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menting on the Hungarian-language broadcasts of Radio Moscow no one heard, let alone listened to. As one of his Muscovite colleagues would observe many years later, even the leading émigrés "had nothing of consequence to do but they behaved as if they had. They practiced assiduously something they referred to as politics, plotted one another's downfall, and generally pranced and cantered and whinnied like superannuated parade horses at the knacker's gates." (Julius Hay, Born 1900: Memoirs [La Salle, Ill.: Library Press, 1975], pp. 218-19.) Given the atmosphere of suspicion prevailing in Moscow at the time, the Russian commissars did not trust information conveyed by foreign Communists.

Could Nagy, a nonentity among the nonentities, have been a petty mole, then? Yes. Could his reporting have contributed to the bloody purge of foreign, especially Hungarian, Communists in the 1930s? Yes. Could he have been directly responsible for the arrest of 25 Hungarian Communist émigrés, of whom 12 were executed and the rest sent to prison or exile? No. One: The Soviet authorities were always both suspicious of and contemptuous toward all foreign Communists; the NKVD surely did not rely on one such informant's reports. Two: As Kryuchkov put it, the 1989 release of the "Volodya File" to Károly Grósz, General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party (HSWP), was meant to be "expedient" and Grósz was to be advised "about their possible use" (p. 36). Three: Given the KGB's aptitude for falsifying documents, the authenticity of anything emerging from its archives must be carefully scrutinized.

A few hitherto unknown details will amplify the skepticism implicit in these reservations and supplement Professor Granville's able account of the political circumstances of 1989.

In 1988, KGB Chief Vladimir Kryuchkov flew to Budapest on a secret fact-finding mission. Long familiar with, and reportedly very fond of, Hungary, he stayed for several days. He met a few party leaders, the head of the political police, and at least one mole the police had planted in the country's increasingly vocal democratic opposition movement. Judging by the questions he asked and the people he met, he wanted to gain a first-hand impression of the bitter struggle that engulfed the HSWP leadership after the forced resignation of

János Kádár earlier that year and of the character, composition, and objectives of the democratic opposition. His visit confirmed what he must have known: that the critics both inside and outside the party were gaining new adherents by using Imre Nagy's execution in 1958 to discredit not only Kádár and his associates but to undermine the whole post-1956 Hungarian political order. As in 1955-56, Nagy-a man Kryuchkov knew while he was the Soviet Embassy's press attaché in Budapest-had once again become the flag for the gathering storm.

I do not know if it was Kryuchkov who then initiated the KGB's search for information on Nagy's past. Nor does it much matter. Both he and Grósz were anxious to discredit Nagy in order to deprive the Hungarian people-and the anti-Kádár, antiGrósz reformers in the HSWP-of a symbol of courage and sacrifice, of a reformer who broke ranks with Moscow. An astute Kremlinologist may also interpret their effort as an attempt to disparage Nagy in order to undermine Mikhail S. Gorbachev's reputation.

I do know, however, who went over to the headquarters of the KGB to authenticate Nagy's handwriting and pick up the newly Nagy's handwriting and pick up the newly found "Volodya File." Accompanied by Gyula Thürmer-Grósz's special assistant for Soviet affairs who, married to a Russian woman, spoke excellent Russian-and possibly by a "Third Man," also from Budapest, the Hungarian in charge of the transaction was Sándor Rajnai, the Hungarian Ambassador to Moscow. Unlike the young Thürmer and the "Third Man," Rajnai had long known Nagy and his handwriting very well indeed. For, in 1957-58, Lieutenant-Colonel Rajnai of the Hungarian political police was responsible for Nagy's arrest in and forced return from his involuntary exile in Romania; for Nagy's year-long interrogation in a Budapest jail where even his presence was top secret; and for the preparation of Nagy's equally secret trial whose scenario Rajnai had drafted. (Loyal, competent, sophisticated, and admired by his superiors and subordinates alike, this creative author of the last bloody Communist purge was subsequently richly rewarded for a job well done. After a long tenure as head of Hungarian foreign intelligence, he served as Ambassador to Romania and then-the top prize-to the Soviet Union. In the 1980s he became a member of the HSWP Central Committee as well.)

