SOVIET UNION EASTERN EUROPE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79T00865A001900340001-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 17
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 16, 2005
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: October 15, 1975
• Content Type: NOTES

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1/AE &rrr
Soviet Union
Eastern Europe
State Dept. review completed
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October 15, 1975
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SOVIET UNION - EASTERN EUROPE
This publication is prepared for regional specialists in the Washington com-
munity by the USSR - Eastern Europe Division, Office of Current Intel-
ligence, with occasional contributions from other offices within the
Directorate of Intelligence. Comments and queries are welcome. They should
be directed to the authors of the individual articles.
CONTENTS
October 15, 1975
Ceausescu Cancels Belgrade Trip. . . . . . . . . . 1
Council of Ministers Re-examines 5
Five Year Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Past Party Congresses and the 25th . . . . . . . . 6
Soviets Mount Anti-Sakharov Campaign . . . . . . . 9
European Communist Conference 11
Preparations Continuing. . . . . . . . . . . .
Kebin Speaks Out on Long-Term 12
Development of Estonia . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Ceausescu Cancels Belgrade Trip
Romanian President Ceausescu abruptly canceled
his state visit to Yugoslavia slated to begin on
October 15.
Neither Bucharest nor Belgrade has officially
announced the cancellation. In a statement that
probably reflects his own lack of information rather
than the facts, a Yugoslav diplomat in Bucharest
told the US embassy on Tuesday that Belgrade is
"mystified" by the Romanian decision. The Yugoslav
added he had been told to attribute the cancellation
to "technical and protocol reasons." Ceausescu is
said to have insisted that President Tito meet him
at the airport, a unique courtesy that the Yugoslav
leader had extended to President Ford. Tito report-
edly refused despite the Romanian contention that
Ceausescu is Tito's "closest ally."
The Yugoslav also claimed that the two sides
could not agree on a joint declaration of principles
proposed by the Romanians and on two suggested eco-
nomic cooperation agreements. Meanwhile, the Belgrade
correspondent for the Middle East News Agency reports
well-informed sources as saying the visit is not
likely to be rescheduled soon.
Strains in the relations of both countries with
Moscow are more likely to have caused the cancella-
tion than the alleged bilateral difficulties. The
Soviets are undoubtedly annoyed that Belgrade and
Bucharest are working to improve their relations with
Peking. The Romanians, who are the more vulnerable
to Soviet pressure, probably decided to play it safe
rather than risk further friction with the Kremlin.
Unlike the Yugoslavs, the Romanians, who are
members of the Soviet alliance system, may have felt
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it more prudent not to flaunt their increasingly
close ties with nonaligned Yugoslavia. Moreover,
within the month the Romanians must consider how
to thwart Soviet efforts at the CEMA summit meeting
to gain greater integration of the members' economies;
Bucharest must also conclude difficult negotiations
of a new five year economic cooperation agreement
with the Soviets.
The cancellation may stem directly from two
visits to Bucharest earlier this month--one by So-
viet party secretary Katushev, the other by Stane
Dolanc, Tito's chief representative in party affairs.
Both men met with essentially the same high-ranking
Romanians, including Ceausescu. The Romanian par-
ticipants in these meetings suggest that major items
under discussion included differences with Moscow
over the proposed conference of European Communist
parties, the CEMA summit, and Romanian-Chinese rela-
tions. A central committee staffer of the Romanian
party early this month said that Bucharest's good
relations with Peking are by far Bucharest's number
one problem with Moscow. The unprecedentedly large
number of Romanian officials--including party, state,
military, and intelligence personnel--to visit China
last month has undoubtedly added to Soviet-Romanian
strains.
The Dolanc-Ceausescu discussions, which received
plaudits in the Romanian press, could have served
as a substitute for a Romanian-Yugoslav summit until
both sides feel circumstances are more opportune for
a Ceausescu-Tito meeting. Dolanc, as Tito's chief
lieutenant, is eminently well-qualified to discuss
major issues in bilateral relations. At Tito's
behest, Dolanc also met Ceausescu in late January.
