khrushchev visit to america

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Rubenstein Center Scholarship

Khrushchev Goes to Washington

• Katey Ryan AU Fellow 2022-2023

In September 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower invited Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to the United States for an official State Visit. Eisenhower’s invitation marked a historic moment: the first time a Soviet head of state received an invitation to the White House. This event marked an opportunity for each leader to learn about their counterpart while sharing their country’s immediate concerns, which included military de-escalation, nuclear arms, and trade.

The Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and the United States Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War in 1918 marked a period of growing strain between the two nations. Tensions between the United States and Soviet Union further developed in the years leading up to World War II. 1 Despite this strained relationship, the United States ultimately allied with the Soviet Union and Great Britain against Nazi Germany, Japan, and Italy during the war. 2 While President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill envisioned a post-war world dedicated to democracy and self-government, 3 Soviet leader Joseph Stalin created a geopolitical sphere of influence by supporting Communist movements abroad, as well as repressing their opponents with violence and authoritarianism. On April 12, 1945, less than three months into his fourth term, President Roosevelt died from cerebral hemorrhage. 4 His successor, President Harry S. Truman , oversaw the final six months of American involvement in World War II. One of his most consequential acts during this time was his decision to use atomic weapons against Japan. As the United States was the only country in the world with the bomb, leaders struggled over the scientific, military, and ethical implications of this decision. World War II’s conclusion gave way to the Cold War, a period of cultural, technological, educational, economic, political, and military rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union as each nation attempted to establish itself as the new world leader. The Soviet Union also accelerated its development of nuclear weapons during and after the war, further fueling the ongoing conflict. Premier Khrushchev’s official visit to the United States illustrated this rivalry.

When President Dwight D. Eisenhower took office on January 20, 1953, he prepared to confront the Cold War and Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator who had ruled for nearly three decades, head-on. Because of his successful career as a five-star general in the United States Army, President Eisenhower was well-versed in military action and diplomacy. 5 However, Stalin’s death on March 5, 1953, changed the calculus of the American and Soviet relationship. Nikita Khrushchev quickly claimed power and advocated a position of "peaceful coexistence," attempting to move past the Stalinist view that war between capitalist and communist nations was inevitable. 6 However, Eisenhower found Khrushchev's "peaceful coexistence" suspicious, believing it might let American officials’ “guard[s] down prematurely.” 7

As part of the Cold War, education, technology, and culture became battlegrounds between the United States and the Soviet Union. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union took the lead, launching Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to enter orbit in the atmosphere. 8 Particularly concerning to Americans, Sputnik passed over the United States multiple times a day, sparking widespread anxiety. In response, President Eisenhower advocated for increasing federal funding to support science, technology, language, scholarship, and graduate fellowship funding to meet these new demands. 9 While the education plan was costly, at around $1 billion over four years, historian William I. Hitchcock argues that Congress supported the plan because of their concerns related to Sputnik. 10 On January 31, 1958, the United States officially entered the space race, launching the Explorer I satellite into orbit. On July 29, 1958, President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act into law, establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA was specifically created to facilitate civilian space exploration, indicating a commitment to peaceful scientific discovery. 11 Despite this nod toward science for the sake of discovery and knowledge, the space race was also another manifestation of the Cold War. 12

On July 12, 1959, President Eisenhower sent U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of State Robert Murphy to speak with Deputy Prime Minister Frol R. Kozlov of the Soviet Union. At this private meeting, Murphy asked Kozlov to carry a sealed letter to Premier Khrushchev. 13 Although the original is no longer available, a draft of the president's letter stated, "…it has seemed to me that it would be mutually profitable for us to have an informal exchange of views about problems which interest both of us.” 14 President Eisenhower extended an invitation for Premier Khrushchev to visit the White House.

Once Premier Khrushchev received the invitation, he and President Eisenhower wrote to each other outlining the logistics and intentions of the visit. In one letter, Khrushchev stated his goal for the visit was “to find a common language and common understanding of the problems we are to resolve.” 15 While these negotiations continued, Vice President Richard Nixon visited the Soviet Union from July 23 through August 2, 1959, to open the American National Exhibition in Moscow’s Sokolniki Park along with the president’s brother and advisor, Dr. Milton Eisenhower. 16 Famously on this trip, the vice president and Soviet premier engaged in a heated debate over the technology displayed in the American National Exhibition, with Nixon and Khrushchev arguing over their nations' respective technological feats in television, rocketry, and construction. 17 Although an unofficial visit, Nixon's trip can be viewed as the precursor to Khrushchev's visit to the United States. Vice President Nixon and Dr. Eisenhower carefully collected information to better prepare President Eisenhower for Khrushchev’s upcoming visit. 18 On August 1, 1959, after meeting with Nixon, Khrushchev formally accepted President Eisenhower’s invitation.

Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Vice President Nixon at the kitchen display in Moscow, July 24, 1959.

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While Vice President Nixon was not typically involved in Soviet negotiations, on this visit he played a key role in highlighting his and President Eisenhower’s goal of de-escalation to Premier Khrushchev and his fellow citizens. 19 When Vice President Nixon and Dr. Eisenhower returned from the Soviet Union, they met with President Eisenhower and six staffers in the Oval Office for over an hour. 20 In this meeting, Nixon advised that the only solution to the ongoing tensions was to open the door to Soviet-American contact, stating that “people [in the Soviet Union] are hungry for news of the outside world.” 21

On September 15, 1959, Nikita Khrushchev landed at Andrews Air Force Base at 12:21 p.m. He was accompanied by his wife, Nina Petrovna Khrushcheva, his daughters Julia Nikitichna and Rada Nikitichna Adzhubei, his son Sergei Nikitich Khrushchev, and his son-in-law Alexei Ivanovich Adzhubei. That morning, President Eisenhower met with his Chief of Staff Wilton B. Persons and White House Press Secretary James Hagerty in the Oval Office for nearly two hours, finalizing preparations for the Soviet leader’s visit. 22

Upon their arrival, Eisenhower delivered a welcome speech at Andrews Air Force Base. He emphasized that the goal of the State Visit was for Premier Khrushchev to gain a better understanding of the United States' system of government, its foundational principles, and its citizens. He contrasted American democracy with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union stating, "although they have built and maintain strong security forces, it is clear that because our people do want peace and because they are the decisive influence in basic actions of our Government, aggression by this Nation is an impossibility.” 23

President Eisenhower and Premier Khrushchev then followed many of the common proceedings of a State Visit. First, they inspected the troops, walking along rows of uniformed men standing at attention. 24 After this, the president, premier, and his wife Nina Petrovna Khrushcheva rode together in a car to Blair House on Lafayette Square, where the Khrushchevs stayed during their visit. In response to overcrowding at the White House by diplomats, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and politicians during World War II, the State Department purchased Blair House in 1942. Since then, the Blair House has served as the residence for visiting diplomats, their families, and the president-elect the night before the Inauguration Day ceremonies. 25

Later that day, the president and premier met in the Oval Office. Khrushchev gave President Eisenhower a wooden box containing a model of a metallic sphere made up of pentagonal pennants. The actual sphere was placed in the Luna II spacecraft and filled with an explosive charge designed to burst once it reached space, thus depositing the pennants, inscribed with "Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics" on the moon. 26 This gift was especially notable given the ongoing tensions of the space race and the Cold War. Only two days before the premier arrived in Washington, the Soviet Union successfully landed the unmanned Luna II spacecraft on the moon. 27 Khrushchev’s gift to President Eisenhower touted Soviet achievements in technology and science, as well as their early lead in the race to the moon.