By the time Rajnai "authenticated" Nagy's handwriting in July or early August of 1989, Nagy had received-on 16 June 1989-a ceremonial reburial at Budapest's Heroes Square in front of hundreds of thousands of people while millions watched the event live on Hungarian TV all day. Still, Rajnai clung to the hope that he could save the regime in which he believed and his own skin, too, by publicizing damaging information about Nagy-by portraying him as a false pretender, a deceiver who sold out his friends and comrades, a Stalinist stooge. Only in this way could Rajnai help the hardliners in the HSWP, notably Károly Grósz, to defeat such critics as Imre Pozsgay who used Nagy's name to gain political ground. Not incidentally, only in this way could Rajnai justify his own past and clarify the meaning of his life. He told me as much during the course of some 40 hours of conversation over several months in 1991 and '92.

As it happened, Rajnai forwarded the "Volodya File" to Grósz; it was translated from Russian into Hungarian by Mrs. Thürmer. Grósz presented a verbal summary, similar to Kryuchkov's, to the HSWP Central Committee on 1 September 1989. In his speech Grósz told the Central Committee of Nagy's direct responsibility for the arrest and sentencing of 25 leading Hungarian cadres in Moscow and the execution of 12 of them. But then Grósz declined to open the floor for discussion or answer any questions. The Central Committee resolved to send the "Volodya File" to the archives where it was shelved. Oddly enough, even Grósz seemed doubtful of Volodya's political value at this late date. "It is my conviction," he declared, "that what you have just heard will not be decisive when it comes to making the ultimate judgment about Imre Nagy's whole life." (The text of Grósz's speech was published on 15 June 1990-ten long months later-in the hardline Szabadság, a smallcirculation Communist weekly edited by Gyula Thürmer.)

In the end, Rajnai's hope of saving the one-party Communist regime by publicizing the "Volodya File" was dashed, and his fear of being held accountable for the phony charges he had concocted against Nagy in 1957-58 turned out to be unwarranted. For, while the Hungarian Supreme Court in 1989 declared the trial of Imre Nagy and his associates null and void, it declined to charge

those responsible for it. (Several Politburo members deeply involved in the case, including Kádár's Minister of Internal Affairs, were then and are still-alive and well. However, the chief prosecutor committed suicide in the 1970s; János Kádár, the main culprit, died minutes before the Court "retried" and rehabilitated his nemesis; and the head of the kangaroo court that had sent Nagy to the gallows in 1958, who remained unrepentant to the end, died in 1991.)

As for Rajnai, by the time we got acquainted in 1991 he had resigned his ambassadorship and retired. He was in semihiding, worried about retribution. A few months after our last conversation in 1992, I received a letter from him in which he asked for my help in getting an American visa. I have since heard that he died abroad, not in the United States, of natural causes. Perhaps so. But in his last years, the memory of Imre Nagy appeared to consume his mind and cripple his will to live.

Sincerely,

Charles Gati

22 November 1995

To the Editor:

The articles by Janos Rainer and Johanna Granville in Issue 5 of the Bulletin make a major contribution to our understanding of the Hungarian revolution of 1956 and the Soviet decisions relating to it. Both articles tend to conclude that the Soviet decision to

intervene decisively to suppress the Nagy government was probably made in the period October 26-30. The documents available to date do not answer the question, but I read them as consistent with a conclusion that the Soviet decision was not made until October 30-31-after the Hungarians had disclosed their intention to declare neutrality and leave the Warsaw Pact. Mikoyan and Suslov, in their telegram of October 30, may have been reporting on their assurances to Nagy as implementation of a deception plan, but why then would they say to their Politburo colleagues "If the situation deteriorates further, then, of course, it will be necessary to reexamine the whole issue in its entirety."

