61. Paper Prepared by the Ambassador at Large (Thompson)1

BRIEFING BY AMBASSADOR THOMPSON

We have had cables now from our Embassies in all of the principal capitals and all of our Allies seem to be in agreement with us on what we know and don’t know about what has happened.

I think we are all agreed that Khrushchev was forced out and that health and age was not the real reason for his removal. There are a number of things which support this. One of them is the fact that they announced that they had put him off the Presidium of the Central Committee. Kozlov has been off with a heart attack for many months and he is still a member and there was no reason to kick Khrushchev out if his removal had not been forced.

We have, of course, known for a long time that Khrushchev’s style of leadership was bothering his other colleagues and we think that that is probably the basic cause for his removal, although obviously some particular issue must have triggered it at this particular time. One thing that supports this thesis was the Pravda editorial which came out a few days ago. Without mentioning him by name, it listed his faults. It accused him of subjectivism, drifting in communist construction, hare-brained scheming, immature conclusions and hasty decisions and actions divorced from reality, bragging and phrasemongering, commandism and unwillingness to take account of the achievements of science and practical experience, using armchair methods, personal decisions, disregard for practical experience of the masses and finally the [Page 145] practice of personality cult. All of those with the possible exception of the mention of science are about method rather than substance, so it leads us to believe that this was the main thing that was bothering them. What triggered it at this time, so far we have no clues. It is rather curious because Khrushchev was himself obviously surprised. He was seen by Palewski the day before and told him he was leaving suddenly for Moscow but it was presumed it was because of the cosmonauts. Brezhnev was in Germany for the Fifteenth Anniversary celebration during the preceding week. This is rather curious for if they had been planning it one would have thought Brezhnev would have been there. There must be something we don’t know that kicked this off.

There have been a whole series of controversial issues being debated in the Soviet Union and this could have been kicked off by any one of them. The two main ones I would think were the problems related to the disintegration of the Communist Bloc and particularly their quarrel with Red China. The Italians came out and published the Tagliatti memorandum, a sort of declaration of independence. The French Communist Party made a similar statement. Khrushchev had gotten himself in a box by insisting on going ahead with the meeting of Communist Parties in December, which was going to lead to a complete break with the Chinese Party. This was opposed by a number of the Communist Parties in Eastern Europe and this change in leadership at least will now give them some maneuverability if they want to pursue a different policy. They have announced they are in favor of a conference but in a different context because the personal quarrel between Mao and Khrushchev is eliminated.

The other set of issues that we think was probably the most serious that they were facing were those that are related to the allocation of resources. There has been a fight going on about this; what it amounts to is who gets the big appropriations. Khrushchev made a speech in late September at a meeting to which had been called people from all over the Soviet Union in which he said that they had enough military strength now and had built up their basic industry so that they could now afford to expand the consumer goods industry. This is a policy which the Soviet military have long opposed as well as the people interested in heavy industry and it certainly would gain military support for his removal if they thought he was going to press this very far. Related to this is the question of military strategy in general. Mr. Khrushchev, for a number of years, has said that in an atomic age it doesn’t make sense to have large conventional armies and air forces and navies and some years ago he announced a cutback in military forces of about a million and a half men. He told me personally at the time that he had to use all of his authority to get it across. Later on they dropped it because of the buildup in the Berlin crisis. Certainly the speeches and articles that have been written by military men in the [Page 146] Soviet Union show that there has been a real division among the military opposing reliance on military missiles rather than conventional forces.

There are also other issues that could have been involved. One is the German problem. The fact that Brezhnev was in Germany might have been indicative. The Germans were disturbed about Khrushchev’s trip to Bonn. There was this rather mysterious attack on a West German diplomatic officer in Moscow with mustard gas which in some quarters was interpreted as an attempt on somebody’s part to disrupt the prospect of Khrushchev’s trip and there was a good deal of talk that he shouldn’t come until it was satisfactorily explained. Before this change in Moscow took place, the Russians gave the Germans a conciliatory note. Another issue that could have been involved was the Cuban issue because Dorticos the President of Cuba was in Moscow at the time, although we think it is unlikely that this could have been the kind of thing to cause this change.

