ffiNFIDENTI~
-
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 
DIRECTOR OF INTELLIGENCE AND RtSEARCH 

I~B-80, t·1ay 21, 1968
1 

'lb : 'Ihe Secretary 
'Ihrough: 
From : ~-Tlnnas L. Hughes~l.~ 

Subject: 'lbe Soviet-East Ceman Berlin Policy: 
to Act 

'Ihe recent East Gennan noves to restrict acress to Berlin are oart
J.: 

of a broader GDR effort to guarantee to itself the trappings of sovereignty and independent existence. 'Ihis paper reviews pressures working on Ulbricht to secure his East German state and the reoord of the past ~years in this oontext. 
ABSTRACT 
'1he latest series of East Ceman infringerrents an access to Berlin raises the q~stion of Soviet-East Cennan rrotives in stirring up trouble in Berlin at this particular rronent. Our analysis of the sequences of events since ~cerrber, whim has culminated thus far in bans on ~ categories of Ceman travellers between the FRG and Berlin, leads us to 
tl.Le follONing oonclusions: 
(1) A "new phase" of the old GDR carrpaign to decide the fate of 

Berlin is underway. 
(2) Unlike earlier such "phases", this one is not acccrnpanied by hints of an irnf:ending crisis in Gerrrany, or even by suggestions of .irrpend­ing initiatives on European securitv. 'ltle IBSR' s support for the GDR neusures has not gone mud1 b2yond lip service, and the Soviets seem uru:iou,.... 
to darrpen any suggestion of tension. 
·r his n•port wa~· produced liy thf' Burt«•u 
of Int1.Jlq.?;1•nci> and R«<>l•<irch. AsidP 


GROUP 3 

fr(lm norm<il sul.istantivP PX< hangt• with 
Downgraded at 12 year.

otht•r ·•~Pncw<> at tht• working levPI, 
it has not been coordinated p)sewhere. 

t;-itervals; not 
!-rt'Ttt:l+'r ·1,-• ,:i,..,..,.,....,,..t~.f,..A 


.. 



--CONFIDrN:PIAL · 
-l.J. ­

(3) 11\Jeither the East C':ermans nor the Soviets sha.v any sign~ of wishing to push matters to the point where oounterrreasures are likel_i, even though the traditional counterrreasures have rrcanwhilc lost much of 
their effectiveness. 
(4) 
Nevertheless, Ulbricht is probably under considerable rressure to act new to secure and guarantee East C£i:rnany's sovereignty and independent existenre. Realist that he is, he is aware: 

(a) 
that the t"RG' s "Eastern Policy" may eventually oorrpletcly undercut the GDR's role in Europe, and that 

(b) cdlesion within tl-ic Warsaw Pact is crumbling. 


(5) 
Ulbricht's recent actions suggest he is na.v ronvinced c1C will be unable to hold off these trends much longer, and he is therefore carpelled to cb what he can nCM to protect the East Cennan regim:!. 

(6) Additianal incentives on Ull1richt to act nCJ1.1 are: 


(a) 
the calculation that if he is to act at all, he must <b so before the LE extracts itself from its Vietnam preoccupation, and 

(b) 
rerent devcl~ts in Czechoslovakia, whid1 have only ailied to his fears for the future of his oonrept of n ccmnunist ( · nnan state. 

(7) 
H::>SC.Olv' llu.s a mrta.in synip<1U1y for Ulbrid1t' s uroble.rns 0nd i ... : aloo in nc~c . of his sup}XJrt within the Warsaw Pact and the oo.rmumist rroverrent. And the Soviets sec tle sarrc tenpting ooportunities on the Berlin scr->-DC ut the noncnt--what witn signs of Allied clisaqreerrent over German policy, o:ntcntions within the FRG coalition governm?..nt, nonular disord2rs in Berlin and West Cennany and t.B distractions elsewhere. 






-ll.l ­

{ 8) Ho..vever, the present Soviet lea&=rship seem.s to have learned caution from its predecessors' record of miscalculations on Berlin an<i does not at this JX)int give the inpression of being willinq to engage in protx;s which could lead to deeper entanglerrents. 
(9) As a result, Moscnw is assessing what the traffic \vill bear. Ulbricht will probably be allCMed to cx:mtin~ garnering what he can of the opportunities of the rronent--but not to the point where serious tensi01! 11\ClY arise. 