Model of the Soviet Pennant sphere that went to the moon on the Luna II.

During the first day’s meeting, President Eisenhower urged Premier Khrushchev to advocate peace between the United States and the Soviet Union. In a memorandum of this private conversation, Eisenhower said, "Mr. Khrushchev could do a great deal for peace by exercising the power he possesses in that direction.” 28 In response, Khrushchev said he shared Eisenhower's goal, although it could not be realized by only one nation putting forth effort. This conversation illustrates the language used in these talks, where both leaders wanted peace but on their own terms. During the planning stages of the visit, President Eisenhower, in a gesture similar to Khrushchev’s gift, displayed his own technological power and invited the premier on a helicopter tour of Washington, D.C. Khrushchev initially declined the invitation. In his autobiography Waging Peace , President Eisenhower wrote, “while riding with [Khrushchev] from the airport that morning I deliberately expressed my regret that he could not join me on this kind of sightseeing for I had found them convenient and always interesting. ‘Oh,’ he replied, ‘If you are to be in the same helicopter, of course I will go!’” 29 This moment, discussing relatively relaxed sightseeing, reflects the mistrust between the two leaders.

This photograph of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev was taken on September 15, 1959. In the photograph, President Eisenhower and Khrushchev can be seen disembarking a presidential helicopter on the South Lawn of the White House Grounds following an impromptu aerial tour of Washington, D.C. During the helicopter tour, the two flew over the National Mall, the monuments, and the local suburbs of Washington, D.C. Khrushchev's 12 day visit to the United States included visits to New York City, Hyde Park to pay respects to former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Los Angeles, San Francisco, corn farms in Iowa, Pittsburgh, Camp David, and Eisenhowers farm at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Later that evening, President Eisenhower and First Lady Mamie Eisenhower hosted a State Dinner for Nikita and Nina Khrushchev with one hundred invited guests in attendance. The menu featured American recipes including crab louis, coleslaw, Boston brown bread, roast turkey, cornbread dressing, and lady fingers coated in a lime glacé. 30 The festivities concluded with Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians performing American songs. 31 This first evening of entertainment highlighted the American culture, food, music, and way of life that President Eisenhower wanted to portray to his Soviet visitors.

Nina Khrushchev, First Lady Mamie Eisenhower, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Premier Nikita Khrushchev at the White House

The next night, Mrs. Khrushcheva hosted a formal dinner at the Soviet Embassy. President Eisenhower, First Lady Mamie Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, and Second Lady Pat Nixon all attended the dinner. The meal highlighted Eastern European cuisine including stuffed partridge, borscht, Caucasian wines, and fresh macaroons. 32 That evening, the winner of the Soviet-sponsored Tchaikovsky International Music Competition, American pianist Van Cliburn, performed for the guests at the dinner. 33

In addition to visiting the capital city, Khrushchev and his family toured the country during their thirteen-day visit. Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., ambassador to the United Nations, acted as the Soviet contingent’s tour guide. On their second day, they visited the United States Department of Agriculture in Beltsville, Maryland, and took a sightseeing tour of Washington D.C. The premier remarked that his favorite part of the tour was the Lincoln Memorial as he was a "fighter for freedom.” 34

Upon Khrushchev’s return, on September 25, he and Eisenhower spent two days at Camp David in Thurmont, Maryland. Renamed for his grandson David, the president enjoyed the tranquility and peacefulness of Camp David. Khrushchev in comparison was somewhat suspicious of the site because of its remoteness. 35

Serious preparation went into the Soviet premier’s visit to Camp David. An operations plan included every detail from sleeping arrangements, transportation, medical care in case of emergency, security, music, dinner menus, and even the movies available. Despite Camp David’s seclusion, like any place the president travels, there are still high levels of security involved. Everyone at Camp David aside from the “four top principals of the conference and support person residing in Aspen lodge,” always wore Camp David security passes. 36 President Eisenhower, Secretary of State Christian Herter, Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Gromyko were all assigned to stay in the four bedrooms of Aspen Lodge. Other diplomats, aides, secretaries, Secret Service agents, and military personnel were assigned rooms throughout the camp, creating a high security environment in the middle of the secluded woods.

Dinner on September 26 featured several American classics: strip steak, broccoli in hollandaise sauce, buttered bread, an assorted green salad, and vanilla ice cream topped with maple syrup and mixed nuts. The movies available also reflected American popular culture at the time, offering several westerns and musicals like Gunfight at the OK Corral and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers . The music selected for meals at Camp David sparked a conversation between Secretary of State Christian Herter and John A. Calhoun, Director of the Executive Secretariat. Calhoun commented that the initial list of Russian folk songs proposed were “rather undistinguished,” and two of which were potentially controversial. 37 Instead, he suggested rather than having an orchestra play the initial compilation, they get a pianist and soloist to sing a Soviet published selection of songs.

At Camp David, Premier Khrushchev and President Eisenhower toured the grounds. While visiting the bowling alley located in Hickory Lodge, Eisenhower and Khrushchev watched Yeoman 2nd Class John Halferty of Fennimore, Wisconsin, bowl. Khrushchev took interest in the bowling alley machinery, which included the automatic pin setting machine. After Halferty rolled a 218 game, President Eisenhower and Premier Khrushchev congratulated him and signed his scorecard. 38 In his autobiography, President Eisenhower explains,

“during the sessions the Chairman and I seized several opportunities for strictly private conversations, some at Camp David other while sightseeing around the countryside. Because my purpose in these man-to-man talks was to learn more about his intentions, objectives, and personal characteristics, we used a single interpreter only—his own.” 39

On one of these excursions, the two leaders traveled by helicopter to Eisenhower’s farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. While in Gettysburg, they toured the Eisenhower’s farm, the nearby Fiester Farm, and went skeet shooting at the range. 40 When they returned to Eisenhower’s Gettysburg home, he met the president’s daughter-in-law, Barbara Jean Thompson Eisenhower, and the president’s grandchildren. 41 Premier Khrushchev was amiable and spoke at length with the Eisenhower grandchildren asking their names and telling the family about his own grandchildren. 42 Khrushchev also showed so much interest in the cattle that President Eisenhower was raising at the Gettysburg farm that the president sent a young Black Angus bull to Moscow as a gift. Premier Khrushchev reciprocated the gift, sending birch trees to President Eisenhower for the farm. 43 The two leaders returned to Camp David at 6:00 p.m. Saturday evening.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Chairman Nikita Khrushchev at Camp David.

