Khrushchev's Cold War

by Aleksandr Fursenko

  1. ‘Abd al-Karim Qasim’s name is transliterated in various ways. It also appears as Qassim and Kassem. We have chosen the transliteration that is currently preferred by scholars.

  2. Negotiations between the USSR and the United Arab Republic (UAR), minutes, April 30, 1958, at 10:00 A.M., MFA. See also Negotiations between the USSR and the UAR, minutes, May 14, 1958, MFA.

  3. Khrushchev revealed this to the Egyptian government in a meeting with Field Marshal Amer in June 1963. See memorandum of conversation, Khrushchev and Amer, June 9, 1963, 52-1-561, APRF.

  4. In the late 1960s Khrushchev recalled that the Kremlin knew of the contacts between Qasim and the Communists and that he had been told that Qasim considered himself a Communist. See Strobe Talbott, ed. Khrushchev Remembers (Boston: Little, Brown, 1940), p. 438. Contemporaneous information is fragmentary but is not incompatible with Khrushchev’s later recollection. See steno, August 4, 1958, CC and Khrushchev’s meeting with Amer in June 1963. In the latter conversation Khrushchev discusses the deal between Qasim and the Communists but assures the Egyptians that he did not know about it. It is fair to assume Khrushchev had an interest in deceiving the anti-Communist Nasser government on that point. Memcon, Khrushchev and Amer meeting, June 9, 1963, 52-1-561, APRF.

  5. See Syria File, 0128, 1958, 21/28/4, MFA.

  6. This was said to Nasser on July 17, 1958. See Mohamed Heikel, The Sphinx and the Commissar: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Influence in the Middle East (New York: Harper & Row), 1978, p. 98.

  7. Protocol 116, October 10, 1957, Fond 3, Opis 12, Delo 1008, pp. 8–11.

  8. On the United States in that crisis, see David W. Lesch, Syria and the United States: Eisenhower’s Cold War in the Middle East (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992), passim. In May 1958 Khrushchev discussed with Nasser the importance of deterrence in the Syrian crisis. See memcon, USSR and UAR negotiations, May 14, 1958, MFA.

  9. Protocol 126, November 15, 1957, AOK.

  10. The timing of this crisis is clear from the fact that at the first meeting of the Presidium following the Iraqi Revolution the only substantive foreign policy discussion concerned the handling of the Chinese problem. Protocol 163, July 15, 1958, AOK.

  11. CIA, Special National Intelligence Estimate, 30-2-58, “The Middle East Crisis,” July 22, 1958, Foreign Relations of the United States [hereafter FRUS], 1958–1960, vol. 12, p. 88.

  12. Memcon, Bryce Harlow, July 14, 1958, 2:35 P.M., FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. 11, microfiche supplement 278/2.

  13. Nigel John Ashton, Eisenhower, Macmillan and the Problem of Nasser: Anglo-American Relations and Arab Nationalism, 1955–59 (London: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 165–81.

  14. For an excellent introduction to the politics of Lebanon before and during the crisis of 1958, see Zachary Karabell, Architects of Intervention: The United States and the Third World and the Cold War 1946–1962 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999), pp. 136–72.

  15. Ashton, op. cit., p. 113.

  16. Memcon, Robert Cutler, July 14, 1958, 10:55 A.M.–12:05 P.M., FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. 12, microfiche supplement, 274. Saeb Salaam was the leader of the rebel forces in Beirut. In a meeting with the CIA’s Miles Copeland on July 27, 1958, Nasser admitted that he assumed Salaam’s telephone calls to Damascus were being tapped. Nasser said that he was now urging restraint on Salaam. Telegram, Cairo to SecState, July 28, 1958, FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. 12, microfiche supplements, 545.

  17. Department of state Memcon “Lebanon,” June 15, 1958, cited in Douglas Little, “His Finest Hour? Eisenhower, Lebanon, and the 1958 Middle East Crisis,” Diplomatic History, vol. 20, no. 1 (Winter 1996). pp. 41–42.

  18. Memcon, July 14, 1958, 2:35 P.M., FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. 11, p. 220.

  19. Memcon, Robert Cutler, July 14, 1958, FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. 11, microfiche supplement, 274.

  20. Memcon, July 14, 1958, 10:30 A.M., ibid., pp. 211–15.

  21. As originally conceived, the operation was to involve two army battle groups from Europe and three marine battalions, two attacks carriers, and an assortment of other surface ships, as well as a Tactical Air Corps composite air strike force, which was deployed to Adana, Turkey. One of the battle groups was later dropped from the operation. Situation Report on Lebanon (1), July 16, 1958, Records of White House Staff Secretary Subject Series, Department of Defense subseries, Joint Chiefs of Staff, vol. 2 (I), DDE Library. The authors are grateful to Eisenhower library archivist David Haight for bringing this series to their attention.

  22. Eisenhower discussed his assumption about “mob-like actions” by the Iraq revolutionaries in a letter to George Humphrey, July 22, 1958, ed. note, FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. 12, p. 331.

  23. Memcon, July 17, 1958, 2:30 P.M., FRUS, ibid., pp. 776–77. Telcon, Dulles and Nixon, July 15, 1958, JFD Telcons, microfilm, University Publications of America.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Memcon, July 14, 1958, 10:50 A.M., FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. 11, p. 213.

  26. Ibid., p. 226.

  27. William Roger Louis, “Harold Macmillan and the Middle East Crisis of 1958,” Elie Kedomie Memorial Lecture, Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 94 (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 207–28. The authors are indebted to Dr. Taylor Fain for drawing our attention to this important article.

  28. Ibid., p. 211.

  29. Harold Macmillan, Riding the Storm, 1956–1959 (London: Macmillan, 1971), p. 523, cited in W. Taylor Fain, “The United States, Great Britain, and Iraq: Confronting Radical Arab Nationalism in the Persian Gulf Region, 1958–1959,” unpublished manuscript.

  30. Memo from Board of National Estimates to AWD, “The Outlook for Kuwait,” March 16, 1959, FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. 12, p. 784, n. 3.

  31. Telcon, July 14, 1958, 5:43 P.M., ibid., vol. 11, 232–33.

  32. Report of Eisenhower and Macmillan telephone call, July 14, 1958, 5:43 P.M., FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. 11, microfiche supplement, 284. JFD memo for the record, July 14, 1958, ibid., microfiche supplement, 285.

  33. Heikal, op. cit., p. 98. Heikal heard Khrushchev say this to Nasser at their July 17 meeting.

  34. “Text of Soviet Statement on Mideast,” Washington Post and Times Herald, July 17, 1958. No notes have been found for the Presidium meeting of July 16, 1958, Protocol 164. However, in his diary entry for July 16, 1958, the Yugoslav ambassador, Veljko Micunovic, describes two meetings with Khrushchev in which the Soviet leader discussed these Presidium decisions. Micunovic was meeting with Khrushchev to plan for Nasser’s secret visit. See Veljko Micunovic, Moscow Diary, trans. by David Floyd (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980), pp. 409–11.

  35. V. V. Kuznetsov to CC, July 16, 1958, APRF.

  36. Ibid.

  37. For accounts of Nasser’s trip, see Heikal, op. cit., pp. 76–102; Talbott, ed., op. cit., pp. 438–39; and Khrushchev’s comments to Marshal Amer in June 1963, APRF.

  38. Micunovic, op. cit., pp. 409–11.

  39. See Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (New York: Norton: 1997), pp. 109–11.

  40. “Holeman,” Box 347, General Correspondence, Richard M. Nixon Pre-Presidential Papers, Vice President [hereafter RMN], NARA-LN.

  41. Strobe Talbott, ed., Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament (Boston: Little Brown, 1974), pp. 366–67.

  42. Richard Nixon to Frank Holeman, November 12, 1955, “Holeman,” Box 347, General Correspondence, RMN, NARA-LN. They had gotten to know each other in 1948, when Nixon was grabbing headlines in his pursuit of the truth about Alger Hiss, a suave former State Department staffer alleged to have been a Soviet agent, and Holeman was just getting his start. In 1952 the Daily News assigned Holeman to the press corps that followed Nixon around the country. By the end of the campaign he and the future vice president had developed an easy relationship and were soon on a first-name basis. In 1956, when the National Press Club invited Harold Stassen, a man vying to replace Eisenhower whenever he decided to retire, Holeman made a
point of sending word to the Nixon camp that he “just wanted to make it clear off-the-record that we invited him merely because he is in the news and for that reason only!” Frank Holeman to RMN, July 24, 1956, Box 347, General Correspondence, RMN, NARA-LN.

  43. “Bulgarian Maneuvers with Russians Reported,” Washington Post and Herald Tribune, July 18, 1958; “Bulgarian Maneuvers with Russians Reported,” ibid., July 20, 1958.

  44. Heikal, op. cit., p. 98.

  45. Ibid.

  46. Osgood Caruthers, “Nasser, in Moscow, Cautions Khrushchev Imperiling Peace,” New York Times, July 19, 1958.

  47. Memcon, USSR and UAR negotiations, May 14, 1958, APRF.

  48. Khrushchev described this dramatic meeting in a letter he sent to Nasser in April 1959, at a time when the USSR, dragged into the middle of a struggle between Egypt and Iraq, was being criticized by Nasser for having failed to provide sufficient military assistance to Cairo. NSK to Nasser, April 12, 1959, Fond 087, 22/12/49, pp. 45–64, MFA.

