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244 Document No. 10: Proposal from georgy Shakhnazarov to the CPSU for a Partial Soviet Troop Withdrawal from the ČSSR March 1987 This provocative memorandum shows the essential role played by key reformers— top aides to Gorbachev—in thinking beyond conventional notions and ultimately (but not immediately) seeing their ideas put into action. Here, Shakhnazarov urges Gorbachev to announce unilateral Soviet troop withdrawals from Czechoslovakia during his upcoming April 1987 trip to Prague. The memo reads like a debater’s brief, taking each possible point of objection and arguing against it, finding every distinction between the Czechoslovak case and those of East Germany or Poland where force reductions at this time are unthinkable. The proposal also emphasizes the public relations and political gains to be had from such an action, and uses remarkable phrases such as: “Soviet troops are being kept in the ČSSR, for the most part, as a remnant of an empire and out of habit.” However, Gorbachev was not yet ready to accept this advice from Shakhnazarov, who at the time was not a formal adviser to the party leader (he was promoted to that position in early 1988), but a first deputy head of the CC Socialist Countries Department. What is new here is the notion of Moscow taking unilateral action to lower its military profile at a time when back-and-forth proposals for mutual NATO and Warsaw Pact troop reductions (including a Gorbachev speech in April 1986, a Warsaw Pact appeal in June 1986 for a 25 percent decrease on both sides, and NATO’s acceptance in December 1986 of specific talks) are producing only negotiations, not progress. Shakhnazarov’s own concern is how to advance reform in Czechoslovakia and strengthen the progressives in the party there. Gorbachev’s speech in Czechoslovak capital on April 10, 1987, would ultimately propose no such withdrawals, and would avoid any reinterpretation of the Prague Spring of 1968. Shakhnazarov’s idea of unilateral cuts—and not only in Czechoslovakia—would have to wait until the Soviet leader’s December 1988 United Nations speech. It seems advisable to assign the USSR Ministry of Defense to look into the question of withdrawing a substantial number of Soviet troops from the ČSSR and to generate proposals concerning M.S. gorbachev’s visit to that country, which is being planned for spring 1987. By announcing a withdrawal agreement with our Czechoslovak colleagues during that visit, we would be investing this matter with major political significance . The political weight of the visit and the decision to withdraw troops would each increase the other’s impact on the world community. The desirability of such a serious political act at precisely this moment is dictated by a range of broad considerations. Firstly, it would substantiate M.S. gorbachev’s statement at the X PUWP Congress in summer 1986 in which he said that Soviet troops stationed in other Melyakova book.indb 244 2010.04.12. 16:20 245 countries are not there indefinitely. This could fundamentally undermine attempts by Western reactionary circles to present that statement, which signaled a major turning point in the approach to the military-strategic situation in Europe, as a propaganda trick. The seriousness of our desire to achieve a breakthrough in new thinking in European politics would be significantly emphasized by a decision to withdraw troops from the ČSSR. The current political phase is marked by increasing pressures on the European track of our policies. Those Western circles which oppose disarmament are trying to play the disparity card on issues of weapons and armed forces between the Warsaw Treaty and NATO; they are building up resistance to our nuclear arms reductions program on that basis. Considering these conditions, the proposed troop withdrawal would undermine the validity of their tactics. Judging by an array of signs it is possible to say that Western reactionary forces are seriously apprehensive about the Soviet Union taking any such steps. Specific evidence of this is the concept they propagate that any withdrawal of Soviet troops from European socialist countries is called “the ousting of the Soviet Union” from those countries. In the political sense, the decision to withdraw troops would to some extent make up for our above-mentioned refusal to extend the unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing. The peace movement in Western Europe would have a new, persuasive argument. From the point of view of Soviet–Czechoslovak relations, the proposed act would be very important and timely. In the country itself, the withdrawal of...

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