-OONFIDENTIAL 

Ulbricht forecast something of his intentions on December I when he told the East German parliament it would be "the ceaseless en­deavor of the Volkskanmer and the government of the GDR to insure the liquidation, step by step, of even the last remnants of World War II which are being used by the imperialist Western powers to hann the GDR and its citizens." However, he also felt c0111pelled to warn his colleague• in the SED that "for the time being" there would be limitations on what the GDR could liquidate . He specifically noted that Article 9 of the country's 1964 treaty with the USSR still applied ("The High Contr cting Parties will regard West Berlin as an independent political unit"), and that West Berlin was still subject to an occupation regime-­his implication was clear that where the occupation regime and four power agr e:menta were concerned, East German freedom of maneuver was subject to certain restriction1 . 
These restrictions did not , however, deter Ulbricht from claiming at th same tirae that West Berlin was "situated on the territory of the GDR and legally belongs to i t." The thesis itself was hardly new, for the GDR has cherished and promoted this assumption since 1949; still, the fact that Ulbricht chose t o voice it at this particular point sug­gest& he was initiating a new phase in the SED' s twenty-year crusade to decide the fate of West Berlin. (Ulbricht never retracted his re­mark, despite the furor i t aroused in the West--but he has not repeated it since either.) 
The Record 
'l1le sequence of events si nce the beginning of December tends to bear out the thesis of a ''new phase" in an old campaign. 
December 8--the Soviet Government issued a formal statement denouncing the West German NDP and the alleged revival of neo-NaziiSl'D in the l'RG . 
D c ber 12--GDR Interior Minister Dickel sent a letter to West Berlin Mayor Schuetz protesting NDP aci tvity in West Berlin and demanding th t the p rty be b nned and its activi ties prohibited in Berlin. 
January 6--th USSR present ed an official memorandum to the F deral Chancellor, outlining Soviet views on Berlin and accusing the FRG of attempting to violat e the international agreements governing 
Berlin' legal status. 
S1 ultaneoualy the GDR stepped up its press campaign against the FRG and ccused Bonn speci f i cally of fanning a new Berlin criaia. 
---OONFIDENTIAL' 




"'GONi'lBBNTIAL­
-2­

January 29--SED Politburo member Hager charged that a renazified FRG was again attempting to incorporate West Berlin which was an "occupation territory of the Four Powers." He also accused Bonn of trying to apply "salami tactics" to West Berlin. 
February 13--the Soviet Ambassador to the GDR Abrasimov sent a note to the three Allied Ambassadors calling their attention to alleged ill gal FRG encroachments on West .Berlin. 
February 15--Ulbricht explained, as he had in 1958, that the We tern powers had destroyed the original four-power administration of Germany and Berlin and thus undermined the legal foundation of their right to participate in the administration of all Berlin. He then added that the present situation in West Berlin "not acceptable" to the GDR. 
February 24--the Soviet Foreign Ministry st aged a fonnal press conference in Moscow to denounce the rise of neo-Naziism in the Federal Republic. 
March 4--Soviet .ltmba1sador Abrasimov issued a publi c statement 1n which he claimed that the Federal Bundestag had no right to hold its cormnittee meetings in West Berlin (As it was then doing, March 4-8). There were concurrent indications of Soviet preparations fo-..· possible air harassment around Berlin but nothing actually dev•loped, perhaps be ause of poor weather conditions. 
March 11--GDR Minister Dickel published an order banning travel in the GDR or through it to Berlin of FRG citizens who were member of the NDP. 
March 13--Abra imov  sent another  l etter to the Allied ambassadors,  
thi  ti e  calling their att ention  to alleged illegal NDP activities in  
We t  erlin.  

rch 13--Ulbricht a serted that no Federal Minister had the right to carry on offici l ctivities in We t ~rlin nor did any Federal civil servant or Federal author i t y, i ncluding Bundeawehr personnel. He further warn d it would be a "misfortune for We t Berlin" if attempts re ade to xt d the Federal Emergency Laws to Berlin. 
March 15--Pravda published an article by GDR Foreign Minister Winzer in which Winzer lleged that FRG policy was aggressively moving against t h GDR in " 11 fi lda--economic, cultural, transportation, postal and 
c i cation ." 




