania’s December 1989
Revolution. See e.g. Kevin Devlin, “Hungary’s New Defense Doctrine: ‘Enemy Not
The West But Romania,’” RAD Background Report/101, Radio Free Europe Research,
16 June 1989; and Douglas Clarke, “The Romanian Military Threat to Hungary,”
RAD Background Report/130, Radio Free Europe Research, 27 July 1989, pp. 1-6.
For the campaign alleging Romanian advocacy of military intervention against
Poland see e.g. “Dokumenty Polska-Rumunia,” Gazeta Wyborcza, 29
September-1 October 1989; “Romania has called for military intervention in
Poland,” Polityka Weekly News Roundup, Warsaw, Polityka in
Polish, no. 38, 23 September 1989 (excerpts), p. 2, Joint Publications
Research Service, East Europe (JPRS-EER-89-130), 27 November 1989, p. 19.
While Devlin and Clarke soundly debunked the allegations regarding Romanian
intentions against Hungary by investigating each of them in detail and
examining actual Romanian military preparations at the time, Western
investigations of an alleged interventionist intention towards Poland have
relied upon the same persons and institutions involved (both wittingly and
unwittingly) in the original disinformation campaign.
[lxxi] To quote Marx again: “The last man nearly ruined this
place, he didn’t know what to do with it. If you think this country’s bad off
now, just wait ‘til I get through with it!” Groucho Marx in Duck Soup, Paramount Pictures, 1933.