On Sunday afternoon, President Eisenhower and Premier Khrushchev concluded the two days of meetings. Although the conversations at Camp David did not provide immediate resolutions to Cold War Era tensions, it did mark a step forward in U.S.-Soviet relations. The conversations marked a thaw and moment of diplomatic progress in the post atomic world. Most importantly, it supported an environment of verbal debate rather than nuclear threat. 44 After the talks at Camp David, Premier Khrushchev and President Eisenhower returned to Washington. That same day, Khrushchev and his family departed Blair House for the Soviet Union. At this point in time, conversations relating to President Eisenhower’s reciprocal visit progressed, although they would not occur in 1959.

President Eisenhower greeting Chairman Khrushchev at Blair House before Khrushchev's departure.

Instead, this progress regressed the following spring. On May 1, 1960, Soviet military forces shot down a United States U-2 reconnaissance plane flying over Soviet airspace. The United States had used U-2s for several years to gather intelligence on Soviet missile capabilities. Although Eisenhower limited U-2 flights during 1959 due to concerns over Berlin, Khrushchev’s visit, and the thawed relationship after Camp David, the intelligence community insisted on collecting more information, and President Eisenhower relented. Further complicating the matter, both President Eisenhower and Premier Khrushchev met in Paris on May 16 for a summit meeting between the United States, Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France. Although the summit was planned to discuss disarmament, nuclear weapons testing, and Berlin, it was overshadowed by the U-2 incident. Ultimately, it led to further mistrust, heightened tensions, and the cancellation of President Eisenhower's reciprocal visit to Moscow. 45

This was originally published on February 9, 2023

Footnotes & Resources

• Although historians debate the origins of this conflict, Walter LaFeber argues that tensions arose between 1890 to 1917, when the United States attempted to limit Russian expansionism into Asian countries, often by supporting Japanese interests. Historian John Lewis Gaddis argues that the deterioration of the United States and Russian relationship leading up to 1917 is attributable to American technological developments and shifts in diplomacy and foreign policy. Similarly, Gaddis asserts that American opinion shifted from coexisting with states of different social systems in the mid-nineteenth century to recognition that it may no longer be a possible route in the late nineteenth century. By 1917, Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik Revolution seized control from Czarist Russia and established the Soviet Union, governing on a Marxist ideological basis and advocating for worldwide revolution.1 Allied intervention in the region between 1918 and 1920 led to further distrust and the growth of the Communist party in the Soviet Union. In 1924, following Vladimir Lenin's death, Joseph Stalin became the Soviet leader and shifted Soviet goals from world revolution to his own grasp for unrestricted power, national security, and fortification of Russia’s military. See Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War: 1945-1996 , (New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 1997), 2, 3, and 5; John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace , (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 6-8.
• During World War II, the United States and Russia worked as allies, though unexpectedly, after Nazi armies invaded Russia in 1941, despite a nonaggression pact that Stalin formed with Hitler in 1939. In 1941, the United States joined the Russian theater of the war, determining that Hitler’s Nazism was a greater threat than Soviet communism and Stalin’s dictatorship. See Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War: 1945-1996 , (New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 1997), 6.
• “The Atlantic Conference and Charter, 1941,” O ffice of the Historian, Milestones 1937-1945 , https://history.state.gov/mile... .
• William E. Leuchtenburg, “Franklin D. Roosevelt: Death of the President,” The University of Virginia Miller Center , https://millercenter.org/presi... .
• During World War II, Eisenhower became Supreme Commander of Allied Expeditionary Forces and led the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. In December the same year, he received his fifth star and was promoted to General of the United States Army. In 1950, President Truman named General Eisenhower the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). NATO was established on April 4, 1949 between the United States, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. Its goal was establishing an allied resistance and security against the Soviet Union. In response, the Soviet Union established the Warsaw Pact, a regional alliance organization. See, “Eisenhower Military Chronology,” Eisenhower National Historic Site, https://www.nps.gov/features/e... . “Army Years,” Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home , https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.... . “Member Countries,” North Atlantic Treaty Organization, October 4, 2022, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/na... . and “North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 1949,” Office of the Historian, https://history.state.gov/mile... .
• Adam Boon, “‘A Dear and Hoped-For Guest’: Eisenhower’s Cancelled Trip to the Soviet Union and the Final Year of His Presidency,” Diplomacy & Statecraft 32 , no. 3 (July 3, 2021): 518, https://doi.org/10.1080/095922... .
• Adam Boon, “‘A Dear and Hoped-For Guest’: Eisenhower’s Cancelled Trip to the Soviet Union and the Final Year of His Presidency,” Diplomacy & Statecraft 32, no. 3 (July 3, 2021): 518, https://doi.org/10.1080/095922... .
• Maddie Davis, “The Space Race: Soviets and Americans race to the stars,” The Presidency UVA Miller Center , https://millercenter.org/the-p... .
• Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Special Message to the Congress on Education,” The American Presidency Project UCSB, January 27, 1958, https://www.presidency.ucsb.ed... .
• William I. Hitchcock, The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018), 393.
• “60 Years and Counting: President Eisenhower Signs Nasa Into Existence,” NASA , https://www.nasa.gov/specials/... .
• Stephen J. Garber and Roger D. Launius, “A Brief History of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration,” NASA , July 25, 2005, https://history.nasa.gov/facts... .
• Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Volume X, Part 1, Eastern Europe Region; Soviet Union; Cyprus, Document 87, https://history.state.gov/hist... .
• Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Volume X, Part 1, Eastern Europe Region; Soviet Union; Cyprus, Document 89, https://history.state.gov/hist... .
• Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Volume X, Part 1, Eastern Europe Region; Soviet Union; Cyprus, Document 91, https://history.state.gov/hist... .
• Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Volume X, Part 1, Eastern Europe Region; Soviet Union; Cyprus, Document 92, https://history.state.gov/hist... .
• “The Kitchen Debate,” Richard Nixon Foundation , July 24, 1959, published August 26, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?... .
• Irwin F. Gellman, The President and the Apprentice: Eisenhower and Nixon, 1952-1961 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 483 and 526.
• Irwin F. Gellman, The President and the Apprentice: Eisenhower and Nixon, 1952-1961 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 519.
• “The President’s Appointments,” Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home, August 5, 1959, 9 https://www.eisenhowerlibrary....
• Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Volume X, Part 1, Eastern Europe Region; Soviet Union; Cyprus, Document 106, https://history.state.gov/hist... .
• “The President’s Appointments,” Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home , September 15, 1959, 1 https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.... .
• Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Remarks of Welcome to Chairman Khrushchev of the U.S.S.R. at Andrews Air Force Base,” University of California Santa Barbara The American Presidency Project, September 15, 1959, https://www.presidency.ucsb.ed... .
• The President’s Appointments,” Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home , September 15, 1959, https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.... .
• “Blair House,” The White House Historical Association, https://www.whitehousehistory.... .
• Marina Koren and Alan Taylor, “Photos: A Collection of Lunar Firsts,” The Atlantic , January 3, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/ph... .
• John Uri, “60 Years Ago: Luna 2 Makes Impact in Moon Race,” NASA Johnson Space Center , September 12, 2019, https://www.nasa.gov/feature/6... .
• Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Volume X, Part 1, Eastern Europe Region; Soviet Union; Cyprus, Document 111, https://history.state.gov/hist... .
• Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace: 1956-1961 , (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1965), 438.
• “Menu for State Dinner Honoring Khrushchev,” The New York Times , September 16, 1959, https://timesmachine.nytimes.c... .
• “The President’s Appointments,” Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home, September 15, 1959, 5, https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.... .
• “Menu of Russian Dinner Given by Khrushchevs,” The New York Times, September 17, 1959, https://timesmachine.nytimes.c... .
• In 1958, Khrushchev learned of Cliburn when competition authorities, shocked by the American’s talent sought Khrushchev’s permission to award Cliburn the winning prize. See, Stuart Isacoff, “Van Cliburn, Russia and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto no. 1,” The Library of Congress , 2012, https://blogs.loc.gov/now-see-... .
• “Khrushchev’s American Journey,” American Experience PBS , November 18, 2014, https://www.thirteen.org/progr... .
• “Camp David,” Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum, and Boyhood Home, https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.... .
• “Camp David Operation Plan, 2-59,” Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home, September 16, 1959 , https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.... .
• John A. Calhoun to General A.J. Goodpaster, “Dinner music at Camp David,” September 22, 1959, https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.... .
• John M. Hightower, “Khrushchev, Ike Discuss Major Issues,” Eugene Register Guard, September 26, 1959, https://news.google.com/newspa... . Also see, The President’s Appointments,” Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home, September 26, 1959, https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.... .
• Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace: 1956-1961, (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1965), 444.
• The President’s Appointments,” Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home , September 26, 1959, https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.... .
• Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace: 1956-1961 , (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1965), 444.
• Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower: in War and Peace , (New York: Random House, 2012), 748.
• William I. Hitchcock, The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018), 428.
• William I. Hitchcock, The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s , (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018), 468-9.