-3­

April 11--r dical student leader R.udi Dutschke was shot in Berlin, and in the sub quent atudent rioting, the West Berlin SED for the first time op ly participated in the demonatrationa. 
April 13--the GDR Interior Minister announced a temporary ban the travel of all high-ranking FRG officials and ministers to West B rlin through GDR territory. 
April 26--GDR border guards prevented West Berlin Mayor Schuetz from driving to Bonn from Berlin, specifically because he was president of the RG Bundesrat.* 
'lbe Constitution In A Hurry 
Parallel to his moves on the Berlin front, Ulbricht also hastily pushed through a new constitution f or the so-called German Democratic Republic. The idea of a new German constitution had first been broached at the 7th SED Congress in .April 1967, a month after Brezhnev had spoken 
bout the need for a new Soviet constitution at the 23rd CPSU Congress. However, all talks about a new Soviet constitut ion stopped soon after, nor was anythiing more heard of one for the GDR until Ulbricht sudd ly announced, on December 1 , t he creati on of an East German stitutional drafting commission . Within eight weeks, the constitutional c ission bad produced a draft text (published February 2) and public 
*A le publicized series of East-German-Soviet and Warsaw Pact consul­tation took place within this same time-frame and probably played part in developing the scenario. Whole coteri es including East Germans, were in Moscow repeatedly during November 1967 for the 50th anniversary celebrations. December 11-12, Ulbricht lead another delegation to Moscow, reportedly for long-tenn trade talks . J nuary 15-16, Brezhnev, Kosygin and Podgorny suddenly appeared in Ea t Berlin for consultations on matters of "mutual interest". 
In addition, there were several gatherings of Warsaw Pact members to di cu 8 issu of mutual concern, but which for the East Germat};meant pri rily how international relationships affected the "German Questi on" . Feb ry 26-27. th Wraw Pact deputy foreign ministers met for confidential di cu ions in st B rlin ju t prior to the opening of the Budapest conf rence of comnuni t parties. March 23, leaders of the Pact states ex­cept or nia, gather d in Dr esden to assess Czechoslovak developments. 
--GONFIDENTIA't­


COMFiftEN'f'IAL 
-4 ­

discussions of its prov1s1ons were bein g drummed up throughout the country. On March 21, revised text was distributed and on the 24th, a pl i cite on the con titution was announced for April 6. 
On April 8 Ulbricht promulgated his new constitution, a peculiar document with a political polemic for a preamble and emphasizing sweeping principles rather than concrete legal provisions. Evidently there was considerable debate within the regime, and possibly with the Soviets, over some of its formulations. There were rumors the beginning of January that the Eas t Germans intended to use the con­stitution to complete the legal i ncorporation of East Berlin into the GDR and to set the legal basis f or their claim to West Berli n as well (as Ulbricht had hinted De cember 1). The final wording is ambiguous in this regard, and certain changes of wording made in the second draft text of the constitution concerning voti ngs rights of Volkskammer members could indicate Soviet intervention, or merely second thoughts about pushing these ambitions too far. 
A similar uncertainty as to the exact definition of the relation­ship between West Germany and the GDR also emerged during the same time period. Politburo member Albert Norden asserted at a press con­ference on December 18 that the GDR could consider "establishing diplomatic relations with the West German government" only after Bonn settled its debts with the GDR. The reference to "diplomatic relations" was deleted from the published text of the conference (Neues Deutschland, December 19) after West German sources pounced on the phrases as an effort to class the FRG as a foreign country, or "abroad, 11 f or the GDR. Ulbricht returned to the demand that the two German states "recognize each other diplomatically" only on February 26, but then thi s passage, too, was deleted from the official publi shed version of his speech (Neues Deutschland, February 27), although a minor Berlin paper did print it. 
Passages in th draft constitutional text reflect this same un­
ertainty. The original draft mentioned in one paragraph the rights of GDR cit·z ns traveling "abroad. 11 The wording was altered in tlw s cond draft to traveling "outside GDR borders.u 
In any cv nt, th evident confusion and Ulbricht's haste wi.tb the 
nt·re •xercise and his resort to the plebiscite instrument remained un xplained. The re 1 imc obvious l y wished to be able to demonstrate popu ar acceptance of the "separate and sovereign" East German state (not surprisingly, a 94.5 percent "yes " vote was registered), but even 


