189. Memorandum From the Secretary of Stateʼs Special Assistant (Bohlen) to the Presidentʼs Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy)0
Following the Presidentʼs conversation with me1 on the desirability of taking up, informally, with the Soviets the question of Marshal Malinovskyʼs May Day statement,2 and our conversation on the same subject,1 I found an occasion on Friday afternoon at the Soviet reception to have a few private words with Ambassador Dobrynin.
I told him that Marshal Malinovskyʼs statement on the subject of surprise attack, naming the President of the United States, had been noted here, and seemed to me to be a revision to Stalin-type diplomacy and not in any way conducive to the development of the type of relationships that we were seeking with the Soviet Union.
I reviewed with him the history of the Saturday Evening Post article,3 pointing out that, in effect, President Kennedy had merely restated the policy in this regard which had been that of the previous Administration, but that due to an imprecisely written account in the article, was susceptible of misunderstanding. I emphasized that the White House had immediately issued a clarification4 to set any misinterpretation straight, but that apparently the Soviet Government preferred to pick up the wrong interpretation and give it widest publicity through an important speech by their Minister of Defense, on May Day. I added that there were enough problems confronting our two countries without deliberately trying to increase misunderstanding by a false interpretation, which I felt was the case in regard to Malinovskyʼs speech.
Dobrynin did not attempt to defend the Malinovsky speech beyond saying that he did not know its origin, and appeared to feel that it was perhaps a mistake. He, however, did state that “they” had been very much surprised at the attribution to the President in the Saturday Evening Post article and had wondered whether the President was trying to strike [Page 433] out on a new nuclear policy for the United States. He admitted that they perhaps should have paid more attention to the White House clarification, but did not dwell on it. I told him that if there were any points of this nature which were unclear, he had access to various people in the Department of State or elsewhere from which he would be able to receive a true account, with which he agreed.
The conversation was completely calm and friendly, and I gathered that Dobrynin was somewhat embarrassed by Malinovskyʼs reference to the President, but he also retained enough of typical Soviet suspicion to have believed in the possibility of a highly contrived method of presenting a policy departure with the White House clarification part of this subtle performance. Operating as they do under a highly disciplined centralized authority, they find it very difficult to believe in the quality of accident in any public statement on policy.
- Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Countries Series,USSR. Confidential.↩
- Not further identified.↩
- The text of Malinovskyʼs May Day statement is printed in Pravda, May 9, 1962. The Soviet Marshal reiterated these views in the May issue of Kommunist. The Embassy in Moscow commented that the statement was noteworthy for its effort to perpetuate the myth that President Kennedy was prepared to initiate a preventive nuclear war against the Communist bloc. (Telegram 2828 from Moscow, May 8; Department of State, Central Files, 761.00 May Day/5-162)↩
- Not further identified.↩
- See footnote 1, Document 179.↩
- Parts of this clarification, issued by Salinger on March 27, are quoted in The New York Times, March 28, 1962.↩