When Nikita Khrushchev took over the Soviet Union, he gradually
implemented a foreign policy that became known as peaceful
coexistence. Khrushchev was not the first of Stalin’s successors
that believed in this type of foreign policy. Georgy Malenkov was
actually the first to suggest it. Malenkov once said, “At the
present time, there is no dispute or unresolved question that cannot
be settled peacefully by mutual agreement of the interested
countries.” A few examples of things that resulted from Malenkov’s
policy include: diplomatic relations being re-established with
Greece, Yugoslavia, Israel, as well as the end of the Korean War.
Khrushchev started to show his desire for a peaceful
coexistence to exist between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. when he met
President Eisenhower, British Prime mister Eden, and French Prime
Minister Fuare at The Geneva Summit in 1955 in order to reduce
international tensions between the communist and capitalist blocks.
In 1956, during the 20th Congress of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev formally announced his commitment to
the foreign policy of maintaining a peaceful coexistence between the
Soviet Union’s Communist bloc and America’s Capitalist bloc.
Khrushchev was trying the best that he could to not start a nuclear
war with the United States. At one point in 1959, Khrushchev said,
“We may argue. The main thing is to argue without using weapons.”
Khrushchev even visited President Dwight D. Eisenhower at Camp David
in 1959, in a further attempt to cool international relations
between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Many westerners, who were watching Khrushchev
de-Stalinize the U.S.S.R. and promote his peaceful coexistence
policy, believed that they were witnessing a “Thaw” in the cold war.
There were, however, several times during the mid to late 1950’s
when Khrushchev backed away from his policy of peaceful coexistence.
One such event was the creation of the Warsaw Pact, in response to
the formation of NATO. Another example of Khrushchev reversing his
policy of peaceful coexistence happened during the Hungarian revolt
in 1956. The Soviet army crushed the Hungarian Revolution, resulted
in many casualties.
Over half of a decade of peaceful coexistence was
seemingly put to rest after the U-2 incident in 1960. This incident
resulted in the cancelation of the Paris Summit that was scheduled
later that same year. The Bay of Pigs Invasion, construction of the
Berlin Wall, and the Cuban missile crisis did not only slam the door
shut on Khrushchev’s policy of peaceful coexistence, they also
heightened international tensions so much that a nuclear war between
the United States and the Soviet Union seemed inevitable.
Overall, Khrushchev’s policy of trying to maintain a
peaceful coexistence between capitalism and communism failed
miserably. Both the United States and the U.S.S.R. never tried hard
enough or trusted each other enough to make it work. The one thing
that Khrushchev was able to accomplish with his foreign policy was
to create a slight thaw in the Cold War, this just before a Siberian
freeze ended up taking place.