If a decision to intervene had been taken
earlier, what was there to "reexamine in its
entirety"? Moreover, the Soviet public dec-
laration of October 30 advanced a liberal
interpretation of Warsaw Pact relationships,
and included an explicit promise to negoti-
ate a possible complete Soviet military with-
drawal from Hungary. That may, of course,
have been intended only to deceive Hungar-
ian, Western and world opinion. But if so, it
was a costly device-its brutal repudiation
in practice a few days later was a serious
blow to the Soviet Union in the Western
socialist world as well as in Eastern Europe.

I continue to believe what I first wrote in
a RAND paper (P-984) on November 28,
1956 (first published in Problems of Com-
munism in January 1957, and later in my
book Soviet Military Policy): while Soviet
contingent preparations for possible inter-
vention were no doubt underway, it was only
on October 30-31 that the final decision to
intervene was made.

the Bulletin on pp. 30-31. In para. 5 (on p. 31) he cites an alleged conversation by a KGB Hungarian source with some Americans (named but not identified) who were reported to have said that "if the uprising is not liquidated in the shortest possible time, the UN troops will move in at the proposal of the USA and a second Korea will take place.' Nagy had told Andropov on November 1 that Hungary was not only withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact immediately, but would seek UN and Big Four guarantees of its neutrality. Did the Soviet leaders on October 30-November 1 fear a U.S. intervention, possible under UN auspices circumventing their veto, if they withdrew? Perhaps new documents will clarify that issue.

In closing, I would like also to correct one small error in the translation of one of the documents. A report by Deputy MVD Minister Perevertkin on 24 October 1956, is cited (on p. 22 of the Bulletin) as saying that the Soviet intervention force at that time numbered in all "128 rifle divisions and 39 mechanized divisions"-which would have meant almost the entire Soviet Army! The figures evidently refer to 128 rifle and 39 mechanized companies, not divisions. As correctly noted in the text of Mark Kramer's commentary (on p. 51), the Soviet force in Hungary on October 24 totaled some 31,500 men drawn from five divisions in and near Hungary.

On October 31, when Mikoyan and
Suslov met with Imre Nagy and Zoltan Tildy,
the latter rejected an offer to withdraw im-
mediately all Soviet troops that had not
earlier been present in the country. More-
over, Tildy told Mikoyan that Hungary would
definitely repudiate the Warsaw Pact in any
case—that is, even if the Soviet leaders
accepted their demand to withdraw all So-
viet forces immediately. (This was dis-
closed in a monitored broadcast by [Hungar-
ian Defense Minister] General Pal Maleter Sincerely,
on November 1 or 2.) I believe that that was
the final straw that tipped the decision to
intervene. The new documents, while not
conclusive, are consistent with that interpre-
tation. We can hope that other documents
not yet discovered or published will clarify
this matter.

I do not argue that the thesis I have
outlined briefly above has been confirmed,
but it has not been disconfirmed by the new
evidence available, and in my view the new
material tends to substantiate it. I believe we
should continue to regard the question as an
open one.

Other important developments were also occurring, including the Anglo-French intervention in Suez on October 30 (which, as Vladislav Zubok has pointed out, the Soviet leaders initially interpreted as blessed by the United States). Further attention should also be given to the intriguing comment in KGB Chief Serov's report of October 28, cited in

Raymond L. Garthoff

The Update section summarizes items in the popular and scholarly press containing new information on Cold War history emanating from the former Communist realm. Readers are invited to alert CWIHP to relevant citations. Readers should consult references in Bulletin articles for additional sources.

Abbreviations:

DA = Deutschland Archiv
FBIS =
vice

Foreign Broadcast Information Ser

NYT = New York Times
RFE/RL = Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
VjZ= Vierteljahreshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte
WP = Washington Post
ZfG=Zeitschrift fuer Geschichtswissenschaft

Russia/Former Soviet Union

Interview with Stalin granddaughter Galina Iakovkevnoi Dzhugashvili. (Yuri Dmitriev and Samarii Gurarii, "Syn Stalina" [Stalin's Son], Trud, 31 May 1994, 3.)