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Khrushchev’s Great American Road Trip

• Angela Brintlinger

In September 1959 Nikita Khrushchev, General Secretary of the Communist Party and Premier of the Soviet Union , arrived in Washington for a tour of the country. The first Russian head-of-state to set foot on American soil while in office, Khrushchev and his journey were the talk of the U.S.—in newspapers, on television, in living rooms across the country—during his visit.

In a well-written narrative, historians Lawrence Nelson and Matthew Schoenbachler follow Khrushchev’s route, from his arrival onboard a Soviet TU-114 airplane that landed at Andrews Airforce Base, to his visit to New York City , his trip out to the West Coast to see Los Angeles and San Francisco, his stopovers in the Iowa heartland where he toured agricultural sites and in Pittsburgh to see industrial sites, and his return to Washington, Camp David, and President Eisenhower’s own Gettysburg farm.

The opportunity to share in this journey, to imagine the complications and sheer exhaustion of meals, receptions, speeches, and transit from one site to another, is simply delightful. Nelson and Schoenbachler describe misunderstandings and frustrations, clashes of expectations and uncomfortable situations for participants on both sides.

They portray the Soviet leader as genuinely curious about the United States and the people who lived there, repeatedly emphasizing Khrushchev’s joy at breaking away from security cordons and official engagements and interacting with ordinary Americans.

Khrushchev during his visit to the Agricultural Research Service Center in Maryland.

Some of them were not pleased to see him. Crowds, many of whom had ties to Hungary or relatives trapped in the Soviet Union, made their presence known—sometimes with their silence, as at Khrushchev’s arrival in Washington, DC, or with homemade signs and placards along his route.

Khrushchev was the “Butcher of Budapest,” “bloody Khrushchev, master of captive nations,” a “Murderer.” But when he was able to connect with individuals, Khrushchev had positive exchanges—of his fedora for a stevedore’s cap in San Francisco, or simply of words, assuring people he met that what he and the Soviet Union wanted was peace and prosperity for both nations.

Henry Cabot Lodge looms large in this narrative. From Lodge’s papers and memoirs, the authors draw an intimate portrait of the statesman who spent hours and hours with the Soviet Premier—in airplanes, on trains, and at reception after reception across the country.

So too does Robert Garst, a likeable Iowa corn farmer who had forged a personal relationship with Khrushchev during his own 1955 visit to the Soviet Union. Garst’s fantastic harvest yields caused consternation for Khrushchev, who wanted to adopt some American agricultural practices while still asserting the advantage of the Soviet command economy.

The Khrushchev family at the Waldorf Astoria during their visit to the United States .

Throughout the book the authors come back time and again to two ideas: first, the hostility of the Communist leader toward the West as evidenced by what they call Khrushchev’s “infamous remark” “We will bury you,” and second, his inferiority complex, which they highlight every time Khrushchev is impressed or surprised by what he sees, or when he defends the Soviet system.

The controversy about what Khrushchev meant with his “burial” comment flared at the time. As a 1962 CIA report (declassified in 2002) explains, Khrushchev did say those words in Moscow 1956, but in all likelihood he was not issuing a threat but rather stating what he saw as an historical inevitability. If Marxist-Leninist doctrine was correct, then communism would outlast capitalism.

When he arrived in Washington DC in September 1959 Khrushchev complained: “my statement was deliberately distorted … what I meant was ... that in the historical sense capitalism will be buried … I am convinced that communism will win.” The question of this misinterpretation never comes up in Khrushchev’s Journey but would add nuance to the complicated relationships that emerged between Khrushchev and other world leaders, including Eisenhower.

A 1964 stamp from the Soviet Union

For Americans capitalism and religion were the bedrock of our country, a fact Khrushchev’s U.S. hosts reminded him of repeatedly. They also continually insisted that the American system was inherently superior to the Soviet one, so it is hardly surprising that Khrushchev should appear, as Washington Post reporter Chalmers Roberts characterized him, “tough, touchy, and proud.”

Regardless of what Khrushchev felt personally as he toured IBM employee cafeterias or Iowa cattle farms, he would inevitably have defended his own country and the Soviet system. Calling this some sort of inferiority complex misses the mark.

For lovers of food history, this book is a trove, detailing menus as the Americans endeavored to impress their Soviet guests and vice versa. For example, the first dinner at the Soviet embassy featured “caviar, fish fillets, Ukrainian Borscht, sterlet in champagne, vodka, and Caucasian shashlik” flown in from the USSR and was crowned in a “bit of culinary humor” with Baked Alaska.

At the IBM cafeteria in San Jose the Soviet premier was treated to “beautiful California salads and an array of cold meats,” but what really impressed him was the self-service and the cafeteria line.

Under a canvas tent in Iowa on Garst’s farm “guests lunched on baked ham, fried chicken, barbecued ribs, apple pie, and corn pudding.” Khrushchev expressed his approval of the fare.

Lawrence Nelson passed away in 2014, and his colleague at the University of North Alabama Matthew Schoenbachler finished this book and saw it through to publication. Their conclusion to this story blames the Americans for the ensuing missile crisis and for the continued arms race .

