22.5: The USSR During the Cold War

When Stalin died in 1954, the USSR was still comparatively poor, but enormously powerful. In addition, millions were still trapped in the gulags of Siberia. After a power struggle between the top members of the communist party, Stalin’s successor emerged: Nikita Khrushchev, a former coal miner and engineer who genuinely believed that the USSR would overtake the West economically.

Soon after securing power, Khrushchev broke with Stalinism. In 1956, he gave a 'secret speech' to the leaders of the communist party, not broadcast to the general public, but leaked to the state-controlled press. In it, Khrushchev blamed Stalin for bringing about a “cult of personality” that was at variance with true communist principles, and for “excesses,” a thinly veiled acknowledgment of the Siberian prison camps and summary executions. Shortly afterwards, "The Thaw" began. Khrushchev had four million prisoners released from the gulags as a practical gesture demonstrating his sincerity. For a brief period, there was another flowering of literary and artistic experimentation comparable to that of the early 1920s. The ubiquitous censorship was relaxed, with a few accurate accounts of the gulags making it into mainstream publication. In turn, among many, there were genuine hopes for larger political reforms of the system.

This hope of a new beginning was found elsewhere in the Soviet Bloc. In October of 1956, a reformist faction of the Hungarian communist party inspired a mass uprising calling for a reformed, more humanistic communism, and the expulsion of Soviet forces and “advisers” completely. A full-scale invasion by the Soviet army killed several thousand protesters in violent clashes (primarily in the capital city of Budapest), followed by the arrests of over half a million people. While Khrushchev might not want to follow directly in Stalin’s footsteps, he had no intention of allowing genuine independence in the Soviet Bloc countries of Eastern Europe.

Angered by the events in Hungary and by the growth of outright dissent with the USSR, Khrushchev reasserted control. Large-scale change was out of the question. Instead, the state concentrated on wildly ambitious, and sometimes astonishingly impractical, economic projects. Soviet engineers and planners drained whole river systems to irrigate fields, Soviet factories churned out thousands of tons of products and materials no one wanted, and whole regions were polluted to the point of becoming nearly uninhabitable. Over time, cynicism replaced terror as the default outlook of Soviet citizens. For most, the only hope of achieving a decent standard of living and relative personal stability was forming the right connections within the enormous party bureaucracy. The USSR went from a murderous police state under Stalin to a bloated, corrupt police state under Khrushchev and the leaders who followed him.

At this point, the Cold War reached its most frenzied pitch. Khrushchev was an explosive personality, who sincerely believed in the possibility of the USSR “winning” the Cold War by

• outstripping the Western world economically
• winning over the nations of the Third World to communism politically

To that end, he continued the Stalinist focus on building up heavy industry and military hardware, as well as developments in science and engineering.

Space Race

During Khrushchev’s tenure, the “space race” joined the arms race as a major centerpiece of Cold War policy. The first superpower to reach a given breakthrough in the space race would "win" a major symbolic victory in the eyes of the world. In addition, since the space race was based on the mastery of rocket technology, the military implications were obvious. In 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the Earth, which was perceived as a major Soviet triumph in the Cold War. Khrushchev claimed that the USSR had also developed missiles that could strike targets on the other side of the world. Thus, the West feared that the Soviets could as easily detonate a nuclear weapon in the US as in Europe.

Figure 22.5.1: A commemorative Soviet postage stamp depicting Sputnik’s orbit.

Cuba

U.S. President John F Kennedy was a hard-line anti-communist, who believed it was important to stand up to the Soviets symbolically and, if necessary, militarily. In 1959, Cuban revolutionaries overthrew the right-wing dictator Fulgencio Batista (who had been an American ally). Fearing U.S. intervention, they eventually aligned themselves with the USSR. Thus, Kennedy faced the growing technological and military power of the USSR, as well as what he regarded as a Soviet puppet on the doorstep of US territory.

In 1962, the US Central Intelligence Agency staged an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the Cuban communist leader Fidel Castro, an event known as the Bay of Pigs Invasion. In the aftermath, Castro and Khrushchev agreed to install missile batteries in Cuba both as a deterrent against a potential invasion by the US in the future and to redress the superiority of U.S. missile deployments. Khrushchev was eager to establish a military presence in the Western hemisphere, especially since the US had already installed missile batteries in Italy and Turkey.

Soon, U.S. spy planes detected the construction of the missile site in Cuba and the shipments of missiles en route to Cuba, leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis. There was serious consideration of launching a full-scale U.S.-led assault on Cuba, something that could have led directly to nuclear war. Many U.S. military leaders believed in the possibility of a “limited nuclear war”, missile sites would be destroyed quickly enough to prevent the Soviets from launching counter-strikes. Instead, Kennedy and Khrushchev carefully engaged in behind-the-scenes diplomacy. Both realized the stakes of the conflict and did not want to destroy the world in the name of national pride. After thirteen panicked days, both sides agreed to withdraw their missiles. Ironically, a Soviet submarine very nearly launched nuclear torpedoes at an U.S. ship. A single Soviet officer called off the strike that could have led directly to nuclear war.

A photograph released by the U.S. Department of Defense shows a Russian ship unloading missiles.

Source: History.com

In the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the US and USSR agreed to create a “hotline” to ensure rapid communication in the event of future crises. The United States dropped the idea of “limited” nuclear and instead recognized that any nuclear strike was the equivalent of “M.A.D.” (Mutually Assured Destruction). While the arms race between the superpowers continued, both sides did enter into various treaties that limited the pace of nuclear arms production.

Brezhnev's Reign

In 1964, having lost the confidence of key members of the Politburo, Khrushchev was forced out of office. Leonid Brezhnev, a lifelong communist bureaucrat, would hold power until 1982, overseeing a long period of what is usually characterized as stagnation by historians. The Soviet system, including its nominal adherence to Marxism-Leninism, would remain in place, but even elites abandoned the idea that “real” communism was achievable. Instead, life in the USSR was about trying to find a place in the system, rather than pursuing the more far-reaching goals of communist theory. The deeply wedded state and the economy were rife with corruption and nepotism. A deep-seated, bitter cynicism became the outlook of most Soviet citizens toward their government.

During Brezhnev’s tenure as the Soviet premier, Czechoslovakia tried to break away from the Soviet Block. In the Spring of 1968, the Czech communist leader Alexander Dubcek (who had fought against the Nazis in the war and had been a staunch ally and trusted underling of the Soviets) received permission from Moscow to experiment with limited reforms. He called for “socialism with a human face,” meaning a kind of communist government that allowed freedom of speech, a liberalized outlook on human expression, and a diversified economy that could address sectors besides heavy industry. Dubcek relaxed censorship and allowed workers to organize into Soviets (councils) as they had in the early years of the communist revolution in Russia. These reforms were eagerly embraced by the Czechs and Slovaks.

Predictably, the reforms proved too radical for Moscow. Brezhnev sent in the Soviet military, as did the other Warsaw Pact countries (except Romania). This reaction was regarded around the world as especially crude and disproportionate, given that the Czechs and Slovaks did not rise up in any kind of violent way. The message was clear: no meaningful reform would be possible in the East unless the leadership in Moscow underwent a fundamental change of outlook. That change would eventually come in the 1980s under Mikhail Gorbachev.