Part 2 (2/2)

The only saving grace was Khrushchevas control of his home press. Pravda correspondent Gennady Vasiliev filed a story speaking of a happy crowd (there was none) lining the sh.o.r.e on a bright and sunny morning (it was raining).

None of that dampened the energy Khrushchev would invest in the trip. Speaking before the UN General a.s.sembly, he would unsucessfully demand the resignation of Secretary General Dag Hammerskjld (who would die the next year in a plane crash in Africa), and be replaced by a troika of a Westerner, a communist, and a nonaligned leader.a On the last day of his stay, in an iconic act that would be historyas primary recollection of the visit, he removed a shoe in protest of a Philippine delegateas reference to communist captive nations and banged it on his UN table.

By September 26, only a week into Khrushchevas trip, the New York Times reported that a nationwide survey showed the Soviet leader had made himself the focal point of the presidential election campaign and had helped make foreign policy the premier concern of U.S. voters. Americans were measuring which of the candidates, Richard Nixon or Senator John F. Kennedy, could best stand up to Khrushchev.

Khrushchev was determined to use his considerable leverage more wisely than in 1956, when Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganinas praise of the Sovietsa favored candidate, Adlai Stevenson, had helped the winning Eisenhowera”Nixon ticket. In public, Khrushchev hedged his bets, saying that both candidates arepresent American big businessaas we Russians say, they are two boots of the same pair: which is better, the left or the right boot?a When asked whom he favored, he safely said, aRoosevelt.a But behind the scenes, he worked toward Nixonas defeat. As early as January 1960, over vodka, fruit, and caviar, Soviet Amba.s.sador to the U.S. Mikhail Mens.h.i.+kov had asked Adlai Stevenson how Moscow might best help him defeat Nixon. Was it better for the Soviet press to praise him or criticize hima”and on which topics? Stevenson responded that he did not expect to be a candidatea”and he then prayed that news of the Soviet proposition would never leak.

Yet both parties so deeply recognized Khrushchevas potential to swing votes, either by design or by accident, that each reached out to him.

Republican Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., who had grown close to Khrushchev during his first U.S. trip, had flown to Moscow in February 1960 to convince the Soviet leader that he could work with Nixon. Lodge, who would become Nixonas running mate, said, aOnce Mr. Nixon is in the White House, Iam surea”Iam absolutely certaina”heall take a position of preserving and perhaps even improving our relations.a He asked Khrushchev to remain neutral, realizing any endors.e.m.e.nt would only cost Nixon votes.

By autumn, the Eisenhower administration had increased its appeals to Khrushchev to release Gary Powers and the RB-47 airmen who had been shot down over the Arctic. Khrushchev recalled later that he had refused after calculating that the election was so close any such move might have swung the outcome. aAs it turned out, wead done the right thing,a he would say later. Given the margin of victory, he said, aThe slightest nudge either way would have been decisive.a The Democrats were also at work to influence Khrushchev. W. Averell Harriman, President Rooseveltas former amba.s.sador to Moscow, recommended through Amba.s.sador Mens.h.i.+kov that Khrushchev be tough on both candidates. The surest way to elect Nixon was to praise Kennedy in public, he said. The timing of the meeting, less than a month before the election and while Khrushchev was still in the U.S., demonstrated the Democratsa recognition of Khrushchevas electoral influence.

As guarded as he was in public, Khrushchev was explicit with underlings. aWe thought we would have more hope of improving Sovieta”American relations if John Kennedy were in the White House.a He told colleagues that Nixonas anticommunism and his connection with athat devil of darkness [Senator Joe] McCarthy, to whom he owed his career,a all meant awe had no reason to welcome the prospect of Nixon as President.a Though Kennedyas campaign rhetoric was hawkish against Moscow, the KGB chalked that up less to conviction than to political expedience and the influence of his anticommunist father, Joe. Khrushchev welcomed Kennedyas calls for nuclear test ban negotiations and his statement that he would have apologized for the U-2 incursions if he had been president when they occurred. More to the point, Khrushchev believed he could outmaneuver Kennedy, a man whom his foreign ministry had characterized as aunlikely to possess the qualities of an outstanding person.a The consensus in the Kremlin was that the young man was a lightweight, a product of American privilege who lacked the experience required for leaders.h.i.+p.

