GERMANY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91T01172R000200170001-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 2, 2004
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: July 16, 1953
• Content Type: REPORT

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GERMANY
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Office of Current Intelligence
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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
DOS review(s) completed.
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Outside the Soviet Union, the situation in Germany was to provide
the clearest indication of the problems faced by the new Soviet lead-
ership and the difficulty which it had in handling them. Difficulty
in larger policy questions is perhaps inherent in the nature of the
collegial leadership, where differing opinions must be resolved and
where mistaken policy can react disastrously on its chief proponent.
In East Germany, US officials were quick to notice in the days
following Stalin's death that Walter Ulbricht was taking special pains
to straighten out his record. His 8 March policy statement, published
in the East German press prior to Malenkov's funeral oration, attributed
to Stalin's guidance policies that Ulbricht had long espoused. At the
same time,[ I at a late March
meeting of the Soviet Control Commission rv ewo had criticized the
SED Central Committee and, indirectly, Ulbricht for failure to meet
successfully the problems of reparations, refugees and consumer goods
shortages. The relative mildness of East German reaction to West Ger-
man Bundestag ratification of the EDC and the contractual agreements was
taken at the time as a possible indication that Ulbricht's strong poli-
cies were less acceptable than they had been previously.
GERMANY
I relations between the
Soviet occupation authorities a as German ommunist leaders had
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the. East Germans and the. political and economic blunders for which the
Germans were blamed. At the same time, the USSR put out feelers re-
garding new Soviet proposals on Germany. These feelers were evasive
on the problem of free elections in East-Germany, declaring that the
essential problem was to ensure Germany's neutrality.
On 15 April Ulbricht disproved rumors of a Soviet policy shift in
Germany and of his own shaky status by strongly reaffirming his "rapid
socialization" program. Two days after this speech the Soviet Govern-
ment announced that the Political Advisor to the Soviet Control Commission,
V. S. Semenov, was being recalled and would be replaced by P. F. Yudin.
This appointment was especially interesting in view of the importance
of this job and the fact that Yudin, like Kuznetsov and Benediktov, had
also had no foreign office experience. He was a Party theoretician of
long standing,.who had been the first editor of the Cominform Journal
and who was elevated to the Party's Presidium at the October Congress.
On the surface it looked as though this Party leader
was being sent into a ticklish post to keep the situation under control
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and possibly to implement a new policy-
On 5 May Ulbricht continued his hard line when he bitterly de-
nounced the West German Socialists as traitors to the working class
despite their opposition to the Bonn and Paris treaties. Ulbricht's
propaganda tactic of basing the unity campaign on the implausible
thesis that an increasingly communized East Germany would become more
attractive to West Germans demonstrated an inflexibility inconsistent
with the emphasis being given to the German unity campaign in state-
ments emanating from Moscow.
On 5 May Ambassador Bohlen commented that the articles by Grote-
wohl and Ulbricht, published in the Moscow press on the anniversary
of the German surrender, did not indicate a change in Soviet policy
toward Germany and may have been an attempt to show that rumors of
such a change were without foundation. On 15 May the SED expelled
Franz Dahlem and several other members from its Central Committee.
Dahlem's fall from favor had been attributed to his Western residence
and his alleged association with the view that the transfer of "Soviet-
style communism" to East Germany should be delayed. His purge again
pointed to the dominant position of Ulbricht.
On 28 May Moscow completely revamped its representation in
Germany by dissolving the Soviet Control Commission and naming Am-
bassador Semenov to the new post of Soviet High Commissioner in
Germany. His return 37 days after his replacement as Political Ad-
viser to the SCC by Yu1in implied indecision in Moscow on policy in
Germany and on the organizational and personnel setup necessary to
implement it.
Semenov's replacement in April had left no prominent Soviet
Foreign Ministry official in Germany during a period when the USSR
was expressing interest in an improved international situation. On
1 May the Soviet press had carried Semenov's elevation to the Col-
legium of the Foreign Ministry. The announcement of his return to
Germany was now made by the Soviet Foreign Ministry. It indicated
that the Foreign Ministry under Molotov was being allowed to assume
formal responsibility for overall German policy determination at the
expense of the Army representative, Chuikov. The status of both
was left unclear in the original announcement.
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Chuikov, whose functions were limited to command of the Soviet
troops in Germany, was transferred on 7 June to an unnamed post in
the Ministry of Defense and replaced by Col. General A. A. Grechko,
who had been Commander of the Kiev Military District. Yudin was
subsequently to be appointed Deputy to Semenov. At the same time
I. I. Ilyichev, formerly Soviet Ambassador to East Germany and a
professional diplomat, took over the duties of Soviet High Commis-
sioner to Austria from General Sviridov and was also named Ambas-
sador to Austria.
