861.00/10–149
The Secretary of State to the Embassy in the Soviet Union 1
top secret
No. 140
Sir: Reference is made to your despatch numbered 557 of October 1, 19492 commenting on OIR Report No. 4998 entitled Soviet Internal Situation.3 The study devoted to this document by members [Page 679] of the Embassy staff and the comments incorporated in the despatch under reference are appreciated. Some of the issues raised by the Embassy’s critical analysis are so important that the Department has examined them with care and believes it advisable to inform the Embassy at some length of its reactions.
Since the frame of reference of the OIR report did not require an analysis of the problem of the United States export control policy, the discussion of this matter which appears in Despatch No. 557 will be taken up in a subsequent Instruction from the Department which will comment on the very vital questions posed in the Embassy’s Despatch No. 5584 and the enclosures thereto. It will be noted by referring to the Foreword to OIR Report No. 4998 that it was limited to an evaluation of the current Soviet situation from the standpoint of whether existing weaknesses were such as to force a change in Soviet policies. Therefore the problem of export control was relevant to the subject of the report only if there was evidence that United States limitations on exports to the USSR had weakened the Soviet economy to a point where the USSR would, at the time of writing, be willing to make political concessions.
An apparent misconception of the purpose and consciously imposed limitations of the OIR Report may, in fact, be at the basis of many of the exceptions taken to the study in the despatch under reference. While the Foreword of the Report was intended to explain the latter’s frame of reference, it perhaps would have been advisable to elaborate somewhat, in the Instruction transmitting the document, on the genesis of the study and the purpose which it was intended to serve. The facts are as follows: The Undersecretary of State requested OIR to produce a study which would examine all data available to the Department and to the several intelligence agencies of the Government to find evidence whether or not there were serious weaknesses in the Soviet position. At the time of the request—the middle of June—there was current in the American press speculation that the USSR had suffered a decisive defeat in the cold war and was ready to yield important political concessions.
In view of the grave import of the decisions of high policy which the results of the study might influence, all concerned with its preparation were particularly careful to eschew all judgements based on intuition, wishful thinking or analogy, and to bring to bear on the problem all possible reliable evidence.… These materials were examined and assessed by the economic and political specialists of the Eastern European Branch of the Division of Research for Europe, analysts with many years of training and experience in the Russian field and several of whom, notably the former Chief of the Economic [Page 680] Section of Embassy Moscow, had been in residence and had travelled in the Soviet Union.
The Embassy’s Despatch No. 557 rests its major criticisms of the OIR Report on an assumption that the Soviet economy is suffering from serious, if not decisive, difficulties; that these difficulties have forced “sweeping reversal of high economic policy” and may have been “sufficiently serious … to compel revision of perhaps major military goals.”
Whether this assumption is valid is a question of paramount importance to the Department. The acceptance of such an assumption would necessitate a revision of all intelligence estimates (including those relative to capabilities in the atomic energy field) which underlie current US foreign policies.
Since the assumption is contrary to the findings of OIR Report 4998, the Embassy’s Despatch was studied with great care for the logic and evidence on which the assumption was based. This study revealed that it was based on interpretations of the significance of the following:
- 1.
- The removal of Voznesenski from his posts as Chief of Gosplan, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers and Politburo member;
- 2.
- The “1948 ministerial recentralization and the separation of the Central Statistical Administration from the State Planning Commission;”
- 3.
- The “Varga Affair;”
- 4.
- The fact that Soviet statistics are increasingly scarce and untrustworthy;
- 5.
- The possibility that the USSR will announce inauguration of a new Five-Year Plan at the end of 1949, instead of 1950 when the current Five-Year Plan was originally scheduled to end;
- 6.
- The USSR is receiving heavy shipments of oil from Rumania and is seeking a maximum proportion of Austrian oil resources.
It is recognized by the Department that any estimate of the current Soviet situation requires as complete as possible a study of all the above points, among others. Each of them has been the object of careful and sustained study for several months.
Yet the Department was unable to find in any of these points evidence of a crisis serious enough to require marked shifts in Soviet policy. Instead all available facts, as distinct from speculations, indicated that these developments were of the same nature and order of magnitude as any number of others which have marked the postwar, not to mention the prewar, Soviet scene. In essence they seemed to constitute evidence that the USSR continues to be the USSR, with Stalin still the master and manipulator of Party power, following the tried practice of maintaining undisputed supremacy through permitting one faction of underlings to offset another; with government as cumbersome and inefficient as ever and tending to the same time [Page 681] honored penchant for reliance upon “reorganization” to cure all ills; with imperialist appetites as great or greater than ever; with the usual discrepancies between plans and achievements, pretensions and realities. Facts which would justify any other conclusion were simply not available in Washington.
[The preceding six points were here made the subjects of an expanded, detailed analysis in the following six typewritten pages, which are not reproduced.]
The Department continues to be vitally interested in all the issues bearing on the question of Soviet strengths or weaknesses, and is appreciative of the energy with which the Embassy approached the problem. For the purpose of assisting Departmental officers in the study of these matters, the Embassy is requested to continue its search for solid evidence bearing on the question.
Very truly yours,
Special Assistant for Research and Intelligence