  49. Extract from Protocol 169, Presidium meeting of July 26, 1958, APRF. At this meeting, where the leadership discussed the first plan for sending arms to Baghdad, the Soviets reviewed the history of Iraqi requests for military supplies.

  50. Protocol 170, July 18, 1958, APRF; Qasim to Khrushchev, July 18, 1958, APRF.

  51. Russell Baker, “Dulles Doubtful of Soviet Action,” New York Times, July 19, 1958.

  52. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Twining requested that the 101st Airborne also be prepared for dispatch. Eisenhower turned down that request because the lack of sufficient navy transport meant that this would involve chartering private vessels, an act that would reveal the movement and add to international tension. Memcon, DDE and Twining, July 15, 1958, 11:25 A.M., FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. 11, p. 246. Twining estimated it would take ten days to load the marine division and its equipment.

  53. Memcon, July 16, 1958, ibid., p. 75.

  54. Memcon, DDE and Selwyn Lloyd, July 17, 1958, ibid., p. 321.

  55. Ibid., Memcon, JWD and Lloyd, ibid., pp. 319–20.

  56. FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. 12, p. 93, n. 1.

  57. Memcon, July 17, 1958, ibid., p. 326.

  58. Viscount Hood to Foreign Office, July 15, 1958. Prem 11/2368, National Archives—UK.

  59. Michael Wright to FO, November 24, 1958, from Baghdad, Prem 11/2368, National Archives—UK.

  60. “Proclamation by Brigadier Kassem, prime minister of Iraq, on oil policy,” Baghdad, July 18, 1958, Gillian King, ed., Documents on International Affairs, 1958 (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 300.

  61. J. Bowker to FO, July 17, 1958, 71/134199, National Archives—UK.

  62. Macmillan and Lloyd, July 18, 1958, National Archives—UK, 11/2408, quoted in Ashton, op. cit., p. 178.

  63. Dulles told Lloyd that he thought the moderate language coming from Iraq was “part of a façade to deceive the West.” Memcon, Dulles and Lloyd, July 19, 1958, 6:00 P.M., FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. 11, p. 342.

  64. The UAR’s guarantee of Iraqi territory was reported to President Eisenhower on July 18, 1958. Note, Andrew Goodpaster, July 1958, FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. 11, microfilm, 446.

  65. Alphand to Paris, Juillet (July) 18, 1958, Documents Diplomatiques Français [hereafter DDF], 1958, vol. 2, Record No. 56, Ministère des Affaires Étrangères Commission de Publication des Documents Diplomatiques, Français (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1993), p. 110, n. 2. The telegram in question is summarized in the note.

  66. On July 20 Dulles reported that it had been agreed with the British and approved by the president “not to back a military effort to retake Iraq.” Memcon, meeting with DDE, July 20, 1958, 3:45 P.M., FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. 12, p. 83.

  67. Telegram, SecState to London Embassy, July 18, 1958, 8:30 P.M., FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. 11, p. 325. Memcon, Lloyd to Dulles, July 19, 1958, 6:00 P.M., ibid., Alphand to Paris, July 19, 1958, DDF, 1958, vol. 2, Document 56.

  68. Memcon, July 20, 1958, 3:45 P.M., FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. 11, p. 349.

  69. U.K. consul-general (Istanbul) to FO, July 17, 1958, Prem 11/2368, National Archives–UK.

  70. Alphand to Paris, July 19, 1958, DDF, 1958, vol. 2, Document 56. In the July 19 Presidium meeting Mikhail Suslov made a direct reference to Paris’s disagreements with London and Washington over the handling of the crisis in the Middle East, steno, July 19, 1958, AOK.

  71. The British concluded that Turkish intervention “would almost lead the new Iraqi regime to invite the Russians to intervene. This would alter the whole military situation in the Middle East to our extreme disadvantage.” FO to U.S. State Dept, July 18, 1958, Prem 11/2368, National Archives—UK.

  72. Krasnaya Zvezda, July 17, 1958, quoting an interview with Brown that appeared on July 16 in the New York Journal-American.

  73. Steno, July 19, 1958, AOK.

  74. In a letter to Nasser, Khrushchev explained by inference that he had been most concerned about an intervention by Pakistan, Iran, or Turkey into Iraq. NSK to Nasser, April 12, 1959, MFA.

  75. Steno, July 19, 1958, AOK.

  76. Walter Lacqueur, Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations (New York: Scribner’s, 1990); Appendix 3, “Voroshilov,” Talbott, ed., op. cit., pp. 554–55.

  77. It was the old marshal who had sounded the death knell for Zhukov’s Kremlin career when he denounced him in full view of his colleagues as “not being much of a party man.” Protocol 121, October 26, 1957, AOK.

  78. Protocol 157, June 7, 1958, AOK.

  79. Steno, July 19, 1958, AOK.

  80. “Text of Khrushchev Message on Summit Parley,” New York Times, July 20 1958.

  81. FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. 11, p. 56, n. 5.

  82. Joint Chiefs of Staff, sitrep, July 22, 1958, Records of White House Staff Secretary, subject series, Department of Defense sub series, Joint Chiefs of Staff, vol. 2(1), DDE Library.

  83. Editorial note, FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. 11, p. 372.

  84. Sokolovskii and Skatchkov to CC, July 25, 1958, APRF.

  85. Protocol 169, July 26, 1958, APRF.

  86. Gerasimov (Cairo) to CC, July 28, 1958, APRF.

  87. Ibid.

  88. Gerasimov (Cairo) to CC, August 11, 1958, APRF.

  89. Protocol 169, July 26, 1958, APRF.

  90. See Strobe Talbott, ed., Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament (Boston: Little Brown, 1970), p. 472, loc. cit., pp. 19–34; also memcon, Khrushchev and Mao, July 31, 1958, Volkogonov Papers, Library of Congress.

  91. Protocol 163, July 15, 1958.

  92. See Khrushchev’s comments at the July 31 meeting with Mao and his later recollections in Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, loc. cit., pp. 19–34. See discussion of the fall of Admiral Kuznetsov in chapter 3, “Arms to Egypt.”

  93. R. Pikhoia, Sovetskii Soiuz: Istoriia vlasti, 1945–1991 [Soviet Union: History of Power, 1945–1991] (Moscow: R.A.A.S. Publishing House, 1991), pp. 203–8.

  94. See memcon, NSK and Nasser, May 14, 1958, 51/1/561, APRF.

  95. On July 15 the Presidium had decided to have Mikoyan draft the letter (See Protocol 163, July 15, 1958), but Khrushchev intervened. See Khrushchev’s discussion of this decision to send his own private message in memcon, NSK and Mao, July 31, 1958, Volkogonov Papers, Library of Congress.

  96. See their exchange, ibid.

  97. See Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), pp. 163–205.

  98. Protocol 168, July 24, 1958.

  99. Khrushchev told the story of how he decided to go to Beijing in the midst of the Middle East crisis at his August 3 meeting with Mao. See memcon, August 3, 1958, Volkogonov Papers, Library of Congress.

  100. Editorial note, FRUS, 1959–1960, vol. 11, pp. 406–7.

  101. Memorandum, July 28, 1958, Pavel Yudin, China Referentura 0100, 51/432/6 1958, MFA.

  102. Ibid.

  103. Soviet memorandum of conversation between Mao and Khrushchev, July 31, 1958, Volkogonov Papers, Library of Congress.

  104. “Peip
ing Hits U.S.,” Washington Post and Times Herald, July 17, 1958.

  105. Nigel John Ashton, Eisenhower, Macmillan and the Problem of Nasser: Anglo-American Relations and Arab Nationalism, 1955–1959 (London: Macmillan, 1996).

  106. Memcon, NSK and Mao, August 3, 1958, Volkogonov Papers, Library of Congress.

  107. Steno, August 4, 1958, AOK, on the second question.]

  108. Ibid.

  109. Ibid. At the Security Council, China sat next to CCCP, the English transliteration of the Russian abbreviation of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

  110. Khrushchev believed that it was also time to bring the military exercises to an end in the southeastern border region and in Bulgaria. He ordered the broadcast of a public report announcing the end of the exercises and that the commander for those exercises, Marshal Andrei Grechko, be described as having returned to Moscow to deliver his report. Meanwhile the Bulgarians were to be told that they could stop their exercises.

  111. Zaitsev to CC, August 24, 1958, APRF.

  112. Ibid.

  113. This had happened a few days earlier, July 31, 1958.

  114. “‘Tough Line’ May Gain,” New York Times, August 7, 1958.

  CHAPTER 8: “A BONE IN MY THROAT”

  1. Khrushchev made these points to the Presidium on August 4, 1958. See Steno, August 4, 1958, AOK.

  2. Memcon, NSK and Nasser, May 1958, APRF.

  3. Memcon, Andrei Gromyko with Ambassador Tarazi, October 21, 1958, 087, MFA. Tarazi accompanied Amer on his visit to the USSR.

  4. Many fine historians have worked on this issue. The most thoughtful student, however, remains Marc Trachtenberg, who analyzed the crisis first in his essay “The Berlin Crisis,” in History and Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), and then in his important book, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). The authors found that despite his not having Soviet materials to work with, Trachtenberg ably captured Khrushchev’s anxieties over the rise in strength of the West German Army, especially Adenauer’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Although this turned out not to be the main reason for the Soviet ultimatum policy in 1958, it was a very significant contributing factor.