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system of permanent and temporary passes for passage through the sector border between East and West Berlin. Moreover, in issuing these passes, not to create unnecessary difficulties and broadly to take account of the interests of the German populace.

17. To order the Command of the Group of Soviet occupation forces in Germany to improve the distribution of Soviet troops, taking into account the lessons of the events of June 17, and, in particular, to see to the stationing around Berlin of the necessary quantity of tank units.

The issue has been resolved by the Ministry of Defense of the USSR in the course of operational procedure.

[Source: AVP RF, f. 82, op. 41, por. 93, p. 280, d. 93, ll. 63-68. Translated by Benjamin Aldrich-Moodie.]

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In the investigatory process of the MFS of the German Democratic Republic there are group files on the persons who took an active part in the preparation and realization of the provocation on June 17 of this year in Berlin and in other cities.

The investigation has established that the provocative work was carried out according to assignments given by reactionary and espionage organizations in West Germany.

The most characteristic are the following files:

1. An investigative file on 7 residents of the city of Berlin - HERTEL, 18 years of age, lubricator in a transport association, MÜLLER, 26 years old, the owner of a truck, DIBALL, 20 years old, without definite occupation, and others, who took active part in the riots (broke glass in government buildings and shops, tore down slogans and placards, and threw stones at police).

The arrested HERTEL and DIBALL admitted that they took part in the riots on the instructions of the fascist organization "League of German Youth," of which they had been members since 1952.

The arrested MÜLLER stated that he was drawn into participation in the disorders by the representatives of the anti-Soviet organization of West Berlin, "Fighting Group Against Inhumanity."

The file of the investigation is complete.

2. The investigative file on 14 residents of the city of Leipzig - GNICHTEL, 33 years old, auto electrician; MULBERG, 41 years of age, dental technician; SCHEBE,

24 years old, student of the veterinary faculty, and others. The arrested Germans in this group admitted that they were connected with the agents of the "Group for the Struggle Against Inhumanity" in West Berlin - TALEM and SCHUBERT - and on their instructions, carried out espionage and other enemy activity on GDR territory and took active part in preparing the provocation of June 17. They received instructions at secret meetings of the "Fighting Group Against Inhumanity" in West Berlin.

The arrested SCHEBE showed that TAHL called him to a secret meeting in West Berlin at the beginning of May of this year and informed him that an uprising was being prepared and accordingly instructed him.

The arrested GNICHTEL also received an assignment from TAHL to show up active supporters of the SED and to warn them in writing that they would be eliminated. Stamps displaying a picture of one of the leaders of the GDR with a noose around his neck were supposed to appear on the envelopes.

Workers in the apparatus of the Representative of the MVD SSSR in the GDR, having consulted with the High Commissioner in Germany, Com. Semenov, are introducing a proposal to organize open trials on these cases with the goal of unmasking West German fascist organizations engaged in preparing and carrying out the provocations of June 17 of this year in Berlin and in other cities. Presented for your examination.

MINISTER OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS OF THE USSR S. KRUGLOV

[Source: AVP RF. Provided by the National Security Archive; translated by Ben Aldrich-Moodie.]

Christian Ostermann is the incoming Acting Director of the Cold War International History Project and a specialist on the Cold War in Germany.

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On the establishment of the SCC, see Elke Scherstjanoi, Das SKK-Statut. Zur Geschichte der Sowjetischen

Kontrollkommission in Deutschland 1949 bis 1953. Eine
Dokumentation (Munich, forthcoming).

3

USSR State Directorate for Soviet Property Abroad. 4 The Wismut uranium mining complex in southern East Germany was established in 1947 as a Soviet stock company under exclusive Soviet control. In 1954, Wismut was transformed into a "Joint Soviet-German Stock Company," which it remained until 1990. Wismut produced about 215,559 tons of uranium between 1945 and 1990, 13% of the total global uranium production (to 1990). See Norman Naimark, The Russians in Germany. A History of the Soviet Occupation Zone 1945-1949 (Cambridge, 1996), 238-250; Rainer Karlsch, “Ein Staat im Staate. Der Uranbergbau der Wismut AG in Sachsen und Thüringen," Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte B 49-50 (1993), 1422; and Rainer Karlsch/Harm Schröter (eds.), "Strahlende Vergangenheit" - Studien zur Geschichte des Uranbergbaus der Wismut (St. Katharinen, 1996).

