Driving the Soviets up the wall: Soviet-East German relations, 1953-1961 9781400840724, 9780691096780, 9780691124285

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Driving the Soviets up the Wall

PRINCETON STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL HISTORY AND POLITICS Series Editors Jack L. Snyder, Marc Trachtenberg, and Fareed Zakaria

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Driving the Soviets up the Wall SOVIET—EAST GERMAN RELATIONS, 1953-1961

Hope M. Harrison

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON AND OXFORD

Copyright © 2003 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY All Rights Reserved

Third printing, and first paperback printing, 2005 Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0-691-12428-5 Paperback ISBN-10: 0-691-12428-0 THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE CLOTH EDITION OF THIS BOOK AS FOLLOWS

Harrison, Hope Millard. Driving the Soviets up the wall : Soviet-East German relations, 1953-1961 / Hope M. Harrison. p. cm.—(Princeton studies in international history and politics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-691-09678-3 (alk. paper) 1. Germany (East)—Relations—Soviet Union. 2. Soviet Union—Relations— Germany (East) I. Title. II. Series.

DD284.5.865 H368 2003

327.43'1047'09045—dc21 2002192693

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Sabon Printed on acid-free paper. ©

pup.princeton.edu Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

To My Parents, and in Memory of Adam B. Ulam

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Contents

List of Maps 1x Preface Xi

Acknowledgments XV

Abbreviations X1X INTRODUCTION

in the Early Cold War 1

The Dynamics of Soviet—East German Relations CHAPTER ONE

in Moscow and Berlin 12 1953: Soviet—East German Relations and Power Struggles

CHAPTER Two

1956-1958: Soviet and East German Policy Debates

in the Wake of the Twentieth Party Congress 49 CHAPTER THREE

1958-1960: Khrushchev Takes on the West in the Berlin Crisis 96 CHAPTER FOUR

Conclusion 224 Notes 235 1960-1961: Ulbricht, Khrushchev, and the Berlin Wall 139

Note on Sources 311

Index 337

Bibliography 315

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List of Maps

Map 1. Europe during the Cold War 6

Access Routes 20

Map 2. Divided Germany and Berlin with Western

Map 3. Five Places to Stop the Refugees 183

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Preface

ON THE AFTERNOON of 9 November 1989, I boarded a plane on a long-

planned journey to West Berlin. I was going with a group of graduate students from Harvard and Stanford for ten days on a program sponsored by the city of West Berlin. In an effort to maintain the U.S. commitment to West Berlin, the city paid for the program every year to bring “up and coming” Americans to West Berlin. At the time, I was a pre-doctoral fellow at the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. I was working on my dissertation on the building of the Berlin Wall. I wanted to know as much about divided Berlin as possible and was eager for the trip. Throughout the fall of 1989, East German refugees had been escaping via West German embassies in Prague and Warsaw and across the Hungarian border into Austria. They were all headed to West Germany. Bonn accepted all these refugees as West German citizens entitled to generous social welfare support. In addition, they gave each East German “welcome money” of 100 deutschmarks (worth roughly $55 at the time). Over 50,000 East Germans had fled to West Germany between May and October 1989, and by early November, this had become a crisis for the West German economic and social welfare system. The refugee numbers increased dramatically in early November. In fact, just before I left for West Berlin, 15,000 East Germans fled to West Germany via Czechoslovakia on 4—5 November,' and on 7 November, two hundred East Germans left East Germany each hour.” The question at the top of my list for all of the West Berlin and West German officials we were going to meet was, “How can you keep this up? What are you going to do about the refugees pouring into your country?” During the night of Thursday, 9 November, our group flew to Frankfurt. When we boarded the connecting flight to West Berlin on Friday morning, everyone on the plane was reading newspapers with banner headlines declaring, “The Wall Is Open!” I looked around and thought, “Is 10 November the equivalent of April Fool’s Day in Germany? What is going on?” I didn’t have to wonder for long. The pilot got on the intercom system and announced, “The Wall fell in Berlin last night. We are flying into history.”

