Berlin 1961 Part 2

A few days after Thanksgiving, during one of the most extraordinary meetings ever between a Soviet leader and an American politician, Khrushchev made clear that his Berlin ultimatum for the moment was far more about getting President Eisenhoweras attention than it was about altering Berlinas status.

Giving him only a half houras notice, Khrushchev summoned visiting Minnesota Senator Hubert H. Humphrey to his Kremlin office for the longest meeting any American official or elected politician had ever had with any Soviet leader. Though scheduled for only an hour from three p.m., their talks ended just before midnight, after an eight-hour, twenty-five-minute exchange.

To show off his knowledge of matters American, Khrushchev expounded on the local politics of California, New York, and Humphreyas home state of Minnesota. He joked about athe new McCarthyaa"not anticommunist Joe but the left-of-center congressman Eugene, who would later run for president. He shared with Humphrey a secret ano American has heard of,a telling him of the successful test of a Soviet five-million-ton hydrogen bomb using only a tenth of the fissionable material previously required to produce an explosion of its magnitude. He also spoke about the development of a missile with a 9,000-mile range, for the first time sufficient to strike U.S. targets.

After asking Humphrey to name his native city, Khrushchev bounced to his feet and drew a bold blue circle around Minneapolis on a map of the United States hanging on his walla"aso that I donat forget to order them to spare the city when the rockets fly.a Khrushchev struck Humphrey as a man infected with personal and national insecurity, asomebody who has risen from poverty and weakness to wealth and power but is never wholly confident of himself and his new status.a In recounting his meeting the following day to Amba.s.sador Thompson, so that the U.S. envoy could relay it to President Eisenhower, Humphrey said Khrushchev returned perhaps two dozen times to the matter of Berlin and his ultimatum, which the Soviet leader said had followed amany months of thought.a Humphrey concluded the chief purpose of their marathon meeting was ato impress him with the Soviet position on Berlin and to convey his words and thoughts to the President.a Khrushchev wielded an a.r.s.enal of metaphors to describe the city. It was alternatively a cancer, a knot, a thorn, and a bone in his throat. He told Humphrey he intended to cough the bone loose by making West Berlin a afree citya that would be demilitarized and guaranteed by United Nations observers. To convince Humphrey he wasnat trying to trick the U.S. into giving up West Berlin to communist control, he recalled at length how he had personally ordered the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Austria in 1955, thus ensuring its neutrality. Khrushchev told Humphrey that at the time he had argued to Foreign Minister Molotov that Russian troops were only useful in Austria if he intended to expand westward, and he didnat want to do that. So, he said, aa neutral Austria was established and a source of conflict was removed.a His argument was that Soviet behavior in Austria should serve for Eisenhower both as a model for West Berlin and as rea.s.surance about its future. Because of that, he said, the U.S., Britain, and France had no need to leave any troops in Berlin. aTwenty-five thousand troops in Berlin are of no importance unless you want to make war,a he said in a calm voice. aWhy do you maintain this thorn? A free city, a free Berlin, could lead to the breaking of the ice between the USSR and the USA.a Khrushchev insisted to Humphrey that by solving the Berlin problem, he and Eisenhower could improve their personal relationship and together achieve a historic thaw in the Cold War. And if the U.S. president didnat like the details of his Berlin plan, Khrushchev told Humphrey, he would be open to a counterproposal. Khrushchev said he could accept any alternative suggestions from Eisenhower as long as they didnat include either German unification or athe liquidation of the socialist system in East Germany.a For the first time, he was painting his red lines for any Berlin talks.

Khrushchev shifted so rapidly between seduction and threats that Humphrey was reminded of his fatheras treatment for chilblains back in South Dakota, which involved the frequent shifting of his feet between hot and cold water. aOur troops are there not to play cards, our tanks are not there to show you the way to Berlin,a Khrushchev blurted to Humphrey at one point. aWe mean business.a At the next moment, however, the Soviet leaderas eyes would moisten as he spoke with dripping sentimentality about losing a son in World War II and his affection for President Eisenhower. aI like President Eisenhower,a he told Humphrey. aWe wish no evil to the United States or to Berlin. You must a.s.sure the President of this.a Eisenhower responded to Khrushchevas Berlin ultimatum just as the Soviet leader had hoped. He signed on to a four-power foreign ministersa meeting in Geneva, which East and West German representatives would attend as observers. Although progress there proved disappointing, Eisenhower thereafter invited Khrushchev to be the first Soviet Communist Party leader to visit the United States.

Khrushchev congratulated himself, considering Eisenhoweras agreement to receive him in the capitalistsa lair aas a concrete result of the Berlin pressure he had been exerting on the Western powers.a He felt he had finally extracted from America the respect he so profoundly craved for himself and his homeland.

KHRUSHCHEVaS U.S. VISIT.

SEPTEMBER 15a"27, 1959.

As the departure date for his trip to America drew closer, Khrushchev grew increasingly concerned that his hosts were planning a aprovocation,a a damaging slight upon his arrival or at other points during his visit. That in turn could be used against him at home by his now silenced but far from vanquished rivals as evidence that his high-profile U.S. visit was both naive and harmful to Soviet interests.

