AF-SOOMAALI

Mem­o­ran­dum of Con­ver­sa­tion, East Ger­man Of­fi­cial with So­viet Am­bas­sador to Ethiopia Ratanov


Memorandum of Conversation, East German Official with Soviet Ambassador to Ethiopia Ratanov
Date:
12/07/1977
Source:
SAPO-BArch, DY30 IV 2/2.035/126
Description:
The memo details a conversation between Ratanov and an East German official. The talk covered the ongoing war with Somalia and the internal political situation of Ethiopia

Mem­o­ran­dum of Con­ver­sa­tion, East Ger­man of­fi­cial with So­viet Am­bas­sador to Ethiopia Ratanov, Ad­dis Ababa,
6 De­cem­ber 1977 (dated 7 De­cem­ber)

Com­rade Ratanov gave the fol­low­ing in­for­ma­tion:

Mil­i­tar­ily, the East­ern front is presently the most dif­fi­cult prob­lem for the Ethiopian side. Due to the cor­re­la­tion of forces the ini­tia­tive is with the So­mali side. The Ethiopian troops are forced onto the de­fense. The Ethiopian side is mak­ing all-out ef­forts to mo­bi­lize around 60,000 to 70,000 men. About 20,000 men will al­ready be avail­able within the next few weeks. They will be trained in short train­ing courses. The Ethiopian side will be able to go on the of­fen­sive in about 1 1/​2 to 2 months.
The tech­ni­cal su­pe­ri­or­ity of the So­mali troops is most promi­nent in heavy ar­tillery. Al­though the Ethiopian side has – due to So­viet de­liv­er­ies – at its dis­posal over 510 heavy guns while So­ma­lia only has 126, there is a lack of sol­diers who can han­dle the heavy ar­tillery. The train­ing is still tak­ing time.

300 Cuban mil­i­tary ex­perts (ar­tillery, tank dri­vers, pi­lots) are ex­pected to ar­rive soon.

The Ethiopian side cur­rently has about 137 tanks on the East­ern front. The So­mali side has about 140.

40 Ethiopian tanks can­not be used in bat­tle due to mi­nor re­pairs. Though these re­pairs would nor­mally be done by the tank dri­vers them­selves, they are not ca­pa­ble of do­ing so. On the So­mali side such re­pairs are pos­si­ble be­cause the So­viet Union had es­tab­lished the nec­es­sary re­pair sta­tion.

In re­cent days, the Ethiopian side has for the first time launched air at­tacks on mo­bile ob­jects us­ing the MiG 21. The neg­a­tive opin­ion about the MiGs has mean­while im­proved (the [U.S.] F-5 is a much im­proved model with a wider op­er­a­tional range).

Com­rade Ratanov gave the fol­low­ing ex­pla­na­tion of the Er­itrean prob­lem:

If it were pos­si­ble to give the Ethiopian side a breath­ing-spell in Er­itrea, it could fo­cus its ef­forts on the East­ern front. A di­a­logue has to be ini­ti­ated. This has not been done so far. In this re­gard, it would not be ad­van­ta­geous to show all our cards right away.

It is of crit­i­cal im­por­tance that the Ethiopian side is not will­ing to grant the Er­itrean pop­u­la­tion au­ton­omy within the bounds of its old ter­ri­to­ries. They as­sume that other peo­ples still re­side in Er­itrea (e.g. Ti­gre and Afars). This has to be taken into con­sid­er­a­tion. There­fore they want to trim Er­itrean ter­ri­tory. The area of the Afars around the port of Assab as well as the Ti­gre are to be sep­a­rated. This would be al­most half of Er­itrean ter­ri­tory.

Should the Ethiopian lead­er­ship stick with this point of view, it will be dif­fi­cult to find a com­mon ground for ne­go­ti­a­tions. (Var­i­ous peo­ples live, for ex­am­ple, in Dages­tan and Geor­gia. There are au­tonomous ter­ri­to­ries within the in­di­vid­ual re­publics of the [So­viet] Union.) The most im­por­tant thing is to get both par­ties to the ne­go­ti­at­ing table.

The first point of the 9-point pro­gram on Er­itrea states au­ton­omy with re­spect to tribes/​peo­ples but not with re­spect to ter­ri­to­ries. Mengistu has stated in a pre­vi­ous speech that Ethiopia would be will­ing to grant more au­ton­omy to Er­itrea than it had had be­fore. But he has not yet stated what he meant by this.

On the cor­re­la­tion of forces within the PMAC:

Mengistu has fur­ther con­sol­i­dated his po­si­tion since the elim­i­na­tion of [Co-chair­man of the Co­or­di­nat­ing Com­mit­tee of the Armed forces (DERG) Lt. Col.] At­nafu Abate. He has fur­ther gained stature as a rev­o­lu­tion­ary states­man. One senses in speak­ing with him that he views things re­al­is­ti­cally. At the same time one has to reckon with his com­pli­cated char­ac­ter.

