COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT BULLETIN Issue 5 Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C. Spring 1995 COLD WAR C C RISES RISES The Crisis and Cuban-Soviet Relations: Fidel Castro’s Secret 1968 Speech by Philip Brenner and James G. Blight On 25 and 26 January 1968, Cuban leader Fidel Castro gave an extraordinary 12-hour speech before the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party on the history of Cuba’s relationship with the Soviet Union. It is well known that the relationship in the six years after the Cuban Missile Crisis was turbulent. But the disclosure of this speech, kept secret at the time, helps clarify how important the Missile Crisis was in setting the stage for the turbulence. The Cuban government recently declassified POLAND, 1956 POLAND, 1980-81 Khrushchev, Gomulka, and the “Polish October” by L.W. Gluchowski Eastern Europe was central to Soviet foreign and defence policy throughout the Cold War. After World War II, and especially from 1947 onward, the Soviet military and security forces, together with local communist elites, constructed the most integrated alliance system of the Cold War period. Soviet state institutions of control also helped to reconstruct the mili- tary and security forces of states dev- astated by World War II. Their aim was to secure communist regimes in postwar Eastern Europe dedicated to defend the Soviet Union’s western frontier. To ensure loyalty, unifor- mity, and quality, Soviet military and security officers were recruited to staff or to advise the East Euro- pean military and security forces. 1 This pattern applied in particular to continued on page 2 continued on page 81 To Attack, or Not to Attack? Stalin, Kim Il Sung, and the Prelude to War by Kathryn Weathersby The historical record of the Korean War has recently been greatly enriched by Russian Presi- dent Boris Yeltsin’s presentation to President Kim Young-Sam of South Korea, during the latter’s visit to Moscow in June 1994, of 216 previously classified high level Soviet docu- ments on the war from Russian archives. The collection totals 548 pages and includes docu- ments from the period 1949-1953. Most of the documents are ciphered telegrams between IN THIS ISSUE: 1953 GDR Uprising 10 1956 Hungarian Crisis 22 The Yeltsin Dossier 22 Imre Nagy Reassessed 23 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis 58 KGB Documents 58 Diplomatic Cables 58 Soviet-Cuban Talks 59 Warsaw Pact “Lessons” 59 1980-81 Polish Crisis 116 Soviet Documents 116 Honecker’s Appeal 124 Carter-Brezhnev Correspondence 140 Response 155 KOREA, 1949-50 CUBA, 1962 continued on page 50 Khrushchev’s CPSU CC Presidium Meeting on East European Crises, 24 October 1956 Introduction, Translation, and Annotation by Mark Kramer The document below has been translated from a 19- page Czech manuscript entitled “Zprava o jednani na UV KSSS 24. rijna 1956 k situaci v Polsku a Mad’arsku” (“Account of a Meeting at the CPSU CC, 24 October 1956, on the Situation in Poland and Hungary”). The manuscript, which is stored in Fond 07/16, Svazek 3, at the Central State Archive in Prague (Statni ustredni archiv, or SUA), is one of many items in the Czech archives that shed valuable new light on the Soviet Union’s response to the crises in Poland and Hungary in SUDOPLATOV RESPONDS: The Authors of Special Tasks Reply to Critics— see page 155 continued on page 38 HUNGARY AND POLAND, 1956 continued on page 116 Soviet Policy During the Polish Crisis by Mark Kramer The prolonged crisis in Poland in 1980-81 was one of the most intriguing episodes of the Cold War, but until very recently almost no primary sources relating to the crisis were available. That problem has greatly diminished over the past few years. This article will draw on new archival materials and memoirs from Russia, Poland, Germany, and Czechoslova- kia to provide a reassessment of the Soviet Union’s role in the Polish cri- sis. The article will begin with a brief review of some of the most important new sources, and will then analyze the decision-making calculus in Moscow in 1980-81. The third part will take up the controversial question of whether, and under what circumstances, the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies might have invaded Poland in December 1981. The discussion here is based in part on a longer chapter about the Polish crisis in my forthcoming book on Soviet policy in Eastern Europe, 1945-1991. Further coverage of the