Ask the Scholar

{
    "localId": "470155286",
    "label": "Report, Soviet and Satellite Appraisals of the Recently Concluded Council of Foreign Ministers Sessions",
    "core": "doc",
    "dtoType": "document",
    "citationUrl": "https://catalog.archives.gov/id/470155286"
}

{
    "id": "470155286",
    "sourceUrl": "https://catalog.archives.gov/id/470155286",
    "contentType": "document",
    "title": "Report, Soviet and Satellite Appraisals of the Recently Concluded Council of Foreign Ministers Sessions",
    "citationUrl": "https://catalog.archives.gov/id/470155286",
    "collections": [
        "President's Secretary's Files (Truman Administration)",
        "Intelligence Files"
    ],
    "iiifBase": "https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/presidential-libraries/truman/hst-psf/602196/875441/875441-12-001.tif",
    "thumbnailUrl": "https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/presidential-libraries/truman/hst-psf/602196/875441/875441-12-001.tif",
    "largeImageUrl": "https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/presidential-libraries/truman/hst-psf/602196/875441/875441-12-001.tif",
    "imageCount": 3,
    "hasImages": true,
    "source": "import",
    "hasTranscription": false
}

{
    "url": "https://catalog.archives.gov/id/470155286",
    "naId": 470155286,
    "levelOfDescription": "item",
    "productionDates": [
        {
            "day": 22,
            "logicalDate": "1949-06-22",
            "month": 6,
            "year": 1949
        }
    ],
    "recordType": "description",
    "ocrSource": "nara-archive"
}

{
    "seq": 3,
    "pageIndex": 0,
    "type": "photo",
    "url": "https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/presidential-libraries/truman/hst-psf/602196/875441/875441-12-003.tif",
    "mediaId": "e5673b5d83bdcc28",
    "ocrText": "RESTRICTED\nWHY THE WESTERN POWERS \"CHANGED THEIR TACTICS\": Following his implication that the\nWestern Powers initially wanted to \"break up the talks\" (or, as Linetsky puts it, \"to nail\nthe CFM in a coffin\")--a possibility of which they were \"deprived\"--Zhukov proceeds to\nexplain the Western \"change of tactics\" that presumably occurred. Ascribing the explana-\ntion to \"journalistic circles,\" he cites \"two causes\" for the change: (1) Western recogni-\ntion of the growing world peace movement; and (2) Western recognition of the \"recession\nmenacing the Western world.\" Relative to the first, which has been a relatively un-\ndeveloped line in previous Soviet propaganda about the Conference, Zhukov contends that\n\"to have broken up the negotiations\" in the face of the Soviet-led world \"movement for\npeace against the instigators of war\" would have \"meant that the... Western Powers would\nappear... as the avowed accomplices of the instigators of war.\" Regarding the second\nimputed cause, which has often been cited as the reason for Western interest in a limited\neconomic agreement, Zhukov implies that there was more than a mere coincidence between the\nrecent American stock market drop and the beginning of the closed CFM meetings \"in search\nof a partial agreement\" on Germany and of an Austrian treaty solution. He also points to\nthe falling American production index and to mounting American unemployment as \"circum-\nstances\" forcing \"the most farseeing representatives of U.S. business circles to raise...\nthe question of the necessity to restore normal trade relations with the East....\nSuch\nare the factors which moved the Western delegations to the concluding of a partial agree-\nment relating to the German question.\" Satellite and Soviet-controlled German radios\nrepeat the thesis that increasing \"signs of an economic crisis\" coerced the Western\nPowers into a limited economic agreement.\n\"THE DECISIVE ROLE IN ACHIEVING AGREEMENT WAS PLAYED BY THE SOVIET UNION\": Thus, in\nso many words, Zhukov claims Soviet credit for the agreements reached. Apparently neither\nhe nor Linetsky sees any contradiction between such claims and the above-cited \"causes\"\nof the Western \"change,\" for Linetsky reiterates the same claims when he says:\n\"Throughout the work of the Paris session the delegation of the Soviet Union consis-\ntently displayed its readiness to come to concerted decisions. It showed constant\ninitiative and made concrete proposals on every question. And it was this line\nof the Soviet delegation which led in the final analysis to the agreements\nLinetsky accuses the \"reactionary press of doing all in its power to belittle or distort\nthe decisive constructive part which the Soviet delegation played in the agreements\nreached.\" He also attacks the \"policy of (continued) blackmail\" advocated by those who\nwanted the Conference to fail--a policy that Linetsky identifies with \"the Western Union\nand the North Atlantic Treaty; that is, the method of putting together aggressive war\nblocs.\"\n\"FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS\" AND \"GENUINE ATTITUDES\": Zhukov repeats the now-familiar\nSoviet comparisons between the righteously just Soviet proposals on the \"fundamental\nproblems\" of Germany and the alleged Western intentions to maintain dismemberment and\noccupation \"for a long and indefinite time.\" It is of interest that he attempts to\nidentify the Soviet peace treaty proposals--the \"touchstone\" revealing the participants'\n\"genuine attitudes\" towards Germany--with the previous Soviet proposals at the Conference.\n\"The line of the Soviet Government (on a peace treaty),\" he says, \"had already become\nclear during the discussion of the first question on the agenda.\" And he finds it signi-\nficant that \"the most categoric (Western) rejections were directed against the proposal\n(on) the withdrawal of occupation troops....\" (Although Moscow and the Satellites report\nVishinsky's speech on CFM authority for concluding a Japanese peace treaty, no comment on\nthe subject has appeared as yet.)\nRESTRICTED"
}