xii * Preface I could not believe my luck at being in Berlin for this historic occasion, all the more so because of my dissertation topic. My parents, with whom I had spoken many times about the dissertation, were beside themselves

with excitement at my timing. Ich war dabei! (I was there! as all the quickly manufactured T-shirts and mugs said.) Euphoria is the only word to describe the mood on the streets of Berlin. People were selling champagne on street corners. On the afternoon of 10 November, in a jet-lagged, yet ebullient state, several of us went to Kennedy Platz (the site of Kennedy’s 1963 Ich bin ein Berliner speech), in front of the West Berlin City Hall, Rathaus Schéneberg, to hear the West German leaders speak about the momentous opening of the Wall. Chancellor Helmut Kohl had flown back hurriedly from Warsaw that morning along with Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. The West Berlin mayor, Walter Momper, was also on the podium. The most popular speaker of the day, though, was Willy Brandt, who had been the mayor of West Berlin when the Wall went up in 1961 and had gone on to become the West German chancellor.’ As a historian and as a human being, it was extraordinary to be part of the celebration at Rathaus Schéneberg—to actually be there and feel the emotion of the day, not just read about it in history books. Back at the hotel for dinner, I befriended one of the West Berlin English teachers hosting us, Claudia Wilhelm. Claudia volunteered to drive me around in her VW Bug the next day. Claudia was and is a Berliner. She was born in the East and fled with her family to the West in 1958. When the Wall came down, she was reunited with family in the East, including some she had not even known about. Saturday morning, 11 November, Claudia picked me up and drove me to see the celebrations at the Brandenburg Gate and the opening of the Glienecker Briicke, the famous “spy bridge” connecting West Berlin and Potsdam, East Germany. In 1962 the American U-2 pilot Francis

Gary Powers had been traded for the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel in the middle of the bridge. Claudia and I stood amid crowds of cheering West Berliners as East Germans walked across the bridge and into the beautiful Grunewald section of West Berlin with its forests and lakes. People cheered. People cried. We took pictures. It was incredible. The next morning, we drove to Potsdamer Platz, the historic center of Berlin and site of Europe’s first traffic light in 1924. With the building of the Berlin Wall through the center of Potsdamer Platz, it became a

barren, terrifying no-man’s land of layers of wall, minefields, guard towers, anti-tank barricades, guard dogs, and guards with a shoot-tokill order. But on this spectacular Sunday morning, we watched a bulldozer lift up and remove a section of the Wall at Potsdamer Platz. Then we stood with the thousands of people who parted to form a corridor

Preface + xiil through which East Berliners could walk or drive into West Berlin. It was the most moving experience of my ten days in Berlin. I remember watching one young couple drive through in their green Trabant, or Trabi (the tiny, cardboard-like, exhaust-emitting, popular East German car). They were alternately laughing and crying, and people were reach-

ing through their open car windows to hand the couple money and champagne. The hood of their car was covered with red and white carnations. We were all filled with emotion. All weekend long, it was impossible to drive a car on the main street of West Berlin, the Kiirfurstendamm, due to the tens of thousands of East Berliners and East Germans strolling up and down it to get a look at West Berlin’s Fifth Avenue. We wanted to take the subway to East Berlin, but it was out of the question to even enter a subway station due to the thousands of people coming in from East Berlin. Monday morning’s West Berlin tabloid, Bild, had huge headlines in black, red, and gold, the colors of the German flag saying, “Guten Morgen, Deutschland. Es war ein schénes Wochenende.” “Good Morning, Germany. It was a beautiful weekend.” It certainly was. People were hammering away at the wall to take home pieces as souvenirs. In the early days, there were pieces everywhere on the ground. As Claudia and I picked up a few, I thought to myself, “Now, who is going to want to read a book about the sad story of building the Wall, when they can read an uplifting book about the fall of the Wall?” But I also more optimistically thought, “Maybe it will be possible to

tell a more complete story of how the Wall went up now that it has come down.” Sure enough, once Germany united a year later and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the archival doors swung open in Berlin

and Moscow. This allowed me, and others, to piece together a much more complete picture of the East German and Soviet decision-making process leading to the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Less than a year after German unification, in the fall of 1991, I began my work in the archives. Developments since unification have added to the importance of understanding the decision to build the Wall and the impact it had. People lost their lives trying to escape over or under the Wall. They were shot

by East German border guards. The whole border system surrounding the Wall was not just something that sat passively while people stared at it in defiance. It encompassed an entire lethal response system that was activated when someone tried to cross the border without permission. Human beings were responsible for killing other human beings, Germans for killing Germans. The “Wall trials” since unification have attempted to assign culpability for this deadly border system to the high-level East German policy

xiv -« Preface

makers and the border guards who implemented their superiors’ directives. Some of the accused and convicted, such as former East German leader Egon Krenz, have tried to deflect the blame for the Wall and all it entailed onto the Soviets and the “cold war.” The evidence presented in this book, however, demonstrates the critical responsibility of the East German leaders themselves for the building of the Berlin Wall and all that went with it. Peter Schneider presciently forecast in his 1982 book, Der Mauerspringer (The Wall Jumper), “It will take us longer to tear down the Wall in our heads than any wrecking company will need for the Wall we can see.” Even more than most people realized until the Wall came down, it really mattered on which side of the Wall you lived your life— the communist east or the capitalist, democratic west. Since German unification, the Mauer im Kopf (“the wall in the mind”) has continued to divide east and west Germans.’ The euphoria I witnessed in November 1989 faded away within months as resentments built up on both sides. The west Germans resented all the money it took to rebuild the shattered east; and the east Germans resented being “taken over,” “colonized” by the west with all of the East German traditions they had developed over forty years summarily dumped on the ash heap of history along with the ubiquitous statues of Lenin. Divided by the Wall, the distance between the East and West Germans expanded. It turned out to be not so easy to bridge just by tearing down the Wall and letting East Germans drive through in their Trabis. But the next generation of Germans will surely bridge this distance. On my final morning in Berlin in November 1989, Claudia drove me to the airport as the snow fell on pre-dawn Berlin. People were in their homes asleep after another night of celebrating the Wall’s opening. As we drove through the deserted streets, past Schloss Charlottenburg, I knew that I would return many times to uncover the history of the Berlin Wall. I, too, had become a Berliner.

Acknowledgments

I AM GRATEFUL to the institutions and colleagues who have helped me

over the years of work on this book. I want to thank the institutions who have generously supported my research and writing: the Harriman Institute of Columbia University, the Nuclear History Program, Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, the Social Science Research Council’s Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at the Free University of Berlin, Harvard’s Davis Center, Lafayette College, the Kennan Institute, the Cold War International History Project, and the Norwegian Nobel Institute. I also benefited greatly from interacting with my colleagues at these institutions. Since most of the key sources I used for this book were archival documents in Moscow and Berlin, I am happy to take this opportunity to thank the archivists and administrative staff who helped me: in Berlin, Herr Lange, Frau Grafe, Frau Pardon, and Frau Rauber at SAPMOBundesarchiv; Herr Geyer at the (East German) Foreign Ministry archive; and Herr Forster and Frau Tschuck at the Stasi archive; in Moscow, Dr. Lebedev, Dr. Stegny, and the many archivists at the Foreign Ministry Archive; and Zoia Vodopianova, Vladimir Chernous, Yuri Malov, Rem Ussikov, Anatolii Prokopenko, and Natalia Tomilina at the post-1953 Central Committee Archive, now called the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History. Sven Holtsmark was very helpful in deciphering the filing methods of the Russian Foreign Ministry archive for me. I am grateful for the research help of Anne Kjelling and Bjorn Feen at the library of the Norwegian Nobel Institute. Olga Khomenko, Paul du Quenoy, and Justin Gibbons have been valuable research assistants at different stages of the work on this book, and Jeremy Kahn gave me helpful computer assistance with the manuscript. I was lucky to be able to supplement my archival work with interviews with former Soviet and East German officials. I want to particularly thank Karl Schirdewan (who has since passed away) and his wife Giesela, as well as Horst Brie in Berlin and Yuli Kvitsinky in Moscow for their openness. My dear friends in Moscow and Berlin have been tremendously generous with their time and apartment space. And they made my research trips very special. Warm thanks to Lena Sorokoletovskikh and Yura

xvi -° Acknowledgments

Bloshkin in Moscow; Alla Zbinovsky and Andy Braddel, formerly in Moscow, now in London; and Claudia Wilhelm, Beate Ihme-Tuchel, Johannes Tuchel, Lothar Wilker, Angelika Straub, and Hans-Hermann Hertle in Berlin. Claudia especially has been limitless in her hospitality and friendship. Thanks also to Ambassador Nikolai Gribkov in Moscow. Several colleagues have read all or part of this work and offered valuable advice. The final product is my responsibility alone, but it has been much improved by their help. In particular, Christian Ostermann and Melvyn Leffler each read the entire manuscript at crucial points. Christian and I spent the summer of 2000 pouring over the manuscript and having very stimulating discussions about every part of it. Christian

helped me think through many crucial points. I cannot thank him enough for his careful attention to my manuscript, his lively conversation, and his friendship. Mel read the manuscript in the winter of 20012002. He gave an extremely generous amount of his time to editing the manuscript and pressing me on key questions. His comments, advice, and encouragement were invaluable in the final stage of my work. I appreciate the enthusiasm Jim Hershberg has shown for this project from the start and his suggestions. I also want to thank Jeff Kopstein and an anonymous reviewer for Princeton University Press for their very helpful comments. Jack Snyder, Robert Legvold, Robert Jervis, Mark von Hagen, Marc Trachtenberg, Tom Christensen, Kim Zisk, Bill Burr, John Lewis Gaddis, Tim Naftali, Geir Lundestad, and Jim Goldgeier all read parts of the manuscript in earlier stages and provided constructive comments. I also had useful discussions with many other colleagues and have benefited from their work: Hannes Adomeit, Giinter Bishof, Tom Blanton, Tim Colton, Frank Costigliola, Greg Domber, Alexei Filitov, John Gearson, Beate Ihme-Tuchel, Mark Kramer, Haejong Lee, Michael Lemke, Gerry Livingston, Vojtech Mastny, Ernest May, Jim McAdams, David Murphy, Olav Njglstad, Leopoldo Nuti, Arnie Offner, Sue Peterson, Blair Ruble, Kori Schake, Doug Selvage, Dick Smyser, William Taubman, Oldrich Tuma, Matthias Uhl, Adam Ulam, Ruud van Dik, Armin Wagner, Kathryn Weathersby, Odd Arne Westad, Gerhard Wettig, and Vlad Zubok. I am particularly grateful to Armin Wagner and Matthias Uhl, who responded from Berlin so quickly, helpfully, and thoroughly to my detailed e-mail questions in the final stage of my work on this book. A timely conversation on an airplane with Ken Reger persuaded me to add the preface. I want to thank Lew Bateman and John Lewis Gaddis for their early support for the publication of this work. It was Marc Trachtenberg’s introduction to History and Strategy in 1991 that sold me on the Princeton Studies in International History and Politics series. Marc made it clear

Acknowledgments + xvii

that his work was at the intersection of history and political science and that scholars in the two fields had much to gain by sharing insights. I wholeheartedly agree with Marc and hope that historians and political scientists will find value in this book. I am glad that my colleagues at the history department and the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University decided to take the risk of hiring a former political scientist and have given me a wonderful academic home. In particular, I want to thank Ron Spector, Ed Berkowitz, and Harry Harding. Ed came up with the idea for the title of this book at my job talk at George Washington. | also want to thank my dear friend Lil Fenn, formerly of George Washington’s history department and now at Duke University, who made the maps for this book. The unique geography of divided Berlin and divided Germany is essential to the story here, and Lil graciously offered to por-

tray this with maps. I am very grateful to all the people who helped me at Princeton University Press—Chuck Myers, Kevin MclInturff, Gail Schmitt, Leslie Flis, Marsha Kunin, and Maria denBoer. Loving support of friends and family is essential in my life and has sustained me over the years of writing this book. Thanks to Devin Reese,

Hal Cardwell and Camilla Cardwell, Mei Zhu, Lily Marshall, Anna Kyznetsova, Rob Litwak, George Liston Seay, and to my grandmother and my aunt Mary. I am also grateful to Ray Marvin and David Longo for their special help and to my neighbor Rosemary Normand. Kevin Carroll is an angel in my life. No words can adequately express his profound influence on my life. But he knows. I am so lucky to have my oldest and dearest friend, Beth Onufrak, in my life. She is a great source of support and happiness. Beth has cheerfully endured countless phone calls talking about Khrushchev and UI-

bricht. And she is a pediatric psychologist, not a historian! We have shared many things. I am blessed to have four wonderful parents: my mother, my father, my stepmother, and my stepfather. My stepmother, Linda Harrison, was my high school history teacher and has been a great friend and inspiration. My stepfather, Joseph Blaney, shares an interest and expertise in

history with me. He has been a great support to me for over twenty years, and he and my mother (and their cat, Butterfly) graciously hosted

me for a month in their home at the final stage of my work on this book. Butterfly was a great help, except when she sat on the manuscript. I feel infinite gratitude for all my mother, Dorothy G. Blaney, and my father, Robert L. Harrison, have given me. I have inherited my father’s patience and attention to detail, without which I could have never written this book. I cherish our special trips to Berlin together. My mother’s love and support for me in everything, including completing this book,

xviii * Acknowledgments

have been boundless. She is the rock in my life and the very definition of a mother. We have discussed most of this book, and she has read and commented on portions of it. This book is dedicated to my parents and to the memory of Adam B. Ulam. It was Adam’s examination of the Berlin Crisis—in an undergraduate class I took with him at Harvard, and in his seminal work, Expansion and Coexistence—that piqued my curiosity to know more. A professor can give no greater gift to a student.

Abbreviations

APRF Archive of the President of the Russian Federation

AVPRF Archive of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation

BStU Federal Commission for Stasi Files

CDU Christian Democratic Party

CFM Conference of Foreign Ministers (of the Four Powers—the United States, Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France)

CM Council of Ministers

CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union CWIHP Cold War International History Project FRG Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) GDR German Democratic Republic (East Germany) GSFG Group of Soviet Forces in Germany GPO Government Printing Office (U.S.) KGB Committee of State Security (Soviet secret police)

KPD Communist Party of Germany MfAA Ministry of Foreign Aftairs M¢sS Ministry for State Security (the Stasi) MID Ministry of Foreign Aftairs MVD Ministry of Internal Affairs PRC People’s Republic of China

PB Politburo

RGANI Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Noveishei Istorii, Russian State Archive of Contemporary History SAPMO-BArch, ZPA Foundation of Archives of the Parties and Mass Organizations of the former East Germany, Federal Archive, Central Party Archive

SBZ Soviet Zone of Occupation

xx «+ Abbreviations

SED Socialist Unity Party of [East] Germany SPD Social Democratic Party of Germany

SKK Soviet Control Commission

Stasi State Security Service (East German secret police, MfS)

TsKhSD Center for the Preservation of Contemporary Documentation (Archive of the Post-1953 Soviet Central Committee, now called the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History, RGANI)

WTO Warsaw Treaty Organization (also known as the Warsaw Pact)

ZAIG Stasi’s Central Analysis and Information Group

Driving the Soviets up the Wall

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INTRODUCTION

The Dynamics of Soviet—East German Relations in the Early Cold War

THE TWO STATES that emerged from the defeated Germany were central

to the development of the cold war. Rapidly evolving from defeated objects of Four Power policy, the two Germanys became important actors in their own right on the front line of the cold war. Both superpowers initially treated their part of Germany as war booty to be plundered and kept weak, but as the cold war developed, they would each come to see their part of Germany as an essential ally whose needs were intertwined with their own. For political, military, economic, and ideological reasons, the superpowers engaged in a competition for allies to

show that their side of the cold war was the stronger, more popular, more vibrant one. They also wanted to ensure that their German ally would not unite with the other against them. Beginning in the 1950s, the superpowers invested themselves, and their reputations, increasingly in their German allies, who were adept at taking advantage of this situation. While there have been a variety of in-depth studies of the U.S.-West German alliance,’ there has been much less investigation of the Soviet— East German alliance.” This book will take advantage of the opening of former communist archives to examine the Soviet—East German side of

the cold war from Josef Stalin’s death in 1953 through the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. After the profound Soviet losses of World War II, the Kremlin leaders’ prime motive initially was to make sure Germany could not rise up and threaten them again. It took longer for the Soviets than for the Western Powers to shift their policy from destruction and retribution in Germany to construction and support of an ally. It was a big leap from Stalin’s sanction of the raping and pillaging of the Soviet Zone of Germany’ in the mid- to late 1940s to Soviet leader Nikita S$. Khrushchev’s declaration to the East Germans that “your needs are our needs” in the 1950s." This book tells the story of Khrushchev’s increasing commitment to a strong, socialist state in East Germany and the ways the persistent East German leader Walter Ulbricht was able to use this commitment to his advantage. It is the story of East Germany transforming its weakness into strength in its relations with the Soviet Union and the story of the East Germans’ capacity to resist Soviet directives. This book will demonstrate that Soviet—-East German relations from 1953-1961, particularly concerning the divided city of

2 + Introduction Berlin, cannot be understood without studying the actions and aims of both the Kremlin and East Berlin. An appreciation of the importance of nonsuperpower actors in the cold war is one of the primary lessons scholars have gleaned from the former Soviet bloc’s new archival evidence. In response, the political scientist Tony Smith has called for a pericentric study of the cold war,’ and the historian James G. Hershberg has urged a “retroactive debipolarization” of cold war history.° Both scholars point to the opportunity and need to supplement previous studies focusing on the role of the superpowers with studies that examine the contributions of other states to the dynamics and key events of the cold war. Allies mattered in the cold war both because of the importance vested in them by the superpowers and because of actions they took at times independent of their superpower patrons, especially actions that exacerbated superpower relations or dragged more powerful superpower patrons into situations and commitments they otherwise would not have chosen.’ Only by including the actions and perceptions of key allies, such as England, France,

the two Germanys, the two Koreas, the two Chinas, and the two Vietnams, in the history of the cold war can we arrive at a more nuanced and comprehensive analysis of some of the pivotal events and dynamics of that period. The roles of the two superpowers must be combined with those of important allies. The present book is an effort to do this. This book will illustrate that the Soviet—East German relationship was more two-sided than previously understood, that in some important ways a mutual dependency existed that mattered for the evolution of the cold war. As Abraham Ben-Zvi postulates in studying U.S.-Israeli relations, “the core of numerous patron-client [relationships] is seldom characterized by pure dependence, but rather by what [Klaus] Knorr calls ‘asymmetrical interdependence.’”* The concept of interdependence in superpower-ally relations has been well developed on the Western side of the cold war, revealing the influence of America’s allies on the cold war—as persuasive allies and independent actors whose views and actions mattered to the United States for a variety of reasons. This body of literature demonstrates that it was not just U.S. preferences that were expressed in relations with its allies; the perceptions and aims of the allies were also important factors influencing U.S. policy. For example, the British played a crucial role in prodding the Americans to respond to the Soviet threat by establishing the Marshall Plan, a West German state, and NATO;’ and the West European “invitation” for a postwar American presence was an essential part of U.S. decision making.’ Outside of Europe, Pakistan, Taiwan, and Israel all pulled the Americans in as much as possible to assist them against their regional rivals.'’ The United States often found that its ac-

Dynamics of Relations + 3

tions in these regions were guided more by the concerns of its local ally than by U.S. global strategy.” American allies did not exert their influence just by being persuasive in interactions with the United States; they also at times went outside of those interactions to act independently. Thus, President Truman found that he could not control the actions of South Korean President Syngman Rhee in the armistice talks ending the Korean War;’ and the British and French launched the Suez Crisis of 1956 without consulting with the United States."* Similarly, try though he did to persuade West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to be more flexible in handling the Berlin Crisis in the late 1950s, President Eisenhower frequently complained that Adenauer’s differing views seriously constrained American options in the crisis.” Scholars of the Western side of the cold war have assumed that their findings of complicated, two-sided alliance relations only applied to the West.’° This is partly because they believed that the openness of the Ameri-

can democratic system to lobbying was a significant part of the reason allies were able to gain influence over American policy.'’ Thomas RisseKappen has argued that democratic norms and institutions enabled and even promoted “the European influence on U.S. foreign policy.”’® Given

the lack of democracy in the Soviet Union and Soviet bloc, combined with the Western cold war image of the Kremlin as an autocratic master of the Warsaw Pact, most scholars have concluded that, with the exception of China, Moscow did not have to deal with troublesome allies who complicated its foreign policy making. The treasure trove of documents made accessible since 1991, however, makes it clear that Moscow also had alliance concerns and that Soviet alliances were not as one-sided as previously surmised. This book will show that there was an important degree of mutual dependency between the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The same basic phenomenon accounts for both U.S. and Soviet vulnerabilities to alliance pressures during the cold war: the competition for allies. As the cold war burgeoned in the 1950s, Moscow and Washington felt they needed allies not only for practical military and economic reasons, but also for reasons more connected with their reputation as leader of one of two opposing blocs. Both sides believed in the domino theory: that gaining or losing an ally would have a multiplier effect. On the Soviet side, this concern was exacerbated starting in the late 1950s when they had to worry not only about the challenge to their allies from the United States, but also from Mao’s China. In Germany, Korea, Cuba, and elsewhere, the superpowers believed that if they did not defend their interests strongly, they would have no credibility as a reliable ally. As John Lewis Gaddis observes, however, “Credibility is ...a state of mind,

4 + Introduction not an objective, independently measurable reality. [C]redibility can hardly be on the line until one has chosen to put it there. For whatever reason, the Cold War encouraged a curious fecklessness on the part of the superpowers when it came to how and where they risked their reputations. Berlin was the most dramatic example, but hardly the only one.””” Just as John F. Kennedy told the West Berliners in 1963, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” so Khrushchev equated Soviet needs with those of his German ally. This book sets out to investigate both sides of the Soviet—East Ger-

man relationship: how and why the Soviets saw the GDR as a crucial domino and how the East Germans responded to this. We will examine both the constraints on Soviet policy in affecting events in the GDR and the ways in which the East Germans resisted or influenced Soviet policies.”

Regarding relations between the Soviets and their allies, Kathryn Weathersby has argued that it is only by examining “the intersection of Moscow’s and Pyongyang’s aims” that one can understand what “pro-

duced the [Korean] war in June 1950”;*' and Norman Naimark has asserted that “[t]he GDR... was created primarily out of the interaction of Russians and Germans in the Soviet occupied zone.”~ Similarly, I will demonstrate that it is only by taking into account both the actions, urgings, and proddings of Ulbricht, and the calculations of Khrushchev, as well as the broader East-West interactions, that one can understand the climactic event of this book, the building of the Berlin Wall and the crisis surrounding it. There are a variety of factors that can explain the influence of a smaller ally on a great power, the influence of the Kremlin’s German ally on Soviet policy and on conditions in the GDR. As in any relationship between an empire’s core and its periphery, the geographic distance yields significant control over local conditions to the local power. This can create a gap between the superpower’s policy preferences and the actual local implementation of policy. The capacity of the local power to affect local conditions, and the implementation or nonimplementation of the superpower’s declared policies, gives it the capacity to constrain these policies.” In spite of all the Soviet troops and advisors in the GDR, Moscow was still not able always to enforce its policies and prevent the East Germans from acting independently. The roughly 500,000 Soviet troops in the GDR may have deterred the population from repeating the uprising of 1953, but they were not able to control the actions of the East German

leaders.’ The Soviet forces could determine or protect the ultimate “fate” of the socialist regime in the GDR but could not regulate its daily “behavior.”~” Thus, through its impact on day-to-day local conditions, the smaller ally may limit the superpower’s real long-term policy options. Strategic location is central to the influence of an ally. If the country is located, for example, at the border between two military alliances, as

Dynamics of Relations + 5

was the case with the GDR, this gives the superpower a great stake in protecting and strengthening the ally, because the ally is a crucial part of the superpower’s buffer zone. The ally is of course perfectly well aware of this situation and may be able to use it to its own advantage. It can do this by persuading the superpower that the local ally needs certain things like increased economic and military aid (or a border closure) if it is going to be able to maintain its position as a bulwark against the other bloc. Thus, while the ally is clearly dependent on the superpower for its protection in its vulnerable location on the edge of the bloc, the superpower also feels some dependence on the ally to preserve this position as bulwark or buffer.”®

The ally may play more than just a military-strategic role for the superpower; it may have a more symbolic function, such as serving as a model for the system of its superpower patron. As Khrushchev recounted in his memoirs, he sought to use their front-line location to make the GDR and East Berlin into a “showcase of the moral, political and material achievement” of socialism for capitalists to see and so be persuaded of the superiority of socialism.”’ Khrushchev’s energetic faith in the preeminence of the communist system and his determination to demonstrate this in Germany gave the GDR a means to pressure him for increased support.”” Khrushchev testified to the importance of a strong, socialist East Germany for the Soviet Union by telling Ulbricht, “your needs are our needs.” Ulbricht treated this as an invitation to elicit a Soviet response to East German “needs” even if they sometimes conflicted with broader Soviet “needs.” As John Lewis Gaddis points out, the two superpowers “attached their own reputations to their respective clients ... [and] fell into the habit of letting their German allies determine their German interests, and hence their German policies.”” This situation provided the GDR with opportunities to convert its weaknesses into strength in bargaining with or manipulating the Soviet Union. The lack of popular support for the East German socialist government was manifested in the hundreds of thousands of refugees who fled to the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) each year. The leaders of East Germany’s Socialist Unity Party (SED) could, with justification, use the threat of the regime’s collapse to obtain more aid from Mos-

cow.” In addition, as the weaker power, East Germany had more to lose, more at stake if it collapsed than the Soviet Union did and thus was more motivated and persistent in the pursuit of its narrow goals. This translated into increased bargaining strength.” Glenn Snyder’s concept of the “alliance security dilemma” offers a useful lens through which to view the Soviet—East German relationship, although he does not apply the concept to the Soviet side of the cold war and focuses primarily on periods of multipolarity instead of bipolar-

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