Now as then, there is no evidence of stress in
Yugoslav-Romanian relations.
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Council of Ministers
Re-examines Five Year Plan
The USSR Council of Ministers has met for the
second time in four months to discuss the next five
year economic plan (1976-80). Plan drafts will ap-
parently be reworked to conform to new instructions
from the party's Central Committee and General Sec-
retary Brezhnev.
The Council of Ministers discussed the plan on
June 10 and issued guidelines for further work, re-
ferring to Politburo decisions and directives from
Brezhnev. On October 13, Premier Kosygin reported
to the Council of Ministers on progress in drafting
the plan. A press statement suggests that in his
report he outlined the new tasks set by the Central
Committee and Brezhnev, but it does not reveal the
direction the revisions will take. It does note
that additional work on the 1976 plan is needed to
improve production efficiency, welfare, the develop-
ment of agriculture, and the output of consumer goods.
Soviet officials say that formulation of the
five year plan is behind schedule, according to the
US embassy in Moscow. They cite several problems
complicating the process: the unexpectedly large
expenditures of hard currency this year for grain
and other imports, disagreement over industrial
reorganization, regional lobbying for new projects,
and efforts to shift somewhat from quantitative to
qualitative goals in production.
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Past Party Congresses and the 25th
A Soviet party congress is scheduled for next
February. It will be the 25th in the party's history
and the third presided over by General Secretary
Brezhnev. It is already beginning to occupy the at-
tention of party figures, high and low.
Party congresses have varied greatly over the
years in character and in significance.
The 19th Congress in 1952--the last under Stalin's
leadership--laid a groundwork for a generational
change in the top leaders. The groundwork did not
hold up when the dictator died six months later, and
his heirs were left to quarrel over Soviet policies
and their own hierarchical positions.
The 20th Congress in 1956 launched Nikita
Khrushchev's de-Stalinization campaign; its impact
is still being felt throughout the communist move-
ment.
The 21st Congress in 1959 sank without a ripple.
The 22nd Congress in 1961, among other things, ap-
proved a visionary party program, mapping out the
stages toward communism in the following decades.
The 23rd Congress, in 1966, consolidated the
position of the new team and swept the Stalin prob-
lem under the rug, settling for a narrowly limited
"rehabilitation" of the man who had led the party
for nearly 30 years.
The 24th in 1971 was keynoted by pledges of
continuity.
The two congresses held thus far under the cur-
rent Kremlin leadership have been businesslike, as
promised by the men who ousted Khrushchev for "hare-
brained schemes," and therefore relatively drab.
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The 25th could well follow in this pattern, but
there will be pressures for change. Even if the
25th simply offers more of the same, its promise of
continuity would be fragile, for another change of
generations loom in the Kremlin.
The average age of the Politburo--the party's
steering committee--is 71, and more than half of them
will probably leave the scene within the next few
years.
The General Secretary and his unofficial deputy,
Andrey Kirilenko, are approaching 70. Mikhail Suslov,
the party ideologist is 72. Premier Kosygin is 71,
President Podgorny is 72, and Minister of Defense
Grechko is 71.
These five seniors, along with Minister of For-
eign Affairs Gromyko (66) and KGB Chairman Andropov
(61) function as a small inner collective within the
Politburo. There is little or no devolution of
authority to the juniors on the Politburo.
Among the juniors--a relative term at best--are
able men already on the Politburo, as well as others
waiting on the threshold. None of them has established
a special claim to consideration as a contender for
a position at the top.
If the Soviets wish to achieve the first smooth
succession in their history, serious collective plan-
ning will have to begin soon. There is no sign of
such planning.
Brezhnev and others have shown interest in giv-
ing the 25th congress--probably Brezhnev's last--a
special character that would put their stamp on the
party future.