•COl'lFIB~lA:b­
rt 
::r 


-5 ­

here, a more measured, less hectic approach would have served that aim more convincingly. For the moment , it can only be assumed the SED leadership was for some reason hi ghly anxious to have its con­stitutional ploy completed and registered as soon as possible, 
regardless  of the fine points  in i ts  substance.  
Nailing Down Loose Ends  
At  the  same  time,  the SED  regime  gives  the  impression of being  

in a similar hurry to assert and register what prerogatives it can with regard to West Berlin and its ties with the outside world. When Ulbricht spoke in December about "remnants of World War II" which allegedly "harmed the GDR and its citizens," he was obviously referring, as he had often before, both to the modalities of Berlin access and to residual interzonal facilities--travel documentation, posts, telecommunications and t rade--which are still to some extent under Allied control or regulated by procedures developed under Allied aegis. In practically all other areas, apart from the separate existence of West Berlin itself (which he admitted could not be touched ltfor t he time beingit), the GDR has managed to make good its claim to sovereignty. 
With respect to the residual interzonal facilities, in the fall of 1966 the GDR had suddenly begun to demand large and very specific i n­demnities from Bonn for alleged indebtedness contracted by the FRG for postal and telecommunication services rendered by the GDR as far back as 1949 (the "debts" Norden mentioned on December 18). GDR officials have since repeated these demands periodically, the postal one again in April 1968. Despite threat , however, the regime made no attempt to retaliate for nonpayment other t han to withdraw at the beginning of 1967 from an Allied Working Group in Berlin which handled inter­zonal postal accounts. (Nor has i t as yet agreed to Bonn-East Berlin negotiations on the alleged indebtedness unless these be conducted at ministerial lev 1 on a formal state-to-state basis.) Periodically the GDR also mounts a propaganda campaign against the Allied Travt.l Office (ATO) which controls documentation for East German travel to Western countries, and attempts to bypass the ATO's jurisdiction. To da te, 11owever, the Soviets have not chosen to back any of these East German efforts to shak off Allied cont rols wi th more than minimum moral suppor , nor have they ev n pushed r eally seriously for GDR membership in the United Nations or other international organs. 






-GONF!l)ew!M:; 
-6 ­
Air Access 
At the 7th SED Congress (April 1967) Ulbricht had treated the matter of Berlin access at length, but on that occasion he sur­prisingly discussed only the question of air access. He stressed the absence of any international agreements covering civil air traffic to Berlin, repeated charges that the air corridors which he said had been temporarily made available" to supply the Allied garrisons were being misused, and claimed that the GDR together with the Soviet Union would be willing to conclude "correct" contracts with the US, British and French for the use of GDR air space for civil air traffic to and :f'ran Berlin. He also added a willingness to nego­tiate similar contracts for traffic on the GDR railroads. 
Ulbricht's emphasis on the air corridors at a foI'llTl such as a Party Congress seemed peculiar at the time since the issue was then a relatively dormant one; it has still not been pushed to the fore­front since with any obviousness (although there was the hint of possible harassm nt at the t~ of the March Bundestag caIJnittee week a year later) • There were reports late in 1967 that Soviet civil aviati officials were in Berlin negotiating with GDR authorities but no indication that these talks related to Berlin corridor traffic. 
Ulbricht made no other references to Berlin access at the Con­gress, except to reaffinn his willingness to guarantee Berlin's status as an independent unit contractually, "including transit rights" through the GDR to it. Since Ulbricht's speeches at SED Congresses tend to be programmatic guidelines for the caning period, it can only be ass he expected then to be moving t<Mard contractual arrange­ments on air access in the foreseeable future. 
Ulbr cht's Road Narr<:Ms 
Yet the ly mov s Ulbricht has made on access since the Congress involv d G rman ci lian road traffic, and these in turn represented marginal action. They did not block access (this would risk cotmter­
as s fran t West) but sought to use special categ;ories of 
rsons to assert Fast German rights over civilian access . 

