ABSTRACT

On 18 January 1965 the Polish leader Wladyslaw Gomulka was casually flicking through East German proposals for the impending PCC meeting, ‘while waiting for the arrival of the delegations [of the other WP members]’ at Warsaw’s railway station.2 The Romanian leader Gheorghiu-Dej was, however, furious that the East German leaders had only disseminated their proposals on reforms, non-proliferation, and a draft communiqué a few days before the PCC meeting was to start on 19 January, and he arranged a bilateral meeting with Gomulka to share his frustration. He also organised to meet the East German leader Walter Ulbricht bilaterally to rebuke him strongly ‘about the method that you have adopted’, since ‘[o]ur politburo has not had the possibility’ to study the documents, and therefore ‘has no mandate to discuss this’.3