the remoter regions of the Soviet Union not pre-
viously cultivated because they were subject to
droughts or other unfavourable conditions. It was
a crash programme that produced spectacular
results between 1953 and 1956. Later results
proved disappointing.
As always the Soviet leadership faced the prob-
lem of how to stretch inadequate resources to pro-
vide for policies each of which was highly desirable
in itself: more investment in agriculture, a switch,
even if a modest one, from heavy to consumer
industries, and full support for the military estab-
lishment and defence. One conclusion reached was
that an openly aggressive policy towards the US
and its allies, such as Stalin had followed in 1948
and 1949, would only cement the anti-Soviet
alliances and lead to increased Western rearma-
ment, so widening the gap between the West and
the Soviet Union even if Soviet defence expendi-
ture were greatly increased. Soviet relations with
the rest of the world therefore followed a calmer
course. But the West must not be left with the
impression that the opportunity now existed to
undermine Soviet control of Eastern and central
Europe, which was fundamental to the Soviet
Union’s perception of its continued security. So a
tightrope had to be walked between concession
and firmness. Despite debate on each issue of pol-
icy, and political rivalries, a surprisingly consistent
line of policy emerged from 1953 until 1956.
In April 1953, only a month after Stalin’s death,
the Soviet Union used its influence to help bring
the Korean War to a conclusion. Next, it was indi-
cated that a peace treaty might be possible for
Austria. But, to hold the balance, emphasis was
placed on the continuity of Soviet policy: there
would be no withdrawal from Eastern Europe. The
point was underlined when Soviet tanks suppressed
disorders in Berlin which threatened to turn into a
general uprising against an unpopular Stalinist
regime. But in the summer of 1953 further
friendly signals were sent. An American journalist
in Prague who had been imprisoned as a spy two
years previously was released, and Malenkov deliv-
ered a speech in which he declared that there were
no problems that could not be settled by negotia-
tion. To satisfy the hardliners these ‘new’ views
were interspersed with classic Stalinist declarations
as well. Actions, however, indicated the new
approach more clearly: the resumption of diplo-
matic relations with Greece, with Israel and even
with Stalin’s sworn enemy, Tito’s Yugoslavia.
Conciliatory statements were made to improve
relations in the Middle East with Turkey and Iran.
In the spring of 1954, the Soviet Union and China
participated with Britain and France in the Geneva
Conference, which reached a settlement relating to
the French Indo-China War. The largest and most
unexpected concession the Russians made was to
conclude the long-drawn-out negotiations over
Austria by agreeing to withdraw from the Soviet
zone and from Vienna, which they did tactfully to
the strains of the Radetzky March. The Austrian
Treaty was signed on 15 May 1955. A new epoch
in East–West relations appeared to have been
achieved two months later at a conference of the
Big Four (the US, the Soviet Union, Britain and
France), also held in Geneva. Although far-reach-
ing disarmament proposals by both sides got
nowhere and no real progress was made on any
substantive issue, the friendly human contact
between the Soviet leaders – Khrushchev clearly
emerging as Russia’s decisive voice in foreign
affairs – and President Eisenhower created an illu-
sory feeling that a new era was about to start. The
Cold War looked like being liquidated. Even so,
Soviet policy failed in one of its main objectives:
to prevent the rearming of Western Europe in gen-
eral and of Western Germany in particular. Nor
did the relaxation of tension sufficiently encourage
the West to abandon NATO and to dissolve the
Western European–North American military life-
line. Suspicions of the Soviet Union ran too deep,
Soviet military power in Europe was too over-
whelming to tempt France, Britain and the Federal
Republic of Germany to exchange the American
alliance for Soviet promises of peaceful coexistence
and some form of German reunification.
The decision to withdraw from Austria coincided
with the fall of Malenkov in February 1955.
Foreign relations were one of the issues in the
internal power struggle among the Soviet leader-
ship in the Politburo (or rather in the Praesidium,
as the Politburo was renamed from 1952 to
1966). Khrushchev was prepared to go further
1
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