Part 2 (1/2)

A few days after Thanksgiving, during one of the most extraordinary meetings ever between a Soviet leader and an American politician, Khrushchev made clear that his Berlin ultimatum for the moment was far more about getting President Eisenhoweras attention than it was about altering Berlinas status.

Giving him only a half houras notice, Khrushchev summoned visiting Minnesota Senator Hubert H. Humphrey to his Kremlin office for the longest meeting any American official or elected politician had ever had with any Soviet leader. Though scheduled for only an hour from three p.m., their talks ended just before midnight, after an eight-hour, twenty-five-minute exchange.

To show off his knowledge of matters American, Khrushchev expounded on the local politics of California, New York, and Humphreyas home state of Minnesota. He joked about athe new McCarthyaa”not anticommunist Joe but the left-of-center congressman Eugene, who would later run for president. He shared with Humphrey a secret ano American has heard of,a telling him of the successful test of a Soviet five-million-ton hydrogen bomb using only a tenth of the fissionable material previously required to produce an explosion of its magnitude. He also spoke about the development of a missile with a 9,000-mile range, for the first time sufficient to strike U.S. targets.

After asking Humphrey to name his native city, Khrushchev bounced to his feet and drew a bold blue circle around Minneapolis on a map of the United States hanging on his walla”aso that I donat forget to order them to spare the city when the rockets fly.a Khrushchev struck Humphrey as a man infected with personal and national insecurity, asomebody who has risen from poverty and weakness to wealth and power but is never wholly confident of himself and his new status.a In recounting his meeting the following day to Amba.s.sador Thompson, so that the U.S. envoy could relay it to President Eisenhower, Humphrey said Khrushchev returned perhaps two dozen times to the matter of Berlin and his ultimatum, which the Soviet leader said had followed amany months of thought.a Humphrey concluded the chief purpose of their marathon meeting was ato impress him with the Soviet position on Berlin and to convey his words and thoughts to the President.a Khrushchev wielded an a.r.s.enal of metaphors to describe the city. It was alternatively a cancer, a knot, a thorn, and a bone in his throat. He told Humphrey he intended to cough the bone loose by making West Berlin a afree citya that would be demilitarized and guaranteed by United Nations observers. To convince Humphrey he wasnat trying to trick the U.S. into giving up West Berlin to communist control, he recalled at length how he had personally ordered the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Austria in 1955, thus ensuring its neutrality. Khrushchev told Humphrey that at the time he had argued to Foreign Minister Molotov that Russian troops were only useful in Austria if he intended to expand westward, and he didnat want to do that. So, he said, aa neutral Austria was established and a source of conflict was removed.a His argument was that Soviet behavior in Austria should serve for Eisenhower both as a model for West Berlin and as rea.s.surance about its future. Because of that, he said, the U.S., Britain, and France had no need to leave any troops in Berlin. aTwenty-five thousand troops in Berlin are of no importance unless you want to make war,a he said in a calm voice. aWhy do you maintain this thorn? A free city, a free Berlin, could lead to the breaking of the ice between the USSR and the USA.a Khrushchev insisted to Humphrey that by solving the Berlin problem, he and Eisenhower could improve their personal relations.h.i.+p and together achieve a historic thaw in the Cold War. And if the U.S. president didnat like the details of his Berlin plan, Khrushchev told Humphrey, he would be open to a counterproposal. Khrushchev said he could accept any alternative suggestions from Eisenhower as long as they didnat include either German unification or athe liquidation of the socialist system in East Germany.a For the first time, he was painting his red lines for any Berlin talks.

Khrushchev s.h.i.+fted so rapidly between seduction and threats that Humphrey was reminded of his fatheras treatment for chilblains back in South Dakota, which involved the frequent s.h.i.+fting of his feet between hot and cold water. aOur troops are there not to play cards, our tanks are not there to show you the way to Berlin,a Khrushchev blurted to Humphrey at one point. aWe mean business.a At the next moment, however, the Soviet leaderas eyes would moisten as he spoke with dripping sentimentality about losing a son in World War II and his affection for President Eisenhower. aI like President Eisenhower,a he told Humphrey. aWe wish no evil to the United States or to Berlin. You must a.s.sure the President of this.a Eisenhower responded to Khrushchevas Berlin ultimatum just as the Soviet leader had hoped. He signed on to a four-power foreign ministersa meeting in Geneva, which East and West German representatives would attend as observers. Although progress there proved disappointing, Eisenhower thereafter invited Khrushchev to be the first Soviet Communist Party leader to visit the United States.

