Khrushchev was quite unconscious of the deeply depressing effect this encounter had on the young President. He was simply being himself, and by now people in responsible positions should know what that meant. They should also know how to take hints* There was nothing in his attitude and his behaviour to upset the President’s seasoned diplomatic advisers, some of whom had been through it all before and knew what to expect. When Kennedy asked what they made of it, one of them replied that it was “par for the course.”16 But the young President was new to this dreary game, which Khrushchev had grown old in and which he rather enjoyed. He was, in fact, a young man in a hurry, and when the meetings were over he exclaimed that if Khrushchev really meant what he said about Berlin there would be war.
That the President was a young man in a hurry, Khrushchev himself could see: this sort of hurry was alien to his temperament. It could also be dangerous. He knew, none better, that the Soviet Union, with China on her flank, must indeed come to some sort of an understanding with America. But this had to be achieved gradually and in proper form. There was no immediate threat from China—or, rather, the immediate threat was not to the Soviet Union as a state but to the Soviet Union as the head of an ideological empire. A too swift accommodation with Washington could only assist China in this matter. America had to be taught that the Soviet Union was still very much a power—and who, in any case, was America? Was it Kennedy? Then who was Kennedy? At the end of the Vienna meeting Khrushchev had satisfied himself that Kennedy was a person and a strong character into the bargain. But what did he really believe? This was by no means clear. Might there not also be an element of brittleness in his evident strength? This would have to be tested. And so it was tested, first in the Berlin crisis which culminated in the horror of the Wall. Then in the Cuban affair.
The Cuban affair, as already observed, was Khrushchev’s last great fling. It was also, for him, the beginning of the end.
The breach with China was, in October 1962, still not officially public. Khrushchev himself was committed to it and all Communists everywhere knew he was pushing it very hard: the Communist movement was disintegrating under the impact of this gigantic conflict, and as the Communist movement disintegrated, the base of Russian authority over a large area of Eastern Europe and over the Communist Parties everywhere, legal or illegal fifth-columns in effect, was rapidly dwindling. Khrushchev’s one great asset, which he exploited unremittingly, was universal fear of nuclear war. The Chinese talked with insane recklessness about “paper tigers,” about the hollowness of the American threat, about the cravenness of all those comrades who showed themselves afraid of the hydrogen bomb. It was only their talk that was reckless; they were in fact behaving with extreme circumspection. But it was easy for Khrushchev to present them as belligerent war-mongers who, given half a chance, and through their policies of encouraging active revolutionary and liberation struggles, could push mankind into nuclear catastrophe. Communists all over the world were no more anxious to be incinerated than their capitalist cousins.
The great asset of the Chinese, on the other hand, was twofold: they led the field in protesting against the authoritarian ways of the Soviet Communist Party, which many of the comrades resented, and they pointed out unceasingly and with truth that Khrushchev had shelved the world revolution in the interests of the power and prosperity of the Soviet Union—and was seeking a détente with the loathsome American imperialists to this end.
At the time of Cuba Khrushchev was under immense pressure to reassert the power and glory of the Soviet Union both as a state and as the unique headquarters of the world revolutionary movement. He had very little to show for his strenuous and unsettling years at the summit. The economy was in bad shape: industrial growth was slowing down and consumer goods were still in short supply and abysmally poor in quality. Agriculture had relapsed into its previous state of chronic malaise: there had been colossal mistakes in the Virgin Lands and elsewhere. Khrushchev’s constant boastings had become a joke, and his reckless plunging and endless expedients were producing a widespread mood of frustration and unsettlement. Corruption, speculation, the short-circuiting of central planning by illegal means on an immense scale still continued.17 The young, in millions, cared nothing about the government and less than nothing about the Party. The conventional forces had been run down in favour of rocket weapons, causing dangerous discontent in the army. The satellites were restless. The Communist movement was falling to pieces. The quarrel with China was being deliberately exacerbated to the point of no return. The understanding with America, headed now by a tough and pigheaded young President, whom nobody understood, but who was certainly too young and inexperienced to be allowed to hold up the Soviet Union to ransom, was as far away as ever.
The Cuban revolution and America’s attitude to it indicated that in no part of the world where the United States could assert herself was there the least chance of a revolution, Communist inspired or otherwise, being recognised by the United States— which meant that the Soviet Union would have to renounce all pretensions to revolutionary leadership, or else, sooner or later, meet America head on and teach her a lesson. Kennedy’s fumbling of the Bay of Pigs affair and his acceptance of the Berlin Wall suggested that he might be the President most amenable to such a lesson: in spite of his self-assurance there was an indecisive look about him: also, he was not putting up much of a fight for his ideas in Congress….
Cuba was the opportunity. It was greatly stimulating, it was even a little intoxicating, to see a Communist régime amazingly established within a stone’s throw of the American mainland. But there, unbelievably, it was—and most demonstratively under Russian protection. But it could not last long. Sooner or later there would be a massive American invasion—and then what? If the Soviet Union then did nothing, the damage to her prestige would be irreparable; yet what should she do without bringing herself into full-scale conflict with America? How could she defend Cuba effectively without attacking the mainland in a full-scale atomic assault? And that, of course, would also end in the destruction of the Soviet Union.