5 Marshal Vasilii I. Chuikov (1900-1982) had been the commander-in-chief of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany and head of the Soviet Control Commission in Germany until May 1953.

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13

Some of these anxieties stemmed from the large-scale deportation of German scientists and technicians to the Soviet Union by the NKVD and Soviet army units in the early years of Soviet occupation. See Naimark, The Russians in Germany, 220233.

14 Following the establishment of the GDR, the SED sought to eliminate the influence of the churches, particularly the dominant Protestant Church, which had remained an interzonal, all-German organization and was regarded by many as the last force of resistance within East Germany. The main target of the SED's brutal "Kirchenkampf" were the church youth organizations, especially the Protestant “Junge Gemeinde" [Youth Congregation]. After Soviet intervention in early June 1953, the SED agreed to a "truce" with the churches. The SED, however, continued to fight the "Junge Gemeinde" by forcing young people to choose between the Church's “confirmation" and the so-called "youth consecration” (“Jugendweihe"), a rival secular initiation process. On the SED's church policy, see Martin George Goerner, Die Kirche als Problem der SED [The Church as a Problem for the SED] (Berlin, 1997), and Thomas Raabe,

SED-Staat und katholische Kirche. Politische Beziehungen 19451961[SED State and Catholic Church. The Political Relationship 1945-1961] (Paderborn, 1995).

15 Bund Deutscher Jugend - German Youth League. 16 Walter Ulbricht (1893-1973), since 1950 Deputy Prime Minister, 1950-1953 SED Secretary-General, 1953-1971 First Secretary of the SED Central Committee, 1960-1973 Chairman of the GDR State Council (President).

17 Free German Youth, the Communist-front youth organization. 18 Underlined by hand.

19

Radio in the American Sector. - Central to Western efforts to destabilize the SED regime and maintain the spirit of resistance in the GDR, the US-controlled RIAS had become, in the words of the first U.S. High Commissioner, John J. McCloy "the spiritual and psychological center of resistance in a Communistdominated, blacked-out area." US authorities estimated that up to 70% of East Germans tuned into the radio station. See Christian F. Ostermann, "Keeping the Pot Simmering. The United States and the East German Uprising of 1953,” German Studies Review 19:1 (March 1996), 65. In the spring of 1953, RIAS led a vigorous propaganda campaign against the forced norm increase of 28 May. See Markus Wacket, "Wir sprechen zur Zone. Die politischen Sendungen des RIAS in der Vorgeschichte der JuniErhebung 1953," Deutschland Archiv 26 (1993), 1035-1048.

20 It was not until late August 1953, that the SED Politburo decided to make an all-out effort in the "fight against the reactionary RIAS broadcasts.” Minutes of Politburo Meeting, 26 August 1953, Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der ehemaligen DDR im Bundesarchiv (SAPMO-BArch), DY 30 IV 2/2/312. See Christian F. Ostermann, “The United States, the East German Uprising of 1953 and the Limits of Rollback." CWIHP Working Paper No. 11 (Washington, 1994).

21 Communist Party of West Germany

22

Created in February 1950 as the successor to the failed People's Congress Movement, the Communist-front organization "National Front of a Democratic Germany" was a Soviet/GDR instrument for all-German propaganda. Although nominally a national organization, it was only effective in the GDR where it served to facilitate the electoral “unity list.” Dietrich Staritz, Geschichte der DDR, rev. ed. (Frankfurt, 1997), 49. 23 Vladimir S. Semenov (1911-1992) was the Political Adviser to the Chief of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany 1946-1949 and, since 1949, Political Adviser to the Soviet Control Commission in Germany. In April 1953 he became head of the Third European Division in the Soviet Foreign Ministry. The next month he was named the USSR High Commissioner in Germany. He later became Deputy Foreign Minister and USSR Ambassador to West Germany. See his memoirs Von Stalin bis Gorbatschow. Ein halbes Jahrhundert in diplomatischer Mission 1939-1991 (Berlin, 1995).

24 Andrei A. Grechko (1903-1976), 1953-1957 Commander-inchief of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany.

25

Otto Grotewohl (1894-1964), 1945-1946 Chairman of the Central Committee of the Social Democratic Party in the Soviet Zone; since October 1949 GDR prime minister. On Grotewohl's role see Markus Jodl, Amboß oder Hammer? Eine politische Biographie (Berlin, 1997).

26 Lavrentii P. Beriia (1899-1953), 1938-1946 People's Commissar for Internal Affairs, 1946 Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, head of the KGB, was arrested on 26 June 1953 and executed in December 1953.

27

Viacheslav M. Molotov (1890-1986) had been a member of

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34

Matyas Rakosi (1892-1971), Prime Minister 1952-1953 and 1955-1956, the central figure in Hungary's Stalinist dictatorship. 35 Imre Nagy (1896-1958), Hungarian Prime Minister 19531955 and October - November 1956; condemned in a secret trial and executed on 16 June 1958. For recent biographies see Andras B. Hegedus et al, (eds), 1956. Kezikünyve. Megtorlas es Emlekezes (Budapest, 1996), 108-109; Janos Rainer, Imre Nagy (Budapest, 1996).

36 Allamvedelmi Hatosag, the Office of State Security, had been

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44

Marshal Leonid Aleksandrovich Govorov was the Chief Inspector of the Soviet Ministry of Defense. See David E. Murphy, Sergei A. Kondrashev and George Bailey, Battleground Berlin (New Haven, CT, 1997), 168.

45 Reported by "VCh-phone" at 7.26 a.m., 17 June 1953, Moscow time. The reporter was Comrade Kovalev (Assistant to Comrade Semenov). The receiver was Chief of Main Operations Department of General Staff Lieutenant-General PAVLOVSKY. Copies were sent to Malenkov, Beriia, Molotov, Voroshilov, Khrushchev, Kaganovich and Mikoian.

46 The reporter was Colonel General GRECHKO. The receiver

was Lieutenant General PAVLOVSKY, Chief of the Main
Operations Administration of the General Staff of the Soviet
Army. Sent to Malenkov, Beriia, Molotov, Voroshilov,
Khrushchev, Kaganovich, Mikoian

47 Sent to Malenkov, Beriia, Molotov, Voroshilov, Khrushchev, Kaganovich, Mikoian.

48 Marshal Vassili D. Sokolovskii (1897-1968), an old Germany expert who had been deputy commander-in-chief of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany in 1945/46 and commander-in-chief and head of the Soviet Military Administration of Germany, headed the Soviet General Staff from 1952-1960.

49

Sent to Malenkov, Beriia, Molotov, Voroshilov, Khrushchev, Kaganovich, Mikoian.

50 Sent to Malenkov, Beriia, Molotov, Voroshilov, Khrushchev, Kaganovich, Mikoian.

51

Sent to Malenkov, Beriia, Molotov, Voroshilov, Khrushchev, Kaganovich, Mikoian.

52

Sent to Malenkov, Beriia, Molotov, Voroshilov, Khrushchev, Kaganovich, Mikoian.

53

Sent to Malenkov, Beriia, Molotov, Voroshilov, Khrushchev, Bulganin, Kaganovich, Mikoian.

54 Stamped "MID USSR, 18 VI 53; Declassified"

55

Sent to Malenkov, Beriia, Molotov, Voroshilov, Khrushchev, Kaganovich, Mikoian.

56 Stamped: "MID USSR, 19 June 1953; MID USSR 7 July 53;

Declassified"

57 Soviet Control Commission.

58

37-year old West Berliner Willi Göttling who had been crossing the Soviet sector in Berlin to pass from one part of the Western sectors to another, was arrested by Soviet troops and became the first person to be executed. See Manfred Hagen, DDR Juni '53. Die erste Volkserhebung im Stalinismus (Stuttgart, 1992), 91.

59 Otto Nuschke (1883-1957), since 1948 Chairman of the Soviet Zone CDU, was GDR Deputy Prime Minister from 1949 to 1957.

60

Stamped: "MID USSR, 23 June 1953; Declassified" 61 On 20 June, Semenov reported to Moscow that "the further interrogation of the parachutist allegedly dropped in the region of Sangerhausen gives ground for assuming that his initial testimony as to the drop of a group of parachutists is a provocatorymendacious statement. I ask you not to use this material until the end of the investigation." AVP RF, f. 082, op. 41, por. 93, p. 280, 1. 41.

62. Stamped: “MID USSR, 23 June 1953 and 20 June 1953;

Declassified."

64

63 Colonel Ivan A. Fadeikin. According to Pavel and Anatoli Sudoplatov, with Gerold L. and Leona P. Schecter, Special Tasks, The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness A Soviet Spymaster (New York, 1994), 365, Fadeikin was the deputy KGB resident in Berlin. According to David E. Murphy, Sergei A. Kondrashev and George Bailey, Battleground Berlin (New Haven, CT, 1997), 177, Fadeikin was Acting MVD Berlin chief at the time. The Fighting Group Against Inhumanity (“Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit") was established in 1948 by publicist Rainer Hildebrandt as a humanitarian organization for East Zone refugees and victims of SED terror. In the early 1950s, the West Berlin-based KgU developed into a anti-communist resistance organization, devoted to providing and collecting information in East Germany and carrying out sabotage operations throughout the GDR.

65 Sent to Malenkov, Beriia, Molotov, Voroshilov, Khrushchev, Bulganin, Kaganovich, Mikoian.

66 For the transcript of the Soviet-Hungarian leadership
meetings, see this Bulletin and the Electronic Bulletin
(www.cwihp.si.edu).

67 Piotr Fedotov was a senior foreign intelligence official. See David E. Murphy, Sergei A. Kondrashev and George Bailey, Battleground Berlin ((New Haven, CT, 1997), 177.

68 Stamped: "Secretariat of com. Vyshinskii, MID USSR, 4 July 1953; Declassified." The document contains many illegible handwritten marginalia.

69 See note 67.

70

71

Type-script, original, autograph. Contains notes.

Hermann Matern (1893-1971), since 1950 member of the

SED CC Politburo and Vice President of the GDR legislature, the Volkskammer.

72 Heinrich Rau (1899-1961), since 1949 candidate, since 1950 member of the SED Politburo, had been heading the State Planing Commission since 1950. In 1953, he became Minister for Machine Construction and in 1955 moved on to become Minister for Foreign and Inner-German Trade. Throughout this period, he also occupied the office of Deputy Prime Minister. 73 Corrected from original. Bruno Leuschner (1910-1965) had

been a member of the SED Central Committee since 1950 and, as Rau's successor, chaired the State Planing Commission from 1952-1961.

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76

Elli Schmidt (1908-1980), since 1949 chairman of the German Women's League, was a candidate of the SED Politburo from 1950 to June 1953, when she was removed from all her positions. In January 1954, she was forced to resign her membership in the SED. She was rehabilitated in July 1956. 77 Anton Ackermann (1905-1973), author of the controversial April 1946 article "Is There a Peculiar German Way to Socialism?," had been a candidate of the Politburo since 1949 and was in 1953 Director of the Institute for Marxism-Leninism. Due to his support of Herrnstadt and Zaisser he lost these positions in June 1953 and was eventually expelled from the Central Committee in 1954. He committed suicide in 1973.

78 Paul Strassenberger (1910-1956) was the deputy chairman of the State Planing Commission from 1950-1953.

79

Kurt Gregor (1907-1990), had been GDR Minister for

Foreign and Inner-German Trade since 1952.

80 Hermann Axen (1916-1992) had been a member of the SED

Central Committee since 1950 and served in its secretariat from 1950 to 1953.

81 Otto Schön (1905-1968), a close associate of Ulbricht, was a

member of the SED Central Committee from 1950 until 1968 and a member of the secretariat from 1950 to 1953. From 1953 to 1968 he headed the office of the SED Politburo.

82 At the Second Party Conference of the SED in July 1952, Ulbricht had announced the policy of the "forced construction of socialism."

83 Prior to the forced merger of the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party in the Soviet Zone in April 1946, Otto Buchwitz (1879-1964) had been a member of the SPD since 1898. By 1953, Buchwitz had staunch credentials as a SED party

loyalist: he had co-chaired the Central Party Control Commission in 1949-1950 and since 1949 had been a member of the Volkskammer. See his 50 Jahre Funktionär der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung (1958). For his pre-1945 career, see Martin Schumacher/Ulrike Höroldt/Christian Ostermann (eds.), M.d.R. Die Weimarer Reichstagsabgeordneten in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (Düsseldorf, 1994).

84 Georgii M. Pushkin (1909-1963) had been in the diplomatic

service from 1949-1952. From 1952-1953 and 1959-1963 he was Deputy Foreign Minister.