For that reason, Khrushchevas considerations about how he would negotiate Berlinas future in the U.S. were secondary to his scrutiny of every aspect of the itinerary to ensure he didnat suffer what he referred to as amoral damage.a Though Khrushchev was a communist leader ostensibly representing the proletariat vanguard, his advance team demanded that he be treated with the pomp and circ.u.mstance of a visiting Western head of state.

Khrushchev balked, for example, when he learned his most crucial talks with Eisenhower would occur at a place called aCamp David,a a place none of his advisers knew and which sounded to him like a gulag, or internment camp. He recalled that in the first years after the Revolution, the Americans had brought a Soviet delegation to Sivriada, in the Turkish Princesa Islands, where the stray dogs of Istanbul had been sent to die in 1911. Thinking to himself that athe capitalists never missed a chance to embarra.s.s or offend the Soviet Union,a he feared athis Camp David wasaa place where people who were mistrusted could be kept in quarantine.a Khrushchev only agreed to the meeting after his advance team, following investigation, reported that the Camp David invitation was a particular honor, as Eisenhower was taking him to a country dacha built by Roosevelt in the mountains of Maryland during World War II. Khrushchev would later express shame about how the episode revealed Soviet ignorance. More important, however, was what it said about the potent mixture of mistrust and insecurity with which Khrushchev approached every aspect of his relationship with the U.S.

Disregarding the advice of his pilot, Khrushchev flew across the Atlantic in a still-experimental Tupolev Tu-114, which had not yet pa.s.sed its required tests and had microscopic cracks in its engine. Despite the risks, Khrushchev insisted upon this means of travel, as it was the only aircraft in the Soviet fleet that could reach Washington nonstop. He would thus arrive aboard a plane that had the worldas largest pa.s.senger capacity, longest range, greatest thrust, and fastest cruising speed. That said, Soviet fishing boats, cargo ships, and tankers formed a line under the plane between Iceland and New York as a potential rescue party should the engine fissures expand and force a crash landing at sea.

Khrushchev would recall later that his anerves were strained with excitementa as he looked from the window of his plane as it circled over its landing area and he considered the tripas deeper significance: aWe had finally forced the United States to recognize the necessity of establishing closer contacts with usa. Wead come a long way from the time when the United States wouldnat even grant us diplomatic recognition.a For the moment, Berlin was an afterthought to this larger national purpose. He relished the notion that it had been the might of the Soviet economy, its armed forces, and the entire socialist camp that had prompted Eisenhower to seek better relations. aFrom a ravaged, backward, illiterate Russia, we had transformed ourselves into a Russia whose accomplishments had stunned the world.a To Khrushchevas relief and delight, Eisenhower greeted him at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, D.C., with a red carpet and a twenty-one-gun salute. Khrushchev would later recall that he was aimmensely proud; it even shook me up a bita. Here was the United States of America, the greatest capitalist power in the world, bestowing honor on the representative of our socialist homelanda"a country which, in the eyes of capitalist America, had always been unworthy or, worse, infected with some sort of plague.a It was more a result of this improved mood than any deeper Berlin strategy that moved Khrushchev to tell President Eisenhower during their first meeting on September 15 that he would like to acome to terms on Germany and thereby on Berlin too.a Without providing further details, Khrushchev said, aWe do not contemplate taking unilateral action.a For his part, Eisenhower called the Berlin situation aabnormal,a language the Soviet leader considered encouraging for Berlin talks that would come at the end of the trip.

The coast-to-coast journey that followed was marked by dramatic highs and lows that ill.u.s.trated both sides of Khrushchevas complex emotional relationship with the U.S.: the eager suitor seeking approval from the worldas greatest power, and the insecure adversary scanning for the slightest offense.

He and his wife, Nina Petrovna, sat between Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra during a lunch at Twentieth Centurya"Fox, at which Marilyn Monroe wore her tightest dress, but the Soviet leader railed like a spoiled child at being denied entry to Disneylanda"wondering whether it was because the amus.e.m.e.nt park had cholera or a missile launching pad. Khrushchev saw conspiracy in the choice of Russian-born Jewish movie mogul Victor Carter as his Los Angeles escort, blaming much of what went wrong in the city on the evil intent of the migr whose family had fled Rostov-on-Don.

His trip had nearly ended on his first day in California, when Khrushchev struck back at conservative Los Angeles Mayor Norris Poulson during a late-night speech at a star-studded banquet. Looking to score domestic political points, the mayor had refused the appeal of Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.a"the U.S. amba.s.sador to the United Nations and Khrushchevas companion throughout the tripa"that he remove anticommunist lines that the Soviet leader would find offensive. aIt took us only twelve hours to get here,a Khrushchev said in response, asking that his plane be prepared for departure. aPerhaps it will take us even less time to get back.a The climactic Camp David meeting began badly, as Khrushchev and Eisenhower engaged in two days of acrimonious talks over everything from the threat of nuclear war (Khrushchev said he didnat fear it) to discriminatory rules on what technology Americans could sell Moscow (Khrushchev sneered that he didnat need low-tech U.S. help to make shoes or sausages). Eisenhower prevented a breakdown in talks when he flew his guest by helicopter to his Gettysburg ranch and presented him with one of his cattle as a gift. In return, Khrushchev invited Eisenhower and his grandchildren to visit the Soviet Union.