There was just one move open, and Khrushchev took it— whether out of conviction, or under great pressure, we do not know: establish rocket bases in Cuba in the utmost secrecy and Cuba would be safe for ever. The rockets did not have to be used —heaven forbid! But once their presence in combat readiness was revealed, no matter how America might rave, she could not invade—without inviting the full-scale nuclear war which he, Khrushchev, knew that no government in its senses could conceivably invite over the possession of an island, no matter how near, no matter how hostile.
Khrushchev’s military advisers probably saw no further than this. He himself almost certainly saw a good deal further. Once the inevitable uproar had subsided the whole balance of East-West strategy would have changed. The young President would have learnt his lesson. The Soviet Union would emerge with such authority that she could afford to turn her back on China— and could then, at leisure, start to deal with the United States on the basis of a fait accompli, pending the time when China would have made her own atom bomb.
The plan broke down. Although the installation of the rockets in Cuba was carried out more swiftly than anybody in the West could have imagined, the installations were in fact discovered before they were complete and operational. America was faced not with a fait accompli but with a major and revolutionary strategic deployment which had not been completed. For Khrushchev it was a perfect reversal: just as with his fait accompli he had proposed to force upon Kennedy a retreat which could only be avoided by risking, if not launching, a nuclear war, so, now, Kennedy could do the same to him—and he, no more than Kennedy, could not afford to appear as the aggressor, to threaten the destruction of civilisation with his long-range intercontinental missiles rather than call off what, to put it mildly, was the deliberate continuation of a highly provocative action under the eyes of all the world.
It was a neat equation, and the American President solved it. It was
a question of nerve, and the American President, horribly isolated, proved that his nerve was good. Kennedy’s solution depended on the assumption that Khrushchev was not prepared to launch a nuclear war over Cuba, just as Khrushchev’s initial action had depended on the assumption that Kennedy would not be prepared to launch a nuclear war to reverse a. fait accompli in Cuba. Kennedy’s assumption was correct. Khrushchev’s assumption was probably correct; but we cannot know this.
There was no hysteria about his subsequent action. We have it on the authority of Kennedy’s biographer and personal aide that the famous letter which marked the collapse of the Soviet attempt to humiliate the United States in its own hemisphere was not hysterical, but perfectly reasonable.18 He was still under pressure. The second letter, which tried to qualify the surrender by insisting that America should abandon some of her bases in exchange for his taking the rockets out of Cuba, showed that some of his colleagues, military or civilian or both, thought his retreat too absolute and were determined to make him salvage something from the debacle. It is doubtful if Khrushchev himself was interested in half a loaf. The Soviet Union had lived with the American bases in Turkey for a very long time and could go on living with them. He had gambled for very high stakes and lost: side bets were unimportant. The only thing to do was to present himself as the man who, by bold and decisive action, had made it impossible for America to invade Cuba, and then, his purpose accomplished, to engage in a high and mighty and statesmanlike gesture of conciliation calculated to secure the peace of the world.
He was also looking ahead. He knew very well that the Chinese would soon be gleefully exploiting his retreat, as indeed they did. He knew very well that he had jeopardised his mainline policy of détente with America, and that after using Gromyko and others to deny the very existence of “offensive” weapons in Cuba he would have his work cut out to persuade President Kennedy to believe his word about anything ever again. The retreat must be complete: there must be no bargaining about anything outside Cuba. And so it was.
The days of having things both ways were over. Détente with America must now be put above all other things, cost what it might. This first meant publicly clarifying Moscow’s position vis-à-vis Peking. And so, in the winter of 1962-3, came the first direct and undisguised Soviet attacks on China.19 The Chinese, who had been calling the Cuban retreat another Munich, replied with even more vehemence, reposing their whole case on Khrushchev’s betrayal of the Communist cause. Communists who had supported Russia against China were beginning to wonder: they would have to go on wondering…. All during the first half of 1963 Khrushchev and Mao manoeuvred to put the other in the wrong, Mao with overwhelming attack, Khrushchev coldly, but almost absently. His eye was on America. The Chinese were to be kept in play: let them overstep themselves by all means, but he was not going to incur the odium of precipitating the final breach—not yet. When at length a very high-powered delegation arrived in Moscow to have things out— after each side had done its level best to provoke the other into calling off the meeting—Khrushchev absented himself and left them to batter their heads against Mikhail Suslov—who had stage-managed the great conference of the eighty-one Parties in November 1960.20 More than this, he returned to Moscow, while the Chinese were still there, to meet the American President’s envoy, Averell Harriman. He was easy and relaxed. He was having his way. He was in the process of wiping out the nasty taste of Cuba by making a large public gesture and establishing, while he publicly snubbed the Chinese, a “special relationship” with America. He told Mr. Harriman a good deal about the Russian quarrel with China. And on 4th August he signed the celebrated test-ban treaty, which reduced the Chinese, by now back in Peking, to apoplexy, and caused them at last publicly to declare that as far back as 1959 the Russians had refused to help them with the atom bomb, which had amounted to the unilateral breach of a treaty of mutual technical assistance signed in 1957.21
Khrushchev was once more the world statesman, moving back to the spirit of Camp David—and beyond. His great aim now was to liquidate all possible obstacles to a further improvement of relations with America. As far as he was concerned, the quarrel with China had moved right out of the sphere of ideology: China, growing strong, working towards her own nuclear weapons, was a potential threat to the Soviet Union as a power. All the emphasis now was on frontier incidents, both real and imagined.22 The day might come, and soon, when he, Khrushchev, might need a frontier incident as an excuse to react violently to destroy Chinese nuclear installations while there was still time. This, of course, was never said. It has never, to my knowledge, been suggested. But it must have been present in the mind of the man whose career we have traced and who had the boldness and logic to stake so much on the Cuba gamble. Six or seven hundred million Chinese headed by a bitterly hostile demi-god and pressing against the vast, empty hinterlands of the Soviet Far East (some of which, as they pointed out, had been stolen from them by a Russian Tsar),23 could, suitably armed, be a terrifying threat.
