Quick questions on Cold War crises 1956-1962: Hungary, Berlin, Cuba (VCE Modern History Unit 4)

Stalin died on 5 March 1953. The collective leadership (Malenkov, Beria, Molotov, Khrushchev, Bulganin) softened policy at home and abroad. Beria was executed in December 1953. Nikita Khrushchev consolidated power as First Secretary by 1955.

The Hungarian leadership had been split since 1953 between Stalinist Matyas Rakosi and reformist Imre Nagy. Nagy was prime minister from 1953 to 1955, then ousted. After the Secret Speech, Rakosi was forced to resign on 18 July 1956.

A US U-2 reconnaissance aircraft piloted by Francis Gary Powers was shot down by an S-75 surface-to-air missile over Sverdlovsk in the USSR on 1 May 1960. The US initially claimed a weather plane was lost; Khrushchev sprang the trap on 7 May by revealing the pilot and the wreckage.

West Berlin remained an embarrassment for the GDR: around 2.7 million East Germans had fled to the West through Berlin between 1949 and 1961, many of them young, skilled, and educated. Khrushchev's Berlin Ultimatum (10 November 1958) demanded that Berlin become a "free city" and that Western forces withdraw within six months. The deadline lapsed without action.

Fidel Castro had taken power in Cuba on 1 January 1959. By 1960 he had nationalised American businesses and signed a trade agreement with the USSR. The CIA had begun planning an invasion under Eisenhower (March 1960).

In April 1962 Khrushchev decided to deploy Soviet medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic missiles (R-12 SS-4s and R-14 SS-5s) to Cuba. Motives included deterring a second American invasion of Cuba, redressing the Soviet strategic disadvantage (the US had around 5,000 strategic warheads to the USSR's around 300), and matching the American Jupiter missiles in Turkey (operational from April 1962).

Hotline and Test Ban. The Moscow-Washington direct teleprinter "hotline" became operational on 30 August 1963. The Partial Test Ban Treaty (signed in Moscow on 5 August 1963) banned atmospheric, underwater and outer-space nuclear testing.

Michael Dobbs (One Minute to Midnight, 2008) reconstructs the crisis hour by hour using Soviet, American and Cuban sources and emphasises the role of accident (the Anderson shoot-down, the Arkhipov decision).

A U-2 piloted by Rudolf Anderson was shot down over Cuba; Anderson was killed. A Soviet B-59 submarine off Cuba was depth-charged by the destroyer USS Beale. The submarine carried a nuclear-armed torpedo.

The Moscow-Washington direct teleprinter "hotline" became operational on 30 August 1963. The Partial Test Ban Treaty (signed in Moscow on 5 August 1963) banned atmospheric, underwater and outer-space nuclear testing.

Khrushchev's colleagues blamed him for the Cuban humiliation. He was deposed in a Politburo coup on 14 October 1964; Leonid Brezhnev replaced him as First Secretary.

The USSR launched a massive nuclear and conventional build-up. Strategic parity (around 1,500 intercontinental ballistic missiles each) was reached by 1969 and underpinned SALT I (1972).

Kennedy was assassinated on 22 November 1963. Lyndon Johnson inherited the deepening Vietnam commitment.

The crisis taught both sides to keep open communication channels and to avoid public ultimatums. The pattern of carefully managed confrontation persisted through the rest of the Cold War.

Kennedy made a real concession on the Jupiter missiles in Turkey, kept secret for years. The "quarantine" choice (not invasion or air strike) was also a concession against hawkish ExComm advice.