The following morning, Khrushchev agreed to abandon his Berlin ultimatum of the previous year in exchange for Eisenhoweras commitment that he would enter talks on Berlinas status with the aim of achieving a solution that would satisfy all parties.

With unusual candor, Khrushchev shared with Eisenhower that he had only issued a Berlin ultimatum as athe result of the high-handed att.i.tude of the U.S. toward the USSR, which had led the Soviets to think that there was no alternative.a He said he needed a disarmament agreement with the U.S., as it was hard enough to feed his country without having to bear the costs of an arms race. The two men then compared notes about how their military establishments were pushing them each toward ever larger arms purchases, always blaming the aggressive posture of the other country.

Talks nearly collapsed again when Khrushchev insisted on a joint communiqu to capture their agreement on Berlin negotiations, but demanded the U.S. side take out language that athere would be no time limit on them.a After a difficult exchange, Eisenhower accepted Khrushchevas terms as long as he could mention at their joint press conference the Soviet leaderas agreement to abandon his Berlin ultimatum, which Khrushchev would confirm if the media asked.

For his part, Eisenhower agreed to what Khrushchev had most wanted: a four-power Paris Summit on Berlin and disarmament issues. For Khrushchev, the agreement immunized him against critics who argued his apeaceful coexistencea policy toward the West had been without resulta"and provided incontrovertible proof that his course was improving the Soviet Unionas global standing.

Elated by the U.S. trip and the prospect of a summit, Khrushchev preemptively cut Soviet armed forces by a further 1.2 million men in December, the largest-percentage reduction since the 1920s. Reports that Franceas Charles de Gaulle and West Germanyas Konrad Adenauer were rolling back Eisenhoweras willingness to negotiate Berlinas status did not dampen Khrushchevas self-congratulatory optimism.

SVERDLOVSK, SOVIET UNION.

SUNDAY, MAY 1, 1960.

Just eight months after his American journey, what Khrushchev heralded as the aspirit of Camp Davida exploded over Sverdlovsk in the Ural Mountains when a Soviet surface-to-air missile brought down a spy plane.

Initially, Khrushchev celebrated the incident as a triumph of Soviet anti aircraft technology and a change of luck. As recently as three weeks earlier, his air defense forces had failed to bring down the advanced, high-alt.i.tude CIA plane even though the Soviets knew exactly where it was flying. While in pursuit on that earlier occasion, a MiG-19 Soviet fighter had crashed in Semipalatinsk near a secret nuclear testing site that the U-2 plane was photographing. Two newly developed high-alt.i.tude interceptors also could not catch up to the U-2 as it collected images of the Tyumatom ballistic missile site.

Up until that point, a frustrated Khrushchev had kept the U.S. intrusions secret from the world so as to avoid having to admit Soviet military failure. Now that his forces had shot down the U-2, he gleefully toyed with the Americans by saying nothing about the incident while the CIA put out a false cover storya"one it would later be forced to withdraw with embarra.s.smenta"that a weather plane had gone missing over Turkey.

Within days, however, Khrushchev recognized that the U-2 incident posed greater dangers to him than to the Americans. Political enemies whom he had neutralized after putting down the 1957 coup against him began to regroup. Mao Tse-tung publicly condemned Khrushchevas wooing of the Americans as acommunist betrayal.a Though still speaking privately, Soviet party officials and military bra.s.s more confidently questioned Khrushchevas troop reductions. They argued that Khrushchev was undermining their ability to defend the homeland.

Years later, Khrushchev would concede to the American physician A. McGhee Harvey, a specialist who was treating his daughter, that the U-2 incident proved to be the watershed event after which he awas no longer in full control.a From that point forward, Khrushchev found it harder to defend himself against those who argued that he was too weak in the face of the militaristic and imperialist intentions of duplicitous Americans.

At first, Khrushchev tried to keep on track the Paris Summit that was scheduled to occur two weeks after the U-2 eventa"a meeting that he had worked so hard to organize as a crowning moment of his rule. Khrushchev told domestic critics that if they pulled out, they would only be rewarding U.S. hard-liners like CIA chief Allen Dulles, who, he argued, had ordered the flights to undermine Eisenhoweras genuine peace efforts.

Eisenhower removed Khrushchevas last political cover at a press conference on May 11, just five days ahead of the summit. To rea.s.sure Americans that their government had acted responsibly and under his complete control, Eisenhower said he had personally approved Gary Powersas U-2 flighta"as he had with each and every one of the sensitive missions. Such risks were necessary, he said, because Soviet secrecy made it impossible to a.s.sess Moscowas intentions and capabilities through any other means. aWe are getting to the point where we must decide whether we are trying to prepare to fight a war or prevent one,a he told his national security team.

By the time he landed in Paris, Khrushchev had concluded that if he couldnat get a public apology from Eisenhower, he would have to prompt the collapse of the Paris talks. It was politically safer for him to abandon the summit than to go ahead with a meeting that was destined to fail, and by then it also was clear the U.S. would offer none of the concessions he was seeking on Berlin.