The candidates continued to shower attention on Khrushchev as he monitored their campaign from his suite at the Soviet Mission at Sixty-eighth Street and Park Avenue, where he would occasionally appear on the balcony of a turn-of-the-century mansion built originally for the banker Percy Pyne. In the initial Kennedya”Nixon debate in a Chicago TV studio on September 26a”the first live-broadcast presidential debate evera”Kennedyas opening statement before sixty million American viewers spoke directly to Khrushchevas New York stay and aour struggle with Mr. Khrushchev for survival.a Though the debate was to have been about domestic issues, Kennedy worried that the Soviet Union was churning out atwice as many scientists and engineers as we area while the U.S. continued to underpay its teachers and underfund its schools. He declared that he would do better than Nixon in keeping America ahead of the Soviets in education, health care, home construction, and economic strength.

During their second debate on foreign policy on October 7 in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., the candidates focused squarely on Khrushchev and Berlin. Kennedy predicted that the next president ain his first year is going to be confronted with a very serious question on our defense of Berlin, our commitment to Berlin. Itas going to be a test of our nerve and will.a He said that President Eisenhower had allowed American strength to erode and that he, if elected, would ask Congress to support a military buildup, because by spring or winter aweare going to be face-to-face with the most serious Berlin crisis since 1949 or 1950.a During the campaign, Adlai Stevenson had counseled Kennedy to avoid discussing Berlin altogether because it would be adifficult to say anything very constructive about the divided city without compromising future negotiations.a So Kennedy had raised Berlin in only half a dozen speeches. Yet before a national television audience the subject was impossible to avoid, particularly after Khrushchev had told United Nations correspondents he wanted the U.S. to join a summit on Berlinas future shortly after electionsa”to be followed by a UN General a.s.sembly meeting on the matter in April.

During their third debate on October 13, Frank McGee of NBC News asked both candidates whether they would be willing to take military action to defend Berlin. Kennedy responded with his clearest statement of the campaign on Berlin: aMr. McGee, we have a contractual right to be in Berlin coming out of the conversations at Potsdam and of World War II that has been reinforced by direct commitments of the President of the United States. Itas been reinforced by a number of other nations under NATOa. It is a commitment that we have to meet if we are going to protect the security of Western Europe, and therefore on this question I donat think there is any doubt in the mind of any American. I hope there is not any doubt in the mind of any member of the community of West Berlin. Iam sure there isnat any doubt in the mind of the Russians. We will meet our commitments to maintain the freedom and independence of West Berlin.a For all Kennedyas apparent conviction, Khrushchev sensed the makings of compromise. Kennedy talked of U.S. contractual rights in Berlin but not of moral responsibility. He wasnat sounding the usual Republican clarion call to free captive nations. He wasnat even suggesting that freedom should spread across the cityas border to East Berlin. He had spoken of West Berlin and of West Berlin alone. Kennedy was talking about Berlin as a technical and legal matter, points that could be negotiated.

Before Khrushchev could test Kennedy, however, he had to put his communist house in order and neutralize rising challenges on two frontsa”China and East Germany.

MOSCOW.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1960.

It was understandable that at first the West overlooked the importance of the worldas largest-ever meeting of communist leaders, given that it was characterized primarily by two weeks of mind-numbing and redundant speeches from eighty-one party delegations from around the world. Behind the scenes, however, Khrushchev was working to neutralize the challenge Chinaas Mao Tse-tung was mounting to his leaders.h.i.+p of world communisma”and to gain support within the party for a new diplomatic effort with President-elect Kennedy.

Soviet foreign policy strategists saw their two priorities as the Sinoa”Soviet alliance and peaceful coexistence with the West, very much in that order. Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko had argued it would be a mistake to lose Beijing without gaining anything reliable from the U.S., yet that was precisely what had happened during 1960. The Soviet emba.s.sy in Beijing reported to Khrushchev that the Chinese were using the aftermath of the U-2 incident and the Paris Summit failure to oppose Khrushchevas foreign policy afor the first time directly and openly.a Mao opposed Khrushchevas foreign policy of peaceful coexistence with the West and sought a course of more intense confrontation both over Berlin and across the developing world. The Chinese delegation had come to Moscow determined to gain increased Kremlin support for national liberation movements and a.s.sorted leftistsa”from Asia and Africa to Latin America.