If Eisenhower had not authorized U-2 flights over Soviet airspace, they imply, then the mutual good will generated by Khrushchev’s journey might have taken our two nations on a different path. They hint at the dangers of those reconnaissance flights from the beginning of their narrative.

Whether or not that conclusion is persuasive, the genuine humanity of the Soviet premier comes out, and in a way that is the most powerful part of the book. Americans were curious about Khrushchev, and he was curious about them. Both sides came away with a better understanding of what the “enemy” looked like.

Khrushchev Visits America – A Cold War Comedy of Errors, Act I

While some may have heard of Khrushchev’s failed attempt to visit Disneyland, many do not realize that this was just one of a hundred things that went wrong on this trip, one that stands in stark contrast to the highly scripted photo ops of today’s politicians. From angry journalists to scandalous movie stars, the entirety of the visit was cloaked by barely concealed threats and marked by chaos – almost to the point of political farce.

Richard Townsend Davies discusses how he worked on managing the press during Khrushchev’s less-than successful trip to Los Angeles. He was interviewed by Peter Jessup in 1979.

Read about Khrushchev’s hilarious trip to Iowa and the Corn Battle of Garst Farm in Act II . Go here for Khrushchev’s “kitchen debate” with VP Richard Nixon. Read about other foreign dignitaries who actually made it to Disneyland .

Running Away from the Hot Potato

There was a good deal of discussion on who should handle the logistics for the press party. The White House had a formal organization which was much better equipped to handle that kind of thing, but Jim Hagerty, recognizing — I think quite correctly — truly all the problems that would be involved, the controversy, the difficulties involved in handling such a huge press party, turned it over to Linc White, and Linc White… was not strong on the organizational side, and there was no reason why he should be:  his job was to be spokesman for the State Department.

So he in turn turned this responsibility over to Joe Reap, who again had never handled anything like this. It was a case of people trying to run away from this hot potato.

The big problem of course was that Mr. Khrushchev and Henry Cabot Lodge, who was his guide on his travels after the Camp David talks were over, spent nearly a week traveling around the country. He went, as you remember, to Iowa to the Roswell Garst farm, he went out to the West Coast, he was entertained by Spyros Skouras, in Hollywood, he was taken and shown the filming of the scene from Can Can in which Shirley MacLaine was kicking up her heels, about which he said, “no, this was obscene, the American pornographers”…I thought he quite enjoyed it. I was watching him, and he seemed to be enjoying it, but he had great sport with that.

A Pressing Problem

Q: The best people in the journalistic world.

DAVIES: The very best people. Everybody wanted to be involved in this trip, and even those journalists who didn’t stick with the trip throughout wanted to be there for the major stops, because at each stop there was something very newsworthy:  as I say, in Hollywood going to the stage — the sound stage — where Can Can was being filmed, in San Francisco there was a meeting with [head of the United Auto Workers, UAW] Walter Reuther, with labor leaders, and I think Harry Bridges [head of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, ILWU] was there.

And this was an extremely important milestone in the history of Soviet-American relations, as I hardly need to stress, and the important events had occurred already at Camp David, and would terminate, as I recall, with Khrushchev’s first appearance at the U.N., so in Washington and in New York, nevertheless this trip was an enormous media event, one of the great and one of the early great media events which were covered by television and all that.

We had all kinds of stars with us. And all these correspondents felt as I say that they had to be in the immediate vicinity of the principals…and they couldn’t be, because you couldn’t get 200 or 300 people into that space and have anything but a mob scene, so there had to be a press pool, and that meant that somebody had to decide every day who the members of that pool were going to be.

There were roughly 15 people selected to be members of the pool, and the functions of these people were to observe, to be in the immediate vicinity of Khrushchev and the leading Americans who were with him, and whom he met at each stop, and then to go back and be debriefed or debrief to the remainder of the press corps who couldn’t squeeze in to be near Khrushchev and his American hosts when there was an event of some sort.

But since there were — I forget exactly how many events there were, but let’s say that during the six days there might have been as many as 20 events — not everybody could be a member of the pool, and that included people who were spending a great deal of money, whom the State Department was charging a lot of money to pay for the hire of the airplane in which they flew around from place to place, and for the provision of the accommodations which the State Department was responsible for reserving at each stop.

So this was an enormous logistical job — a logistical and political job, because when a newspaper spent — I don’t know what the final charge was — let’s say 5000, 6000, or 7000 dollars to send a correspondent around to cover Mr. Khrushchev, then that correspondent would say, “Now what is my boss getting for his 5-6-7000 dollars? I am in the back of 300 correspondents, I can’t see or hear anything, and for that we are supposed to pay 5-6-7000 dollars.”

Joe Reap kind of threw his hands up and said, look, it’s going to be a disaster no matter what happens. And Linc White said the same thing, he said it’s going to be a disaster. And I said, “It won’t be a disaster, we’ll all pull together, we are all in this thing together,” which we were – all in it together.

A Rough Start

But the first trouble began on the trip up to Hyde Park, where he was supposed to go and lay a wreath at the grave of President Roosevelt. President Roosevelt of course was honored, so to speak, in the Soviet Union, he was a great friend of Russia, and if he had only lived, if he had not died everything would have been honky-dory, and so forth.

This was the first day of the trip, and the question arose as to who was going to be in the pool, because there was a motorcade organized by the New York State Police – the security was extreme of course – and there was a press car, or maybe two, in which the pool would ride.

Well, I had nothing to do with the pool; that was up to Joe Reap. But there just wasn’t room for everybody. People were fighting to get into these station wagons, and it was kind of what the kids call these days a heavy scene. It was not well organized.

And you know, here were Scotty Reston and all the rest, all these great journalists not only seeing this occur but being victims of it, participating in it, so you knew that sooner or later there was going to be a blast from the press about the whole thing. All right. From Hyde Park — from New York rather….

Khrushchev vs. Mickey Mouse

I think we went directly from New York to Los Angeles, unless I am mistaken. In Los Angeles there was a Mayor…golly, I should remember his name. The Mayor of Los Angeles [Norris Poulsen] was a bit of a controversial figure, right wing, maybe not extreme, but a right-wing Republican who made some unpleasant noises when Khrushchev arrived, and he sounded very grudging when he said, “Welcome to Los Angeles. We suppose everybody wants to see Hollywood, and we suppose, since you asked to see Hollywood…”

Then sort of the first thing that happened was — and this developed on the way from the airport to the hotel where Khrushchev was staying — that Khrushchev said he wanted to go to Disneyland.

[He vetoed] going to Disneyland, because it would require closing Disneyland a day ahead of time, and then sending hundreds and hundreds of people in there to search it and make sure that somebody was not hidden at the top of a Ferris wheel or someplace with a high powered rifle waiting to shoot Mr. Khrushchev when he came in.

