Six Crises

by Richard Nixon

  I expected, based on his previous conduct, that Khrushchev might take a belligerent, bullying attitude. I knew that I could not respond in kind, because under no circumstances could I run the risk of “rocking the boat” or giving him a pretext for breaking off the Geneva negotiations. I had also decided completely to reject the advice of those who had urged me to try and convince Khrushchev that we were “sincerely” for peace, that we believed his concern for the security of his country from attack was real, and that he should be reassured of our willingness to enter into any guarantees on that score. It was my belief that Khrushchev knew that our intentions were peaceful. It was he who was the aggressor in words and action, whose arrogantly admitted aim in life was to win the world so that our grandchildren would live under Communism. If the opportunity presented itself, then, I believed the most important single purpose of my talks with him would be to convince him that he could not hope to convert the United States to Communism, nor could he hope to “win” a nuclear war in the traditional sense of the word. In 1959 and since, Khrushchev had boasted that the Soviet Union could destroy and devastate all the nations of Europe, and the United States as well, without sustaining annihilation itself. Khrushchev must not come to believe his own propaganda, merely because of the Soviet Union’s new advances in missile power.

  While on a good-will trip of this type I must avoid the temptation to answer threat with threat and boast for boast. I should not miss an opportunity to get across to him that the United States did not believe his boasts about the operational capacity of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles and that such boasts were, in reality, threats which do not advance the cause of peace. He should understand that the United States is for peace, but that we would not be bluffed or pushed around.

  Apart from my meetings with Khrushchev, I wanted to use every opportunity which arose on this trip to get through to the Russian people as distinguished from the Communist hierarchy. While Khrushchev and the Communist leaders did not really believe the United States threatened aggression against the Soviet Union, the 200 million people of Russia who are not Communists have been told for years that this was the case. My job was to convince them that the American Government and the American people were one in their dedication to peace and in their desire for friendly relations with the Russian people. In addition, I had to try to get across that it was their own Communist leaders who had deliberately created the tensions which might lead to war because of their insistence on spreading Communism by any means necessary, throughout the world.

  I was keyed up and ready for battle as the flight neared Moscow. But I knew that this was not to be a single crisis in the classic sense. While my meeting with Khrushchev might be a personal crisis for me, I recognized that in perspective it was only one episode in the continuing crisis that Mr. Khrushchev and his Communist colleagues are determined to perpetuate through our lifetime. What I did in the Soviet Union would not in itself ensure peace, deter Communist aggression, or remove any one of the trouble spots in the world. I could not convince Nikita Khrushchev that individual freedom and liberty were better than dictatorial socialism, any more than he could convince me that my grandchildren would live under Communism. This crisis would not come to a head and be resolved during my two-week visit to the Soviet Union. It would continue most probably through my lifetime and certainly beyond that of Khrushchev himself. Yet, every move in this crisis-laden struggle was important. At stake was world peace and the survival of freedom. With my planning and preparation behind me, I now intended to play my small part in this gigantic struggle to the best of my ability.

  • • •

  Eleven hours after takeoff, with a one-hour refueling stop in Iceland, our Air Force Boeing 707 came in for a smooth landing at Vnukova Airport in Moscow—at 2:50 P.M. Thursday, July 23, 1959. The press plane, which was a new long-range 707, had arrived before us, establishing two new records. It was the first commercial United States airliner to land in the Soviet Union since the end of World War II, and it set a nonstop speed record between New York and Moscow: eight hours and fifty-three minutes.

  The day was warm but the reception was cool. I sensed immediately that we were being given the “correct treatment” and nothing more. Outwardly, the arrival procedure was scarcely different from what I had experienced in scores of other world capitals. Yet, while listening to the booming welcoming speech of First Deputy Premier Frol Kozlov, who said all the correct things about peace and friendship, I could sense a degree of coolness and oppression in the warm summer air. Subconsciously it reminded me of the rather ominous unfriendliness that I had experienced so consciously on our arrival at the airport at Caracas.

  There were the usual handshakes and words of greeting, but no playing of national anthems, no band, no crowds. Approximately one hundred diplomats and officials and perhaps an equal number of reporters and photographers were on hand. Otherwise, the airport area was empty except for a few mechanics and passengers boarding other planes. Our motorcade sped through empty streets, for the route had been blocked off from other vehicles. The dozen or so people who were on the streets scarcely turned their heads as we went by. They had not the slightest idea who we were. When we arrived at the U. S. Embassy residence, I felt the same sense of relief upon reaching a bit of American soil in a foreign land that I had experienced when we had finally reached the sanctuary of the American Embassy in Caracas fourteen months before.

  Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson, who with his wife, Jane, extended their usual warm and gracious hospitality, suggested an explanation for the cold reception: Khrushchev might be having some second thoughts about the wisdom of his decision to allow an American fair in Moscow and an American Vice President to speak to the Russian people. Khrushchev had returned from a ten-day tour of Poland, where he had been coolly received, just ninety minutes before I landed in Moscow. He had gone directly from the airport to the Moscow Sports Arena to address thousands of Moscovites. The timing worked out so that just when I was being greeted at the airport, Khrushchev was lambasting the United States generally and me personally for the Captive Nations Resolution passed by Congress a week before. The resolution called for prayers for those behind the Iron Curtain. It was difficult for me to imagine that the resolution truly disturbed the Soviet Premier because it was simply the expression of a well-known opinion in the United States, and not a call to action.

  Ambassador Thompson informed me that news of my visit had been buried in the back pages of the Moscow newspapers. The U. S. Exhibition had been ridiculed by the Communist press for the past four days as not representative of life in America. But it must actually have impressed them, because just recently the Soviet Government had decided to open a competing exhibition of Soviet-produced consumer goods.

  Late that afternoon, Mrs. Nixon and I went out for our first stroll on Russian soil. It was with a somewhat strange feeling that we walked along Chaikovsky Street, one of Moscow’s main thoroughfares, to Smolensky Square. We looked in the shop windows, observed the men and women on the street going about their normal everyday business, and with my rudimentary Russian and the help of our interpreter introduced ourselves to several shopkeepers, customers, and occasional pedestrians. Each time we saw surprise and then delight upon the faces of those we met. We were greeted with sincere words of welcome. As we returned from this pleasant walk, I was encouraged at the prospects of my visit.

  That evening we dined with the Thompsons, and I received a firsthand briefing on the latest in Soviet policies and thinking from the Ambassador and members of the Embassy staff.

  I also received my first indoctrination in how to conduct confidential conferences in a police state. We did not have our meeting in the spacious drawing room on the first floor of Spaso House. Instead, we used a small sitting room on the second floor, adjacent to the Thompsons’ bedroom. This was the only room in the entire Embassy residence which the small technical crew assigned to the Ambassador’s staff could guarantee was free from “bugging”
devices. And this was accomplished only by keeping it under constant surveillance and by checking it daily with electronic instruments. Everywhere we went in the Soviet Union we were confronted with the same problem. When we stayed in Soviet guesthouses, we conducted any confidential conversations in walks we would take around the grounds, and even then we were careful: we always talked in open spaces, never near trees or bushes large enough to conceal a listening device.

  Tommy Thompson, a career man in the foreign service since 1929, had served in Moscow off and on since 1939. In October 1941, when the diplomatic corps had fled in fear of the Nazi panzer thrusts deep into Soviet territory, Thompson had stayed behind to guard our Embassy and United States interests in Moscow. I first met him late in 1956 while checking into the Hungarian refugee situation in Austria, where he was then representing the United States in the negotiations which led to a treaty of independence for Austria. He became our first Ambassador to the new government there, and then in 1957, President Eisenhower appointed him Ambassador to the Soviet Union, one of the most important diplomatic posts in the world. He has served so well, and his judgment on Soviet affairs has proved to be so acute, that the Kennedy Administration wisely persuaded him to remain on in that post.

  I turned in early that night in anticipation of the next day’s schedule: a meeting with Khrushchev, a preview tour with him of the American Exhibition, and a major speech officially opening the exhibit to the Soviet public. But as usual before any major crisis, I found I was too keyed up to sleep except intermittently. Finally, at 5:30 A.M., I gave up trying and decided to go out for a walk again, to get a feel of the city before starting my official calls.

  I woke up Jack Sherwood and, together with a Russian security policeman who acted as our driver and interpreter, we drove to the Danilovsky Market. As a boy, working in my father’s store, I used to drive a pickup truck to the produce markets in Los Angeles in the early morning hours so that I could get the fresh fruits and vegetables back in the store ready for sale when we opened at 8:00. I thought it would be interesting to compare the Soviet market, which was primarily a retail rather than a wholesale establishment, with the one I had known as a boy in the United States.

  As I moved through the market, testing my few Russian phrases, the people greeted me with genuine warmness. The venders plied me with gifts of fruit, vegetables, and anything at hand, refusing to let us buy anything. As word of my identity spread, the crowd grew. Question after question was put to me about life in the United States and the people hung on my every answer. It was obvious they were starved for information about the outside world. For almost an hour I moved around that market in an atmosphere of warm friendliness. I was struck by one detail which was different from our own markets back home. At each stall or counter, there were two sets of scales: one used by the stallkeeper, and the other by the customer to reweigh his purchase as a check against any cheating!

  While most of those around me apparently had not heard of my visit, they all knew about the American Exhibition. As we were about to leave, several asked me if I had any tickets to the exhibition. Distribution of the tickets, which cost one ruble, or twenty-five cents, each, was left to the Soviet authorities. Explaining to them that I did not have any tickets, I said that I would be very happy to buy tickets for those in the market who had been so kind to me. At my suggestion, Jack Sherwood handed the spokesman for the group a 100-ruble note, but he handed the bill back with a laugh, explaining it was not the cost but rather the unavailability of tickets that prevented them from attending the exhibition. I laughed with them at the difficulty of prying tickets loose from authorities, and then shook hands all around to take my leave.

