Anatoly Chernyaev’s 1973 diary (1)

Decay as seen from the Kremlin

The Warsaw Pact in 1973: Rising foreign debt, repression, and unravelling of Stalinist regimes

Konstantin F. Katushev

Senior Soviet bureaucrat Anatoly Chernyaev, in his diary entry dated 4 August 1973, summarises a comprehensive report prepared by Konstantin Katushev [*], then Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, on the situation in the Warsaw Pact countries. Written ahead of a Politburo meeting to be held in Crimea, the report is striking in that it shows how, by the early 1970s, the system in these countries was already decaying from within and beginning to come apart.

The picture that emerges from the report is clear: the so-called “socialist bloc” had become a group of countries held together by military discipline, yet economically bankrupt, politically devoid of legitimacy, and socially fragmented. The material presented below reflects Chernyaev’s summary. Our own interventions are confined solely to the subheadings.

Economy: Socialist rhetoric, cap in hand before the imperialist powers

According to Katushev’s report, the economic situation was dire everywhere. This was not a cyclical fluctuation, but a structural impasse. Even more striking was the fact that almost all the Warsaw Pact countries had accumulated heavy foreign debts vis-à-vis the imperialist powers. Bulgaria and Romania, in particular, stood out as the most extreme cases of this relationship of dependency.

In Poland, financial equilibrium could be maintained only at the cost of internal cuts to national income. The collectivisation of agriculture, meanwhile, had ceased to be a policy objective and had, in practice, been consigned to the dustbin of history. In Chernyaev’s notes, this state of affairs is recorded as a reality not even worth debating.

“The Warsaw Pact - The Reliable Shield of Socialism”, Soviet poster, 1975.

East Germany: Brandt and the crisis of legitimacy

On the moral and political front, the picture was no less unsettling. East Germany was experiencing a kind of ideological paralysis in the face of Willy Brandt’s “peace initiative.” Brandt had become not only a national figure in the eyes of the West, but also -and more alarmingly for the regime- in the eyes of the East German public, even coming to be seen as a bearer of national unity.

The decision to allow West Germans to enter East Germany produced an effect the regime had failed to anticipate: demands by East Germans to travel to West Germany exploded into a mass movement. Refusals of these applications led to open protests. More serious still, senior officials denied travel permits began to resign, while party members handed in their membership cards. The regime was disintegrating not only on the streets, but within its own ranks.

Bulgaria: The National Question and the impotence of the Stalinist regime

In Bulgaria, incompetence, nepotism, and moral decay had become systemic features of the regime. Yet the truly explosive issue was the national question: Turks, “half-Turks”, Macedonians, and Roma were subjected to severe repression. The practices of local authorities triggered violent clashes, while demands for mass migration to Turkey were steadily rising.

Todor Zhivkov’s suggestion that Bulgaria should be transformed into a Union Republic of the USSR as a way out of this crisis amounted to an explicit admission of the centre’s helplessness. To the Kremlin’s ear, this sounded not like the voice of a sovereign “fraternal party”, but rather that of a peripheral state slipping out of control.

Anti‑Sovietism and ideological decay

In Poland and Hungary, anti-Soviet sentiment and nationalism were clearly on the rise. Yet ideological decay was not confined to Europe. The case of Mongolia showed how cadres “civilised” by the Soviet model had become alienated from their own society. These layers had turned into a stratum that fed on the system from within while holding its social environment in contempt.

The leadership crisis in Mongolia embodied this decay. Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal was, in everyone’s eyes, spent; yet his refusal to relinquish office locked the system into paralysis. Chernyaev’s verdict in his notes was merciless: “A circus.”

Hungary: A worn-out balancer

János Kádár’s two attempts to resign exposed the hollowness of the myth of the “stable Hungarian model.” Kádár was both ill and spent; the task of reconciling the pro-Soviet and nationalist-liberal cliques within the government had become an intolerable burden. The issue was taken directly to Leonid Brezhnev.

Czechoslovakia: Full shelves, hollow loyalty

In Czechoslovakia, “normalisation” existed only at the level of appearances. Shops were full, yet reserves had been exhausted and heavy industry had ground almost to a standstill. Society had withdrawn from politics, cultivating a silent but deep-seated contempt for the regime.

Young people who joined the Party were immediately ostracised; creative intellectuals collectively ignored those in power. Students lay entirely beyond the Party’s reach. The Church had re-emerged as a public force. The Politburo was divided. Gustáv Husák had taken to drink and was a weak organiser; even his supposed unity with Vasil Biľak, Moscow’s favourite, was no more than a façade.

From left to right — Zhivkov, Ceausescu, Gierek, Kádár, Husák, Brezhnev, Honecker, Katushev, Tsedenbal, and Gromyko (Crimea, 1973).

Conclusion: A Centre that postpones rather than resolves the crisis

Anatoly Chernyaev’s diary summary of Konstantin Katushev’s report makes it clear that, by 1973, the Warsaw Pact countries were grappling with severe economic difficulties and had entered a phase of political disintegration. Economic bankruptcy, the erosion of ideological conviction, and social and political alienation could no longer be concealed, even in reports prepared explicitly for the highest strata of the Stalinist bureaucracy at the centre. Yet the Stalinist regime -and its nerve centre in the Kremlin- incapable of resolving this deepening crisis, sought merely to keep it in check through delay and repression.

[*] Konstantin F. Katushev (1927-2010) served for an extended period during the Brezhnev era as Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee responsible for relations with the socialist countries (1968-1977). As such, inter-party relations with the Warsaw Pact and Comecon countries fell directly under his remit.

Source: Anatoly S. Chernyaev, Diary of Anatoly Chernyaev (1973), trans. Anna Melyakova, ed. Svetlana Savranskaya, pp. 55–56.