1945 letter on postwar strategy from senior Soviet diplomat I.M. Maisky to Stalin from Foreign Ministry archives printed. ("The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Conference of the Three Allied Powers in Yalta," Diplomaticheskii Vestnik 3-4 (February 1995), 78-79.)

December 1945 documents from Russian Foreign Ministry archives illuminate Moscow's refusal to join International Monetary Fund and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. (Harold James and Marzenna James, "The Origins of the Cold War: Some New Documents," The Historical Journal 37, 3 (1994), 615622.)

Gen. Dmitrii Volkogonov announces (2 December 1994) plans to revise estimate of total Soviet deaths during World War II; says 44 Soviet soldiers and officers remain MIA from the 1956 invasion of Hungary, 300 were still missing from the war in Afghanistan, and a Col. Udanov, missing in Ethiopia in 1978, was reported to be alive and working in a Somali stone quarry as late as 1989. (RFE/RL Daily Report 229 (6 December 1994).) Dispute over number of Soviet deaths in World War II reviewed. (Boris Sokolov, "New Estimates of World

War II Losses," Moscow News [English] 16 (28 April-4 May 1995), 7.)

Stalin's handling of Nuremberg trials assessed by historian Natalya Lebedeva. ("Stalin and the Nuremberg Trial," Moscow News [English] 11 (24-30 March 1995), 12.)

Russian evidence on Soviet-Italian relations and the Italian Communist Party, 1944-48. (Elena Aga-Rossi and Victor Zaslavsky, "L'URSS, il PCIe l'Italia: 1944-1948,” Storia Contemporanea 25:6 (December 1994), 929

982.)

Problems of Post-Communism 42:5 (September-October 1995) spotlights new findings from Soviet archives: Vladislav M. Zubok, "Soviet Activities in Europe After World War II," pp. 3-8; Hope M. Harrison, "Soviet-East German Relations After World War II," pp. 9-17; Scott Parrish, "Soviet Reaction to the Marshall Plan: Opportunity or Threat?" pp. 18-24; and Kathryn Weathersby, "New Russian Archival Materials, Old American Debates, and the Korean War," pp. 25-32.

Report on persecution and isolation of Russians who returned from WW II German POW camps includes April 1956 recommendation from commission headed by Defense Minister Zhukov to relax measures. (Vladimir Naumov and Alexander Korotkov, "WWII POWs Condemned as Traitors," Moscow News [English] 17 (5-11 May 1995), 11.

Recounting of Soviet policy toward early Cold War flashpoint on basis of Communist Party and Foreign Ministry archives. (N.I. Egorova, “Iranskii Krisis' 1945-1946 gg. porassekrechennym arkhivym dokumentam" ["The Iran Crisis" 1945-1946 on the Basis of Declassified Archival Documents], Novaia i Noveishaia Istoriia 3 (1994), 24-42.)

Stalin's postwar policy in Eastern Europe assessed. (Vadim Tarlinskii, "Sud ba federatsii" [Fate of the Federation], Nezavisimaia Gazeta, 17 December 1993,

4.)

Cominform reassessed on basis of party archives. (G.M. Adibekov, “An Attempt at the 'Cominternization' of the Cominform," Novaia i Noveishaia Istoriia 4-5 (1994), 51

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and Nikolay N. Detinov, The Big Five: Arms Control Decision-Making in the Soviet Union (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 1995); A.M. Aleksandrov-Agentov, Ot Kollontai do Gorbacheva: Vospominaniya diplomata, sovetnika A.A. Gromyko, pomoshchnika L.I. Brezhneva, Yu. V. Andropova, K.U. Chernenko i M.S. Gorbacheva (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1994); G.M. Kornienko, Kholodnaia voina: svidetel'stvo ee uchastnika [The Cold War: Testimony of a Participant (Moscow: International Relations, 1995); Vojtiech Mastny, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years, 1947-1953 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming, 1996).