Now that relations had broken down with the U.S., a number of Soviet officials privately argued that Khrushchev should make a bolder strategic bet on the Chinese. What only a few of them knew, however, was that the personal animosity that had grown between Khrushchev and Mao would make that impossible.

By Khrushchevas own account, he had disliked Mao since his first visit in 1954 for the fifth anniversary of the Peopleas Republic. Khrushchev had complained about everything from the endless rounds of green tea (aI canat take that much liquida) to what he regarded as his hostas ingratiating, insincere courtesy. Mao was so uncooperative during their talks that Khrushchev had concluded upon returning to Moscow, aConflict with China is inevitable.a When a year later West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer raised concerns with Khrushchev about an emerging Sino-Soviet alliance, Khrushchev dismissed that prospect and pointed to his own concerns about China. aThink of it,a he had said. aAlready six hundred million of them and every year twelve million morea. We have to do something for our peopleas standard of living, we have to arm like the Americans, [and] we have to give all the time to the Chinese who suck our blood like leeches.a Mao had shocked Khrushchev with his readiness for war with the U.S., irrespective of the devastation it might bring. Because the Chinese and Soviets together had a vastly greater population, Mao had argued to Khrushchev that they would emerge victorious. aNo matter what kind of war breaks outa”conventional or thermonucleara”weall win,a he had told Khrushchev. aWe may lose more than three hundred million people. So what? War is war.a Using what the Soviet leader considered the crudest possible term for s.e.xual intercourse, Mao told Khrushchev the Chinese would simply produce more babies than ever before to replace the dead. Khrushchev came to consider Mao aa lunatic on a throne.a Khrushchevas 1956 repudiation of Stalin and of his personality cult had strained the relations.h.i.+p further. aThey understood the implications for themselves,a Khrushchev said of the Chinese. aStalin was exposed and condemned at the Congress for having had hundreds of thousands of people shot and for his abuse of power. Mao Tse-tung was following in Stalinas footsteps.a The downward spiral in relations accelerated in June 1959 when Khrushchev reneged on a pledge to give the Chinese a sample atomic bomb while at the same time moving to improve relations with the Americans. Mao told fellow party leaders that Khrushchev was abandoning communism to make pacts with the devil.

Khrushchev further strained ties when he returned to China shortly after his 1959 U.S. trip to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Peopleas Republic. Instead of simply praising Maoas revolution, Khrushchev used a state banquet as well to congratulate himself for reducing world tensions through the aCamp David spirita that he had created with Eisenhower.

On the same trip, Mao blew a cloud of cigarette smoke in Khrushchevas face while he talkeda”though he knew the Soviet leader hated nothing morea”and mocked him for what he called disorganized rambling. Maoas efforts to humiliate Khrushchev reached their low point at an outdoor pool where he took him for further discussions. The champion swimmer Mao dived in the deep end and performed laps gracefully while Khrushchev floundered in the shallows with the help of a life ring tossed in by Chinese aides. On the drive home from the pool, Mao told his physician that he had so tormented Khrushchev it was like asticking a needle up his a.s.s.a Khrushchev knew he had been set up: aThe interpreter is translating, and I canat answer as I should. It was Maoas way of putting himself in an advantageous position. Well, I got sick of it. All the while I was swimming, I was thinking, aThe h.e.l.l with you.aa The first sign of how much uglier matters would get between Mao and Khrushchev had come five months earlier, on June 20, 1960, in Bucharest, where the Romanians had hosted fifty-one national communist delegations for their 3rd Party Congress. Just two days before the gathering, Khrushchev had announced that he would attend after failing to bridge differences with a Chinese delegation that had visited Moscow en route to the Romanian capital. His partic.i.p.ation turned an insignificant, provincial party meeting into the most open warfare yet between leaders of the two most powerful communist states. To prepare the ground, Boris Ponomarev, chief of the International Department of the Soviet Central Committee, had circulated Moscowas case against Maoas amisjudgment of the current global situationa in the form of an eighty-one-page aLetter of Informationa for Congress delegates. In it, Khrushchev explained his intention to continue his disputed course of peaceful coexistence with the new U.S. president.