Brezhnev, until this year, was urging the ap-
proval of a 15-year economic plan (1976-90). The
drafting of such a plan would present planners with
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horrendous technical problems and engage the top
leaders in political controversy. (The idea may have
been dropped; at least it has been mentioned publicly
by a Soviet leader only once this year, and that one
reference was censored out of Pravda.)
Brezhnev is also on the public record with a
promise that a draft of a new constitution would be
published in time for the 25th congress.
The congress will be asked to approve a new five
year plan (1975-80). It may take up other unfinished
business like the proposed reorganization of manage-
ment in both industry and agriculture.
Each of these matters has implications for for-
eign and domestic policies, and bureaucratic empires
are at stake. Reaching agreement in the Politburo
will not be easy, and Brezhnev, the chairman of the
board, will have a busy fall.
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Soviets Mount Anti-Sakharov Campaign
The Soviet media campaign condemning the Nobel
peace award to Andrey Sakharov picked up steam yes-
terday with the first domestic press blast at the
dissident physicist. The attack by the writers
union weekly Literary Gazette, which was given of-
ficial emphasis by its distribution through Tass,
called Sakharov a "hater of peace" and his Nobel
award a part of a plot by "imperialist reaction" to
sabotage detente.
The campaign may well reach a crescendo this
weekend, to coincide with the scheduled session in
Copenhagen of an international "Sakharov hearing"
on human rights in the USSR; Moscow has so far been
silent on this event.
The name-calling may also-be laying the ground-
work for either disallowing Sakharov's wish to go to
Oslo, or, if permission is granted, preventing his
return home. Dissident sources in Moscow reportedly
believe that Sakharov, in time, may be offered a
one-way ticket abroad, and that, like exiled writer
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who won the 1970 Nobel lit-
erature prize, he will refuse to go without a
guaranteed return home. So far, the orchestration
of the anti-Sakharov campaign is strikingly similar
to that mounted against Solzhenitsyn five years ago.
The Kremlin's decision on how to handle Sakharov's
case, which is likely to be made at the Politburo
level, will be even more difficult now that prominent,
non-dissident scientist Leonid Kantorovich has been
named co-recipient of the 1975 Nobel prize for eco-
nomics. The leadership may find it perplexing, but
not impossible, to charge the Nobel officials with
playing politics in Sakharov's case, while recognizing
in Kantorovich--a Lenin prize winner--the work of a
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major, establishment scientist. The Nobel peace
prize and the economics prize are to be awarded on
December 10 in Oslo and Stockholm, respectively.
Sakharov, meanwhile, has told Western reporters
that he believes the award will benefit the cause of
human rights in the USSR, and has renewed his call
for a general amnesty for political prisoners. Re-
ferring to the CSCE agreements, Sakharov said that
his Nobel prize should give impetus to an "interna-
tional crusade" for human rights in the Soviet Union.
He added that it would "violate the s irit of detente"
if he were not allowed to an to Ds
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European Communist Conference
Preparations Continuing
Senior European Communist officials, meeting in
East Berlin last week, apparently agreed at a minimum
to keep preparations for a conference of European
parties moving. The brief, vaguely phrased communi-
que suggests, however, that serious differences re-
main to be settled.
In the latest meeting, called after a three-
month recess of the conference preparations, the
party secretaries reportedly discussed a new, shorter
East German draft of the final conference document.
The content of this draft is not yet known, and the
independent-minded parties, such as the Yugoslavs
and Italians, have not yet commented on it. A
shortened document, however, is obviously intended
to eliminate, or at least reduce, areas of controversy
that have bedeviled conference preparations so far.
Perhaps over-optimistically, the party secretaries
have set next month as the target date to complete
work on the concluding document.
In an effort to keep the ball rolling, Moscow
and its allies have resumed their propaganda extoll-
ing the Soviet role as the "nucleus of the socialist
community" and pledging a "successful" European Com-
munist conference that will strengthen communism
everywhere on the basis of "Marxism-Leninism and pro-
letarian internationalism."
This unilateral definition of the conference
purpose, thoroughly unacceptable to the independent-
minded parties, may serve as a substitute for a con-
cluding conference document reflecting Moscow's views.
If Moscow is indeed reconciled to this approach, its
aim-now will be simply to get the conference convened
with as many attendees as possible. The Soviets would
then attempt through unilateral statements by them-
selves and their allies to portray the conclave as a
Soviet triumph and a demonstration of Moscow's pri-
macy in the movement.
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Kebin Speaks Out on
Long-Term Development o Estonia
Estonian party boss Kebin has written an article
in the leading Estonian theoretical journal, Kommunist
Estonii, presenting in a markedly contentious vein his
views on the future economic development of the re-
public. His message seems to be addressed to Moscow.
There is a hint that he is unhappy with the way the
next five year plan is shaping up and concerned that
Estonia's interests may be slighted.
The article was written this spring at a time
when basic guidelines for the next five year plan
were apparently being thrashed out in Moscow. 'The
article was signed for the press on May 22. Three
weeks later, on June 10, the Soviet press reported
that the USSR Council of Ministers had met to approve
a draft outline of the 1976-80 plan. Kebin's article
is the first public intimation that we have seen of
wrangling over the plan, but it is not surprising
the Estonian leader should have been out in front.
He has long been one of the most outspoken of party
officials and other regional leaders have undoubtedly
been engaged--and are probably still engaged--in
similar lobbying efforts behind the scenes.
Kebin's main objective was apparently to justify
higher economic growth rates for Estonia and to make
a case for channeling capital investments into the
light industries and the food industries. This seems
the only explanation for Kebin's extraordinarily
defensive treatment of Estonia's high per capita out-
put and standard of living (along with Latvia, the
highest in the USSR). He goes to such lengths to
play down the significance of these indicators that
he raises the suspicion that officials in Moscow and
elsewhere were citing Estonia's high level of economic
development as a reason for holding down investment
in the republic.
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Kebin argues that the indicators used in the
USSR for evaluating production tend to inflate the
value of the output of precisely those sectors of
the economy that predominate in Estonia. Thus, he
argues, per capita production figures can be mis-
leading. Furthermore, he claims, the structure of
the population in Estonia is not the same as the
average republic. Estonia, for example, has a larger
proportion of able-bodied people. "It is therefore
only natural," he maintains, "that the per capita
production and consumption indicators for Estonia are
somewhat higher than the average for the country as
a whole."
On the subject of the industrial development of
the republic, Kebin comes out strongly against the
construction of any new big enterprises, citing the
labor shortage in the area as the reason. "Such
enterprises," he states, "should be considered only
on an exceptional basis." Here and elsewhere in the
article he treats the local labor shortage as an
immutable fact of life. Nowhere does he suggest
recruiting surplus labor from other republics. This
practice, common in years past, was highly unpopular
among native Estonians.
Kebin also discusses the shale-oil extraction
industry--another controversial matter. Many
Estonians believe that the republic is being forced
to supply neighboring regions, such as Leningrad,
with energy and that its only return is more Rus-
sians to work the mines and irreversible environ-
mental degradation. Kebin states that rising costs
and the rapid depletion of the shale-oil deposits
forced a decision in the 1960s to slow down produc-
tion. His lengthy arguments in favor of that
decision leave the impression, however, that it may
be in danger of coming unstuck, that officials in
Moscow, faced with difficulties in meeting growing
energy demands, may be taking a second look at
Estonia's shale-oil resources.
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"In the more distant future when oil and natural
gas deposits become exhausted," Kebin concedes,
"shale could be used extensively." In the meantime,
he recommends concentrating on research to improve
processing methods. He would apparently also like
to see more of the oil,that is extracted go into
producing fertilizer.
Kebin ends his article on a slightly boastful
note. In the new era of "cost accounting" in the
USSR, he says, Estonia's books are "balanced." The
republic is able to finance its economic develop-
ment out of income created in the republic and the
cost of necessary imports are covered by its exports
to other republics.
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