EMPLOYMENT OF THREATS AND WARNINGS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85M00364R001001570023-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 26, 2007
• Sequence Number: 23
• Publication Date: April 28, 1983
• Content Type: REPORT

Approved For Release 2007/11/26: CIA-RDP85M00364RO01001570023-6
STAT
SOVA/PA/F
28 April 1983
EMPLOYMENT OF THREATS AND WARNINGS
BY STALIN AND KHRUSHCHEV
Stalin attempted to intimidate adversaries by threatening to
unleash local Communist forces and sympathizers to instigate
strikes and riots. Less directly, he threatened the use of
Soviet forces against nations opposite Soviet borders.
-- In 1948, the city of Berlin was blockaded as a
counter to currency reform in West Berlin and
the West's denial of Soviet control over the
Ruhr.
-- In 1948 and 1949, Stalin fulminated against
Yugoslavia and Tito; the USSR applied the
pressure of troop movements towards Yugoslavia's
borders, frontier incidents involving
Yugoslavia's neighbors, a rigorous economic
blockade, and an increasingly bellicose tone in
diplomatic notes and propaganda.
-- Throughout 1948-1949, the USSR sought to block
the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty by
playing upon the deeply rooted fear of war in
Western Europe. Soviet utterances included
threats of civil war, sabotage, invasion,
strikes, treaty cancellations, parliamentary
obstruction, and international working-class
solidarity.
-- In 1949-1950, Stalin made.vague threats against
US diplomatic efforts to negotiate a separate
peace treaty with Japan.
-- When the attack by North Korea on the South in
June 1950 stimulated plans for the rearmament of
West Germany, both Moscow and German Communist
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leaders intimated that West Germany might expect
to share the fate of South Korea. Soviet
leaders sent threatening notes to the British
and French governments which characterized the
rearmament of West Germany as a breach of their
respective treaties of alliance with the Soviet
Union.
Khrushchev also sought to intimidate states bordering the
Soviet Union with the USSR's huge land a-rmy. On at least two
occasions, he threatened adversaries with "rocket attacks" or
transatlantic nuclear strikes.
-- In 1956, in an effort to impress the visiting
Shah of Iran with Soviet military power, Kremlin
leaders treated him to a "secret" film of a test
explosion of a Soviet. hydrogen bomb.
-- In 1956, Khrushchev threatened "rocket attacks"
against Great Britain and France if they did not
desist from their armed attack upon Egypt during
the Suez crisis.
-- In 1958, Khrushchev threatened a new Berlin
crisis when he announced his intention to end
the occupation regime in the former German
capital.
On April 18, 1961, the day after the abortive
invasion by Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs,
Khrushchev sent a diplomatic note to President
Kennedy warning of the "consequences which
aggression against Cuba could have for the whole
world and the United States of America itself."
Following his Vienna meeting with Kennedy in
1961, Khrushchev threatened to solve the German
question unilaterally within the year.
Aerial photography in October 1962 indicated
preparations in Cuba for the installation of
Soviet medium and intermediate-range ballistic
missiles. In addition, air bases were being
prepared to accommodate nuclear-capable bombers,
which were in the process of being uncrated and
assembled.
Approved For Release 2007/11/26: CIA-RDP85M00364R001001570023-6