Stalin's General (41 page)

When Zhukov took office as defense minister he faced a myriad of issues but first and foremost was an ongoing program of troop reductions.
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At the end of the Second World War the Red Army was eleven million strong but dropped to three million in the war's aftermath. However, the outbreak of the Cold War in 1947–1948 resulted in an increase to 5.4 million by the early 1950s. After Stalin's death in 1953
that number was cut by 600,000 and in August 1955 Khrushchev announced a further reduction of a similar order. In May 1956 another demobilization of 1.2 million was announced.

During Zhukov's term as defense minister from February 1955 to October 1957 the armed forces were reduced by some two million people. The cuts were made for a mixture of strategic and economic reasons. Zhukov seems to have acknowledged that in the nuclear age fewer conventional forces were necessary due to the deterrent of the atomic bomb, especially since in the mid-1950s the USSR had begun to develop the rocket technology that could guarantee delivery of bombs to distant targets. (In 1957 the Soviets launched Sputnik—the world's first orbital satellite.) “Unlike so many thick-headed types you find wearing uniforms,” recalled Khrushchev, “Zhukov understood the necessity of reducing our military expenditures.”
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Related to these troop reductions were Soviet proposals for arms control and nuclear disarmament. On May 10, 1955, the USSR called on the United Nations to establish an international control agency to supervise significant reductions in armaments and armed forces and to initiate a process leading to the prohibition of nuclear weapons.
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Full implementation of the proposals would have resulted in a Soviet army of 1.5 million troops—a surprisingly small number for a country the size of the USSR. Zhukov was an ardent supporter of the proposals and proved more flexible than Khrushchev in responding to western objections to the Soviet disarmament program. The Americans, for example, demanded that their spy planes be allowed to overfly Soviet territory to verify Soviet compliance with disarmament agreements. Zhukov was prepared to concede this demand if the United States agreed to Soviet aerial inspection of the United States. Some have suggested that Zhukov's motive was purely instrumental—that he expected to get more military intelligence on the Americans than they would get in return. But that underestimates the importance Zhukov attached to achieving nuclear disarmament and the lengths to which he was prepared to go to secure that goal. When Zhukov warned of the devastation that would result from nuclear war it was the heartfelt plea from someone who had seen such large-scale destruction firsthand.

At the same time, running somewhat in contradiction to Soviet efforts
to control the spiraling arms race, was Moscow's decision to establish the Warsaw Pact. This was the Soviet response to the rearmament of West Germany and its admission into NATO in May 1955. This eventuality had been in prospect for several years and the Soviets had waged an extensive campaign for a pan-European collective security treaty to protect all European states and preclude the need for German rearmament, an action designed to counter a supposed Soviet threat to Western Europe. While the Soviets had political and ideological ambitions in Europe—in the long run they wanted to see the spread of communism to the whole continent—they had no military designs. Indeed, they saw themselves as the ones under threat from NATO and the United States.

When the campaign for European collective security failed the Soviets decided to set up the Warsaw Pact, initially not so much a military counterpart to NATO but more as an exemplar of a nonaggressive collective security organization open to all states.
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It was Zhukov and Foreign Minister Molotov who drafted the terms of the “Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance” signed by the Soviets and their communist allies in Eastern Europe in Warsaw in May 1955. Zhukov's involvement in drafting the pact stemmed from the Presidium's decision to establish a joint military command of the signatory states—much like what existed under the umbrella of NATO. In April 1955 Zhukov and Molotov presented to the Soviet leadership a proposal for a military organization of the Warsaw Pact consisting of eighty-five divisions, thirty-two contributed by the USSR.
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But it was to be some time before the Warsaw Pact developed into a full-fledged military alliance like NATO.

Despite the deepening Cold War divide in Europe, the first great power summit since the Potsdam Conference of 1945 was held in Geneva in July 1955. In attendance were the leaders of France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States. The Soviet delegation was led by Bulganin in his capacity as prime minister. He was accompanied by Khrushchev, Molotov, and Zhukov. Khrushchev later claimed that Zhukov was specifically included on the delegation because of his prior relationship with President Eisenhower, but as the subject of the summit concerned European security it was likely he would have attended anyway.

Geneva was Khrushchev's first trip outside the communist bloc and he was eager to make an impact on the world stage. But standing in his way was the media attention lavished on the prospect of Zhukov's encounter with Eisenhower. In May 1955 Zhukov made the front cover of
Time
magazine. The accompanying story was almost fawning. According to
Time
, “Zhukov is the nearest thing the Soviet Union has to a popular hero; the victorious Red Army is its only esteemed public institution.… In the confused power situation following Stalin's death, Zhukov and the Red Army give the regime a reassuring semblance of stability.” Readers of the piece were also led to believe that Zhukov had single-handedly masterminded the Soviet victory over Germany. Among the legends repeated in the article was that he had once demonstrated the importance of spit and polish by personally cleaning the boots of one of his soldiers. Another was that Zhukov's family in his home village of Strelkovka had been saved in the nick of time from being burned alive in their house by the Germans. In relation to Zhukov and Eisenhower the magazine speculated: “Could the friendship of two old soldiers provide the basis for a genuine easing of tensions between the U.S. and Russia?”
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A few weeks before the Geneva summit the American ambassador in Moscow, Charles Bohlen, met Zhukov at a British embassy reception. Zhukov, Bohlen reported to Washington, emphasized the need to improve Soviet-American relations and expressed hope for bilateral conversations between the United States and the USSR as well as those at the four-power summit. Bohlen was struck by how deeply Zhukov emphasized disarmament:

Later Bohlen and Zhukov were joined by Bulganin and Anastas Mikoyan, the deputy prime minister. Bulganin said good-naturedly that Zhukov was considered an “Americanphile.” When Bohlen replied that the relationship between Zhukov and Eisenhower was well known and showed that friendship between military men was more solid than that between diplomats and politicians, “both Mikoyan and Zhukov looked at Bulganin and laughed.”
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In his memoirs Bohlen said of Zhukov that he “looked like a soldier—stocky, sturdy as a Russian oak, a slightly ruddy complexion and clear blue eyes. Although he had a pleasant smile, he was very reserved, particularly with foreigners.… He conveyed a tolerance, even a respect, for the United States, and there was no doubt in my mind that his affection for Eisenhower was genuine.”
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At Geneva Zhukov had two official conversations with Eisenhower, recorded separately by Bohlen, who acted as Eisenhower's interpreter, and by Oleg Troyanovsky, the Foreign Ministry official who translated for Zhukov.
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Zhukov, recalled Troyanovsky, behaved with great dignity and diplomacy at the summit, taking an active part in the proceedings while accepting the preeminence of Bulganin and Khrushchev. Zhukov did not come across at all like the severe commander he was reputed to be: “He could adapt, it seems, to a different situation.”
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Zhukov's first conversation with Eisenhower took place during lunch in the president's villa on July 20. Recalling the good relations between the United States and the Soviet Union during the war and the joint work he and Eisenhower had done on the Allied Control Council, Zhukov noted that toward the end of the war Hitler had tried, unsuccessfully, to disrupt the alliance between the two countries. Unfortunately, after the war “dark forces” had succeeded in undermining the alliance by portraying the Soviet Union as an aggressive state that was planning attacks on other countries. Zhukov gave Eisenhower his word as a soldier that this was not so and claimed the only reason he had come to Geneva was to meet the president and to
help improve Soviet-American relations. When Eisenhower responded that the development of the Cold War was the result of aggressive Soviet actions, Zhukov refused to be drawn into the argument, stating that mistakes had been made by both sides and that it was better to look to the future rather than to dwell on the past.

In political terms Zhukov's main theme was the need for disarmament and the establishment of a collective security system in Europe to facilitate the dissolution of the Cold War blocs. When Eisenhower raised the issue of a system of inspection to make sure arms controls and disarmament agreements were being kept, Zhukov did not object. The two men also discussed the Chinese question with Zhukov urging Eisenhower to recognize Communist China and admit it to the United Nations. In relation to Germany, Zhukov repeated the Soviet line that the two Germanys could be reunited in the context of a pan-European system of collective security that would provide protection for all states in Europe.

Ideological and political differences aside, the tone of the conversation between the two men was relaxed and conciliatory. The friendly talk continued at Zhukov's next meeting with Eisenhower on July 23 though much of the conversation was devoted to a procedural dispute at the summit over which issue was to be discussed and resolved first: German reunification or European collective security. While the Americans wanted to settle the German question first, the Soviets said reunification should follow the establishment of a European collective security system to reassure them that a united Germany would not threaten the USSR. When Eisenhower appealed to him to use his good offices to resolve this dispute, Zhukov responded that efforts to reach a compromise should continue until the end of the summit. The conversation concluded with Zhukov expressing the hope that he would be able to visit the president's grandchildren in the United States and Eisenhower his in Moscow.

Despite his and Zhukov's warm relations Eisenhower would later recall:

According to Andrei Gromyko, at that time deputy foreign minister, Zhukov was as disappointed as Eisenhower and said the president “withdrew into himself and merely mouthed a few platitudes. I could see that Zhukov was upset and, on our way back home he made the comment that the Soviet Union must ‘keep its powder dry.' ”
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Neither post hoc recollection is borne out by the contemporary record of the two men's conversations at Geneva. What had happened was that both men had become politicians and were disappointed the other was not the old soldier they had known in Berlin a decade earlier. As Zhukov commented to Troyanovsky when they were leaving the president's villa: “President Eisenhower is not the same person as General Eisenhower.”
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Years later, Troyanovsky ran into Zhukov at a cinema in Moscow screening
The Bridge on the River Kwai
—David Lean's classic POW epic starring Alec Guinness as the British officer who collaborates with the Japanese in building the bridge as a means of keeping up his men's morale. When Troyanovsky asked what he thought of the film, Zhukov replied that it was “too pacifist for me. I prefer something with shooting like
The Guns of Navarone
. I'm a military man, a different business from yours.”
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In fact, in 1955 Zhukov had performed very well in his new political and diplomatic role. He had also mellowed personally and acquired some humility as a result of his postwar disgrace—qualities that would serve him well when he was forced into exile a second time.

The only practical result from the Geneva summit was an agreement to hold a further meeting of the foreign ministers of the four states. The first item on the agenda would be the German question
and
European security—thus circumventing the procedural dispute
that had dogged the summit. When the foreign ministers met in October 1955 the meeting started well, everyone agreeing on the need to establish a common system of security in Europe. But the western price for a deal on pan-European security was German reunification on terms that would mean a loss of communist control over East Germany. Molotov wanted to pursue negotiations along these lines but was overruled by Khrushchev, who took a more hawkish line. As a result the foreign ministers meeting collapsed without agreement.