With Mao absent from Bucharest, his counterthrust was delivered by Peng Zhen, the head of the Chinese delegation and a legendary communist who had guided resistance to j.a.panese occupation and ultimately the communist capture of Beijing in 1948.* Peng stunned delegates with the fierceness of his unprecedented attack on Khrushchev, which he supported by circulating copies of a lengthy correspondence the Soviet leader had sent to Mao that year. The Soviet leaderas letter shocked delegates in two respects: the crude language with which Khrushchev spewed venom at Mao, and the Chinese breach of confidentiality in sharing the private communication with others.

Khrushchev turned as vicious as veteran delegates had ever seen him in a final, closed session. He attacked the absent Mao as aa Buddha who gets his theory out of his nosea and for being aoblivious of any interests other than his own.a Peng shot back that it was now clear Khrushchev had organized the Bucharest meeting only to attack China. He said the Soviet leader had no foreign policy except to ablow hot then cold toward the imperialist powers.a Khrushchev was livid. In a furious, impulsive froth, he issued overnight orders that would undo Soviet economic, diplomatic, and intelligence-gathering interests in China that had taken years to establish. aWithin the short span of a month,a he decreed, he would withdraw 1,390 Soviet technical advisers, sc.r.a.pping 257 scientific and technical cooperation projects, and discontinuing work on 343 expert contracts and subcontracts. Dozens of Chinese research and construction projects came to a stop, as did factory and mining projects that had begun trial production.

Despite all that, the Bucharest communiqu had been crafted to carefully hide from the West the truth about the head-on collision of communismas leaders. That would be harder to conceal at the November follow-on meeting in Moscow, which included many of the same delegates but was far larger and at a higher level.

Khrushchevas intense lobbying before the meeting and cajoling during the conference kept the Chinese in check. Only a dozen country delegations among the eighty-one sided with Chinaas objections to Khrushchevas course of liberalizing communism at home and peaceful coexistence abroad. Still, even that level of opposition to Soviet rule was unprecedented.

With Mao in Beijing, Khrushchev and Chinese General Party Secretary Deng Xiaoping locked horns behind closed doors at the Kremlinas St. Georgeas Hall. Khrushchev called Mao a amegalomaniac warmonger.a He said Mao wanted asomeone you can p.i.s.s ona. If you want Stalin that badly, you can have hima”cadaver, coffin, and all!a Deng attacked the Soviet leaderas speech, saying, aKhrushchev had evidently been talking without knowing what he was saying, as he did all too frequently.a It was an unprecedented personal insult to the communist movementas acknowledged leader on his own turf. Maoas new ally, the Albanian leader Enver Hoxha, made the most vicious of all the speeches, saying Khrushchev had blackmailed Albania and was trying to starve his country into submission for remaining true to Stalin.

In the end, the Soviets and the Chinese negotiated a ceasefire. The Chinese had been surprised by the support the Soviet leader could still muster and retreated, having seen the futility of splitting the communist movement at such a crucial moment. The Chinese reluctantly accepted Khrushchevas notion of peaceful coexistence with the West in exchange for the Soviet leaderas agreement to increase support for capitalismas opponents across the developing world.

The Soviets would resume a.s.sistance to China and thus keep construction work going on 66 of the 155 unfinished industrial projects they had begun. However, Mao didnat get what he most wanted: high-end collaboration on military technology. Maoas interpreter Yan Mingfu viewed the agreement as only aa temporary armistice. In the long run, events were already out of control.a With the Chinese temporarily in check, however, Khrushchev moved to protect his East German flank.

THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1960.

Ulbricht sat forward and erect in his chair, listening skeptically as Khrushchev briefed him on his strategy for handling Kennedy and Berlin in 1961. The East German leader had peppered Khrushchev with three letters since October, each increasingly critical of Khrushchevas failure to counter his countryas growing economic difficulties and refugee bleed with a more determined response.

Having given up hope that Khrushchev would act on Berlin at any point soon, Ulbricht had begun to act unilaterally to tighten his control over Berlin. For the first time, East Germany was requiring that diplomats accredited to West Germany seek permission from East German authorities to enter East Berlin or East Germanya”and in one high-profile incident had turned back Walter aReda Dowling, the U.S. amba.s.sador to West Germany. The East German moves directly contradicted Soviet efforts to expand diplomatic and economic contacts with West Berlin and West Germany. So on October 24, Khrushchev had angrily ordered Ulbricht to reverse the new border regime. Ulbricht had reluctantly complied, but tensions between the two men continued to grow.

