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October 22, 2020

Interview with Süha Umar

Süha Umar is a Turkish Ambassador (Rtd.) He served as Head of the Turkish Delegation to ACRS.

July 2, 1957

Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy in the Senate, Washington, D.C., July 2, 1957

On July 2, 1957, US senator John F. Kennedy made his perhaps best-known senatorial speech—on Algeria.

Home to about 8 million Muslims, 1.2 million European settlers, and 130,000 Jews, it was from October 1954 embroiled in what France dubbed “events”—domestic events, to be precise. Virtually all settlers and most metropolitan French saw Algeria as an indivisible part of France. Algeria had been integrated into metropolitan administrative structures in 1847, towards the end of a structurally if not intentionally genocidal pacification campaign; Algeria’s population dropped by half between 1830, when France invaded, and the early 1870s. Eighty years and many political turns later (see e.g. Messali Hadj’s 1927 speech in this collection), in 1954, the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) launched a war for independence. Kennedy did not quite see eye to eye with the FLN.

As Kennedy's speech shows, he did not want France entirely out of North Africa. However, he had criticized French action already in early 1950s Indochina. And in 1957 he met with Abdelkader Chanderli (1915-1993), an unaccredited representative of the FLN at the United Nations in New York and in Washington, DC, and a linchpin of the FLN’s successful international offensive described in Matthew Connelly’s A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (2002). Thus, Kennedy supported the FLN’s demand for independence, which explains its very positive reaction to his speech.

And thus, unlike the 1952-1960 Republican administration of Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969) that officially backed the views of NATO ally France and kept delivering arms, the Democratic senator diagnosed a “war” by “Western imperialism” that, together with if different from “Soviet imperialism,” is “the great enemy of … the most powerful single force in the world today: ... man's eternal desire to be free and independent.” (In fact, Kennedy’s speech on the Algerian example of Western imperialism was the first of two, the second concerning the Polish example of Sovietimperialism. On another, domestic note, to support African Algeria’s independence was an attempt to woe civil-rights-movement-era African Americans without enraging white voters.) To be sure, Kennedy saw France as an ally, too. But France’s war was tainting Washington too much, which helped Moscow. In Kennedy’s eyes, to support the US Cold War against the Soviet Union meant granting Algeria independence. The official French line was the exact opposite: only continued French presence in Algeria could keep Moscow and its Egyptian puppet, President Gamal Abdel Nasser, from controlling the Mediterranean and encroaching on Africa.

March 24, 1987

Information Summary: 'On the Measures for Counteracting Ideological Diversions against the Soviet Baltic Republics'

In February 1987, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party – the supreme political authority in the Soviet Union – sought to address the ever-growing vocal support in the international community for the independence of the Baltic republics (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia). The resulting Politburo decree, titled “On the Measures for Counteracting Ideological Diversions against the Soviet Baltic Republics,” was summarized for the KGB of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic by Lt. Colonel Vilius P. Kontrimas, deputy chief of the First Department (foreign intelligence) on March 24, 1987.

October 11, 1960

Decree of the CPSU Central Committee and USSR Council of Ministers on the Object Vostok-3A

Decree issued by the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers entitled “On the Object Vostok-3A” approving the plan to carry out a human spaceflight in December 1960.

May 22, 1959

Decree of the CPSU Central Committee and USSR Council of Ministers on Vostok

Decree of the Central Committee and Council of Ministers officially titled “On the Object Vostok,” approving the development of the Vostok reconnaissance satellite.

January 5, 1959

Decree of the CPSU Central Committee and USSR Council of Ministers on Biomedical Research

Central Committee and Council of Ministers Decree titled “On Strengthening Scientific-Research Work in the Field of Biomedical Support to Spaceflight” that transformed the Institute of Aviation Medicine to the Institute of Aviation and Space Medicine.

September 1968

About the Major Proposals Put Forward by the Soviet Union for Inclusion of the Agenda of the Day at the XXIII Session of the UNGA

This memo contains a list of items on the agenda in preparation for the XXIII Session of the General Assembly. Some of the listed items on the agenda include instructing Gromyko to put the "Memorandum of the Government of the USSR on Some Urgent Measures to End the Arms Race and Disarmament" on the agenda of the 23rd Session of the UNGA and approve the directives of the delegation of the USSR to the 23rd Session of the UNGA. This memo also includes a list of logistical preparations for the Soviet delegation, including approving a list of advisers and experts for the Soviet delegation, as well as means of transportation to the 23rd Session in New York for the USSR, Ukrainian SSR, Belarussian SSR, and potentially the Mongolian SR upon request.

May 1968

CPSU CC Decree, 'On Introducing Several Revisions to the NPT Draft'

This decree tasks the Soviet MFA with obtaining an agreement from fellow members of the Warsaw Pact on the USSR's suggested revisions to the NPT.

April 1968

CPSU CC Decree, 'Information for the Leadership of the CP of India on the Question of the NPT'

In this decree, the CPSU CC recommends that a telegram to the Soviet ambassador in India be approved. This telegram would hold information for the Indian CP about the NPT.

April 29, 1968

CPSU CC Decree, 'On Appealing to Pope Paul VI about the Issue of the NPT'

This document relates to the following appeal to Pope Paul VI on the issue of nuclear non-proliferation.

Pagination