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Khrushchev was the first Soviet leader to realize that nuclear bipolarity dictated permanent ’peaceful coexistence’ between two antagonistic social systems. Although he never abandoned the idea of the usability of nuclear weapons, he regarded them primarily as a positive force and was eager to use them in his gamble for peace – an attempt to negotiate a permanent truce with the US, which would have liberated Soviet resources for the construction of communism and the assistance of ’progressive’ movements and regimes around the world. Khrushchev had little doubt that behind the nuclear shield, the Soviet Union would win a peaceful economic competition with the capitalist camp.

Chapter 4 examines Nikita Khrushchev’s decision-making in the Cuban missile crisis. It posits that the logic of affect offers a more comprehensive explanation of the Soviet prime minister’s choice behavior. Specifically, the model shows that his defiance of John F. Kennedy’s demand to remove the missiles from Cuba during the first two days of the crisis was shaped by his sense of humiliation and anger at what he saw as the American president’s refusal to recognize him as the leader of a co-equal power. In the last four days of the crisis, however, the decline of Khrushchev’s anger and humiliation and a growing fear of nuclear war shaped his preference for accepting Kennedy’s terms. That Khrushchev interpreted a message from Washington at the height of the crisis to mean that Kennedy was finally validating his equal status helped him to protect his self-esteem as he decided to withdraw the missiles.

This chapter chronicles Khrushchev's career in Ukraine, providing new information about his early years—including a 1923 Trotskyite “deviation” that haunted Khrushchev as long as Stalin lived; his initial ties with his mentor, Lazar Kaganovich; and early evidence of both Khrushchev's Stalinism and his budding anti-Stalinism. Most significantly, it shows how Khrushchev's Ukrainian experience influenced his later behavior as Soviet leader.

This chapter describes how Khrushchev employed both nuclear bluster and bluff to pressure the West. The problem Khrushchev faced was how to deter any Western attack and advance his strategic objectives, while at the same time easing the defense burden on the Soviet economy. Khrushchev's answer was to cut back on conventional weapons and rely on nuclear rockets, even before Soviet intercontinental missiles were deployed in substantial numbers. The horrors he encountered firsthand during World War II convinced Khrushchev that nuclear conflict must be avoided at all costs, even as he manipulated the threat of it to intimidate the West.

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of Nikita Khrushchev's rise and fall from power. It then considers the sources of information about Khrushchev and the questions that have been asked about him. This is followed by an overview of the subsequent chapters.

This chapter examines the Sino-Soviet split and its implications for the United States' policies in Asia, Europe, and the Americas during the period 1956–1964. Coordination and comity in the communist camp peaked between 1953 and 1957, but alliance between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China (PRC) was relatively short-lived. This was caused by ideological differences, distrust, and jealous rivalries for international leadership between Nikita Khrushchev and Mao Zedong. The chapter explains what caused the strain in Sino-Soviet relations, and especially the collapse of Sino-Soviet military and economic cooperation. It also considers the effects of the Sino-Soviet disputes on third-party communists in Asia, China's foreign policy activism, and the catalytic effect of the Sino-Soviet split on Soviet foreign policy.

This chapter focuses on Eastern Europe, highlighting the ways in which the communist contestants in the Farms Race pursued noncapitalist goals in the economic battles of the Cold War. Supermarket USA—a project jointly pursued by the U.S. Department of Commerce and a private supermarket trade group in 1957—was the first full-scale American-style supermarket to be erected in a communist country. U.S. propagandists touted the Supermarket USA exhibit at Zagreb’s 1957 trade fair as proof of the power of capitalist agriculture and efficient food distribution. Yugoslavian communist leaders, however, recognized the potential for deploying supermarkets in their campaign to convince restive rural peasants to accept socialist approaches to food production. The Yugoslavian adaptation of American supermarkets contrasts with the Soviet Union’s efforts, under the leadership of the rhetorically gifted Nikita Khrushchev, to defy American proclamations of capitalism’s superiority as a mode for spurring agricultural productivity and consumer abundance. In particular, the chapter highlights the ways in which the famous 1959 Kitchen Debate between Khrushchev and U.S. vice president Richard Nixon should be understood as a debate not just about kitchens or consumerism but about the structure of the agricultural systems that fed into both capitalist and communist kitchens.

This chapter focuses on Khrushchev's foreign policy. It addresses the much-debated question of why Khrushchev declared a Berlin ultimatum in November 1958, thus transforming his hitherto measured efforts to ease East–West tensions in the Berlin crisis, which lasted until 1961 and beyond. The reason is that after the West had snubbed Soviet peace overtures for five years, Khrushchev resolved to force Western powers to accept them.

This chapter examines Khrushchev's handling of Germany and Berlin. It argues that divided Germany was a grave international problem for Khrushchev. The realities of the German question severely limited his freedom of choice, just as the realities of the party command system crippled his attempts at domestic reforms. An understanding of Khrushchev's diplomacy on the German question makes it easier to answer a larger question: why the Soviet reformer was unable to transcend the legacy of the Cold War that he inherited from Stalin.