In 1964 China exploded her first atom bomb. For the whole of that year Khrushchev’s immediate preoccupation was to arrange a great international conference of Communist parties designed to secure the submission of China or her formal expulsion from the world Communist movement. He was losing support against China all the time, so the matter was urgent. He met stubborn resistance for a variety of reasons, from Communist parties hitherto loyal—from the Poles inside the Communist bloc, from the Italians outside, from many others. Communist Rumania was leading the field in exploiting this largely hidden conflict in her own interests by having the effrontery to play off Moscow against Peking: the monolithic satellite bloc was falling to pieces, and Khrushchev was making things worse by trying to bully into submission peoples who knew that they no longer need submit. There was one thing only that held the European satellites together: it was no longer fear of Moscow; it was fear of Germany.
The situation was complicated beyond measure for Khrushchev by the impending American elections. The assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963 had been a shattering blow. He had known where he was with Kennedy. It had been he, not Kennedy, who had been taught a lesson by Cuba. But there had been no reversal of Kennedy’s policies by Johnson, so all was still well. Now it might be Goldwater, in which case his dream seemed likely to be doomed. It was almost certainly because of this that he fixed the date of the preliminary conference which was to prepare for the great all-Party conference for 15th December, 1964: the American elections were to take place in November. It was almost certainly because of this that, in good time for the American elections, he decided, without, consulting his colleagues of the Presidium (so they afterwards said), to send his son-in-law, Adjubei, to Bonn.
There was only one possible interpretation of this: he was preparing the great coup which would convince American opinion of his good intentions and cut the ground of Senator Goldwater from under his feet. He was moving to an accommodation with West Germany. He was getting ready to sell Comrade Ulbricht down the river. He was finally admitting the logic of all his policies and he knew how to cut his losses. He had taken this decision on himself. He was the master of the Soviet Union, who had weathered so many crises, and he was going to behave like the master. He had a vision, and he was going to act on his vision.
His colleagues dissented. There were various sporadic actions designed to sabotage his great design. Then, while he was far away on the Black Sea, they met and made their decision. All those who had ever opposed the old master on anything drew together to bring him down. They did not, most of them, oppose the main line of his policy (their subsequent actions proved this), but they were against his suddenness and his precipitance; they were against the hostages he was preparing to give to fortune; they were against the muddle he was making of the economy, the endless “hare-brained” schemes, which led nowhere, which had no systematic direction; above all they were against his final assumption of absolute authority. They summoned him back to Moscow on urgent business.
They had the police in their pocket through Shelepin, who was duly rewarded, and they had the Army behind them. One after another they stood up, some of them owing all they were to him, and separately arraigned him: for economic failure, for agricultural failure, for administrative failure; for his unco-ordinated plunges and sudden switches of domestic policy; for his opportunism and lack of consistency; for his endless boasting. They attacked him for the unrest in the satellites; for pushing the Chinese quarrel to such bitter extremes and so making even an appearance of amity impossible, thus fatally dividing the Communist world. They attacked him for being ready to sacrifice too much too quickly for the sake of an understanding, necessary as it was, with America. They attacked him for his overtures to Bonn. Above all they attacked him for alienating so many good soldiers, so many able officials, and for promoting sycophants and yes-men to high office. They attacked him for encouraging a personality cult of his own, in breach of solemn promise, for encouraging the glorification of his person and for trying to govern and make policy with too little reference to his colleagues and through his own personal network of favourites. They said he was too old. They said the government of the Soviet Union and the leadership of the Communist Party were too serious to be left to the uncontrolled, uncontrollable impulses of a man who was showing himself ever more incapable of playing his part in a team. They demanded his resignation.
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