So General Serov himself had vetoed it, he had agreed that this would be impossible. But Khrushchev made great publicity about this, and he was attempting, in what I regard as typical Soviet fashion, to put the Americans on the defensive, and Henry Cabot Lodge – whom I had met and gotten to know a little bit during the few days when he visited Afghanistan and was a very nice man — in this kind of head-to-head confrontation with this very shrewd peasant, this very rough infighter, it took [Lodge] a while to figure out that he was being attacked, but he was, you know. Initially, he thought, well, he really wants to go to Disneyland.

And maybe for all I know he did. However, my perception of it was that this had been worked out rather carefully, and it was a ploy. “Let’s say that you want to go to Disneyland. They of course will say, “No, it’s impossible,” and then you have already established your position as a demandeur, whose reasonable request, so far as the American people — the American people will say, why sure, of course, everybody wants to go to Disneyland…It’s a free country.” So that was the first thing that happened.

Khrushchev Kicks Up His Heels

Well, at the lunch Spyros Skouras of course made a very impassioned speech: he was a Greek immigrant boy who came here with nothing, he spoke with quite a heavy Greek accent, and he preached at Mr. Khrushchev about how America was the land of golden opportunity, and here he was, a little Greek peasant boy whose family had fled from Turkey before the wrath of the Turks immediately after the First World War, and who eventually had come to the United States, and they didn’t have a penny with which to bless themselves, and now here he was…

Q: A tycoon.

DAVIES: The Chairman, or whatever it was, of 20th Century Fox. There were several other speeches in like vein, but Spyros Skouras’s was perhaps the most aggressive. It was well meant, but of course there had been no advance planning, and nobody had said to Spyros Skouras we want to handle it this way or that way. But I don’t think it would have made any difference if they had said that, so unorganized or disorganized we were.

I think Mrs. Khrushcheva was not exactly enchanted. She was, as far as I was aware…a woman of considerable education, and I would say even culture, not prepossessing looking by our standards, but an intelligent woman, who had contributed enormously, I believe, to Khrushchev’s education.

She was a school teacher when they were married, he was unschooled, very crude, raw, a peasant boy who had gone to work in a mining town in the Ukraine and never had any higher education, but she came from a slightly better background and helped to educate him. Nina Petrovna – I think she was quite a remarkable woman.

Well, I don’t think she was exactly enchanted. There was something very condescending in a way, I think, or at any rate they didn’t understand – she didn’t understand, she was not quite aware of what this was, and here were these very scantily dressed, charming young ladies prancing about in a fashion which in the Soviet Union with its prim and proper ways would have been regarded as pretty daring, if not actually obscene almost.

So she was not quite pleased by the whole thing – it was evident – but Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev appeared to enjoy it.

Khrushchev Threatens to Go Home

Well, then that evening there was a big dinner at the hotel. The Mayor was there again and made what I think  Khrushchev, I would say more or less accurately, described as ugly noises. He was trying to make politics out of the whole thing and to score a point or two off Khrushchev, the way Nixon had scored a point, and a very substantial one, during the visit to the Soviet Union, by shaking his finger under Khrushchev’s nose as he engaged with him in a polemic.

So Khrushchev then chose this occasion to drive home — to cap the psychological effort that he had begun earlier with the ploy about Disneyland, and it was then that he threatened to go home, and he enumerated all these things.

When Mr. Nixon came to our country of course we knew that he was not a friend of ours, but we received him properly and correctly, and nobody insulted him.”

And then he referred to this obscene spectacle, an affront. He portrayed it as an affront, and in effect said, “You know, Mr. Skouras’ speech was an affront, lecturing me as if I were a little boy, why I fought in the Revolution, and so forth and so on, and so forth and so on.”

And he took the pose of one who had been offended, and he was indignant, and righteously so, and he said it was very simple, that he had been invited here by the President, but if in fact it were the case that he was not welcome, then he was quite capable…, the plane was standing by, he would have it called there, and he would get on the plane and go right back to the Soviet Union.

Well, needless to say this sent a tremor — a tremor! — through the assembled dignitaries. What does this mean? It’s very threatening.

And it was very threatening. It was very threatening. It was very effective, with the result that Henry Cabot Lodge then was on the phone to the President next thing, saying, “What should we do? What should we do?”

I don’t know that the President telephoned Khrushchev directly because they had no common language, but through Henry Cabot Lodge the President conveyed his apologies. In other words, Khrushchev had succeeded in putting us in a corner quite adroitly, very well, utilizing our own mistakes.

It was a comedy of errors, which however had more serious overtones….

The Last Ones Left: Inside the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971

To be young, rich and ambassador to paris in the ’50s, the rough road to moscow for malcolm toon  .

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Krushchev's Visit to Iowa

In September 1959, Nikita Khrushchev became the first Soviet leader to visit the United States. There was quite a lot riding on his trip, which followed Vice President Richard Nixon’s visit to Moscow and came mere days after a Soviet rocket had successfully reached the moon. Khrushchev was met with a wide range of reactions in the United States. Some Americans cheered for him, others denounced him, and one hotel spokesman who was present for his appearance at a New York City hotel described the applause he received there as “not enthusiastic but friendly – a little better than polite.” [1] His reception at the height of the Cold War was certainly mixed.

Like many visiting heads of state, Khrushchev’s travel plans in the United States focused on major cities – he arrived in Washington DC and visited New York, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, where he was famously upset to learn he would not have the chance to see Disneyland. However, Khrushchev also made a point of visiting the heartland to observe American farming firsthand. Agriculture was of enormous importance to the Soviet economy, but they grew different crops and used different techniques, so Khrushchev went to rural Iowa to learn about American farming methods.

Some Iowans raised concerns about his visit. One Iowan, in a newspaper editorial, wrote that while “a first-hand look at this country and its resources might take some of the cockiness out of him,” such a trip could be risky—for the Soviet leader. The writer thought that Khrushchev was likely to receive a “cynical and cool” welcome from Americans, and it would be difficult to protect him from crowd attacks, in the form of “thrown tomatoes” or worse. [2]

Image 1: Upon seeing this Iowa farmer during his 1959 visit, Khrushchev patted his belly, exclaiming, “Now there’s a real American!” Des Moines Register. View Image Full Size

Other Iowans saw the Soviet leader’s visit to Iowa as the most important part of his trip in the United States. “Communist Khrushchev’s visit to Capitalist Iowa,” wrote George Mills in an article for the Des Moines Sunday Register , “will be the most important part of his American tour from his viewpoint.” Mills cited statements made by Khrushchev about the leader’s interest in American farm production, especially dairy products, milk, and corn, suggesting that Khrushchev would be more interested in what he saw in Iowa than in New York or San Francisco. [3] 

Khrushchev arrived in Iowa on September 22, 1959 and was treated to a reception hosted by Governor Herschel Loveless. The following day, he traveled to Coon Rapids, Iowa, to observe a powerhouse of American farming. He compared what he saw to Soviet-style collective farms, which one Iowa newspaper described as “similar to co-operatives whose members share in the returns.” [4]

While touring the expansive farm of Roswell Garst in Coon Rapids, Khrushchev was fascinated by the hybrid corn Garst had developed in 1930, which allowed for greater crop yields. Garst had been trying to sell corn to the Soviet Union for some time, and had even invited a Soviet delegation to visit his farm a few years earlier. Khrushchev was very impressed that so few farmers could feed so many Americans, but in part he credited the rich Iowa soil, telling his American hosts that “you are an intelligent people… but God has helped you.” He maintained, however, that the Soviet Union’s rapid growth suggested that God was on the side of the Soviets as well. [5] Khrushchev was, of course, joking—he was a staunch atheist.

