ABSTRACT
On October 23, 1954, the Western powers signed the so-called Paris Treaties, which included the accession of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), set for May 5, 1955. On the same day, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov submitted a proposal that the ministers of foreign affairs of the four great powers start preparatory negotiations on convening a pan-European security conference. Since the proposal was flatly rejected by the West, the Soviet leadership threatened to convene the meeting on its own if necessary. This is what eventually took place, and the representatives of the European communist countries, with the exception of Yugoslavia, held a meeting between November 29 and December 2, 1954 in Moscow.2 As part of the new Soviet doctrine – the so-called doctrine of active foreign policy3 – aimed at fostering greater formal participation of the East-Central European communist states since early 1954, the official appeal to convene the conference was made public jointly by the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary at Soviet request.4 The resolution made at the conference – as expected – conveyed a two-fold message: the declaration still urged the establishment of a collective European security system, but on the other hand, it indicated that if the Paris Treaties were ratified, the Soviet Union and its East-Central European allies would take the necessary steps to improve their own security.
