Mr. Khrushchev: Build This Wall!

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 17, 2001 | by Hans S. Nichols

Ten years after the failed military coup in the former Soviet Union, and in the wake of the 40th anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall, new evidence has emerged about the origins of the Berlin link in the Iron Curtain. Researchers at the Woodrow Wilson Center's Cold War International History Project have revealed that an aggressive East German leadership persistently pressured a reluctant Soviet apparatus into building the wall.

As early as 1952 the East Germans were pestering their Soviet uncles to help them stem the tide of their fleeing population by closing the border to West Germany. But for nine years the Soviets scoffed at the request, claiming that it was "politically unacceptable and grossly simplistic." Instead, the Soviets counseled the febrile East German comrades to adopt policies that would encourage their citizens to remain in their home country.

But by the summer of 1961 it became clear that East Germany needed to do more to keep its captive people from emigrating. The Soviet ambassador cabled home that the East Germans were "exercising impatience and a somewhat unilateral approach to this problem." Fearful that the East Germans would act on their own and close the border, the Soviets gave the project a pre-emptive stamp of approval.

"The biggest surprise of these new documents," says Hope Harrison, a professor at George Washington University and author of the forthcoming book Driving the Soviets Up the Wall, "is the aggressive way in which the East German leader Walter Ulbricht pressured and manipulated a much more cautious, reluctant Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev." Khrushchev, cautious?