Nuclear Weapons Issues:

Historian Zhores Medvedev on various aspects of the Soviet atomic program, including the roles of prison labor and the KGB. (Zhores Medvedev, "KGB i Sovetskaia Atomnaia Bomba" [The KGB and the Soviet Atomic Bomb], Smena [Change], 24 August 1994, 4; Medvedev, "Bomba c kleimom LON" [Bomb with the Mark of LON (Camp of Special Significance)], Rabochaia Tribuna, 30 September 1994, 5; 1 October 1994, 3; Medvedev, “The KGB and the Atomic Bomb," Rossiia, 31 January 1995, 6.)

Assessment of role of espionage in Soviet atom bomb. (Vladimir Skomorokhov, "From Where Was It Born, Our Atom?" Delovoi mir [Business World], 22-23-25-28 June 1994.) Interview with Prof. Balentin Belokon' on debate over origins of Soviet atomic bomb. (Oleg Moroz, "Sovetskaia Abomba: Sobstvennoe izobretenie ili plagiat" [The Soviet A-Bomb: Indpendent Invention or Plagiarism], Literaturnaia Gazeta 26 (29 June 1994), 10.) Several secret letters printed in commentary on book by ex-KGB officer Pavel Sudoplatov. (Aleksandr Minkin, "Bomba" [Bomb], Moskovskii Komsomol'ets, 29 June 1994, 1.)

Evidence from the archives of D.V. Skobel'tsyn. (Mikhail Rebrov, “Mog li Sovetskii Soiuz pervym sdelat' atomnuiu bombu?" [Could the Soviet Union Have Been the First to Make an Atomic Bomb?] Krasnaia Zvezda, 30 April 1994, 5.)

Interview with Arkadii Brishch on his work on Soviet atom bomb. (Oleg Moroz, "Skopirovna byla ne bomba, a skhema zariada" [It wasn't the Bomb that Was Copied, It Was the Storage System], Literaturnaia Gazeta 36 (7 September 1995), 10.)

pearance of several tons of uranium in 1989. according to German report. (Berlin DDP/ ADN, 21 August 1994, in "Secret Nuclear Depots Reported in FRG, East Europe, in FBIS-WU-94-162 (22 August 1994), 12.)

Publications: Thomas B. Cochran, Robert S. Norris, and Oleg A. Bukharin, Making the Russian Bomb: From Stalin to Yeltsin (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995).

New data on atomic bomb project from family archives of Lt.-Gen. Boris L'vovich Bannikov. (Mikhail Rebrov, "Atomnaia bomba: Kak nachinalsia otchet vremeni" Military Issues: [The Atom Bomb: How the Countdown Began], Krasnaia Zvezda, 20 August 1994, 7.)

Interview with I. Zavashin, director of "Avangard" factory at Arzamas-16, formerly secret Soviet nuclear center. (Vladimir Gubarev, "Yuri Zavashin: Pontiatie 'nado' my vpitali s molokom materi" [Yuri Zavashin: The Concept of "Must" We Imbibed with our Mother's Milk], Segodnia, 28 September 1994, 9.)

Description of Soviet Air Force 1956 training maneuver for nuclear war, in which 272 troops were ordered to land at ground zero. (Aleksandr Kyrov, “Dernyi Desant" [Turf Landing], Rossiskaia Gazeta, 26 May 1994, 7.)

Account of secret Soviet 1959 testing of atomic weapons in Pacific. (Mikhail Rebrov, "Otriad osobnogo naznacheniia: Khronika neob 'iavlennoi ekspeditsii"" [An Order of Special Significance: The Story of an Unreported Expedition], Krasnaia Zvezda, 7 May 1994, 6.)

Hidden history and environmental costs of Soviet program of "peaceful nuclear explosions" (PNEs) from 1965-88 probed. (Judith Perera, "Revealed: 23 Years of Soviet Nuking," The Daily Telegraph (London), 8 February 1995, 16, in JPRS-TAC-95-001 (14 February 1995), 27-28.)

Environmental impact of nuclear tests on Totskii proving grounds, and increased cancer rates in city of Orenburzh, assessed by Duma representative. (Tamara Zlotnikova, "Zabytyi genotsid" [Forgotten Genocide], Nezavisimaia Gazeta, 14 September 1994,

2.)