On the es­tab­lish­ment of the Party:

One has to con­vince the Ethiopian side that it is an il­lu­sion to be able to cre­ate a mono­lithic party from the start. The party can only be cre­ated in the fight against the var­i­ous cur­rents. It has to de­velop on the ba­sis of so­cial con­di­tions. […]

There will be risks in­volved in the es­tab­lish­ment of the party which have to be taken into con­sid­er­a­tion. Dur­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of the party one has to de­lib­er­ate the ques­tion of co-op­tion.

The PMAC presently has about 80 mem­bers. 30 of them are a bur­den. These mem­bers hardly have any ed­u­ca­tion and can eas­ily be­come vic­tims of the counter-rev­o­lu­tion. Mengistu in­tends to send them to the USSR, Cuba, and the GDR to turn them into rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies. Only 25 to 20 men be­long to the ac­tive in­ner cir­cle. It is there­fore nec­es­sary upon the es­tab­lish­ment of the party to add to the lead­er­ship other ca­pa­ble forces from out­side. There will be a fight about the lead­er­ship po­si­tions within the cen­tral com­mit­tee of the party. If the forces around Mengistu do not suc­ceed in this fight, then the CC will not be an im­prove­ment in qual­ity over the pre­sent PMAC. The Ethiopian lead­er­ship has lately de­voted much at­ten­tion to the es­tab­lish­ment of the party. There still ex­ists great con­fu­sion with re­spect to ide­o­log­i­cal ques­tions as well as strat­egy and tac­tics. For ex­am­ple, they have only dif­fuse ideas about the class ba­sis.

The work­ers, the peas­ants, the left wing of the pe­tit-bour­geoisie as well as anti-feu­dal and anti-im­pe­ri­al­ist el­e­ments be­long to the forces which sup­port the Rev­o­lu­tion. There is no talk about a na­tional bour­geoisie. From the start it has been per­ceived as an en­emy. There are also a great num­ber of hon­est peo­ple among the state ap­pa­ra­tus and the of­fi­cers corps. The min­is­ter for agri­cul­ture has stated that they would prob­a­bly some day ap­point him am­bas­sador in or­der to get rid of him. Many peo­ple have gone abroad out of fear. Not all of them were coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies.

On the ques­tion of non-cap­i­tal­ist de­vel­op­ment with So­cial­ist ori­en­ta­tion: Within the lead­er­ship there is no­body who knows what this state of de­vel­op­ment re­ally means. It is pre­sented as a So­cial­ist rev­o­lu­tion. For ex­am­ple, the de­vel­op­ment of ku­laks is re­jected. 75% of the rural pop­u­la­tion is still in­volved in a pro­duce-based econ­omy. Who should de­velop agri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion? There are no so­cial sta­tis­tics on which the de­vel­op­ment of the Ethiopian vil­lage could be based. There are reg­u­la­tions for pri­vate in­vest­ments but they are not prop­a­gated. The bour­geoisie has money but is afraid to in­vest be­cause it fears na­tion­al­iza­tion. One should fol­low the ex­am­ple of the USSR and de­velop a NEP [New Eco­nomic Pol­icy], thus pro­vid­ing a prospect for all so­cial classes.

At­nafu was crit­i­cized for prob­lems which he right­fully brought up. He fa­vored the de­vel­op­ment to a mixed so­ci­ety. It was an­other thing that he op­posed so­cial­ism al­to­gether. Now no­body dares to say any­thing any­more. The mood of the work­ers and peas­ants is ex­tremely left­ist. It will take great per­sua­sion to con­vince them of the ne­ces­sity of a NEP. On the other hand there is the dan­ger that the PMAC will be­come too dis­tant from the peo­ple.

On the na­tional ques­tion:

One has to try — through po­lit­i­cal work and by a in­tel­li­gent pol­icy to­wards the na­tion­al­i­ties — to make all mem­bers of in­di­vid­ual eth­nic groups to feel as Ethiopi­ans first. Mem­bers of all eth­nic groups should be rep­re­sented in min­istries and other in­sti­tu­tions on an equal ba­sis. The var­i­ous in­di­vid­ual na­tion­al­i­ties have not even been rep­re­sented in the PMAC. Its com­po­si­tion came about by ac­ci­dent. The pop­u­lar mood is di­rected in par­tic­u­lar against Amharen. There­fore Mengistu was elected chair­man. He evolved as the strong­man. The So­viet mil­i­tary ex­perts have come to re­al­ize that no de­ci­sion is made with­out his agree­ment.

[Source: SAPO-BArch, DY30 IV 2/​2.035/​126; doc­u­ment ob­tained and trans­lated by Chris­t­ian F. Os­ter­mann.]

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