WORLD COMMUNISM AND THE PEACE MOVEMENT 99best. But the countries that mattered most were America, the German
Federal Republic and the United Kingdom, where communists had a
negligible impact on national politics. The Politburo had an interest in
encouraging and subsidizing groups that campaigned for ‘peace’ and
against US policy.
In Sweden Prime Minister Olof Palme came up with an idea about
declaring a demilitarized corridor between East and West Germany.
Although this had no appeal to the Americans, some of the Soviet
military-political negotiators thought that something like it might be
of value. Vitali Kataev, deputy head of the Defence Department in the
Party Secretariat, suggested that there should be a corridor 150 kilo-
metres wide; he wanted all nuclear weapons, tanks and heavy artillery
to be removed from it. Before taking the matter any further, he
sought and obtained Gorbachëv’s approval. Akhromeev spoke angrily
to Kataev and asked him: ‘And do you know how many tanks we’d
need to withdraw from that zone?’ When Kataev replied that he did,
Akhromeev asked how many. The answer according to Kataev was two
thousand tanks.^30 The Defence Ministry and the General Staff were at
one in only considering proposals that would permit the USSR to keep
all its missiles in place in Eastern Europe. People who thought other-
wise either stayed silent or were ignored. The emphasis of practical
policy lay on making difficulties for the Americans in completing their
programme of installation. Soviet policymakers intended to restore
the military imbalance that had existed since they had started to intro-
duce the SS-20s.
This strengthened the importance of the Western ‘peace move-
ment’ from Moscow’s standpoint. The FBI reported to Congress on the
subtlety of the Soviet efforts – rather than try to control the Western
organizations, the KGB and the Party International Department
covertly nudged them in a direction favourable to the USSR’s foreign
and security policies. As usual, the Communist Party of the USA
involved itself in the process. Abundant funding was made available
from Moscow. The Kremlin targeted the World Peace Council as an
instrument of its purposes, and American communists filled posts in
the leadership. Other organizations that were used to enhance the
worldwide image of the Politburo’s objectives included the National
Council of American–Soviet Friendship and US–USSR Citizens’
Dialogue.^31 The Kremlin had long taken an interest in the British
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and covertly given it