Though Eisenhower refused to apologize in Paris for the U-2 mission, he tried to avoid a summit collapse by agreeing to stop the flights. He went an important step further and proposed an aopen skiesa approach that would allow United Nations planes to monitor both countries with over-flights. Khrushchev, however, could never accept such a proposal because it was only secrecy that protected his exaggerations about Soviet capabilities.

In what would be the one and only session of the summit, Khrushchev uncharacteristically stuck to the language of a prepared forty-five-minute harangue that proposed a six- to eight-month postponement of the conference so that it would resume only after Eisenhower had left power. He also withdrew his invitation for Eisenhower to visit the Soviet Union. Without forewarning the other leaders at the summit, Khrushchev then petulantly refused to attend the second session the following day. He instead retreated with Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky to the French village of Pleurs-sur-Marnea"where Malinovsky had stayed during World War IIa"to drink wine, eat cheese, and talk about women. Well lubricated, the Soviet leader returned to Paris that afternoon to declare the summitas collapse.

His crowning public act came during a nearly three-hour farewell press conference at which he slammed his fist so hard on a table that it toppled a bottle of mineral water. a.s.suming the catcalls that followed came from West German reporters, he called them afascist b.a.s.t.a.r.ds we didnat finish off at Stalingrad.a He said if they continued to heckle him, he would hit them so hard athere wonat be a squeal out of you.a Khrushchev was so unhinged by the time he debriefed Warsaw Pact envoys in Paris that he employed a crude joke in relating to them the outcome of the summit. It concerned the sad story of a Tsarist soldier who could fart the melody to aG.o.d Save Russiaa but experienced an unfortunate accident when forced to perform the tune under duress. Khrushchevas punch line was that the amba.s.sadors could report to their governments that his own pressures applied in Paris had similarly made Eisenhower s.h.i.t in his pants.

Polandas amba.s.sador to France, Stanislaw Gaevski, concluded from the session that the Soviet leader awas just a bit unbalanced emotionally.a For the sake of Easta"West relations, Gaevski wished Khrushchev had never come to Paris.

For all his theatrics, however, Khrushchev had too much at stake to abandon his course of apeaceful coexistencea with the U.S. He had given up on Eisenhower but not yet on America. Though the U-2 had undermined his summit, he could not let it undercut his rule.

On his way back to Moscow, Khrushchev stopped in East Berlin, where he replaced his Paris scowl with a peacemakeras smile. Though originally scheduled to speak to a crowd of 100,000 in Marx-Engels Square, after the Paris debacle East German leaders had moved the event to the safer confines of the indoor Werner-Seelenbinder-Halle, where Khrushchev spoke to a select group of 6,000 communist faithful.

To the surprise of U.S. diplomats who had expected Khrushchev to escalate the crisis, Khrushchev sounded an unexpected note of patience until the Americans could elect a new president. aIn this situation, time is required,a he said, adding that the prospects for a Berlin solution would then aripen better.a Khrushchev then began preparations for his return trip to the U.S. under dramatically changed circ.u.mstances.

ABOARD THE BALTIKA.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1960.

Khrushchevas damp welcome on a rickety New York dock demonstrated just how much had changed since his grand reception by President Eisenhower at Andrews Air Force Base just a year earlier. Instead of flying to America aboard the Sovietsa most advanced pa.s.senger aircraft, which was in the shop for repairs, he had traveled aboard the Baltika, a vintage 1940 German vessel seized as reparations after the war.

To compensate and send a message of communist solidarity, Khrushchev had drafted as fellow pa.s.sengers the leaders of Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Byelorussia. His mood swings during the voyage were violent. At one point he fought off depression while preoccupied by fears that NATO might sink his unprotected vessel, yet on another occasion he joyously insisted the Ukrainian party boss Nikolai Podgorny entertain fellow pa.s.sengers by dancing a gopak, a national dance performed with strenuous leg kicks from the squatting position.

When one of the Soviet sailors jumped ship while approaching the American sh.o.r.e, then sought asylum, Khrushchev shrugged in response, saying, aHeall find out soon enough how much it costs and what it tastes like in New York.a Other indignities would follow. Khrushchev was received in the harbor by union demonstrators from the International Longsh.o.r.emenas a.s.sociation, who waved huge protest signs from a chartered boat. The most memorable: ROSES ARE RED, VIOLETS ARE BLUE, STALIN DROPPED DEAD, HOW ABOUT YOU?

Khrushchev was infuriated. He had dreamed of arriving like Americaas earliest discoverers, whom he had read about as a boy. Instead, the unionist boycott left the Baltika to be moored by its own crew and a handful of unskilled Soviet diplomats on the East Riveras dilapidated Pier 73. aSo, another dirty trick the Americans are playing on us,a Khrushchev complained.

The only saving grace was Khrushchevas control of his home press. Pravda correspondent Gennady Vasiliev filed a story speaking of a happy crowd (there was none) lining the sh.o.r.e on a bright and sunny morning (it was raining).