Khrushchev congratulated himself, considering Eisenhoweras agreement to receive him in the capitalistsa lair aas a concrete result of the Berlin pressure he had been exerting on the Western powers.a He felt he had finally extracted from America the respect he so profoundly craved for himself and his homeland.

KHRUSHCHEVaS U.S. VISIT.

SEPTEMBER 15a”27, 1959.

As the departure date for his trip to America drew closer, Khrushchev grew increasingly concerned that his hosts were planning a aprovocation,a a damaging slight upon his arrival or at other points during his visit. That in turn could be used against him at home by his now silenced but far from vanquished rivals as evidence that his high-profile U.S. visit was both naive and harmful to Soviet interests.

For that reason, Khrushchevas considerations about how he would negotiate Berlinas future in the U.S. were secondary to his scrutiny of every aspect of the itinerary to ensure he didnat suffer what he referred to as amoral damage.a Though Khrushchev was a communist leader ostensibly representing the proletariat vanguard, his advance team demanded that he be treated with the pomp and circ.u.mstance of a visiting Western head of state.

Khrushchev balked, for example, when he learned his most crucial talks with Eisenhower would occur at a place called aCamp David,a a place none of his advisers knew and which sounded to him like a gulag, or internment camp. He recalled that in the first years after the Revolution, the Americans had brought a Soviet delegation to Sivriada, in the Turkish Princesa Islands, where the stray dogs of Istanbul had been sent to die in 1911. Thinking to himself that athe capitalists never missed a chance to embarra.s.s or offend the Soviet Union,a he feared athis Camp David wasaa place where people who were mistrusted could be kept in quarantine.a Khrushchev only agreed to the meeting after his advance team, following investigation, reported that the Camp David invitation was a particular honor, as Eisenhower was taking him to a country dacha built by Roosevelt in the mountains of Maryland during World War II. Khrushchev would later express shame about how the episode revealed Soviet ignorance. More important, however, was what it said about the potent mixture of mistrust and insecurity with which Khrushchev approached every aspect of his relations.h.i.+p with the U.S.

Disregarding the advice of his pilot, Khrushchev flew across the Atlantic in a still-experimental Tupolev Tu-114, which had not yet pa.s.sed its required tests and had microscopic cracks in its engine. Despite the risks, Khrushchev insisted upon this means of travel, as it was the only aircraft in the Soviet fleet that could reach Was.h.i.+ngton nonstop. He would thus arrive aboard a plane that had the worldas largest pa.s.senger capacity, longest range, greatest thrust, and fastest cruising speed. That said, Soviet fis.h.i.+ng boats, cargo s.h.i.+ps, and tankers formed a line under the plane between Iceland and New York as a potential rescue party should the engine fissures expand and force a crash landing at sea.

Khrushchev would recall later that his anerves were strained with excitementa as he looked from the window of his plane as it circled over its landing area and he considered the tripas deeper significance: aWe had finally forced the United States to recognize the necessity of establis.h.i.+ng closer contacts with usa. Wead come a long way from the time when the United States wouldnat even grant us diplomatic recognition.a For the moment, Berlin was an afterthought to this larger national purpose. He relished the notion that it had been the might of the Soviet economy, its armed forces, and the entire socialist camp that had prompted Eisenhower to seek better relations. aFrom a ravaged, backward, illiterate Russia, we had transformed ourselves into a Russia whose accomplishments had stunned the world.a To Khrushchevas relief and delight, Eisenhower greeted him at Andrews Air Force Base outside Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., with a red carpet and a twenty-one-gun salute. Khrushchev would later recall that he was aimmensely proud; it even shook me up a bita. Here was the United States of America, the greatest capitalist power in the world, bestowing honor on the representative of our socialist homelanda”a country which, in the eyes of capitalist America, had always been unworthy or, worse, infected with some sort of plague.a It was more a result of this improved mood than any deeper Berlin strategy that moved Khrushchev to tell President Eisenhower during their first meeting on September 15 that he would like to acome to terms on Germany and thereby on Berlin too.a Without providing further details, Khrushchev said, aWe do not contemplate taking unilateral action.a For his part, Eisenhower called the Berlin situation aabnormal,a language the Soviet leader considered encouraging for Berlin talks that would come at the end of the trip.

