Nikita Sergeyevish Khrushchev became the Soviet leader shortly after the death of the previous Soviet leader Stalin in 1953. Everyone hoped that Khrushchev would bring a period of "thaw" in the Cold War. Although his intentions were noble the US remained cautious about the Soviet Union. Khrushchev tried various ways to help reduce the tension between the USSR and the Western countries, namely the United States, but they were only successful to a certain extent.
Within his own borders, Khrushchev was only somewhat successful in reducing tension. Khrushchev gave a "secret speech" to the 20th Party Congress on February 25th 1956. Here Khrushchev attacked Stalin and claimed he was a murderer and a tyrant and pushed for reform in the USSR and in Eastern Europe. He introduced the concept of "destalinzation". Destalinization encouraged those living in the Eastern Europe bloc to believe that under his rule, they would never have to go through what Stalin put them through. He was willing to give them more independence and freedom. This became the foundation for many independence movements across Eastern Europe. He also tried to patch relations with Eastern European countries. In 1955, Khrushchev visited the President of Yugoslavia, Tito, and told him that "there are different roads to communism". When strikes broke out in Czechoslovakia and East Germany in 1953, Khrushchev sent in the Red Army. This action resulted in the arrest of thousands and the death of hundreds. Similarly, in the crises in Poland and Hungary, Khrushchev tried his best to appease to the people, for example when he put Gomulka and Nagy into power. But when they bordered dissent, Khrushchev put his foot down. His attempts to reduce tension in his own country were not always successful. Although he promoted change, the Iron Curtain would still remain in place. Animosity and resentment remained between the countries in Eastern Europe and the USSR.
On an international level, Khrushchev proposed many summit level talks with other countries. In 1956, during his visit to Britain, he proposed "peaceful co-existence". He was the first Soviet leader to advocate this idea and attempted to negotiate with the West regarding Cold War tension. Militarily, Khrushchev did a variety of things to try and defuse the Cold War. In December of 1957, he proposed the banning of all nuclear missiles in Poland, Czechoslovakia and other Eastern European countries.
On January 9th 1958, Khrushchev proposed another summit level talk regarding the creating of a nuclear free zone in central Europe and unifying East and West Germany under a neutral Germany (much like Austria). Weeks later, on January 26th, he again suggested holding top level talks. In March, he even offered to fly to the United States to discuss matters. To show that he sincerely wanted to reduce pressure between the USSR and the West, he stopped all testing of nuclear weapons March 31st 1958. In 1959, the Soviet leader visited the United States. He met with President Dwight Eisenhower at the presidential retreat, Camp David, in Maryland. Relations between the Soviet Union and the United States improved dramatically after his visit. Even though Americans were still hesitant to start rebuilding relations with the Soviets, Khrushchev was most successful in trying to reduce tensions between the two powers.
But his attempts were not always successful. Certain events, out of Khrushchev's control, caused more tension between the USSR and the West. After 1957, tensions between the USSR and the US grew again. In October of 1957, scientists in the USSR sent the first man-made satellite into space. Sputnik I was followed months later with the launch of Sputnik II. Although this "beach ball in space" did not pose any real threats, American believed that they were in danger. They feared that the Soviet Union was going to nuke Washington D.C., destroy New York or even control the minds of American citizens and brainwash them. In 1958, Congress increased it's spending in defense and passed the "National Defense Education Act" which put more funds into science and foreign language classes. China was very displeased with Khrushchev's approach and "peaceful co-existence". After his visit to the United States in 1958, the Chinese Communist party accused him of "going soft" and ordered that he did something to get the US to withdraw from West Berlin. Although another summit was planned, the "U2 Crisis" canceled it. An American U-2 spy plane was shot down May 5th, 1960. Initially, the US government denied the existence of the plane but when the Soviet government produced the pilot, Gary Powers, they admitted that it was indeed a spy-plane. Khrushchev refused to have any further deals with Americans until the apologized and canceled all future flights. President Eisenhower refused to apologize but did cancel all future spy-plane flights. This instantly brought the tension back, undoing all the work that Khrushchev had done during his visit.
Khrushchev did bring a temporary thaw to the Cold War but co-existence did not last long. Because of the events which took place from 1953 to 1950, Khrushchev's attempts at reducing tension were only successful to a certain extent. Although Khrushchev could not be consistent in all of his foreign policies during 1953 to 1960, his involvement in the Cold War was instrumental to the eventual full diffusion of tension between the United States and the USSR. He made his intentions of ending monolithic communism, reducing army costs and promoting a "peaceful co-existence" clear when he came into power, and the inconsistencies in action can be largely attributed to the response and influence of the West and its Eastern allies, respectively.
Under Stalin, the USSR was incessantly preparing for US aggression, while trying to rebuild a war-torn Soviet Union. The dilemma was the choice between bread for the Russian people and protection for the nation, both of which were essential to the country's survival. Khrushchev did not inherit a Russia that was free from bondage, and thus he had to find a way to negotiate with the West in order to buy peace and so to concentrate on the rebuilding of the USSR. And thus, he, as the First Secretary of the Communist Party, presented his initial ideas of reform through his secret speech in February, 1946 to more than twenty-four million people, including the Komsomol (Soviet Communist Youth), eventually publicized internationally with the help of Allen Dulles. Even so, many orthodox historians might argue that the measures taken in Budapest during the Hungarian uprising in 1957 would testify against the supposed liberalization of the Soviet sphere. The same claim could be made about Czechoslovakia, though again, Sergei Khrushchev, son of Nikkita Khrushchev and a historian as well, would eventually claim that the Soviet military involvement prevented a civil war that would have been even more detrimental.
Having established his political stance, Khrushchev also began to cut his military financing and forces, which was about 5.5 million people in 1955. In armed forces along, Khrushchev decreased the size of the Soviet's armed forces to 640,000 in 1956, and an eventual three billion less from 1953 to 1963. The drastic changes he pushed for in politics and the military cannot be ignored as progressive actions to ensure the reduction of tension between the West and the Communist bloc. The outcome of his diplomacy, however, was only logical because though there was a temporary "Spring", shown in the installation of Gamolka and Nagy, the acceptance of Tito, departure from Austria, and visit upon American soil, the positive changes were brought to a halt by the negative responses from the West and the immediate need to return to militaristic competition and paranoia. The US, undergoing the Red Scare during that very period, was in no shape to accept the peace offerings Khrushchev made. As Sergei Khrushchev said during a recent interview, "the main purpose of the U.S.A.'s propaganda assault was not to help reforms in the Soviet Union, but to destabilize it, along with its allies." Such an impression left the Soviets no choice but to return to a hard-line approach to all Western affairs. Therefore, because of the Western party's distrust and unwillingness to cooperate, the Cold War did not thaw.
Yet even though the West and Communist Russia did not seem to reconciliate and the Cold War grew worse and was right on the brink of becoming a nuclear Third World War later on during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the seven years in question did illustrate the fact that the Cold War was perpetuated and fed by misunderstanding, fear and historical resentment.
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