None of that dampened the energy Khrushchev would invest in the trip. Speaking before the UN General a.s.sembly, he would unsucessfully demand the resignation of Secretary General Dag Hammerskjld (who would die the next year in a plane crash in Africa), and be replaced by a troika of a Westerner, a communist, and a nonaligned leader.a On the last day of his stay, in an iconic act that would be historyas primary recollection of the visit, he removed a shoe in protest of a Philippine delegateas reference to communist captive nations and banged it on his UN table.

By September 26, only a week into Khrushchevas trip, the New York Times reported that a nationwide survey showed the Soviet leader had made himself the focal point of the presidential election campaign and had helped make foreign policy the premier concern of U.S. voters. Americans were measuring which of the candidates, Richard Nixon or Senator John F. Kennedy, could best stand up to Khrushchev.

Khrushchev was determined to use his considerable leverage more wisely than in 1956, when Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganinas praise of the Sovietsa favored candidate, Adlai Stevenson, had helped the winning Eisenhowera"Nixon ticket. In public, Khrushchev hedged his bets, saying that both candidates arepresent American big businessaas we Russians say, they are two boots of the same pair: which is better, the left or the right boot?a When asked whom he favored, he safely said, aRoosevelt.a But behind the scenes, he worked toward Nixonas defeat. As early as January 1960, over vodka, fruit, and caviar, Soviet Amba.s.sador to the U.S. Mikhail Menshikov had asked Adlai Stevenson how Moscow might best help him defeat Nixon. Was it better for the Soviet press to praise him or criticize hima"and on which topics? Stevenson responded that he did not expect to be a candidatea"and he then prayed that news of the Soviet proposition would never leak.

Yet both parties so deeply recognized Khrushchevas potential to swing votes, either by design or by accident, that each reached out to him.

Republican Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., who had grown close to Khrushchev during his first U.S. trip, had flown to Moscow in February 1960 to convince the Soviet leader that he could work with Nixon. Lodge, who would become Nixonas running mate, said, aOnce Mr. Nixon is in the White House, Iam surea"Iam absolutely certaina"heall take a position of preserving and perhaps even improving our relations.a He asked Khrushchev to remain neutral, realizing any endors.e.m.e.nt would only cost Nixon votes.

By autumn, the Eisenhower administration had increased its appeals to Khrushchev to release Gary Powers and the RB-47 airmen who had been shot down over the Arctic. Khrushchev recalled later that he had refused after calculating that the election was so close any such move might have swung the outcome. aAs it turned out, wead done the right thing,a he would say later. Given the margin of victory, he said, aThe slightest nudge either way would have been decisive.a The Democrats were also at work to influence Khrushchev. W. Averell Harriman, President Rooseveltas former amba.s.sador to Moscow, recommended through Amba.s.sador Menshikov that Khrushchev be tough on both candidates. The surest way to elect Nixon was to praise Kennedy in public, he said. The timing of the meeting, less than a month before the election and while Khrushchev was still in the U.S., demonstrated the Democratsa recognition of Khrushchevas electoral influence.

As guarded as he was in public, Khrushchev was explicit with underlings. aWe thought we would have more hope of improving Sovieta"American relations if John Kennedy were in the White House.a He told colleagues that Nixonas anticommunism and his connection with athat devil of darkness [Senator Joe] McCarthy, to whom he owed his career,a all meant awe had no reason to welcome the prospect of Nixon as President.a Though Kennedyas campaign rhetoric was hawkish against Moscow, the KGB chalked that up less to conviction than to political expedience and the influence of his anticommunist father, Joe. Khrushchev welcomed Kennedyas calls for nuclear test ban negotiations and his statement that he would have apologized for the U-2 incursions if he had been president when they occurred. More to the point, Khrushchev believed he could outmaneuver Kennedy, a man whom his foreign ministry had characterized as aunlikely to possess the qualities of an outstanding person.a The consensus in the Kremlin was that the young man was a lightweight, a product of American privilege who lacked the experience required for leadership.

The candidates continued to shower attention on Khrushchev as he monitored their campaign from his suite at the Soviet Mission at Sixty-eighth Street and Park Avenue, where he would occasionally appear on the balcony of a turn-of-the-century mansion built originally for the banker Percy Pyne. In the initial Kennedya"Nixon debate in a Chicago TV studio on September 26a"the first live-broadcast presidential debate evera"Kennedyas opening statement before sixty million American viewers spoke directly to Khrushchevas New York stay and aour struggle with Mr. Khrushchev for survival.a Though the debate was to have been about domestic issues, Kennedy worried that the Soviet Union was churning out atwice as many scientists and engineers as we area while the U.S. continued to underpay its teachers and underfund its schools. He declared that he would do better than Nixon in keeping America ahead of the Soviets in education, health care, home construction, and economic strength.

During their second debate on foreign policy on October 7 in Washington, D.C., the candidates focused squarely on Khrushchev and Berlin. Kennedy predicted that the next president ain his first year is going to be confronted with a very serious question on our defense of Berlin, our commitment to Berlin. Itas going to be a test of our nerve and will.a He said that President Eisenhower had allowed American strength to erode and that he, if elected, would ask Congress to support a military buildup, because by spring or winter aweare going to be face-to-face with the most serious Berlin crisis since 1949 or 1950.a During the campaign, Adlai Stevenson had counseled Kennedy to avoid discussing Berlin altogether because it would be adifficult to say anything very constructive about the divided city without compromising future negotiations.a So Kennedy had raised Berlin in only half a dozen speeches. Yet before a national television audience the subject was impossible to avoid, particularly after Khrushchev had told United Nations correspondents he wanted the U.S. to join a summit on Berlinas future shortly after electionsa"to be followed by a UN General a.s.sembly meeting on the matter in April.

During their third debate on October 13, Frank McGee of NBC News asked both candidates whether they would be willing to take military action to defend Berlin. Kennedy responded with his clearest statement of the campaign on Berlin: aMr. McGee, we have a contractual right to be in Berlin coming out of the conversations at Potsdam and of World War II that has been reinforced by direct commitments of the President of the United States. Itas been reinforced by a number of other nations under NATOa. It is a commitment that we have to meet if we are going to protect the security of Western Europe, and therefore on this question I donat think there is any doubt in the mind of any American. I hope there is not any doubt in the mind of any member of the community of West Berlin. Iam sure there isnat any doubt in the mind of the Russians. We will meet our commitments to maintain the freedom and independence of West Berlin.a For all Kennedyas apparent conviction, Khrushchev sensed the makings of compromise. Kennedy talked of U.S. contractual rights in Berlin but not of moral responsibility. He wasnat sounding the usual Republican clarion call to free captive nations. He wasnat even suggesting that freedom should spread across the cityas border to East Berlin. He had spoken of West Berlin and of West Berlin alone. Kennedy was talking about Berlin as a technical and legal matter, points that could be negotiated.

Before Khrushchev could test Kennedy, however, he had to put his communist house in order and neutralize rising challenges on two frontsa"China and East Germany.

MOSCOW.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1960.

It was understandable that at first the West overlooked the importance of the worldas largest-ever meeting of communist leaders, given that it was characterized primarily by two weeks of mind-numbing and redundant speeches from eighty-one party delegations from around the world. Behind the scenes, however, Khrushchev was working to neutralize the challenge Chinaas Mao Tse-tung was mounting to his leadership of world communisma"and to gain support within the party for a new diplomatic effort with President-elect Kennedy.

Soviet foreign policy strategists saw their two priorities as the Sinoa"Soviet alliance and peaceful coexistence with the West, very much in that order. Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko had argued it would be a mistake to lose Beijing without gaining anything reliable from the U.S., yet that was precisely what had happened during 1960. The Soviet emba.s.sy in Beijing reported to Khrushchev that the Chinese were using the aftermath of the U-2 incident and the Paris Summit failure to oppose Khrushchevas foreign policy afor the first time directly and openly.a Mao opposed Khrushchevas foreign policy of peaceful coexistence with the West and sought a course of more intense confrontation both over Berlin and across the developing world. The Chinese delegation had come to Moscow determined to gain increased Kremlin support for national liberation movements and a.s.sorted leftistsa"from Asia and Africa to Latin America.

Now that relations had broken down with the U.S., a number of Soviet officials privately argued that Khrushchev should make a bolder strategic bet on the Chinese. What only a few of them knew, however, was that the personal animosity that had grown between Khrushchev and Mao would make that impossible.

By Khrushchevas own account, he had disliked Mao since his first visit in 1954 for the fifth anniversary of the Peopleas Republic. Khrushchev had complained about everything from the endless rounds of green tea (aI canat take that much liquida) to what he regarded as his hostas ingratiating, insincere courtesy. Mao was so uncooperative during their talks that Khrushchev had concluded upon returning to Moscow, aConflict with China is inevitable.a When a year later West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer raised concerns with Khrushchev about an emerging Sino-Soviet alliance, Khrushchev dismissed that prospect and pointed to his own concerns about China. aThink of it,a he had said. aAlready six hundred million of them and every year twelve million morea. We have to do something for our peopleas standard of living, we have to arm like the Americans, [and] we have to give all the time to the Chinese who suck our blood like leeches.a Mao had shocked Khrushchev with his readiness for war with the U.S., irrespective of the devastation it might bring. Because the Chinese and Soviets together had a vastly greater population, Mao had argued to Khrushchev that they would emerge victorious. aNo matter what kind of war breaks outa"conventional or thermonucleara"weall win,a he had told Khrushchev. aWe may lose more than three hundred million people. So what? War is war.a Using what the Soviet leader considered the crudest possible term for s.e.xual intercourse, Mao told Khrushchev the Chinese would simply produce more babies than ever before to replace the dead. Khrushchev came to consider Mao aa lunatic on a throne.a Khrushchevas 1956 repudiation of Stalin and of his personality cult had strained the relationship further. aThey understood the implications for themselves,a Khrushchev said of the Chinese. aStalin was exposed and condemned at the Congress for having had hundreds of thousands of people shot and for his abuse of power. Mao Tse-tung was following in Stalinas footsteps.a The downward spiral in relations accelerated in June 1959 when Khrushchev reneged on a pledge to give the Chinese a sample atomic bomb while at the same time moving to improve relations with the Americans. Mao told fellow party leaders that Khrushchev was abandoning communism to make pacts with the devil.

Khrushchev further strained ties when he returned to China shortly after his 1959 U.S. trip to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Peopleas Republic. Instead of simply praising Maoas revolution, Khrushchev used a state banquet as well to congratulate himself for reducing world tensions through the aCamp David spirita that he had created with Eisenhower.

On the same trip, Mao blew a cloud of cigarette smoke in Khrushchevas face while he talkeda"though he knew the Soviet leader hated nothing morea"and mocked him for what he called disorganized rambling. Maoas efforts to humiliate Khrushchev reached their low point at an outdoor pool where he took him for further discussions. The champion swimmer Mao dived in the deep end and performed laps gracefully while Khrushchev floundered in the shallows with the help of a life ring tossed in by Chinese aides. On the drive home from the pool, Mao told his physician that he had so tormented Khrushchev it was like asticking a needle up his a.s.s.a Khrushchev knew he had been set up: aThe interpreter is translating, and I canat answer as I should. It was Maoas way of putting himself in an advantageous position. Well, I got sick of it. All the while I was swimming, I was thinking, aThe h.e.l.l with you.aa The first sign of how much uglier matters would get between Mao and Khrushchev had come five months earlier, on June 20, 1960, in Bucharest, where the Romanians had hosted fifty-one national communist delegations for their 3rd Party Congress. Just two days before the gathering, Khrushchev had announced that he would attend after failing to bridge differences with a Chinese delegation that had visited Moscow en route to the Romanian capital. His partic.i.p.ation turned an insignificant, provincial party meeting into the most open warfare yet between leaders of the two most powerful communist states. To prepare the ground, Boris Ponomarev, chief of the International Department of the Soviet Central Committee, had circulated Moscowas case against Maoas amisjudgment of the current global situationa in the form of an eighty-one-page aLetter of Informationa for Congress delegates. In it, Khrushchev explained his intention to continue his disputed course of peaceful coexistence with the new U.S. president.

With Mao absent from Bucharest, his counterthrust was delivered by Peng Zhen, the head of the Chinese delegation and a legendary communist who had guided resistance to j.a.panese occupation and ultimately the communist capture of Beijing in 1948.* Peng stunned delegates with the fierceness of his unprecedented attack on Khrushchev, which he supported by circulating copies of a lengthy correspondence the Soviet leader had sent to Mao that year. The Soviet leaderas letter shocked delegates in two respects: the crude language with which Khrushchev spewed venom at Mao, and the Chinese breach of confidentiality in sharing the private communication with others.

Khrushchev turned as vicious as veteran delegates had ever seen him in a final, closed session. He attacked the absent Mao as aa Buddha who gets his theory out of his nosea and for being aoblivious of any interests other than his own.a Peng shot back that it was now clear Khrushchev had organized the Bucharest meeting only to attack China. He said the Soviet leader had no foreign policy except to ablow hot then cold toward the imperialist powers.a Khrushchev was livid. In a furious, impulsive froth, he issued overnight orders that would undo Soviet economic, diplomatic, and intelligence-gathering interests in China that had taken years to establish. aWithin the short span of a month,a he decreed, he would withdraw 1,390 Soviet technical advisers, sc.r.a.pping 257 scientific and technical cooperation projects, and discontinuing work on 343 expert contracts and subcontracts. Dozens of Chinese research and construction projects came to a stop, as did factory and mining projects that had begun trial production.

Despite all that, the Bucharest communiqu had been crafted to carefully hide from the West the truth about the head-on collision of communismas leaders. That would be harder to conceal at the November follow-on meeting in Moscow, which included many of the same delegates but was far larger and at a higher level.

Khrushchevas intense lobbying before the meeting and cajoling during the conference kept the Chinese in check. Only a dozen country delegations among the eighty-one sided with Chinaas objections to Khrushchevas course of liberalizing communism at home and peaceful coexistence abroad. Still, even that level of opposition to Soviet rule was unprecedented.

With Mao in Beijing, Khrushchev and Chinese General Party Secretary Deng Xiaoping locked horns behind closed doors at the Kremlinas St. Georgeas Hall. Khrushchev called Mao a amegalomaniac warmonger.a He said Mao wanted asomeone you can p.i.s.s ona. If you want Stalin that badly, you can have hima"cadaver, coffin, and all!a Deng attacked the Soviet leaderas speech, saying, aKhrushchev had evidently been talking without knowing what he was saying, as he did all too frequently.a It was an unprecedented personal insult to the communist movementas acknowledged leader on his own turf. Maoas new ally, the Albanian leader Enver Hoxha, made the most vicious of all the speeches, saying Khrushchev had blackmailed Albania and was trying to starve his country into submission for remaining true to Stalin.

In the end, the Soviets and the Chinese negotiated a ceasefire. The Chinese had been surprised by the support the Soviet leader could still muster and retreated, having seen the futility of splitting the communist movement at such a crucial moment. The Chinese reluctantly accepted Khrushchevas notion of peaceful coexistence with the West in exchange for the Soviet leaderas agreement to increase support for capitalismas opponents across the developing world.

