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At the time of Stalin’s death in 1953 the Soviet Union had a great deal to show on the international stage for the years since the Second World War. There was now a “socialist camp” that included China and the northern parts of Korea and Vietnam as well as most of Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union did have an atomic bomb and was about to acquire a hydrogen bomb. These successes were also the reasons that galvanized Western opposition, in the process negating Stalin’s belief in the inevitability of conflict among Western powers. The United States was now completely committed to prevent any more Communist successes, and it possessed resources that the Soviet Union could not match. Furthermore, Eastern Europe was a mixed blessing. None of the new regimes except (ironically) Yugoslavia had enough popular support to stay in power without Soviet backing, and the German problem remained unresolved. The German Democratic Republic had not been able to produce a stable economy and the open border with the West meant that thousands of people, mostly highly trained professionals, left every year. The emerging Cold War prevented the final resolution of the many problems created by the post war four-power occupation, the most explosive being the status of Berlin.

Behind the back and forth of Cold War diplomacy, with its periodic crises, loomed the larger issue of Soviet military power. The mere possession of an atomic bomb did not render the country invulnerable, much less equal to the United States. By 1953 the Soviets had gone a long way toward fending off the potential threat of US strategic bombers, but the world was not standing still. The United States realized that the next stage would be the construction of missiles and as such was working on them. Soviet scientists and military planners had come to the same conclusions, and thus missile construction proceeded, if slowly. The launching of the world’s first satellite, Sputnik, in 1957 created the impression that the Soviets might be way ahead in missile design and construction, and set off a frantic search by the CIA for information about Soviet capabilities. In reality, the rocket that launched Sputnik was highly successful but useless for military purposes. It required a huge launching pad and several days’ preparation time, besides being too expensive to manufacture in large numbers. The Soviets would not have even twenty or thirty ICBMs until the early 1960s, and rough parity with the United States did not come until after the fall of Khrushchev. The United States did not know this until relatively late, however. The notorious U-2 flight of 1960 was an attempt to find out just what the Soviets had, but it was, of course a failure though it did demonstrate the abilities of Soviet air defense. It was not until 1961, after the United States deployed its first spy satellites that the American government was able to determine just how weak the Soviet missile program was. Thus, for most of the 1950s Khrushchev could continue to bluff his way through a series of crises.

The absence of the ability to strike the continental United Stares during those years did not remove the problem created by nuclear weapons. The Soviets most certainly could destroy Western Europe in any nuclear exchange, and Washington could not be sure that some sort of weapons could reach farther. Fortunately in both the Soviet Union and the United States, political leaders, generals, and scientists were becoming increasingly concerned that the weapons were too destructive to be easily or even usefully deployed. Stalin had resisted this conclusion, but once he was gone, even his inner circle began to have doubts. When Eisenhower remarked in a speech at the end of 1953 that atomic weapons could end civilization, even Malenkov echoed the idea, though Khrushchev initially rejected it. Nevertheless they also began to move toward the idea of international cooperation in developing peaceful uses for atomic energy. For the scientists, led by Kurchatov, the 1955 Soviet hydrogen bomb test was a turning point. Still the scientific head of the Soviet nuclear project, Kurchatov began to speak in favor of peaceful coexistence and warning of the dangers of nuclear war. He and the other physicists also pushed for more contact with Western colleagues, and Soviet and Western physicists began to meet fairly regularly. This was important for science, and in addition the involvement of so many scientists east and west in weapons programs meant that an informal channel existed on nuclear issues. Even before the hydrogen bomb test, Khrushchev had Marshal Zhukov mention the possibility of peaceful coexistence in his May Day speech of 1955, in spite of Molotov’s objections. Thus by the Geneva conference of 1955 the limitation of nuclear weapons became a major part of Soviet diplomacy, a concern shared by Eisenhower and most other Western leaders. Khrushchev’s further proclamation at the Twentieth Congress in 1956 that war was not inevitable and peaceful coexistence between capitalism and socialism was possible had many dimensions, but one of them was to justify the need and possibility for talks on weapons limitations and disarmament. The continuous crises of the Cold War played out against powerful counter-currents in both the United States and the USSR, pushing both sides toward some sort of agreement on nuclear weapons. Fortunately these countercurrents were at least to some extent present in the minds of most of the political leaders on both sides. Ultimately they would lead to the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban treaty, which eliminated atmospheric and undersea testing of nuclear weapons. The treaty did nothing to stop the arms race, but it did sharply curtail the damage to the environment and public health caused by the testing of nuclear weapons.

With the knowledge that their nuclear arsenal was inferior to that of the United States and that American military doctrine in the 1950s included the first use of atomic weapons, Khrushchev was in a difficult position. The issues that mattered to him the most, at least at first, were the European issues that centered on Germany. For the Soviets there were three basic problems. First were the economic problems in East Germany and the resultant series of political crises, starting with the June 17, 1953, disorders in East Berlin that were put down by force. Second was the status of West Berlin, a thorn in the side of both the Soviets and the GDR, even if also a major inconvenience to NATO. Finally there was the problem of West Germany. After Stalin’s death the Soviet leadership realized that the Federal Republic was not going to turn against the United States, and indeed early in 1955 it joined NATO and began to build an army. The Soviet response was to establish the Warsaw Pact with its East European allies and put an end to any ideas of a neutral Germany. Though Molotov stuck to older policy, he had no support in the Politburo and from this moment on the Soviet leadership was committed to the division of Germany and full support of the GDR.