Ulbricht's options with respect to Berlin access modalities have of couroe contracted. He has long since exhausted the easy possi­bilities an n requires strong arrl active Soviet backing for an._v se o moves invo ving existing procedures. His two latest measures --ba:rTing NDP nenbers fran the access routes, and "for the time 







-1 ­

b , " high F 1 officials as well --are probably calculated to be about hat the traffic today might bear. In addition the "for the 
" J

time bei qual1f'1.cation on the latest measure suggests less than wholehearted Sovi t conviction about the ploy -and Ulbricht unques­tionably coordinates an.v move on access in advance with Moscow. 
Both new regulations were formulated as orders of the GDR Minister of the Interior, more in the nature of administrative regulations than fonnal laws. Thus they can more easily be rescinded, adjusted or reinterpreted. (Furthennore, they were forecast well in advance to test the air, the NDP ban in Dickel's letter to Schuet~ December 12 and the ban on Federal officials by Ulbricht March 13 • ) Neither measure per se entails much in the way of actual risks and if nothing else, probably are expected by the East Gennans to have useful repercussions a est Berlin morale even if they are eventually rescinded. Only if the ne restrictions are allc:wed to stand unchallenged does the element of risk arise, for the East Germans will then as usual be tempted to up the ante. (As it is, they have ranained more or less unchallenged thus far and already the rLID10r is being spread in Berlin that passport and visa requirenents for West Germans travelling to and f'ran Berlin 
are soon to be instituted.) 
Why All the Hurry? 
'!he specific moves made by the East Germans to exercise further control over access modalities to Berlin are easily explainable in themselves. 'lhe question at the manent is why the East Gennans are moving nCM to heat up the Berlin question and why the simultaneous spurt of legal activity to establish GDR sovereignty whereever it can be registered? Such spurts of East Gennan legalism in the past (as in 1952-5!t, in 1958 and in 1961-62) usually related to sane change, anticipated or penaing, in the status quo of the period. And Ulbricht has long been cognized a.<> a master of anticipating the inevitab1e and curing his own interests well in advance of it. He is also adept at exploiting div rsions elsewhere as opportunities to secure his nt rests neatly and quickly. His tactics in the past have been dicta d not only by his CMn mastery of strataP-:em, but also by his ~ ar for the GDR' s vulnerabillty in the face of any change -and probably also by an intrinsic distrust of the permanence of the Soviet c tm nt to East G rmany. There are no signs he has any reason to 
think differently today . 



-g ­

Despite his fear of change, Ulbricht is also realist enough to recognize that the prevailing pattern of East-West relations in Europe is already shifting -much of his recent diplanacy has been directed simply to slowing down the shift or channeling it in di ctions more palatable to GDR long-term interests. His rush to legality at the manent, however, does not seem to be accanpanied by concurrent hints of :impending camrunist initiatives in Europe. There are no signs of Soviet interest in chanciQ?; a crisis in Germany or ve o Soviet interest in raising tension in Berlin --rather the opposite. Nor has there been any recent evidence of concrete Soviet interest in pushing for a European settlement, for a negotiated resolution of the Gennan question, or any other grandiose security ccnference-type entures. 
Search for a Safe Rapprochement 
On the other hand, since at least mid-1966 (the Bucharest ~et­ing of the Warsaw Pact), the East European states have been struggling, 

other things, to find IIDdus operandi acceptable to the whole Warsaw Pact for deve oping a gradual and phased rapprochement with Western Europe, one which did not endanger the carmunist regimes but 
hich at the same time would allCYtl than to reap the advantages of at least clos r econanic ties with the West. Each of the East European states has pursued its CMn approach i n this matter for its CMn specific reasons, and ous approaches often clashed with one another. 'Ihe Bucharest gathering seems to have produced a temporary tmderstand­1ng; by th fall of 1966 even Ulbricht gave the iJlt>ression of being manentarily reassured that the GDR's continued separate existence would not be thre te d by this particular problem. (It was in September 1966 that w for the first t1me able to announce publlcly that Ge reun1 cation was out of the question for the foreseeable fut and, n any event, impossible with the type of governnent whic 
h n 1 ted n We t Gennany, and it was i n September that he and Tito agre to ra.i th irrespective legations to anbassy status.) 
'!he collap of the Erhard governnent and its replacement in 
c r 1966 by a CDU-SPD coalition with an active "Ha.stem Polley" 
pears t ave ch d the whole picture, particularly for Ulbricht. 


