71. Editorial Note
On September 19, N.A. Bulganin, Chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers, wrote to President Eisenhower on the subject of disarmament. Bulganin’s letter reviewed the discussions on disarmament at the Geneva “Summit” Conference and in the subcommittee of the United Nations Disarmament Commission, and he expressed his disappointment at the lack of progress in the subcommittee negotiations. Bulganin then wrote:
“I must frankly say that the delay is occasioned to a considerable degree by the fact that the members of the subcommittee so far do not know the position of the representative of the United States with regard to those provisions which we had all the grounds to consider as [Page 203] agreed. As is known, the representative of the United States completely put aside the questions of reduction of the armed forces, of armaments, and prohibition of atomic weapons, having expressed the desire to discuss first of all and mainly your proposal concerning the exchange of military information between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. as well as of the mutual exchange of aerial photography of the territories of both countries. In this manner the impression is left that the entire problem of disarmament is being confined by him to these proposals.”
Bulganin went on to review Eisenhower’s proposals presented at the Geneva Conference on aerial photography and the mutual exchange of information on their armaments and armed forces, and he set forth reservations and objections to these proposals. He then advanced suggestions on the levels of armed forces and the prohibition of nuclear weapons, and he renewed the Soviet proposition contained in its proposal submitted to the subcommittee of the Disarmament Commission on May 10 for the creation of control posts at key transportation facilities “designed to prevent dangerous concentration of troops and combat equipment on large scale and thereby remove the possibility of sudden attack by one country against another.”
Bulganin’s letter was delivered by Soviet Chargé Striganov to Acting Secretary Herbert Hoover, Jr., on September 20 for transmittal to the President, who was then vacationing in Colorado. The original of this letter (in Russian) is in Department of State, Central Files, 600.0012/9–1955. The English translation was sent in to President Eisenhower in telegram 510, September 20. (Ibid., 330.13/9–1955) For text of the letter, see Department of State Bulletin, October 24, 1955, pages 644–647, or Documents on Disarmament, 1945–1959, volume I, pages 516–521.
Eisenhower suffered a heart attack on September 24 and therefore sent only an interim reply to Bulganin on October 11. (Ibid., pages 528–529) He did not send a more complete reply until March 1, 1956; for text, see Department of State Bulletin, March 26, 1956, pages 514–515, or Documents on Disarmament, 1945–1959, volume I, pages 593–595. Even so, Bulganin’s September 19 letter and Eisenhower’s October 11 response initiated an exchange of many letters on disarmament between the two heads of government which continued through March 1958, when Nikita S. Khrushchev succeeded Bulganin as Chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers.