Conformity and Challenges in the Eisenhower and Kennedy Years 355arms race. But at the same time he continued to build up Soviet defenses with
conventional and nuclear weapons. Because Russia had its own arsenal, the
Americans, Khrushchev pointed out, “have to talk to us, fight with us; but be
not afraid... this is a game, in which nobody will be a winner.” Just a year
later, the United States began, unilaterally, to spy on Soviet nuclear sites via
U-2 reconnaissance planes anyway. By 1956, then, it was clear that arms con-
trol was not going to happen. The United States was addressing the issue from
a position of strength and would not make concessions that altered that rela-
tionship, while the Soviets did not trust the Americans to control weapons or
disarm in good faith. The “thaw” was short-lived.
At the same time, the Soviet Union was facing turmoil from its “satellite”
countries in Eastern Europe–those nations it had occupied in World War II
and controlled since then. In 1953 in Eastern Germany [the GDR] and in
1956 in Poland and Hungary, local groups rebelled against Communist con-
trol, forcing the governments there and the Soviet Union to confront dissent
within their area of power. Strikingly, the Russians and their allied Communist
governments actually were more flexible than the Americans. Where the U.S.
unleashed often-brutal forces to crush nationalist, workers, and peasant move-
ments in places such as Greece, Iran, Guatemala, and Vietnam, the Soviet
Union actually accepted the establishment of moderate governments in
Eastern Europe. Poland in 1956 was having a “de-Stalinization” campaign to
liberalize that country. Though Khrushchev tried to prevent Wladyslaw
Gomulka, a liberal political leader, from taking charge in Poland, the Polish
people refused to back down and told Khrushchev unequivocally that
Gomulka was their choice for national leader. Gomulka, for his part, assured
the Soviets that he was still a loyal communist and would remain loyal to the
Soviet bloc and retain membership in the Warsaw Pact, a mutual defense
group similar to NATO, established by the Soviet Union and its satellites in
- Khrushchev relented and Gomulka, and his more liberal policies, sur-
vived, for a time at least.
There was a liberation movement in Hungary challenging communist con-
trol underway at that time, too. It did not turn out as in Poland, but still, the
comparisons between the U.S. approach in, say, Guatemala, and the Soviet
approach in Eastern Europe is worth noting. Ultimately, the Soviet Union
intervened to prevent the Hungarian liberalization movement, led by Imre
Nagy, to “de- Communize” that country, but the Russians sent troops and