The coast-to-coast journey that followed was marked by dramatic highs and lows that ill.u.s.trated both sides of Khrushchevas complex emotional relations.h.i.+p with the U.S.: the eager suitor seeking approval from the worldas greatest power, and the insecure adversary scanning for the slightest offense.

He and his wife, Nina Petrovna, sat between Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra during a lunch at Twentieth Centurya”Fox, at which Marilyn Monroe wore her tightest dress, but the Soviet leader railed like a spoiled child at being denied entry to Disneylanda”wondering whether it was because the amus.e.m.e.nt park had cholera or a missile launching pad. Khrushchev saw conspiracy in the choice of Russian-born Jewish movie mogul Victor Carter as his Los Angeles escort, blaming much of what went wrong in the city on the evil intent of the migr whose family had fled Rostov-on-Don.

His trip had nearly ended on his first day in California, when Khrushchev struck back at conservative Los Angeles Mayor Norris Poulson during a late-night speech at a star-studded banquet. Looking to score domestic political points, the mayor had refused the appeal of Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.a”the U.S. amba.s.sador to the United Nations and Khrushchevas companion throughout the tripa”that he remove anticommunist lines that the Soviet leader would find offensive. aIt took us only twelve hours to get here,a Khrushchev said in response, asking that his plane be prepared for departure. aPerhaps it will take us even less time to get back.a The climactic Camp David meeting began badly, as Khrushchev and Eisenhower engaged in two days of acrimonious talks over everything from the threat of nuclear war (Khrushchev said he didnat fear it) to discriminatory rules on what technology Americans could sell Moscow (Khrushchev sneered that he didnat need low-tech U.S. help to make shoes or sausages). Eisenhower prevented a breakdown in talks when he flew his guest by helicopter to his Gettysburg ranch and presented him with one of his cattle as a gift. In return, Khrushchev invited Eisenhower and his grandchildren to visit the Soviet Union.

The following morning, Khrushchev agreed to abandon his Berlin ultimatum of the previous year in exchange for Eisenhoweras commitment that he would enter talks on Berlinas status with the aim of achieving a solution that would satisfy all parties.

With unusual candor, Khrushchev shared with Eisenhower that he had only issued a Berlin ultimatum as athe result of the high-handed att.i.tude of the U.S. toward the USSR, which had led the Soviets to think that there was no alternative.a He said he needed a disarmament agreement with the U.S., as it was hard enough to feed his country without having to bear the costs of an arms race. The two men then compared notes about how their military establishments were pus.h.i.+ng them each toward ever larger arms purchases, always blaming the aggressive posture of the other country.

Talks nearly collapsed again when Khrushchev insisted on a joint communiqu to capture their agreement on Berlin negotiations, but demanded the U.S. side take out language that athere would be no time limit on them.a After a difficult exchange, Eisenhower accepted Khrushchevas terms as long as he could mention at their joint press conference the Soviet leaderas agreement to abandon his Berlin ultimatum, which Khrushchev would confirm if the media asked.

For his part, Eisenhower agreed to what Khrushchev had most wanted: a four-power Paris Summit on Berlin and disarmament issues. For Khrushchev, the agreement immunized him against critics who argued his apeaceful coexistencea policy toward the West had been without resulta”and provided incontrovertible proof that his course was improving the Soviet Unionas global standing.

Elated by the U.S. trip and the prospect of a summit, Khrushchev preemptively cut Soviet armed forces by a further 1.2 million men in December, the largest-percentage reduction since the 1920s. Reports that Franceas Charles de Gaulle and West Germanyas Konrad Adenauer were rolling back Eisenhoweras willingness to negotiate Berlinas status did not dampen Khrushchevas self-congratulatory optimism.

