Eisenhower and Khrushchev 753Hopes of pushing back the Soviet Union with clever
stratagems and moral fervor were fading. Although
the United States detonated the first hydrogen bomb
in November 1952, the Soviets followed suit within
six months. The Cold War between the superpowers
had become yet more chilling.
Stalin died in March 1953, and after a period of
internal conflict within the Kremlin, Nikita Khrushchev
emerged as the new master of the Soviet Union.
Khrushchev was perhaps the most confusing (and,
arguably, confused) figure of the Cold War. Crude and
bibulous, prone to violent tantrums and tearful histri-
onics, he delighted in shocking people with words and
gestures. In the most famous of these, he pounded his
shoe on the table during a debate at the United
Nations. He appealed to the anti-Western prejudices of
countries just emerging from the yoke of colonialism,
offering them economic aid and pointing to Soviet
achievements in science and technology as proof that
communism would vanquish the capitalist system with-
out troubling to destroy it by force. Although a prod-
uct of the Soviet system, Khrushchev recognized its
deep failings and resolved to purge it of Stalinism. He
released political prisoners from Stalin’s gulags, or polit-
ical prison camps, and told wide-eyed party functionar-
ies that Stalin had committed monstrous crimes.
Eisenhower, a seasoned analyst of military capabili-
ties, understood that Khrushchev’s antics were meant
to conceal the Soviet Union’s many weaknesses: the bit-
ter opposition to Soviet rule among peoples of Eastern
Europe; the deficiencies of the overcentralized Soviet
economy, especially in agriculture; and the bureaucratic
stultification of its armed forces. The Soviet Union had
kept up a good pace in the nuclear arms race but had
not attained nuclear parity. Thousands of American air-
planes were based in Europe, northern Africa, and
Turkey, placing most Soviet targets within easy range.
Heavy Soviet bombers, on the other hand, faced the
daunting prospect of lumbering thousands of miles
over the Arctic and Pacific Oceans to reach American
targets, harried all the while by lightning-fast fighter
planes. The United States would win (whatever that
meant) any nuclear war.
But this advantage disappeared in the exhaust
trail of a Soviet rocket, launched on October 4, 1957,
that carried a 184-pound capsule named Sputnikfar
above the atmosphere into earth orbit. Soon,
American policymakers knew, Soviet missiles capable
of reaching American soil would be tipped with
nuclear warheads. The nation’s far-flung network of
bomber defenses had become obsolete, and with it
the strategy of massive retaliation.Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev engage in a “kitchen debate” over the future of
capitalism at a Moscow trade fair in 1959. Although the encounter did little to advance United States-Soviet relations, it
established Nixon’s credentials as a tough negotiator.