861.2423/11–41849: Airgram
The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Barbour) to the Secretary of State
A–1043. The Embassy considers it a mistake to evaluate the effect on Soviet intentions of Soviet ability to produce an atomic explosion primarily in terms of a Soviet “inferiority complex”. This point of view crops up so frequently (e.g. Depciragam October 4, 1949, 11:20 a. m.1) that seems to deserve brief comment.
It is doubtless true that many Russians have at various times felt their country inferior to the west in certain respects, and it is not unlikely that this feeling has occasionally expressed itself in exaggeratedly aggressive behavior, as “inferiority complexes” are said to do. But the persons who decide Soviet policy today are a Georgian who has been at the pinnacle of power for 25 years, plus his immediate entourage. These men now govern a state which has only one equal in the world, and control a world communist network which, among other things, has recently prospered in China. The idea that they suffer decisively from a sense of inferiority as late as September, 1949, is not plausible. Consequently the suggestion that adding the atom to their arsenal has alleviated their “inferiority complex” is less than controlling. In the Embassy’s opinion, they have merely revised upward—but not very greatly—their estimate of their relative strength in the world, and will alter correspondingly the reach, force and timing of their diplomatic and other moves.
- Not printed.↩