The Soviets would resume a.s.sistance to China and thus keep construction work going on 66 of the 155 unfinished industrial projects they had begun. However, Mao didnat get what he most wanted: high-end collaboration on military technology. Maoas interpreter Yan Mingfu viewed the agreement as only aa temporary armistice. In the long run, events were already out of control.a With the Chinese temporarily in check, however, Khrushchev moved to protect his East German flank.

THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1960.

Ulbricht sat forward and erect in his chair, listening skeptically as Khrushchev briefed him on his strategy for handling Kennedy and Berlin in 1961. The East German leader had peppered Khrushchev with three letters since October, each increasingly critical of Khrushchevas failure to counter his countryas growing economic difficulties and refugee bleed with a more determined response.

Having given up hope that Khrushchev would act on Berlin at any point soon, Ulbricht had begun to act unilaterally to tighten his control over Berlin. For the first time, East Germany was requiring that diplomats accredited to West Germany seek permission from East German authorities to enter East Berlin or East Germanya"and in one high-profile incident had turned back Walter aReda Dowling, the U.S. amba.s.sador to West Germany. The East German moves directly contradicted Soviet efforts to expand diplomatic and economic contacts with West Berlin and West Germany. So on October 24, Khrushchev had angrily ordered Ulbricht to reverse the new border regime. Ulbricht had reluctantly complied, but tensions between the two men continued to grow.

The Soviet amba.s.sador in East Berlin, Mikhail Pervukhin, complained to Khrushchev and Foreign Minister Gromyko that Ulbricht was disregarding Kremlin directives with ever greater frequency. A second secretary in the Soviet emba.s.sy, A. P. Kazennov, cabled his bosses in Moscow a warning that the East Germans might shut down travel across the border altogether to stop the increased refugee flow. Pervukhin reported to Moscow that a host of Ulbricht measures limiting movement and economic interaction between the two parts of the city had demonstrated the East German leaderas ainflexibility.a Ulbricht had created a new National Defense Council to better defend his countryas security, and he had named himself to chair it. On October 19, the new council discussed potential measures to seal the Berlin border through which so many refugees were flowing. Though the West considered Ulbricht a Soviet puppet, it was increasingly the East German leader who was trying to pull Moscowas strings.

In his most recent letter on November 22, Ulbricht had complained to Khrushchev that the Soviets were sitting on their hands while his economy was crumbling, refugees were fleeing, West Berlin freedom was becoming an international cause clbre, and West Berlin factories were supplying the West German defense industry. He told Khrushchev that Moscow must change course aafter years of tolerating an unclear situation.a Waiting to act on Berlin until after Khrushchev could organize a summit with Kennedy, Ulbricht argued, simply played into American hands.

Khrushchev a.s.sured a skeptical Ulbricht that he would force the Berlin issue early in the Kennedy administration. What he wanted was not another four-power summit, he said, but a one-on-one meeting with Kennedy where he could more effectively achieve his ends. He told Ulbricht he would resort to another ultimatum at an early stage if Kennedy showed no willingness to negotiate a reasonable agreement in the first months of his administration.

Though Ulbricht remained distrustful, he was heartened by Khrushchevas declaration of determination to force the Berlin issue so early. At the same time, the East German leader warned Khrushchev that his repeated promises of action on Berlin were losing credibility. aAmong our population,a he told Khrushchev, athere is already a mood taking shape where they say, aYou [Khrushchev] only talk about a peace treaty, but donat do anything about it.a We have to be careful.a The East German client was lecturing his Soviet master.

Ulbricht wanted Khrushchev to know that time was running out. aThe situation in Berlin has become complicated, not in our favor,a he said. He told Khrushchev that West Berlinas economy was rapidly growing stronger, ill.u.s.trated by the fact that some 50,000 East Berliners crossed the border each day to work for the Westas higher wages. The tension in the city was growing in rough proportion to the widening gap in living standards between East and West.

aWe still have not taken corresponding countermeasures,a Ulbricht complained. He said he was also losing the battle for the minds of the intelligentsia, a great number of whom were leaving as refugees. Ulbricht told Khrushchev he couldnat compete because West Berlin teachers earned some 200 to 300 marks more a month than teachers in the East, and doctors earned twice the Eastern salaries. He didnat have the means to match such salaries, and lacked the ability to produce sufficient consumer goodsa"even if he could provide East Germans with the money to buy them.

Khrushchev promised Ulbricht further economic a.s.sistance.

The Soviet leader shrugged. Perhaps he would have to put Soviet rockets on military alert as he maneuvered to alter Berlinas status, but he was confident the West would not start a war over the cityas freedom. aLuckily, our adversaries still havenat gone crazy; they still think and their nerves still arenat bad.a If Kennedy would not negotiate, Khrushchev told Ulbricht, he would move forward unilaterally, aand let them see their defeat.a With an exasperated sigh, Khrushchev told Ulbricht, aWe must be finished with this situation sometime.a

3.

KENNEDY: A PRESIDENTaS EDUCATION.

We can live with the status quo in Berlin but can take no real initiative to change it for the better. To a greater or lesser degree, the Soviets and East Germans can, whenever they are willing to a.s.sume the political consequences, change it for the worse.

Martin Hillenbrand, State Department chief of German affairs, transition memo to President Kennedy, January 1961 So let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof.