the Sixth Congress, they appeared in different circumstances, and one cannot deny that they had the imprint of then existing hostility and grave, often unjust, mutual accusations to which the logic of confrontation in those years had led both sides. One should admit that, unfortunately, such accusations still appear from time to time in both the Yugoslav and the Soviet press, as an already known result of relations between our countries in those years. From our side, we are taking measures to ensure the needed clarification of questions related to Yugoslavia in the Soviet press, journals, and books.

We are fully aware that elements of mistrust and prejudice, accumulated in previous years, cannot disappear at once. But, at the same time, we are firmly convinced that now that the existence of mutual good will and aspirations towards improvement of our relations based on equality and mutual advantage has been manifested, the cause of the Soviet and Yugoslav peoples coming together is moving forward because thus demand the interests of both countries and interests of peace and socialism.

The Secretary

Central Committee of the Communist Party of Soviet Union
Moscow, 23 September 1954
N. Khrushchev

appeared aimed against the leadership of Yugoslavia.

The CC CPSU has discussed the question of this gross error, allowed in the book "Historical Materialism," and has made an appropriate decision by harshly punishing those responsible for the violation of directives of the CC CPSU on the character of material on Yugoslavia that is published in the USSR. Enclosed please find the transcript of that decision.

We hope that from your side the case of the book "Historical Materialism" will be correctly understood and judged as an irrelevant misunderstanding.

The Secretary,

Central Committee of the Communist Party of Soviet Union N. Khrushchev

Moscow, 27 September 1954

[Source: Arhiv Jugoslavije, Arhiv CK SKJ, 507/IX, 119/152. Obtained and translated for CWIHP by Svetozar Rajak.]

Svetozar Rajak (London School of Economics) has done extensive research in The National Archives of Yugoslavia.

[Source: Arhiv Jugoslavije, Arhiv CK SKJ, 507 / IX, 119/1-51. Obtained and translated for CWIHP by Svetozar Rajak.]

DOCUMENT No. 5

Fourth Letter from Nikita S. Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, to Tito and the Executive Committee of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, 27 September 1954

To the Executive Committee,

Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia

To Comrade Tito

We consider it important to inform you of an inappropriate formulation, which is at the same time contradictory to directives from the CC CPSU, that was allowed to pass through in the book "Historical Materialism" (Second edition), published by GOSPOLITIZDAT' in June 1954. In this book, contrary to our intentions, and as a result of an oversight by the author and GOSPOLITIZDAT, a disturbing provocation

1 This article is a result of research conducted by the author for his doctoral thesis on "Yugoslav-Soviet relations between 1953 and 1958" at the Department of International History of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). The author wishes to express gratitude to Odd Arne Westad (LSE), the staff of the National Archives of Yugoslavia in Belgrade, and the Archives of the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Yugoslavia for exceptional collaboration and assistance during difficult times of political turmoil. At the same time, he is indebted to a number of scholars in Belgrade, above all to Ljubodrag Dimic (Department of History, University of Belgrade).

2 Communist Party of Yugoslavia, renamed as League of Communists of Yugoslavia, at its Sixth Congress in 1952. 3 In summer and autumn 1953, the USSR and Yugoslavia exchanged ambassadors.

4FNRJ-Federativna Narodna Republika Jugoslavija [Federal Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia], the official name of Yugoslavia at the time.

"For reasons of authenticity, the author has presented this Soviet-Yugoslav exchange of communication. as first, second, etc. letter according to the depiction given by Tito himself when presenting them in November 1954 to the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugo-slavia. Each document is annotated on top of the first page accordingly, in Tito's handwriting.) The presentation of the Khrushchev letters is based on their

Serbo-Croatian translation

"Moscow-based association of Yugoslavs who

By Jim Hershberg

I

In a development that could assist research into the history of nationalism in the former Soviet Union, communist party archives in the Republic of Moldova-until 1991 known as Moldavia, one of the fifteen constituent republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)-have partially opened to researchers. On 20-22 July 1997, I visited the capital city of Chişinău (formerly Kishinev) as part of a visit to archives in several former Soviet republics, including Ukraine, Lithuania, and Latvia, undertaken by a delegation consisting of former CWIHP Director David Wolff, Mark Kramer of Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian Studies, Vladislav Zubok of the National Security Archive, and myself, organized by CWIHP and the National Security Archive.

Arriving by train from Moscow with no advance notice or arrangements, I was able to conduct research in the "Archive of Social-Political Organizations in the Moldovan Republic" (Arhiva Organizatiilor Social-Politice a Republicii Moldova), the repository containing the records of the former Moldavian Communist Party Central Committee (MCP CC) and other party organs. In contrast to the often cumbersome procedures in Russian archives, I was also permitted to order, pay for (at a rate of roughly $0.25/page), and receive photocopies (despite a shortage of toner in the only available machine, alas) within the space of a few hours. Most documents are in Russian, although most of the population also speaks Romanian/ Moldavan, which became the republic's official language in 1994. Below are printed two MCP CC documents (translated and introduced by Mark Kramer) on party concerns about the circulation in Moldavia of Romanian publications containing criticisms of the 21 August 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia to crush the reformist "Prague Spring"; further materials obtained on the trip, including records on the rise of Moldovan nationalism in 1989, are slated for publication in future CWIHP publications.

Nevertheless, some restrictions apply. According to archival authorities, Moldovan legislation provides for a 10-year restriction on documents labelled "secret", a 25-year restriction on documents with higher secrecy classifications such as "osobaya papka" or "special dossier", and a 75-year closure on materials considered "personal"—a term which unfortunately was interpreted as applying to the "lichne" or "personal" collections (fondy) of MCP leaders and other officials. (I worked mostly in Fond 51, which contains the MCP CC records.) In addition,

before being permitted to conduct research in the archive, I was required to obtain a letter of endorsement from the Insitute of History of the Academy of Science of the Republic of Moldova (Institutul de Istorie al Academiei de Stiinte a Republicii Moldova), located in an upper floor of the same building as the archive, at 82, str. 31 August 1989. The Institute was kind enough to provide a letter endorsing my research on the broad topic of "Moldavia and the Cold War, 1945-1991," despite my pigeon Russian and lack of advance notice, but researchers would be advised to write or fax ahead to make prior arrangements and ensure that the archives will be open and accessible on the dates and topics desired. In particular, I was assisted by the director, Demir Dragnev, and Ion Siscana, Institutul de Istorie, str. 31 August [1989], 82, Chisinau, Republica MOLDOVA 2012, tel. (3732) 23-73-27; fax: (3732) 23-45-90. (For additional assistance in arranging a visit to ChisinauI was able to hire an English-language translator hereresearchers may also wish to contact the Soros Foundation-associated Independent Journalism Center at the Open World House, 20 Armeneasca St., 2012, Chisinau, MOLDOVA, tel. (3732) 264225, 222507, fax: (3732) 228691, e-mail: prog.jc@owhmoldnet.md)

The Institutul de Istorie also publishes a quarterly journal, the Revista de Istorie a Moldovei, founded in 1990. According to the masthead of issue 4, 1996, the publication's chief editor is Dr. Dragnev, and Dr. Siscana belongs to the editorial collegium as well as serving as the chief editor of ArenAPoliticii, a monthly publication of culture and political science. Revista de Istorie is in Moldavan (Romanian) with English summaries and tables of contents; however, Dr. Siscana co-edited an Englishlanguage collection of translated documents from various archives on the August 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact's secret protocol, particularly the provisions which led to the incorporation of Bessarabia (later Moldavia) into the Soviet Union (along with the Baltic states and other territories): see I. Shishcanu and V. Varatec, eds., V. Matei, intro., The Pact Molotov-Ribbentrop and its Consequences for Bessarabia (Chisinau: “Universitas" Publishing House, 1991).

Former CWIHP Director Jim Hershberg is Associate Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University.

U

ntil recently, nothing was known about the impact of the 1968 Soviet-Czechoslovak crisis on Soviet Moldavia, a small republic located in the far west of the USSR along eastern Romania and southwestern Ukraine. (At the end of 1991, Soviet Moldavia became the independent country of Moldova.') A few Western scholars in the 1970s and 1980s were able to trace the extensive "spillover" of ferment from the sweeping reforms in Czechoslovakia into Soviet Ukraine, but no comparable studies existed of the other Soviet republics.2 In an analysis of Moldavia's role in Soviet foreign policy published in 1976, Stephen Fischer-Galati refrained from discussing the impact of the Soviet-Czechoslovak crisis.3 Instead, he simply noted that "reports in the foreign press immediately after the military crisis of the summer of 1968 make no mention of the attitude of the Romanian inhabitants of Moldavia when Soviet tanks and troops were moving toward the Romanian frontier." The lack of concrete information, Fischer-Galati added, meant that any comments about the effect of the crisis on Moldavia would be purely "a matter of conjecture.'