This chapter addresses the asymmetry in the military balance between the United States and the Soviet Union from 1953–1965, and the perceptions of that power relationship on the part of Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev, and Mao Zedong. The new imbalance of power altered the incoming Eisenhower administration's definition of its diplomatic objectives. It was only in 1966 that the USSR acquired a credible minimum deterrent force in the form of intercontinental ballistic missiles that were reasonably well protected from a U.S. first strike. Khrushchev apparently had very accurate intelligence on the Kennedy administration's strategic force deployments and future plans. Mao wanted the USSR to act as though it represented a strong military counterweight, regardless of the truth. There are two distinct formative periods in which U.S. perceptions were undergoing major changes: first, from 1953 through mid-1955; and second, from 1961 through 1964.

This chapter argues that, in the first ten years after Stalin's death, the temptation to address the Soviet Union's challenges through personalistic rather than institutional means represented the single greatest impediment to the restoration of the party's authority. Under the populist leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's (CPSU) first secretary, Nikita Khrushchev, the party's centrality to the USSR's future was rhetorically returned to the forefront of the regime's proclamations. Yet it was all too frequently trumped in deed by the “great man” principle. The same dictatorial proclivity was present throughout the communist world, especially in the People's Democracies of Eastern Europe. In the wake of their mentor's passing, “little Stalins,” like Walter Ulbricht in East Germany, Bolesław Bierut in Poland, and Mátyás Rákosi in Hungary, were acutely aware of their vulnerability. Accordingly, although they paid tribute to the concept of collective leadership, they simultaneously subverted it.

This chapter focuses on events after 1953: Beria's fall; Khrushchev's defeat of Malenkov and Molotov; the origins and consequences of his 1956 speech unmasking Stalin, and of the coup attempted against him in 1957; the paradox of the 1961 party program, which promised abundance even as economic conditions worsened; and Khrushchev's decline and fall.

This chapter explores how Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev viewed the resolve of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, considering Khrushchev's decision making surrounding the 1958 Berlin Crisis. The historical record shows that Eisenhower's early statements were particularly influential to the formation of his reputation, as they created expectations of how he would behave in the future. However, Eisenhower was unable to solidify his reputation for resolve at the 1955 Geneva Summit, as Khrushchev perceived Secretary of State John Foster Dulles rather than President Eisenhower as being in direct control of negotiations at the summit. Yet, in the year leading up to the 1958 Berlin Ultimatum, Khrushchev's perception of who was in control of U.S. foreign policy shifted to emphasize the importance of Eisenhower to America's Berlin policy. And the president's statements leading up to the Berlin Crisis led Khrushchev to believe Eisenhower was unlikely to make major concessions on the issue. Eisenhower's subsequent firm response to the Berlin Crisis then confirmed Khrushchev's expectations of the president's resolve. Accordingly, Eisenhower established a reputation for resolute action that would last until the end of his presidency. Further evidence suggests that Eisenhower's actions as a general during World War II were influential to Khrushchev's early perceptions of the president.

This chapter examines the Khrushchev Thaw from the perspective of modern (and postmodern) cultural studies. It identifies three major episodes of the cultural Thaw. In the first episode, set in motion by Stalin's death, the key figures are the writers Olga Berggolts, Vladimir Pomerantsev, Leonid Zorin, and Ehrenburg himself. Their thematic concerns—lyricism, sincerity, generational differences, corrupt bureaucrats—form a cluster of issues that remain at the very center of Thaw culture. The second episode is signaled by the events of the 20th Party Congress and marked by the ceremony of Nikita Khrushchev's “secret speech” of February 25, 1956. The third episode is marked by the 22nd Party Congress and consecrated by the removal of Joseph Stalin's body from the mausoleum on Red Square.

This chapter draws upon long-secret party and police reports, as well as unpublished letters to Soviet newspaper editors, to gauge public opinion about key issues between 1953 and 1964. These include Stalin's death, Khrushchev's secret speech, the Polish and Hungarian upheavals of 1956, the attempted coup of the “anti-party group” in 1957, and the economic troubles of Khrushchev's last years. Opinions differed on all these episodes and issues, but the Soviet people were less supportive of Khrushchev than one might have supposed.

This chapter studies how Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev viewed the resolve of President John F. Kennedy, looking at Khrushchev's decision making surrounding the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. According to evidence made available from declassified and translated Soviet archives, as well as information drawn from additional sources, Kennedy quickly formed a reputation for irresolute action largely because of his repeated failure to back up his strong rhetoric with firm action and his wavering support of the Bay of Pigs invasion early during his tenure. While Kennedy rather quickly established a poor reputation for resolve, it was difficult for him to alter this reputation. Throughout the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and during the early stages of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Khrushchev continued to doubt Kennedy's firmness and determination, despite the president's repeated attempts to signal his resolve. Declassified Soviet documents further indicate that Kennedy was able to change this negative perception of his resolve during the Cuban Missile Crisis only by presenting a consistently resolute position and altering his signals of strategic interest. Thus, it was Kennedy's communication of high strategic interest in Cuba combined with his resolute behavior during the missile crisis that enabled him to alter his poor reputation.

This chapter focuses on agriculture, tracing Khrushchev's far-reaching reforms of September 1953, his Virgin Lands and corn-growing campaigns, his early success in boosting the Soviet harvest, and the agricultural disasters that befell him in the early 1960s. It also dissects Khrushchev's true belief in communism, and his ironical reliance on the hidebound party bureaucracy (the apparat) to implement his utopian dream.

This chapter examines Khrushchev's economic reforms—or rather, the lack of them—in the light of post-Communist experience. The fact that Khrushchev was no economic reformer used to be held against him. Nowadays, knowing that Gorbachev's half-measures only made things worse, Khrushchev's nonmeasures do not seem so bad.