Dmitrii Volkogonov interviewed on search for missing U.S. military from World War II. (Valerii Rudnev, "Rossiia prodolzhaet iskat"" [Russia Continues to Search], Izvestiia, 28 October 1993, 6.) U.S.-Russian commission frustrated by lack of evidence behind claims captured US pilots were held on USSR territory. ("MIA's from the cold war," Moscow News [English] 23 (10-16 June 1994), 14.) On 15 September 1952, Russia returns body of U.S. Air Force captain whose RB-29 reconnaissance aircraft was downed over the Kurile Islands on 7 October 1952. (Reuters cited in RFE/RL Daily Report 178 (19 September 1994).) Revelations on plight of Americans shot down over USSR, Vietnam, including case of B-52 crewman Lt.-Col. Robert Standervik. (Komsomolskaya Pravda, in FBIS-SOV-95-040 (1 March 1995).)

Detailed account of postwar Soviet submarine building program. (I. Spasskiy and V. Semenov, "First Soviet Submarine With Turbine Power Plant (Design Project 617)," Morskoy Sbornik (Moscow) 7 (July 1994), 65-69, in JPRS-UMA-94-053 (15 December 1994), 19-23.

Report on early plans for development of Russian "PKO” defense system. (Anatolii Dokuchaev, "The Russians Weren't Shooting American Satellites,” Krasnaia Zvezda, 30 June 1994, 6.)

Report on 1955 disaster aboard battleship Novorossisk. (Ol'ga Musafirora, "Herazgadannyi vzryv" [Unsolved Explosion], Komsomol'skaia Pravda, 28 October 1993, 3.)

On 1962 Soviet naval campaign in Indonesia. (Andrei Zhdankin, “Do voiny ostavalos' tri chasa" [There Were Three Hours Left Soviet KGB head Kryuchkov noted disap- Until War], Rossiia, 1-7 June 1994, 1.)

Naval commander on Soviet atomic submarine progream. (Ivan Gulaev, "K-27: Podvodnyi rekord 1964 goda" [K-27: The 1964 Underwater Record], Krasnaia Zvezda, 25 June 1994, 6.)

Investigation into 1970 fire aboard nuclear submarine "K-8." (Vladimir Shigin, "Tragediia v Biskaiskom Zalive" [Tragedy in the Bay of Biscay], Moskovskaia Pravda, 12 April 1994, 9.)

New data on disaster aboard nuclear submarine PL-574 which claimed 89 lives. (“Taina gibeli PL-574" [The Secret of the Disaster of PL-574], Komsomol'skaia Pravda, 30 December 1993, 7.)

Former vice-admiral recalls 1974 minesweeping operation in Gulf of Suez. (Aleksandr Apollonov, “6.000 chasov na minnykh poliakh" [6,000 Hours on the Minefields], Krasnaya Zvezda, 17 September 1994, 6.)

Series on Pacific Ocean battles covered up by Soviet regimes. (Nikolai Burbyga, "Zhertvi heob iavlennykh voin" [Victims of Unannounced Wars], Izvestia, 5 January 1994, 6; 9 February 1994, 8.)

Reports on investigation of wreck of the Soviet atomic submarine "Komsomolets." (Vladimir Svartsevich, "Poligon nashei sovesti" [Proving-Ground of Our Conscience], Nezavisimaia Gazeta, 11 August 1994, 5-6; Kirill Dybskii, “Mstislav Keldysh' vernulsia 'so shchitom"" [The "Mstislav Keldysh" Returns "with the Shield"], Segodnia, 17 August 1994, 7.) Interview with Tengiz Borisov, former KOPRON director, on new data concerning "Komsomolets." (Eduard Lunev, "Poslednii parad 'Komsomol'tsa"" [The Last Parade of the "Komsomolets"], Rossiia 25 (6-12 June 1994), 6.)

New data on Soviet ballistic missile development. (Krasnaia Zvezda, 18 June 1994, 6.)

Sino-Soviet Relations:

Correspondence printed between Stalin and Mao from January 1949 reveals disagreement on tactics regarding potential media

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