The extent of Yudinrs actual control of East German policy can-
not be ascertained; the brief Yudin period on the SCC was not marked
by any change in the intensified communization process, which reached
a crescendo during his tenure. Vituperative speeches were made by
Premier Ulbricht in support of this program. Also during this period,
the East German campaign against the Protestant Church reached its
peak. The disparity between the uncompromising East Gera position
and conciliatory Soviet gestures elsewhere was manifest./
Four days after the arrival of Semenov, the SED Politburo an-
nounced a spectacular reversal of its former program, clearly imply-
ing that Semenov had returned with a new policy. On 9 June it did
inter alia the following things-
1. Composed major differences with the Protestant Church;
2. Called for amendment of the plan for heavy industry with
a view to improving worker standards of living;
3. Halted the recently intensified campaign for socializa-
tion of agriculture;
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4. Promised new policies regarding residence. and interzonal
transit permits;
5. Promised restitution of confiscated property and restora-
tion of full civil rights to refugees who returned from the West;
6. Professed a willingness to encourage private business; and
7. Promised a general amnesty for persons charged with damaging
state-owned property.
A week following the SED reversal, the East German Government en-
countered the greatest show of resistance ever experienced in any Soviet
Satellite. Curiously, the riots on 16 and 17 June began as a demonstra-
tion which the Government, anxious to show its, new-found liberality,
probably inspired and encouraged, and certainly, in the beginning,
winked at.
Protesting a late May increase in work norms, 100,000 East Ber-
liners finally joined in unprecedented revolt against the regime.
Strikes and rioting spread over much of the Soviet Zone, with the
demonstrators calling for abolition of the regime and free all-German
elections. Soviet authorities reacted swiftly and efficiently to
quell the disturbances. On 19 June a total of 25,000 Soviet troops
with at least 450 tanks and self-propelled guns were estimated to be
.in East Berl
It was later confirmed that strikes or riots had occurred in 2 cities
in East Germany.
A 21 June editorial in the East German Communist newspaper, Neues
Deutschland, stated that "the quelling,of the fascist provocation was
absolutely essential so that our Government might embark on its new
course which . . . aims at a decisive improvement in the living standard
of our population." On the same day the SED Central Committee proclaimed
that enemies of the people would not be allowed to interrupt the new
course of action, and announced further economic concessions. Despite
renewed disturbances on 7 July, the East German Government reopened
the sector border in Berlin two days later.
The Soviet Union, therefore, had withstood this first test in East
Germany and rejected the alternative of cracking down on its restive
Satellite in retaliation. Additional proof that a general conciliatory
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policy was, at least for the moment, still in effect was seen in several
developments in the Satellites. For example, on 22 June the Albanian
Government cancelled debts accumulated by peasants from 1949 to 1952.
On 24 June Hungary liberalized crop collection measures. On 4 July
newly-appointed Hungarian Premier Imre Nagy promised economic and
political reforms unprecedented in the Satellites. On 6 July Czecho-
slovakia revoked a harsh labor discipline decree announced only one
week earlier.
Meanwhile, the USSR had reshuffled its diplomatic representation
in Poland in another of the top-level personnel realignments
which had been taking place since Stalin's death. G. M. Popov,
another man new to the diplomatic scene, was appointed Ambassador to
Poland. His appointment indicated some diminution of Malenkov's in-
fluence. During the 1940's Popov rose rapidly to the highest echelons
of the Party hierarchy. Between 1941 and 1946 he had become successively
a full-member of the Central Committee, First Secretary of the important
Moscow City and Oblast committees, and a member of the Secretariat and
Orgburo of the Central Committee. In December 1949 he suffered a sharp
set-back when he was replaced on the Central Committee Secretariat
and as,First Secretary of the Moscow Party organization by N. S.
Khrushchev, and transferred "to responsible work in city construction."
His loss of these important positioxss has been attributed to Malenkov's
influence. He served as Minister of City Construction and later was
Minister of Agricultural Machine Building until his removal in De-
cember 1951. His partial decline was evident at the 19th Party Congress
when he was reduced from full to alternate membership on the Central
Committee. According to Ambassador Bohlen, A. A. Sobolev, whom Popov
had replaced, was reportedly unsympathetic to Molotov.
Ambassador Bohlen anticipated that the East German reforms would
go forward, although the Soviet leadership had clearly been impressed
with the dangers to a dictatorship inherent in a program of liberaliza-
tion. In a cable of 19 June he suggested that the reforms were motivated
primarily by the domestic situation in East Germany and stemmed from
the realization by the new Soviet leaders that a continuation of in-
tensive socialization would lead to either economic or political catas-
trophe which could be coped with only through measures of terror they
were unwilling to employ. He pointed out that the Orbit press had
printed the almost unprecedented admission that a working class could
oppose a Communist regime. He added that the emphasis put on the need
for greater consideration for the masses suggested that the reforms
would continue.
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