Image 2: The front page of the Des Moines Register on September 23, 1959, the day after Khrushchev arrived in Iowa. The photo shows the Soviet leader trying his first hot dog. View Image Full Size

In the days after Khrushchev’s visit to Iowa, Soviet newspapers wrote glowingly of Iowa’s hospitality for their leader, and Iowa newspapers eagerly consumed accounts of the Soviet coverage relayed back to them through international press agencies. The Des Moines Tribune reported that the Soviet daily Pravda told its readers “that there’s an ‘enormous reserve of friendly feeling among Americans for the Soviet Union.” [6] The Ames Daily Tribune similarly quoted an article in the Soviet newspaper Izvestiia stating that Iowans “have contributed no small measure” to what they hoped would be an end to the Cold War, and optimistically concluding that the possibility of cooperation “in all fields of life between the Soviet Union and the United States, was born in the granary of America (Iowa).” [7]

In part, the visit was an important moment in the Cold War because it was the first of its kind. No leader of the Soviet Union had ever visited the United States before, nor had any American president been to the Soviet Union, though Nixon had gone there as vice president. From a diplomatic perspective, it was a major milestone. It also held economic significance and foreshadowed closer cooperation between American farmers and Soviet consumers in the years ahead. While some people in the United States were prepared to meet Khrushchev with angry denunciations and tomatoes ready to throw, others, like Roswell Garst, saw the visit as an opportunity to gain access to Soviet markets. In fact, Khrushchev had been interested in planting more corn in the Soviet Union for years, though the crop never prospered in Soviet fields. While Khrushchev would be removed from power in 1964, his visit laid the groundwork for more open economic and diplomatic relations between the United States and the Soviet Union in the decades ahead.

Image 3: An article published in Davenport, Iowa’s Quad-City Times, September 23, 1959. View Image Full Size

• “80,000 in New York Unenthused at Nikita Arrival,” Des Moines Tribune , September 17, 1959, 14.
• “Khrushchev Visit Would Be Risky,” Cedar Rapids Gazette , August 1, 1959, 6.
• “Iowans Discuss How to Welcome Nikita,” Des Moines Sunday Register , September 6, 1959.
• “Russia, Too, Has ‘Capitalist’ Farmers: Nikita,” Carrol Daily Times Herald , September 24, 1959.
• “Looks at ‘Heart’ of US,” Globe-Gazette , September 23, 1959.
• “Pravda Sees Friendliness for Russia,” Des Moines Tribune , September 23, 1959.
• “Press Heaps Praise on Iowa,” Ames Daily Tribune , September 24, 1959.

Nikita Khrushchev's Great American Tour

As part of a diplomatic mission, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev traveled across the United States, meeting Americans from New York to Iowa to California.Photographs: Time & Life Pictures / Getty Images / Associated Press / Library of Congress (05:22)

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The 1959 Khrushchev visit to Washington marked the first Tupolev Tu-114 flight to America

The flight went off without a hitch and the Tupolev Tu-114 was quite the superstar when it landed at Andrews AFB

At the 1955 superpower summit in Geneva, Soviet premier Khrushchev found himself embarrassed when President Eisenhower and the American delegation arrived in four-engined propliners and he arrived in a small twin-engine Ilyushin Il-14 transport. Always the showman on the international stage and determined not to be shown up again by the Americans, Khrushchev decided to fly to the U.S. for his historic 1959 visit in the large Tupolev Tu-114 .

As JP Santiago explains in an interesting article appeared on his website  Tails Through Time , Soviet planners, however, were not thrilled at the prospect as 80% of the trip between Moscow and Washington would be overwater and as Aeroflot, the operator of the Tu-114, had rarely conducted trans-oceanic flights at the time, lacked training with ditching techniques, survival at sea and use of life rafts and life jackets. The politburo of the Communist Party as well as the KGB urged Khrushchev to reconsider but he was resolute in making a “grand entrance” on the first visit of a Soviet leader to the United States. The Soviet Nav y stationed ships every 200 miles along the route should the airliner have to ditch and the KGB even built a mockup fuselage and tested it in a large swimming pool in Moscow to test out water evacuation scenarios.

As told by Von Hardesty in his book Air Force One: The Aircraft that Shaped the Modern Presidency , the flight went off without a hitch and the aircraft itself was quite the superstar when it landed at Andrews AFB . Eisenhower had offered Khrushchev a helicopter tour of the capital, but he refused as he feared a plot to throw him to his death from the helicopter. It was only after Eisenhower assured him he would be on the same helicopter than he agreed.

After his landmark tour of the United States, on the return flight to Moscow , the Aeroflot Tu-114 encountered a storm near Greenland and St. Elmo’s fire danced all over the airframe as the plane temporarily lost contact with Moscow. Khrushchev was sleeping and not awoken during the storm, but the crew feared that loss of contact might cause anxiety in Moscow and fears of a U.S. plot. Fortunately, the large airliner landed safely in Moscow and another unreported tense moment in the Cold War passed into history.

Photo credit: FORTEPAN / Magyar Hírek folyóirat via Wikipedia

Dario Leone

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Nikita Khrushchev's Journey into America Hardcover – Illustrated, May 31, 2019

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• Print length 296 pages
• Language English
• Publisher University Press of Kansas
• Publication date May 31, 2019
• Dimensions 6.25 x 1 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 070062788X
• ISBN-13 978-0700627882
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Editorial Reviews

“Even though many Cold War scholars understate the import of Khrushchev’s 1959 American visit, it has long needed the incisive, full-length, and remarkably thorough treatment that it receives here: as an event of considerable historical significance on its own terms. The authors tell a fascinating tale, with a narrative that is at once lively, colorful, fast-paced, and thoughtful. They place in bold relief the clash between a true believer in the superiority of the Soviet system—probably the last such true believer to hold power in Moscow—and the icons of capitalism that he repeatedly confronted during his visit. Nikita Khrushchev’s Journey into America portrays the ideological nature of the Cold War in the 1950s, from the true believer in Marxism-Leninism who ruled the Soviet Union to the vainglorious movie studio chief who hosted the Soviet ruler in Hollywood to the self-assured Iowa agribusinessman.”— Robert McMahon , Ralph Mershon Professor Emeritus, Ohio State University

About the Author

Matthew Schoenbachler is a professor of history at the University of North Alabama. He is the author of Murder and Madness: The Myth of the Kentucky Tragedy .

