Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary

692 Pages·2006·2.59 MB·English

by  Aleksandr Fursenko

KHRUSHCHEV’S COLD WAR
ALSO BY ALEKSANDR FURSENKO AND TIMOTHY NAFTALI
“One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964
ALSO BY TIMOTHY NAFTALI
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1860–1930 (trans. Gregory L. Freeze)
KHRUSHCHEV’S COLD WAR
The Inside Story of an American Adversary
ALEKSANDR FURSENKO AND TIMOTHY NAFTALI
Copyright © 2006 by Aleksandr A. Fursenko and Timothy Naftali All rights
reserved
First published as a Norton 2007
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write
to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York,
NY 10110
Map on frontmatter by John McCausland
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fursenko, A. A.
Khrushchev's cold war: the inside story of an American adversary / Aleksandr
Fursenko and Timothy Naftali.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN: 978-0-393-33072-4
1. Soviet Union—Foreign relations—United States. 2. United States—Foreign
relations—Soviet Union. 3. Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894–1971. 4. Cold
War. 5. World politics—1945–1989. I. Naftali, Timothy J. II. Title.
E183.8.S65F85 2006
327.4707309'045--dc22
2006017576
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T
3QT
CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1 RED STAR ASCENDANT
Chapter 2 GENEVA
Chapter 3 ARMS TO EGYPT
Chapter 4 SUEZ
Chapter 5 TWIN CRISES
Chapter 6 “KHRUSHCHEY’S COMET”
Chapter 7 COUP IN IRAQ
Chapter 8 “A BONE IN MY THROAT”
Chapter 9 KHRUSHCHEV IN AMERICA
Chapter 10 GRAND DESIGN
Chapter 11 THE CRASH HEARD ROUND THE WORLD
Chapter 12 CASTRO AND LUMUMBA
Chapter 13 SOUTHEAST ASIAN TEST
Chapter 14 “HE IS A SON OF A BITCH”
Chapter 15 IRON RING
Chapter 16 “THE STORM IN BERLIN IS OVER”
Chapter 17 MENISCUS
Chapter 18 “I THINK WE WILL WIN THIS OPERATION”
Chapter 19 CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS
Chapter 20 “LEAVING FEAR ASTERN”
Chapter 21 LEGACY
Acknowledgments
Notes
Abbreviations
INTRODUCTION
T
HERE ARE TIMES when the personality of a single human being can rival
ideologies, institutions, or social movements as a cause of great international
events. The influence of these individuals extends beyond their own cultures,
shaping not only other societies but the competition for power among states. In
the middle years of the twentieth century the Cold War entered what would be
known in retrospect as its most dangerous phase. Five separate crises—Suez,
Iraq, Berlin (twice), and Cuba—broke out in succession; each of them seemed
capable of producing World War III. For much of that time the world was caught
in the grip of intense uncertainty about the future. Leaders and ordinary citizens
alike had no sense of how things would work out, whether the two great
adversaries, the Soviet Union and the United States, would remain in a limbo
defined by no peace and no war or suddenly plunge into a devastating nuclear
conflict. There was one leader, however, who stood apart from others in
believing in his ability to dictate history.
On January 8, 1962, in a speech that remained secret for over forty years,
Nikita S. Khrushchev announced to his colleagues in the Kremlin that the Soviet
position in the superpower struggle was so weak that Moscow had no choice but
to try to set the pace of international politics. “We should increase the pressure,
we must not doze off and, while growing, we should let the opponent feel this
growth.” He adopted the metaphor of a wineglass that was filled to the rim,
forming a meniscus, to describe a world where political tensions everywhere
were brought to the edge of military confrontation. “Because if we don’t have a
meniscus,” he explained, “we let the enemy live peacefully.”
The United States was the “enemy” that Khrushchev did not want to see
“live peacefully.” Was the Soviet leader spoiling for war? The wineglass,
Khrushchev explained in his characteristically colorful way, was not to
overflow, but so long as the Soviet Union was the weaker superpower, it had to
practice brinkmanship to keep its adversary off-balance. A dangerous strategy at
any time in history, but in the nuclear age this approach was potentially suicidal.
Rarely had a single world leader shown this much hubris. Yet the strategy that
Khrushchev announced in 1962 was one that he had been practicing in various
Khrushchev announced in 1962 was one that he had been practicing in various
forms since he had come to dominate the Kremlin’s foreign policy in 1955.
What made Khrushchev believe he could control the consequences of Soviet
pressure tactics? Why was he confident that the United States would understand
that the wineglass was not supposed to spill?
President John F. Kennedy, who like the rest of the U.S. government never
knew about the January 1962 “meniscus” speech or the strategy behind it, had a
very hard time figuring out Khrushchev. All Kennedy had to work with was the
abundant evidence of a contradictory man. On the one hand, the Communist
Party chief spoke of the need for détente and disarmament. In July 1962
Khrushchev was to agree to the Declaration on the Neutrality of Laos, which
eased the U.S.-Soviet struggle in Southeast Asia. At home he was credited with
having ended Stalinist repression, releasing political prisoners and speaking out
against the blood-splattered previous regime. Yet this same leader gave very
tough anti-Western speeches and at times seemed prepared to turn the Cold War
into a deadly competition. Endlessly boastful about Russia’s weapons of mass
destruction, Khrushchev issued ultimatum after ultimatum to force the West to
accept his view of how things ought to be in the Middle East, Central Europe,
and Latin America.
No amount of intelligence or regional expertise ever gave American leaders
in the Cold War enough insight into the Kremlin to feel confident that they knew
what was going on in the corridors of power in Moscow. Were there any
debates? What were their objectives? Did they ever consider going to war? What
role did the personality of the dictator, in this case Nikita Khrushchev, play in
the course of events?
Khrushchev left a clue to where some of the answers might be found. “I will
have to dictate my memoirs without access to archival materials,” he confessed
to a tape recorder in the late 1960s.1 With time on his hands after he was
deposed as Soviet leader in October 1964, he set about dictating hundreds of
hours of recollections. But the result, though fascinating, was a two-thousand-
page tangle of historical truth and self-delusion.2 The answers lay elsewhere. “In
future generations, anyone who is interested in what I have to say can check up
on me,” Khrushchev revealed on tape. “The facts can be found in the minutes
and the protocols of meetings.”3
Those minutes and protocols—the records of decisions and debates—of the
Khrushchev era, the “meniscus speech” included among them, remained closed
in Moscow until the summer of 2003. Despite the opening of many archives in
the first years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Kremlin’s most secret