SVERDLOVSK, SOVIET UNION.

SUNDAY, MAY 1, 1960.

Just eight months after his American journey, what Khrushchev heralded as the aspirit of Camp Davida exploded over Sverdlovsk in the Ural Mountains when a Soviet surface-to-air missile brought down a spy plane.

Initially, Khrushchev celebrated the incident as a triumph of Soviet anti aircraft technology and a change of luck. As recently as three weeks earlier, his air defense forces had failed to bring down the advanced, high-alt.i.tude CIA plane even though the Soviets knew exactly where it was flying. While in pursuit on that earlier occasion, a MiG-19 Soviet fighter had crashed in Semipalatinsk near a secret nuclear testing site that the U-2 plane was photographing. Two newly developed high-alt.i.tude interceptors also could not catch up to the U-2 as it collected images of the Tyumatom ballistic missile site.

Up until that point, a frustrated Khrushchev had kept the U.S. intrusions secret from the world so as to avoid having to admit Soviet military failure. Now that his forces had shot down the U-2, he gleefully toyed with the Americans by saying nothing about the incident while the CIA put out a false cover storya”one it would later be forced to withdraw with embarra.s.smenta”that a weather plane had gone missing over Turkey.

Within days, however, Khrushchev recognized that the U-2 incident posed greater dangers to him than to the Americans. Political enemies whom he had neutralized after putting down the 1957 coup against him began to regroup. Mao Tse-tung publicly condemned Khrushchevas wooing of the Americans as acommunist betrayal.a Though still speaking privately, Soviet party officials and military bra.s.s more confidently questioned Khrushchevas troop reductions. They argued that Khrushchev was undermining their ability to defend the homeland.

Years later, Khrushchev would concede to the American physician A. McGhee Harvey, a specialist who was treating his daughter, that the U-2 incident proved to be the watershed event after which he awas no longer in full control.a From that point forward, Khrushchev found it harder to defend himself against those who argued that he was too weak in the face of the militaristic and imperialist intentions of duplicitous Americans.

At first, Khrushchev tried to keep on track the Paris Summit that was scheduled to occur two weeks after the U-2 eventa”a meeting that he had worked so hard to organize as a crowning moment of his rule. Khrushchev told domestic critics that if they pulled out, they would only be rewarding U.S. hard-liners like CIA chief Allen Dulles, who, he argued, had ordered the flights to undermine Eisenhoweras genuine peace efforts.

Eisenhower removed Khrushchevas last political cover at a press conference on May 11, just five days ahead of the summit. To rea.s.sure Americans that their government had acted responsibly and under his complete control, Eisenhower said he had personally approved Gary Powersas U-2 flighta”as he had with each and every one of the sensitive missions. Such risks were necessary, he said, because Soviet secrecy made it impossible to a.s.sess Moscowas intentions and capabilities through any other means. aWe are getting to the point where we must decide whether we are trying to prepare to fight a war or prevent one,a he told his national security team.

By the time he landed in Paris, Khrushchev had concluded that if he couldnat get a public apology from Eisenhower, he would have to prompt the collapse of the Paris talks. It was politically safer for him to abandon the summit than to go ahead with a meeting that was destined to fail, and by then it also was clear the U.S. would offer none of the concessions he was seeking on Berlin.

Though Eisenhower refused to apologize in Paris for the U-2 mission, he tried to avoid a summit collapse by agreeing to stop the flights. He went an important step further and proposed an aopen skiesa approach that would allow United Nations planes to monitor both countries with over-flights. Khrushchev, however, could never accept such a proposal because it was only secrecy that protected his exaggerations about Soviet capabilities.

In what would be the one and only session of the summit, Khrushchev uncharacteristically stuck to the language of a prepared forty-five-minute harangue that proposed a six- to eight-month postponement of the conference so that it would resume only after Eisenhower had left power. He also withdrew his invitation for Eisenhower to visit the Soviet Union. Without forewarning the other leaders at the summit, Khrushchev then petulantly refused to attend the second session the following day. He instead retreated with Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky to the French village of Pleurs-sur-Marnea”where Malinovsky had stayed during World War IIa”to drink wine, eat cheese, and talk about women. Well lubricated, the Soviet leader returned to Paris that afternoon to declare the summitas collapse.