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ University Press of Kansas; Illustrated edition (May 31, 2019)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 296 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 070062788X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0700627882
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.33 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 1 x 9 inches
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Nikita Khrushchev

By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 29, 2019 | Original: November 9, 2009

Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) led the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War, serving as premier from 1958 to 1964. Though he largely pursued a policy of peaceful coexistence with the West, the Cuban Missile Crisis began after he positioned nuclear weapons 90 miles from Florida. At home, he initiated a process of “de-Stalinization” that made Soviet society less repressive. Yet Khrushchev could be authoritarian in his own right, crushing a revolt in Hungary and approving the construction of the Berlin Wall. Known for his colorful speeches, he once took off and brandished his shoe at the United Nations.

Nikita Khrushchev: The Early Years

Khrushchev was born on April 15, 1894, in Kalinovka, a small Russian village near the Ukrainian border. At age 14 he moved with his family to the Ukrainian mining town of Yuzovka, where he apprenticed as a metalworker and performed other odd jobs. Despite his religious upbringing, Khrushchev joined the communist Bolsheviks in 1918, more than a year after they had seized power in the Russian Revolution . During the subsequent Russian Civil War , Khrushchev’s first wife, with whom he had two children, died of typhus. He later remarried and had four more children.

Did you know? During the “kitchen debate” of 1959, so named because it took place in a model kitchen set up for a trade exhibition in Moscow, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev told U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon, “Let’s compete. Who can produce the most goods for the people, that system is better and it will win.”

In 1929 Khrushchev moved to Moscow, where he steadily rose through the Communist Party ranks. Eventually he entered the inner circle of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin , who by that time had consolidated control over the country and instituted a bloody purge of perceived enemies. Millions of people were killed or imprisoned in Gulag labor camps, and millions more died in famines brought on by the forced collectivization of agriculture.

Khrushchev Takes Over for Stalin

During World War II , Khrushchev mobilized troops to fight Nazi Germany in the Ukraine and at Stalingrad. After the war, he helped to rebuild the devastated countryside while simultaneously stifling Ukrainian nationalist dissent. By the time Stalin died in March 1953, Khrushchev had positioned himself as a possible successor. Six months later, he became head of the Communist Party and one of the most powerful people in the USSR.

At first, Khrushchev and other high-ranking officials ruled through a form of collective leadership. But in 1955 he organized the ouster of Premier Georgi Malenkov and replaced him with an ally, Nikolai Bulganin. Khrushchev foiled a Malenkov-led coup attempt in June 1957 and took over the premiership the following March.

HISTORY Vault: Hitler and Stalin: Roots of Evil

An examination of the paranoia, cold-bloodedness, and sadism of two of the 20th century's most brutal dictators and mass murderers: Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

Khrushchev Begins the De-Stalinization Process

Once a loyal Stalinist, Khrushchev gave a long speech in February 1956 that criticized Stalin for arresting and deporting opponents, for elevating himself above the party and for incompetent wartime leadership, among other things. This withering, albeit incomplete, indictment of Stalin was supposed to remain secret. By that June, however, the U.S. State Department had published the complete text. Starting in 1957, Khrushchev made some minor attempts to rehabilitate Stalin’s image. But he switched course once again in 1961, when the city of Stalingrad was renamed and Stalin’s remains were removed from Lenin’s mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square .

Emboldened by Khrushchev’s so-called “secret speech,” protestors took to the streets in the Soviet satellites of Poland and Hungary. The Polish revolt was resolved fairly peacefully, but the Hungarian revolt was violently suppressed with troops and tanks. In all, at least 2,500 Hungarians were killed in late 1956, and about 13,000 were wounded. Many more fled to the West, and others were arrested or deported.

On the domestic front, Khrushchev worked—not always successfully—to increase agricultural production and raise living standards. He also reduced the power of the Soviet Union’s feared secret police, released many political prisoners, relaxed artistic censorship, opened up more of the country to foreign visitors and inaugurated the space age in 1957 with the launch of the satellite Sputnik. Two years later, a Soviet rocket hit the moon, and in 1961 Soviet astronaut Yuri A. Gagarin became the first man in space.

Khrushchev’s Relationship With Foreign Leaders

Khrushchev had a complicated relationship with the West. A fervent believer in communism, he nonetheless preferred peaceful coexistence with capitalist countries. Unlike Stalin, he even visited the United States. Relations between the two superpowers deteriorated somewhat in 1960 when the Soviets shot down an American U-2 spy plane deep inside their territory. The following year, Khrushchev approved the construction of the Berlin Wall in order to stop East Germans from fleeing to capitalist West Germany.

Cold War tensions reached a high point in October 1962 when the United States discovered Soviet nuclear missiles stationed in Cuba. The world appeared to be on the brink of nuclear conflict, but, after a 13-day standoff, Khrushchev agreed to remove the weapons. In return, U.S. President John F. Kennedy , who one year earlier had authorized the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, publicly consented not to attack Cuba. Kennedy also privately agreed to take American nuclear weapons out of Turkey. In July 1963, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union negotiated a partial nuclear test ban.

One of the sharpest thorns in Khrushchev’s side was fellow communist Mao Zedong , the leader of China. Starting around 1960, the two sides engaged in an increasingly vindictive war of words, with Khrushchev calling Mao a “left revisionist” who failed to comprehend modern warfare. The Chinese, meanwhile, criticized Khrushchev as a “psalm-singing buffoon” who underestimated the nature of Western imperialism.

Khrushchev’s Fall From Power

The break with China and food shortages in the USSR eroded Khrushchev’s legitimacy in the eyes of other high-ranking Soviet officials, who were already bothered by what they saw as his erratic tendency to undercut their authority. In October 1964 Khrushchev was called back from a vacation in Pitsunda, Georgia , and forced to resign as both premier and head of the Communist Party. Khrushchev wrote his memoirs and quietly lived out the remainder of his days before dying of a heart attack in September 1971. Nonetheless, his spirit of reform lived on during the perestroika era of the 1980s.

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False claim: Nikita Khrushchev 1959 quote to the United Nations General Assembly

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US 'Very Disappointed' After Netanyahu Cancels Israeli Visit to Washington

US 'Very Disappointed' After Netanyahu Cancels Israeli Visit to Washington

U.S. national security spokesperson John Kirby speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, U.S., March 22, 2024. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Monday it was very disappointed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had canceled a high-level Israeli delegation's planned visit to Washington after the U.S. abstained from a U.N. vote demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

"It's disapppointing. We're very disappointed that they won't be coming to Washington, D.C. to allow us to have a fulsome conversation with them about viable alternatives to them going in on the ground in Rafah," White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters.

Kirby said senior U.S. officials would still meet for separate talks with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who is currently in Washington, on issues including hostages, humanitarian aid and protecting civilians in the southern Gaza town of Rafah.

War in Israel and Gaza

Kirby stressed that U.S. policy had not changed, despite the decision to abstain from the U.N. Security Council vote. He said U.S. officials could continue to bring up Washington's concerns with Israeli policies in Gaza as part of ongoing discussions between the two governments.

“Nothing has changed about our view that a major ground offensive in Rafah would be a major mistake,” Kirby said.

Photos You Should See

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Steve Holland; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Rami Ayyub)

Copyright 2024 Thomson Reuters .

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