Ranani ' s s ent d f ction :fran the Pact on th bJe t o dip tic latia th the FRG forced the lint1~-b ction t ly int t e o n. Czechoslovakia, H\ and Bulgaria showe ........,~.....,.,·"t in followi th Rananian ex • 'Ille Karlovy Vary t arties in February 1967 apparently succeeded in 





-') ­

papering over tl1c ( · sput.e for the norrent, w.ith the other Pact nent.:>ers agreeing to hold off on relatioos with tho FRG for the tim:; b::!inq. (CUriously enough, UJbricht in recent ~ks has suddenly begun to reaffirm the validity of tbe Karlovy Vary docurrents as the only guidelines for a pursuit of European 3Ccurity. He did so in a Mos<XM" television intcrviev1 en April 29 and in his Marx anniversary speed1 May 2*) 
* :ceja vu. 'I'he record of Ulbrid1t's behavior durinq the past half y-:-ar, when superirrposed on the divcrs trends vvithin t.1-ie h'arsav-.r Pact anci on the international S<X:!I1e durinq the past year, produces a picture sarenovv reminiscent of the Be..clin cnnplex in the post-\,vall r~riod of 1062. men, as na.v, there was a series of legal enactnents to enhan~ GDH. sovereignty, many of them µrovisos which were registered but never fully implcrrented. 'n1en, too, there was a oonrerted \:.rDI\-Soviet insistanre on the need for a Chanqe \vi.th n..spcct to situation in Berlin--1962 it was the demand that a peare treaty finally l.:e signed by tne enci of the "{ear; today, it is tlio ~ffort to redUoo or ~lirninate FRG ties with l'Jcst 1Jerlin. At tlle sa'lL' tirre, tl ere is a siJnilar absence of concurrent indications of Soviet r1r c:!­paratio~ s for re, l crif!is over Ber l in if oonmunist uem:mds are not ret. 
It was only dft0r tne c'vents of October 1962 in the carib~an tho.t it Lccarre < >parent tl.C Soviets and the GDR may have been calculatinq on exploitinq the clfb8rnath of a successful maneuver in Cuba to persuade till.~ lS of th dvi c ilit of S( rious neqotiations on a new status for Berlin as a mri.litarj z d se )arat.c· and :U1derx~nckmt entity. (Oddly enough, on FE:°'bruary 15 tJlbric11t refcrrc d for the first t.irre in year; to that Sovi(:;t "offer" to negotiate a demilitari zed free city status, clairning that in 1962 such a statuo.> v-10ulc1 '1avc Leen nore to West Berlin's advantaqe than the GI ' '."), but that things l iave d-ianqed sinc::D then. ) 
O\l'CT"SlX c..ulating , one muld therefore hypJtnesiz~~ on a tile rt cx~nt s._ries of uncxnlainca r;o;;, mar ~uvc, · . 
Ln Vietnam. The hast r E;,st G n~u1 ..:! Cfort., tic .:ind tlx k!rlin ;J<.Xmc fall Hithii. LlF" ~.curr" · i Tl\· lits l adinq u1 > t o Hanoi's cccptanc~ of the US otfc.. 
to 	<.ah f rom ap1)tnximatoly Lh" s " tine .:is the ll'PCti t ion of Dien Bien Pnu at Y lC Sanh ill1 in South Vic trlclill during th 'I'~ t holie i1YS. 


;;> r C!t 11c ttcms of l~l1avior, on miqht speculate he ovi ts t.o t rrn.it the GD { to try and .xr>loit what opportunitics r G man s~e at a ti.Ire when the lE could reasonaJly cnrrp ly aosorbcd with developrrcnts in the l·'ar ,e.ast. calculated tnat i1 tne event of a rna-jor ~~orth Vict11ai r.se JC in a position to ta T! sonc locc; 1 a 1vai.taq ~ of t: i • l · ic Soviets WJuld ass ~ Unt o e' . qot ' ""r wc. v t.:10 US would oo lih~.,ly to _ lc..~s cli.strnct1---d sCX>n than previously. 'l'hus, the inoontivc for Uloricn 
o >)()rtunities were both 11.-omisin~1 and also not likcl{ 