There are a lot of other things in which there is disagreement. Foreign aid is one of them. Lots of people don’t think they should be giving aid to bourgeois governments. The Chinese have been criticizing them for this. There has also been a question there about the wisdom of spending so much money on space. Kosygin spoke to me about this once and showed he was well aware how much it was costing and he is interested in their economy.

It is rather interesting that there are several major divisions in the Soviet Union. One of the political ones has always been between Leningraders and Ukrainians. Each of these men come from a different part. Brezhnev is Ukrainian and Kosygin comes from Leningrad. There is also a more important division between the Communist Party professionals and the government bureaucrats which in the Soviet Union means all of industry as well as governmental functions. Brezhnev is the Party man and Kosygin is mainly an industrialist. He came up there in the light industry side of their economy. He was at one time head of their planning commission and would tend to be more interested in these problems so they have kept a balance in both of these things by naming these two men.

As far as these two men are concerned, I have had many talks with both, particularly Kosygin. They are, I think, very able administrators but neither of them is the type of man I would think would become a strong leader the way Khrushchev was so it seems quite possible that somebody else will eventually get power the way Khrushchev did. There are other strong figures in the Presidium, one of which might eventually come forward. We would expect these people to follow a rather more cautious policy. One of the attributes of Mr. Khrushchev that disturbed us as well as his own colleagues was his impulsiveness [Page 147] and tendency to launch into ventures without thinking them through. We think these people would be less inclined to do this particularly as they are less firmly in power. I would also think they are apt to follow a more orthodox Communist line. I don’t think they have the imagination Khrushchev had. He is a pragmatic fellow and I think these men will be less inclined to deviate from the standard Communist line. One of the things we will be following more closely is how this is going to affect their relations with China. It is reported, but not confirmed, that Suslov presented the charges against Khrushchev. When the Soviets were having their negotiations with the Chinese, they had two sets of them. Khrushchev had Suslov and Kozlov handle them and it would seem likely that they would take the positions Khrushchev took and are pretty well tagged with them. Suslov is their top theoretician and is mainly interested in relations with other Communist parties and because of that and the fact that they are losing control of these parties in Eastern Europe we would think that he would want to moderate the quarrel with China; but, basically, as an ideologist he would want to stick with the positions he has already taken. We will have to wait and see. They have already announced that they still advocate a meeting of the Communist parties but with the object of unity rather than apparently what Khrushchev was going to do; that is, force the break.

I think they have begun to realize what this quarrel was costing them. In meetings of front organizations the Chinese were coming in and making shambles of them. It almost pays them not to meet rather than have public quarrels.

Mr. Dobrynin, the Soviet Ambassador, came in and told the President2 that their basic foreign policy was going to be unchanged and they have done the same thing in other foreign capitals around the world. We don’t know if its true. He mentioned foreign policy would be based on the XX, XXI, and XXII Party Congresses and explained it meant consolidating peace, relaxation of tensions, developing peaceful coexistence. I would think myself that their primary concern now will be first of all to consolidate their position in the Soviet Union, deal with some of these internal problems; two, to address themselves to the problems of the Communist Bloc and only in the third category to deal with foreign affairs. In any event, toward the last three or four months they have been on dead center so far as the West is concerned. They were waiting for the British and American elections and were showing no disposition to want to tackle any important problems. The President, when he saw Ambassador Dobrynin, gave him an excellent and strong presentation of our policy which could be summarized with the phrase [Page 148] his guard is up but his hand is out. He emphasized flexibility on their part and particularly with the coming problem in the United Nations—Article 19—but the Ambassador had obviously no instructions other than this little piece which he had said, and all he did was to listen.

  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Bundy Files, President’s Meeting with Congressional Leadership, 1/19/64. Confidential. Attached to McGeorge Bundy’s memorandum for the record of the President’s meeting with the Congressional leadership on October 19. In the memorandum Bundy states that “Ambassador Thompson discussed the developments in the Soviet Union, along the lines of the attached memo of his talking points.” The meeting took place in the Cabinet Room from 1:34 to 4:05 p.m. and was attended by 10 Senators and 7 House members. (Ibid., President’s Daily Diary)
  2. See Document 55.