and was kept under rigid control. Zionism was
treated as ideologically hostile to the state – mere
Jewish descent officially was not – and the teaching
of Hebrew and of Jewish culture was prohibited.
Punishments were harsh. Attempts to stamp out
the corruption widespread in the system involved
the imposition of death sentences for large-scale
fraud or transgression against economic laws.
Khrushchev’s first move after forcing Malen-
kov’s fall with the support of Bulganin and
Voroshilov in February 1955 was to discredit his
opponents in the Praesidium. In the winter of
1954–5 he had argued that in the dangerous
international circumstances of the time Malenkov
was wrong to espouse light consumer industries
at the expense of the heavy industry needed for
defence. Molotov could hardly dispute that. A
few months later Khrushchev turned to attack
Molotov’s inflexible stance on foreign relations.
Yugoslavia became the touchstone of Soviet
policy and the key to the making of a complete
break with Stalinism, a repudiation that Molotov
resisted. Molotov had been ready to re-establish
formal diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia as
between two nations, but he was not prepared to
accept that the party could agree to a reconcilia-
tion with a nationalist Yugoslav Communist
Party. Khrushchev prevailed and headed a Soviet
delegation which visited Belgrade in May 1955.
This public Soviet acceptance of Tito’s right to
follow his own nationalist path to communism
without having to accept Soviet leadership was
like the mountain coming to Mohammed.
At the plenum of the Central Committee of
the Communist Party in Moscow held in secret
in July 1955, it came to a showdown between
Khrushchev and Molotov. Khrushchev’s argu-
ments were powerful. The Soviet Union had to
avoid a conflict with the West, but opportunities
existed in the uncommitted underdeveloped
countries, which could be won over to the social-
ist camp. Khrushchev thus recognised that there
were independent nations which, while not
willing to accept Soviet leadership, could be en-
couraged to follow policies friendly to the Soviet
Union. At the same time, the splits in the
Soviet bloc, with Yugoslavia and China, should
be healed as far as possible. Molotov argued for
the more traditional line of policy that to
condone Tito’s break away from the control of
the Soviet party would only endanger the Soviet
position in the other people’s democracies such
as Poland. But before this crucial meeting had
ended, Molotov had to admit to errors – for the
time being he could not resist Khrushchev’s line
of policy. But Khrushchev was not yet powerful
enough to oust him, the most senior of Stalin’s
lieutenants still surviving in power.
Almost as sensational as Khrushchev’s visit to
Belgrade was West German Chancellor Konrad
Adenauer’s visit to Moscow in September 1955.
Adenauer had taken the German Federal Republic
into NATO and had refused to recognise the
German Democratic Republic (East Germany) as
sovereign, claiming to speak for the whole of
Germany. The two issues he raised in Moscow
were German reunification and the return of
German prisoners of war, and as a result of his visit
the surviving German prisoners of war returned
home. Relations between the Federal Republic
and the Soviet Union were normalised as between
two sovereign nations. Only a few weeks later in
November and December 1955 Khrushchev and
Bulganin visited India, Burma and Afghanistan,
to be met everywhere with enthusiasm. To
Afghanistan, in dispute with Pakistan, massive
Soviet military aid was sent, and economic assis-
tance was given to India and Burma; only Pakistan
could not be wooed but remained loyal to the
Western Baghdad Pact. On their return to
Moscow it was clear that Khrushchev’s and
Bulganin’s prestige had risen as a result of their
foreign travels. Khrushchev could claim that
Soviet influence and security had been enhanced
by the policies he had followed: a rapprochement
with Yugoslavia and China, good relations with
the countries of south-east Asia, a relaxation of
tension with Western Europe and, after the
Geneva summit of July 1955, with the US as well.
Soviet influence was on the increase in the neutral
Third World, that is among the ex-colonies of
Western European empires. Finally, the Soviet
Union had leapt over the Baghdad Pact in arrang-
ing an arms deal with Egypt shortly after the
Geneva summit. This showed that Khrushchev’s
policies were not purely defensive but were
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