  But before I could go, one stallkeeper presented me with a huge bouquet of flowers which he said had been purchased with contributions he had hurriedly collected from the people at the market who wished to demonstrate their friendship for the United States and the American people. I walked away from the market with the same impression that most American tourists get in Moscow: the Russian people want to live in peace, they are friendly to Americans, appreciative of U. S. aid during World War II, and they are starved for knowledge about the non-Communist world. But I learned a lesson the next day when the Communist newspapers were read for me: never confuse the desires of the Russian people with the aims of their Communist leaders.

  Pravda, Izvestia, and Trud, the three largest and most influential government and Party newspapers, accused me of trying to “bribe” and “degrade” a Soviet citizen. One account said that I had pulled a capitalistic trick of handing money to a “poor Soviet citizen” while my capitalistic photographers recorded the scene for the “Wall Street press.” The Communist newspapers made a cause célèbre out of the incident, even though there had been no photographers at the market at the time.

  Later that morning, accompanied by Milton Eisenhower and Ambassador Thompson, I paid my first courtesy call in the Kremlin, a walled city within a city, housing the government and Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Marshal Kliment Y. Voroshilov, President of the Supreme Soviet, a figurehead in the Communist hierarchy little-known outside Russia, greeted me “as a dear guest of the Soviet Union” and wished me “health and success” on my trip through his country. After the usual courtesies and protocol of the visit, we left his office and were escorted down the hall to the office of the real boss—the First Secretary of the Communist Party.

  This was the moment for which I had been preparing myself for many months. I was on edge with suspense as I entered Khrushchev’s office shortly after 10:00. He was toying with a model of Lunik, the satellite which the Russians had shot off toward the moon several months before. It looked like an oversized baseball in Khrushchev’s chubby hands. I have no clear recollection of his office, except that it was large and luxurious. But I remember vividly that while Khrushchev was somewhat shorter than I expected, he somehow conveyed the unmistakable impression of great physical strength and vitality.

  The reporters and photographers recorded our first handshake and his accepting from me the personal letter of greetings which President Eisenhower had asked me to deliver. Then he abruptly asked them to leave the room.

  This was supposed to be a pure protocol courtesy visit at which serious business was not to be discussed. Our talks on substantive issues were scheduled for Sunday in the Soviet Government guesthouse about twenty miles outside Moscow. But as soon as the newspapermen had left the office Khrushchev motioned us to sit around the conference table. I could sense that he was in a testy mood. He kept looking me up and down from head to toe, as a tailor might estimate a customer’s size for a suit of clothes, or perhaps more as an undertaker might view a prospective corpse with a coffin in mind. There was nothing about Khrushchev to match the jovial bombast of Kozlov or the suave courtesy of Mikoyan. I expected him to take me on, but I had thought that since today’s events were primarily protocol in nature he would wait until we had our private talks the next day. But Khrushchev never plays by the rules. He delights in doing the unexpected. Just as soon as we sat down at the conference table, he started in on a bone of contention that was to be the major Soviet irritant throughout my tour. It was the Captive Nations Resolution, passed by Congress on July 6, calling on the President to issue a proclamation designating the third week in July as Captive Nations Week, during which free people would rededicate themselves and pray for the liberation of “enslaved peoples” behind the Iron Curtain. President Eisenhower had issued the proclamation on July 17, five days before my departure for Russia.

  In a long harangue, speaking in a high-pitched voice and frequently pounding the table, Khrushchev declared that the Soviet Government regarded the resolution as a very serious “provocation.”

  Why did President Eisenhower issue such a proclamation just before my trip if he wanted me to have a good reception, he asked. And this resolution would certainly not improve the chances for any agreement at the Geneva Conference on a peace treaty for Germany or for a ge
neral improvement in relations between our two countries, he added.

  As he talked and the translation was made, I had to make a quick decision on how to react to his attack. I did not feel that this was the time to debate with him on the merits of the resolution, on which I had some strong feelings. I was sure that he was going through an act—that he was using the resolution as a pretext for taking the offensive against me, and that had it not been for this resolution, he would have found some other excuse for doing so. But I could not tell whether he was trying to get me to lose my temper and respond in kind so that he could make an incident out of my conduct, or whether he simply was trying to put me on the defensive at the very outset of my visit.

  Consequently, I decided at this time to try to finesse his attack by answering him collaterally. I pointed out that this was a decision made by the Congress over which Eisenhower had no control. And the resolution was not a provocation, but an expression of opinion widely held in the United States.

  Khrushchev expressed bewilderment. “Any action by an authoritative body like Congress must have a purpose,” he exclaimed, “and I wonder what the purpose of this particular action can be?” He asserted that the resolution could not change anything in the USSR or in any other country, adding that if the United States meant to bring about any change it would mean war. Then he recalled how the Russian people had repulsed what he called United States intervention at the time of the birth of the Soviet regime, during 1919–21, and certainly would do so now.