LONDON, Jan. 1 -- Secret British government documents from 1964, opened to public scrutiny Sunday, paint a picture of Cold War suspicion and conjecture in the year that saw the ousting of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and China testing its first nuclear bomb. Records of Cabinet, Foreign Office and Ministry of Defense meetings and correspondence showed British officials engaged in vigilant Kremlin- watching and confidently predicting a long rift between Peking and Moscow. The Labour government of British Prime Minister Harold Wilson entered office Oct. 16 1964, the day after Khrushchev 'resigned' and the day of China's first nuclear test. The government papers revealed no major surprises. However, events under both communist powers sparked concerns characteristic of the time: the Cold War was well under way, with the climate of uncertainty and suspicion as yet undiminished by detente or arms limitation treaties. In 1964 papers from Britain's Defense Ministry stated its will 'to contribute to the defense of the free world, notably against the Communist powers.' U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson told his countrymen that 'the men in the Kremlin remain dedicated, dangerous communists.' Khrushchev's forced resignation due to 'ill health' was regarded with skepticism by the British Cabinet. In a conversation at Downing Street on Oct. 16, Wilson noted 'a short hesitation' when he asked Soviet Ambassador Aleksandr Soldatov if Khrushchev was really ill. Soldatov assured the prime minister the Soviet leader was 'fairly ill.' But by Oct. 28 a Foreign Office memorandum to Britain's embassy in Moscow said 'even the Soviet government is no longer attempting to maintain the thesis that Khrushchev was asked to go because of ill health.'
The succession of Leonid Brezhnev as party leader and Aleksei Kosygin as head of the government made Britain question how long the new regime would last, or 'which of the Soviet leaders will come out on top.' British Foreign Secretary Patrick Walker told the Cabinet he expected 'some modifications in the methods' of Soviet policy, and he concluded Khrushchev was ousted because of his 'increasingly erratic conduct of public affairs.' He also attributed the ouster to Khrushchev's 'growing differences with the military.' The leader's sudden departure saw British diplomats develop the art of 'Kremlinology.' They produced detailed accounts of the movements of top Soviet politicians and secret documents, combing through speeches by Politburo members. The search for clues to Kremlin power shake-ups even prompted descriptions of the length of their engagements with foreign delegations. Walker said in confidential notes that the Khrushchev coup and China's nuclear test had drawn criticism from communist countries and were likely to prolong the rift between the Soviet Union and China. He told the Cabinet the test was 'disturbing,' but predicted China would not be able to build long-range nuclear weapons systems before 1975. Minutes of an Oct. 6 meeting of the chiefs of defense staff also expressed alarm, justifying Britain's nuclear deterrent with the argument that 'China will almost certainly have developed a nuclear capability within the next decade.' The meeting bleakly acknowledged the Cold War world order in the words 'the threat of wholesale destruction is likely to remain a dominant military factor into the future.' While British defense chiefs depended on the United States as a Cold War ally, the meeting voiced doubts about Britain's security and its transatlantic 'special relationship.' 'There have been no instances of automatic military support by the United States in conditions leading up to the outbreaks of war,' British military chiefs warned.