to 	1 t. 
--Geff!lDENIIAL­


• 


-10 


GDR Security Blanket 
Ulbricht subsequently attempted t o protect his own interests by concentrating on a four-way alliance with Czechoslovakia, Poland and the USSR and by negotiating a series of bilateral treaties of mutual assistance and cooperation with various members of the Pact . Simultaneously, the USSR moved to open a dialogue ¥tith the FRG, while the other Pact members (aside from Romania) careful ly held the line on diplomatic ties with Bonn. The Brandt-Tsarapkin talks ¥tere in some respects a continuation of earlier Brandt-Abrasimov exchanges but with one important difference--the latter had been a dialogue between the Soviets and the chairman of the West German Social Deoocratic Party; their continuation was an exchange between the Soviets and t he Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister of the FRG. The East Germans evidently were kept ell briefed by the Soviets on the course of the discussions but by the fall of 1967--as the dialogue began to focus specifically on the possibility of an agreement on mutual renunciation of use of force in which the GDR would somehow pa.rticipate--there were signs the East Germans were not convinced they had the whole story. Optimistic accounts of the talks which appeared in the West German press in the fall would have reinforced their suspicions. And adding to their concern about international isolation was the impending resumption of diplomatic relations between Bonn and Belgrade and negotiations on the opening of a Bonn trade mission in Prague. 
In any event, there seem to have been serious East German remonstrations with Moscow about this time and conc..µrrently a noticeable cooling off of Soviet contacts with the FRG and with the Allies in Berlin. Abrasirrov was pointedly not interested. in casual meetings with the Allied ambassador in Berlin at the end of the year, and there was a simultaneous gap i n the substantive exchanges with Tsarapkin in Bonn. (It was just at t his t ime too that there -was another unexplained nuance of change in the GDR-USSR rLla;tion­ship. Som tim around Oc"Cober 1967 the East German leadership stopped r ferring to the Soviet garrisons on their territory as being "t emporarily" ste.tionea. in the GDR. The "temporary" finally reappeared once or twice in April ithout explanation, arter almost a six-month hiatus, but has not been. i:c consi t n ly mployed. The Hungarians, in contrast, have always been consis ent in referring to the Soviet forces in Hungary as "temporarily" stationed there. ) 



_ 11 ­


Th View Since December 
What we have had since December seems to have been an effort to synthesize all the prevailing forces , counterpressures, opportunit.ies and ambitions into specific action which might lead to limited change in the Berlin status quo in favor of GDR. At this point, the aim is an assertion of rlght-:rc:> control accesa rather than to block it. It is a cautiously controlled ploy, focusing on the inviting targets of neo­
~azism and NDP election gains and on that perennial point of friction bet,; en the Allies and the West Gennans, the exact nature of Bonn's -cies with Berlin. It is a ploy cautiously hedged in appeals to legality and to Potsdam--Pravd.a even justifies the East German encroachments on Berlin access as being in defense of Four Power, agreements. 
Moscow is providing the East Germans with propaganda support, but so far has carefully avoided backing them in the diplomatic arena beyond pro-forms gestures. The Soviets seem acutely sensitive to the danger of going too far and thereby engaging countermeasures. Moreover, they appear sensitive to the idea of the FRG's retaliating by holiling out on non­prolifer tion. And, of course, current troubles in Eastern Europe tend to discourag any venture which might contribute to the frictions within the 
Pact. 
Moscow is doubtless assessing what the traffic will bear. Ulbrict will probably continue to be allowed to garner what he can of the opportunities of the moment, but not to t he point of raising tensions in Europe. Alread.y a few sweeteners have been thrown into the pot; the Soviets h ve indicated a certain sympathy for a federal presence in Berlin, at least culturally and economically; US citizens are suddenly being rel ased from East German jails. 
But Ulbricht is under certain compulsions to act for what he obviously consid rs GDR self-preservation, and Ulbrict carries considerable weight in Sovi t councils regardl ss of what the Soviets may think of him personolly or of the Germans in gen r l. Besides, t he opportunities are tempting to the Sovi ts as well--what with evidence of Allied disagreements on German policy, with US distractions elsewher e, with the student violence in Berlin and, of cour e, the ver-present Neo-Nazi issue. In addition, the traditional counterm asures to be feared, such as IZT, have dwindled in importance and effectiveness. Thus we are likely t o see continuing pressures and perhaps new gamb.ts of the sort which assert East German pretentions.