85 Andrei J. Vyshinskii (1883–1954), 1949–1953 Soviet Foreign Minister, 1953-1954 Permanent Representative of the USSR at the U. N.

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Yugoslavia and the Cold War

Co-editor's note: During the early years of the Cold War, Yugoslavia became one of the focal points of the East-West rivalry. As part of its "containment" strategy, the United States tried to promote fissures within the Communist world that would undercut Soviet expansionism and eventually lead to the disintegration of the Soviet empire. As recent studies have shown, the break between Joseph Stalin and Josip Broz Tito was hailed as a major success of this "wedge strategy" and influenced U.S. policy towards Moscow's Eastern European and Asian allies in the ensuing years. After the split became evident in 1948, the Truman administration adopted a policy of "keeping Tito afloat" by extending military support and economic aid to Tito. Efforts to promote Tito's influence among the satellites and to entice Tito to join NATO, pursued by both the Truman and the Eisenhower administrations, however, failed. His increasing commitment to the non-aligned movement and rapprochement with the Soviets in the mid-1950s increasingly undermined U.S. support for Yugoslavia. Though the aid program was eventually terminated, the United States continued to 1 support "Titoism" as an alternative to the Soviet model.

Much less is known about the origins, process and impact of the Soviet-Yugoslav split within the Communist. world. What changed Stalin's mind about the Yugoslavs, whom, in 1945, he considered heirs to his throne and who considered themselves his most faithful disciples? What turned Tito and other top Yugoslav communists in the words of John L. Gaddis, "from worshipful acolytes into schismatic heretics?"2 Did policy differences over a Balkan entente with Bulgaria or Yugoslav ambitions towards Albania cause the rift? Or was it, as Vojtech Mastny has argued, an "incompatibility of affinities" the very Stalinist disposition and fervor of the Yugoslav Communists, which, despite their genuine devotion for the Soviet fatherland and socialism, antagonized the Soviet leader?3

With the following essays and documents, the Cold War International History Project presents new evidence on Yugoslavia's role in the early years of the Cold War. Research on this subject is not an easy task. In Moscow, tougher declassification policies and shrinking archival budgets have posed difficulties. Even more desperate is the situation in the former Yugoslavia where the recent conflict has left archives in shambles. Despite these difficulties, Leonid Gibianskii, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Slavonic and Balkan Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, has unearthed major new findings in the archives in Moscow and Belgrade. His first article covers key episodes in Soviet-Yugoslav relations - the 1946 and 1948 Stalin-Tito meetings. Based on access to Yugoslav as well as Soviet materials, Gibianskii compares

Soviet and Yugoslav documents on the meetings. Csaba Békés, a research fellow at the Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, offers an interesting snapshot of both Stalin's thinking about the establishment of the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) as well as Yugoslav (and Hungarian) perspectives on the organization in 1947. By contrast, the document found and published by the Russian historian Dmitrii Volkogonov throws new light on one of the more bizarre efforts in the late Stalin years to eliminate the Yugoslav leader. Documents obtained from the Russian Foreign Ministry Archives by former CWIHP fellow Andrei Edemskii illuminate the difficult process of SovietYugoslav rapprochement in the mid-1950s. Gibianskii's second essay, as well as the documents concluding this Bulletin section, explore the evolution of Soviet-Yugoslav relations in the aftermath of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. The essay was first presented as a contribution to the 26-28 September 1996 conference on "Hungary and the World, 1956," a major international scholarly conference co-sponsored by the National Security Archive (Washington, DC), the Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution (Budapest), and the Cold War International History Project.4

The transcripts of the 1946 and 1948 Stalin-Tito meetings also inaugurate a major CWIHP initiative on "Stalin as a Statesman." Based on the recently-published appointment books for Stalin's Kremlin office, the Cold War International History Project will try to document Stalin's conversations and correspondence with foreign leaders as comprehensively as possible, with a view to capturing "the voice of Stalin" in the Soviet foreign policy-making process. The compilation and comparison of transcripts, memoranda, cables and other sources from both Russian and other archives will allow researchers to draw conclusions about Stalin's thinking on foreign policy issues from a richer and broader source base. For example, the 1948 Stalin-Tito conversation, printed below, sheds light not just on Stalin's views on Yugoslavia, but also on his feelings about the Chinese Communist revolution. "Triangulations" of this kind promise new insights for all historians of Stalin and the early years of the Cold War.

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