Thanks Joe for your postings above which put the circular firmly in the context of those who wrote it.

Talking of Bulgarians and umberellas, one seemingly innocent and apparently unconnected detail that was always of great significance to NATO. During the "cold war", how well collective farms in Soviet Russia appeared to be doing was watched very closely. If the forecast was for a good harvest, NATO always went onto a higher state of alert. As Joe pointed out, it was one of the early signs that indicated what could be possible in the ensuing weeks, no threat, no danger - just one piece of a jig-saw puzzle.