Journal of European Integration History - Centre d'études et de ...

76
Wolfgang MUELLER
Britain and France (which, due to the Cold War, had, in any case, become obsolete),
the notes also evoked the days when the Western powers and the USSR had had to
cooperate together to defend themselves against the German war machine. Although
the notes’ terminology equated a future European Defence Community with Hitler’s
Anti-Comintern Pact, lambasted the “remobilization of former Hitlerite generals”,
and condemned the planned ECSC for contributing to West Germany’s “remilitarization”,
Stalin, in an interview with Pravda on 17 February 1951 stressed the Soviet
commitment to peace, thus insinuating that West European integration and defence
initiatives were superfluous. 38 This thesis was echoed by the communist World Peace
Council, in its declaration of 26 February, which proposed the conclusion of a Peace
Pact between the four powers plus China and, thereby, the return to the merry old
days of 1945.
About three weeks after the initiating of the ECSC Treaty on 18 April 1951, a
survey taken by the Soviet Foreign ministry among its ambassadors produced an
undecided picture: While the representatives to London and the Hague advocated
sending protest notes to the US (sic), British (sic), and French governments, the ambassador
to the GDR, Georgii Pushkin, spoke out in favour of sending such a protest
note from Moscow to Paris and from East Berlin to Bonn. The Soviet embassies in
Rome and Brussels recommended not taking any steps at all – an opinion that was,
with reference to the fact that the treaty hadn’t been ratified yet, shared by the Foreign
ministry. In his summary for Molotov, deputy minister Zorin recognized that,
“taking into account the growing West German popular movement against rearmament, it
appears advantageous to recommend the government of the GDR to publish a declaration
on the initiating of the ECSC draft treaty by the Bonn cabinet, thereby unmasking the true
meaning of this plan and, in this respect, the policies of the Bonn cabinet”. 39
Molotov, however, referring to the connection between the ECSC and West German
rearmament, advocated (as did Pushkin) publishing one declaration by the Soviet
government and one by East Berlin.
Whereas a TASS report on 9 April about the GDR declaration castigated West
German participation in the ECSC as “a betrayal of the vital interests of the German
people” and “the most grave of all acts by the Adenauer government on its path
towards disrupting and remilitarizing Germany and turning it into a new theatre of
war”, 40 the Soviet side did not react officially until that summer, when a Russian
translation of the ECSC treaty was reportedly sent in about one hundred copies to the
Soviet leadership from Stalin downward. 41 In August, the Foreign ministry sketched
out a plan of action that focused on the EDC instead: it foresaw a Soviet protest to
be handed over to the French government, two weeks later, the handing over to the
38. V. MASTNY, G. SCHMIDT, Konfrontationsmuster des Kalten Krieges, Oldenbourg, Munich,
2003, p. 410.
39. RGASPI, 82/2/1348/13, Zorin to Molotov, 01.04.1951. Cf. M. NARINSKI, La construction européenne
…, op.cit., pp.70 f.
40. AdG, 2893, 09.04.1951.
41. AVPRF, 0136/41/242/33/16-21, Sergeev to Bogomolov, 25.06.1951.