The Soviet amba.s.sador in East Berlin, Mikhail Pervukhin, complained to Khrushchev and Foreign Minister Gromyko that Ulbricht was disregarding Kremlin directives with ever greater frequency. A second secretary in the Soviet emba.s.sy, A. P. Kazennov, cabled his bosses in Moscow a warning that the East Germans might shut down travel across the border altogether to stop the increased refugee flow. Pervukhin reported to Moscow that a host of Ulbricht measures limiting movement and economic interaction between the two parts of the city had demonstrated the East German leaderas ainflexibility.a Ulbricht had created a new National Defense Council to better defend his countryas security, and he had named himself to chair it. On October 19, the new council discussed potential measures to seal the Berlin border through which so many refugees were flowing. Though the West considered Ulbricht a Soviet puppet, it was increasingly the East German leader who was trying to pull Moscowas strings.

In his most recent letter on November 22, Ulbricht had complained to Khrushchev that the Soviets were sitting on their hands while his economy was crumbling, refugees were fleeing, West Berlin freedom was becoming an international cause clbre, and West Berlin factories were supplying the West German defense industry. He told Khrushchev that Moscow must change course aafter years of tolerating an unclear situation.a Waiting to act on Berlin until after Khrushchev could organize a summit with Kennedy, Ulbricht argued, simply played into American hands.

Khrushchev a.s.sured a skeptical Ulbricht that he would force the Berlin issue early in the Kennedy administration. What he wanted was not another four-power summit, he said, but a one-on-one meeting with Kennedy where he could more effectively achieve his ends. He told Ulbricht he would resort to another ultimatum at an early stage if Kennedy showed no willingness to negotiate a reasonable agreement in the first months of his administration.

Though Ulbricht remained distrustful, he was heartened by Khrushchevas declaration of determination to force the Berlin issue so early. At the same time, the East German leader warned Khrushchev that his repeated promises of action on Berlin were losing credibility. aAmong our population,a he told Khrushchev, athere is already a mood taking shape where they say, aYou [Khrushchev] only talk about a peace treaty, but donat do anything about it.a We have to be careful.a The East German client was lecturing his Soviet master.

Ulbricht wanted Khrushchev to know that time was running out. aThe situation in Berlin has become complicated, not in our favor,a he said. He told Khrushchev that West Berlinas economy was rapidly growing stronger, ill.u.s.trated by the fact that some 50,000 East Berliners crossed the border each day to work for the Westas higher wages. The tension in the city was growing in rough proportion to the widening gap in living standards between East and West.

aWe still have not taken corresponding countermeasures,a Ulbricht complained. He said he was also losing the battle for the minds of the intelligentsia, a great number of whom were leaving as refugees. Ulbricht told Khrushchev he couldnat compete because West Berlin teachers earned some 200 to 300 marks more a month than teachers in the East, and doctors earned twice the Eastern salaries. He didnat have the means to match such salaries, and lacked the ability to produce sufficient consumer goodsa”even if he could provide East Germans with the money to buy them.

Khrushchev promised Ulbricht further economic a.s.sistance.

The Soviet leader shrugged. Perhaps he would have to put Soviet rockets on military alert as he maneuvered to alter Berlinas status, but he was confident the West would not start a war over the cityas freedom. aLuckily, our adversaries still havenat gone crazy; they still think and their nerves still arenat bad.a If Kennedy would not negotiate, Khrushchev told Ulbricht, he would move forward unilaterally, aand let them see their defeat.a With an exasperated sigh, Khrushchev told Ulbricht, aWe must be finished with this situation sometime.a

3.

KENNEDY: A PRESIDENTaS EDUCATION.

We can live with the status quo in Berlin but can take no real initiative to change it for the better. To a greater or lesser degree, the Soviets and East Germans can, whenever they are willing to a.s.sume the political consequences, change it for the worse.

Martin Hillenbrand, State Department chief of German affairs, transition memo to President Kennedy, January 1961 So let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof.

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