His crowning public act came during a nearly three-hour farewell press conference at which he slammed his fist so hard on a table that it toppled a bottle of mineral water. a.s.suming the catcalls that followed came from West German reporters, he called them afascist b.a.s.t.a.r.ds we didnat finish off at Stalingrad.a He said if they continued to heckle him, he would hit them so hard athere wonat be a squeal out of you.a Khrushchev was so unhinged by the time he debriefed Warsaw Pact envoys in Paris that he employed a crude joke in relating to them the outcome of the summit. It concerned the sad story of a Tsarist soldier who could fart the melody to aG.o.d Save Russiaa but experienced an unfortunate accident when forced to perform the tune under duress. Khrushchevas punch line was that the amba.s.sadors could report to their governments that his own pressures applied in Paris had similarly made Eisenhower s.h.i.+t in his pants.

Polandas amba.s.sador to France, Stanislaw Gaevski, concluded from the session that the Soviet leader awas just a bit unbalanced emotionally.a For the sake of Easta”West relations, Gaevski wished Khrushchev had never come to Paris.

For all his theatrics, however, Khrushchev had too much at stake to abandon his course of apeaceful coexistencea with the U.S. He had given up on Eisenhower but not yet on America. Though the U-2 had undermined his summit, he could not let it undercut his rule.

On his way back to Moscow, Khrushchev stopped in East Berlin, where he replaced his Paris scowl with a peacemakeras smile. Though originally scheduled to speak to a crowd of 100,000 in Marx-Engels Square, after the Paris debacle East German leaders had moved the event to the safer confines of the indoor Werner-Seelenbinder-Halle, where Khrushchev spoke to a select group of 6,000 communist faithful.

To the surprise of U.S. diplomats who had expected Khrushchev to escalate the crisis, Khrushchev sounded an unexpected note of patience until the Americans could elect a new president. aIn this situation, time is required,a he said, adding that the prospects for a Berlin solution would then aripen better.a Khrushchev then began preparations for his return trip to the U.S. under dramatically changed circ.u.mstances.

ABOARD THE BALTIKA.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1960.

Khrushchevas damp welcome on a rickety New York dock demonstrated just how much had changed since his grand reception by President Eisenhower at Andrews Air Force Base just a year earlier. Instead of flying to America aboard the Sovietsa most advanced pa.s.senger aircraft, which was in the shop for repairs, he had traveled aboard the Baltika, a vintage 1940 German vessel seized as reparations after the war.

To compensate and send a message of communist solidarity, Khrushchev had drafted as fellow pa.s.sengers the leaders of Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Byelorussia. His mood swings during the voyage were violent. At one point he fought off depression while preoccupied by fears that NATO might sink his unprotected vessel, yet on another occasion he joyously insisted the Ukrainian party boss Nikolai Podgorny entertain fellow pa.s.sengers by dancing a gopak, a national dance performed with strenuous leg kicks from the squatting position.

When one of the Soviet sailors jumped s.h.i.+p while approaching the American sh.o.r.e, then sought asylum, Khrushchev shrugged in response, saying, aHeall find out soon enough how much it costs and what it tastes like in New York.a Other indignities would follow. Khrushchev was received in the harbor by union demonstrators from the International Longsh.o.r.emenas a.s.sociation, who waved huge protest signs from a chartered boat. The most memorable: ROSES ARE RED, VIOLETS ARE BLUE, STALIN DROPPED DEAD, HOW ABOUT YOU?

Khrushchev was infuriated. He had dreamed of arriving like Americaas earliest discoverers, whom he had read about as a boy. Instead, the unionist boycott left the Baltika to be moored by its own crew and a handful of unskilled Soviet diplomats on the East Riveras dilapidated Pier 73. aSo, another dirty trick the Americans are playing on us,a Khrushchev complained.