85. Memorandum From the Director of Intelligence and Research (Cumming) to the Secretary of State1
SUBJECT
- Intelligence Note: Significance of Zhukov Ouster
The ouster of Marshal Zhukov is in all probability the Party’s rebuff of efforts on the part of Zhukov and perhaps other professional military leaders to reduce the influence of the Party apparatus in the armed forces. In April 1956, Zhukov publicly criticized the quality of political indoctrination in the armed forces and asserted the pre-eminent role of the military commander. Opposition to political interference has been longstanding [Page 181] among both career officers and men of the Soviet armed forces.
Evidence is lacking that Zhukov posed any present threat to Khrushchev’s position of dominance in the Party Presidium. Zhukov is not known to have harbored ambitions beyond the military sphere. Even the announcement of his ouster carried no suggestion that he aspired to greater political power. Unlike Beriya and the leaders expelled last June, Zhukov was not charged with an attempt to seize power. He was charged, however, with fostering, largely within the military, a Zhukov “cult of personality.” There is already the apparent beginning of a campaign, kicked off by First Deputy Minister of Defense Konev, to disparage Zhukov’s abilities as a military strategist and theorist.
The insinuation that Zhukov favored an “adventurist” foreign policy is unsupported by any known facts. This vague charge has so far not been further developed in Soviet propaganda. If Zhukov represented an “adventurist” force in Middle Eastern policy, he might have been expected to remain in Moscow during the height of the crisis instead of visiting the Balkans. The slackening of Soviet alarmist talk on the Middle East, though coincidental with the Zhukov Ouster, has been gradual and can be better explained by factors other than the Zhukov Ouster.
Although related primarily to internal affairs, the ouster is not likely to produce any significant domestic innovations. The Party apparatus has now followed its demonstrations of supremacy over the secret police and the economic bureaucracy with an act designed to underline a similar primacy over the military. The ouster from the top leadership of so popular a figure as Zhukov may produce some resentment in both military and civilian ranks, but this should cause the regime no serious problem. The elimination of Zhukov, whose prestige exceeded his real power, is not likely to enhance materially Khrushchev’s already well established position of dominance.
While it is questionable that Zhukov ever played a determining role in the formulation of Soviet foreign policy, Moscow may nevertheless now consider it expedient to counter foreign inferences that Zhukov’s removal portends a further stiffening in Soviet attitudes and a greater willingness to court war. Recent Soviet achievements in the rocket and guided missile fields and evidence of an increasingly aroused Western response to recent Soviet challenges could in any case evoke a reinvigorated “coexistence” drive by Moscow. The desire to undercut Western expectations of a more bellicose Soviet posture could now be an important additional motive for accentuating Soviet appeals for a détente.
The timing of the move against Zhukov remains puzzling, in the absence of evidence that the army-Party issue had grown so acute as to [Page 182] require immediate resolution. His absence in the Balkans apparently served as a convenient occasion to organize the case against him.
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, 761.00/11–457. Official Use Only.↩