994

The state of knowledge about the spillover from the 1968 crisis into the Soviet Union remained extremely limited until the USSR was dissolved at the end of 1991. The subsequent opening of archives in countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union (as well as the archives in East-Central Europe) has enabled scholars to gain a much better sense of the impact of the Prague Spring and the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 on the western Soviet republics. It is now clear that the degree of ferment in the Soviet Union connected with the events in Czechoslovakia was much greater than previously assumed. Abundant evidence of this exists in the Russian archives (including a document pertaining to Moldavia that I published in Issue No. 11 of the CWIHP Bulletin), and equally valuable documentation is available in the archives of the other former Soviet republics, including Moldova.

The two documents below from the "Archive of Social-Political Organizations in the Moldovan Republic" (AOSPRM), the former repository of the Communist Party (CP) of Soviet Moldavia, highlight the efforts that Moldavian officials made in late August and September 1968 to prevent the local population from learning about Romania's "hostile," "irrational," and "chauvinist" assessment of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The two documents are among many items in the AOSPRM that shed interesting light on Soviet-Romanian relations, Soviet foreign policy-making, and internal Soviet politics. (See the accompanying report on the Moldovan archive by James G. Hershberg, who obtained these two documents during a visit to Chişinău in July 1997.)

The first document, prepared in early October 1968 by the head of the Department for Propaganda and Agitation of the Moldavian CP Central Committee (CC), Anton Sidorovich Konstantinov, criticized the Moldavian minister of communications, Vasilii (Vasile) Petrovich Russu, for his "blatant violation of party discipline." Russu had failed to instruct the Moldavian postal service to withhold all Romanian newspapers and journals beginning on 21 August 1968. Not until 28 September did Russu belatedly order the head of the Kishinev branch of the postal service, P. P. Grigorashchenko, to prevent any Romanian publications from being distributed within Moldavia.

The second document, a stenographic account of a meeting of the highest organ of the Moldavian Communist Party (known as the Bureau of the Central Committee) on 11 October 1968, contains Russu's explanation of his behavior as well as further details about problems within the Moldavian ministry of communications. Russu insisted that he had been absent from his office for several days immediately after the invasion because he was serving in a reserve military communications battalion that was mobilized and sent to Czechoslovakia. He faulted two of his subordinates the first deputy minister, Mikhail (Mihai) Nikolaevich Severinov, and the head of the ministry's foreign communications section, Konstantin (Constantin) Aleksandrovich Kucia-for having failed to carry out essential tasks while he was gone. The document makes clear that although the members of the Moldavian CP Bureau wanted to condemn Russu's behavior, they were unwilling to impose a severe punishment. Russu received a "stern warning" but was permitted to retain his ministerial post, a job he continued to perform for many years afterward.

It is not surprising that Romanian publications were at the center of this controversy. The emergence of a rift between the Soviet Union and Romania in the mid-1960s had sparked concern among Moldavian CP officials about the possible effects on the "Moldavian" (ethnic Romanian) inhabitants of Moldavia, who made up roughly two-thirds of the republic's total population. In November 1965, the First Secretary of the Moldavian CP, Ivan (Ioan) Ivanovich Bodiul, accused the Romanian authorities of spreading "lies" and "distortions" about Moldavia. A few months later, at the 12th Congress of the Moldavian CP, he launched a stronger attack on the "hostile remarks" and "nationalist propaganda" that were being broadcast into Moldavia on Romanian television and radio. As tensions between Moscow and Bucharest continued to mount in 1967 and 1968 on a number of foreign policy issues, especially the question of Czechoslovakia, Moldavian CP leaders became all the more concerned about the spread of Romanian influence into their republic. Bodiul was one of

several republic party first secretaries who spoke at a Central Committee plenum of the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU) in April 1968, which was specially convened to assess the implications of recent developments in Czechoslovakia. Bodiul expressed anxiety there about Romania's enthusiastic support of the Prague Spring. Bucharest's subsequent opposition to the invasion of Czechoslovakia stirred deep unease in both Kishinev and Moscow about the possible spread of "unsavory" influences into Moldavia.

The risk of "contagion" from Romania loomed especially large during the first few days after the invasion, which marked the high point of Bucharest's defiance of the Soviet Union. A recent book by the Romanian scholar Mihai Retegan, drawing on newly declassified materials from the Romanian foreign ministry and Communist party archives, underscores how tense the Soviet-Romanian relationship became during the period immediately after the invasion.10 In a famous speech from the balcony of the CC headquarters of the Romanian Communist Party (RCP) in Bucharest on 21 August, just hours after Soviet troops had begun moving en masse into Czechoslovakia, the leader of the RCP, Nicolae Ceauşescu, denounced the Soviet Union for having "flagrantly violated the freedom and independence of another state." Speaking before a vast crowd of ordinary citizens as well as party loyalists, he described the invasion as "a colossal error and a grave danger to peace in Europe and to the fate of socialism around the world." Ceauşescu vowed that Romania would take all necessary steps to defend its own sovereignty and territorial integrity:

It has been said that in Czechoslovakia there was a danger of counterrevolution. Perhaps tomorrow they will claim that our meeting here has reflected counterrevolutionary trends. If that should be the case, we warn all of them that the entire Romanian people will never permit anyone to infringe on the territory of our homeland."

Shortly after Ceauşescu finished his speech, the RCP Central Committee and the Romanian government met in an emergency session and adopted a joint communique expressing "great alarm" at the "flagrant violation of the national sovereignty of a fraternal, socialist, free, and independent state, an action that contravenes all the principles on which relations between socialist countries are based as well as universally recognized norms of international law."2 The joint statement called for the immediate withdrawal of the Soviet and East European troops to "allow the Czechoslovak people to handle their internal affairs themselves, without any outside interference."

Romania's bold opposition to the Soviet invasion caused a brief but ominous escalation of the crisis, prompting fears in Bucharest (and elsewhere) that Soviet and allied troops might soon be dispatched to Romania. Romanian leaders were well aware that a military clash with the Soviet Union would entail grave, and potentially catastrophic, consequences for Romania. Faced with that prospect, they sought to defuse the confrontation. Although Ceauşescu and his colleagues did their best to avoid any steps that would appear to legitimize the invasion, their change of tone was quickly perceptible. Throughout the last week of August, they steadily curtailed their criticisms of the invasion, and they even began downplaying other issues that had provoked tensions with Moscow in recent years.13 In particular, Romanian officials temporarily eschewed any further polemics over Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, two former Romanian territories that had been allocated to the Soviet Union under the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact and then incorporated into Soviet Moldavia and Soviet Ukraine at the end of World War II.14 This marked the first major lull in the territorial dispute since the early 1960s.

Important though these efforts to ease tensions and avert a military conflict proved to be, they did not signify a complete reversal of Romania's stance toward the invasion. The Romanian authorities never explicitly disavowed Ceauşescu's balcony speech or the joint resolution adopted on 21 August. Although Ceauşescu ceased most of his public criticisms, he maintained a negative view of the intervention—a view that inevitably continued to be reflected in RCP periodicals and newspapers. Soviet leaders therefore were anxious to prevent Romanian publications from being disseminated within the Soviet Union, especially in Moldavia, where a substantial majority of the population could understand the language.

The documents here show that efforts to halt the influx of Romanian materials into Soviet Moldavia were by no means always successful. For one reason or anotherthe precise culprit is difficult to pin down-Romanian newspapers replete with comments by Ceauşescu and other senior RCP officials were circulated relatively widely in Moldavia in late August and September 1968. These papers enabled some residents of Moldavia to obtain much more detailed and much harsher information about the invasion than they ever could have received from the official Soviet media.

One small point should be noted about the translations. Both documents below, especially the stenographic account, are fairly rough and, in certain places, ungrammatical in the original. The translation seeks to replicate the style of the original, but without sacrificing comprehensibility. For the sake of clarity, the translation in a few places is slightly smoother than the original stenogram, and some minor typographical errors in the original have been corrected.