Cold War crises in the era of peaceful coexistence, including the Hungarian Uprising (1956), the U-2 incident (1960), the Berlin Wall (1961), and the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)

What this dot point is asking

VCAA expects you to explain how the period of "peaceful coexistence" announced by Khrushchev in 1956 produced the most dangerous Cold War crises of all. Strong responses pair the Soviet crushing of Hungary (1956) with the U-2 incident (1960), the Berlin Wall (August 1961), and the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962), and explain how the crises altered the rules of the superpower contest.

The answer

Peaceful coexistence and the Secret Speech

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.

Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" to a closed session of the 20th Congress of the CPSU on 25 February 1956 attacked Stalin's "cult of personality" and acknowledged the Terror. The speech was leaked through Polish channels to the West by April 1956. It destabilised Eastern European Stalinist leaders and signalled a new doctrine: "peaceful coexistence" with capitalism, "different roads to socialism," and the possibility of avoiding war between systems.

The Hungarian Uprising (October to November 1956)

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.

The Poznan riots in Poland (28 to 30 June 1956) and the appointment of the reformist Wladyslaw Gomulka in Warsaw (19 October 1956) without Soviet intervention raised expectations across the bloc.

On 23 October 1956, around 200,000 Hungarians demonstrated in Budapest. The crowd toppled the Stalin statue and besieged the radio station. AVH secret police fired on the crowd. The next day Nagy was reinstalled as prime minister and Soviet troops moved into Budapest. Fighting spread.

On 30 October, Soviet troops withdrew from Budapest. Nagy announced the abolition of one-party rule and, on 1 November, Hungarian withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact and a request for UN recognition of Hungarian neutrality. The Suez Crisis (29 October to 7 November 1956) distracted the West.

On 4 November 1956, around 200,000 Soviet troops and 4,000 tanks invaded. Fighting in Budapest lasted around two weeks. An estimated 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet soldiers died; around 200,000 Hungarians fled to Austria. Janos Kadar formed a Soviet-installed government. Nagy was lured out of the Yugoslav embassy with a safe-conduct pledge, deported to Romania, returned for secret trial, and executed on 16 June 1958.

The Western response was limited to UN condemnations. The crushing of Hungary defined the limits of peaceful coexistence: reform inside the bloc was tolerated only if it left party rule and Warsaw Pact membership intact.

The U-2 incident (1 May 1960)

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.

The Paris Four Power Summit (16 to 17 May 1960) collapsed: Khrushchev walked out after Eisenhower refused to apologise. Powers was sentenced to 10 years in a Soviet labour camp on 19 August 1960 and exchanged on the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin on 10 February 1962 for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.

The U-2 incident killed the prospects of detente under Eisenhower and Khrushchev. It opened the door for the more confrontational tone of the Kennedy-Khrushchev exchanges.

The Berlin Crisis and the Wall (1958 to 1961)

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.

The Vienna Summit (3 to 4 June 1961) was a poor showing for Kennedy, who had been embarrassed by the failed Bay of Pigs invasion (17 to 19 April 1961). Khrushchev renewed the Berlin pressure. Kennedy responded with a speech on 25 July 1961 increasing the defence budget and calling up reservists.

In the early hours of 13 August 1961, East German troops and police closed the border between East and West Berlin and began stringing barbed wire. The Berlin Wall (concrete from June 1962) sealed the inner-German border in Berlin for the next 28 years. American and Soviet tanks confronted each other at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961 for 16 hours; both sides eventually withdrew.

The Wall solved Khrushchev's immediate problem (the haemorrhage of East Germans) without provoking a war. Around 140 people died trying to cross the Wall between 1961 and 1989.

The Bay of Pigs (17 to 19 April 1961)

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).

Kennedy authorised the operation on 4 April 1961. Around 1,400 Cuban exiles (Brigade 2506) landed at the Bay of Pigs on the south coast of Cuba on 17 April. The plan depended on a popular uprising that did not happen and on US air cover that Kennedy refused to commit. By 19 April, around 1,200 exiles had surrendered. They were ransomed to the US in December 1962 for food and medicine.

The Bay of Pigs pushed Castro publicly into the Soviet camp (he declared the revolution "socialist" on 16 April 1961) and encouraged Khrushchev to test the inexperienced Kennedy.

The Cuban Missile Crisis (16 to 28 October 1962)

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).

A US U-2 photographed missile sites at San Cristobal on 14 October 1962. Kennedy convened the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (ExComm) on 16 October. ExComm considered an air strike, an invasion, and a naval blockade. Kennedy announced the "quarantine" (a blockade, called a quarantine to avoid the legal connotations of an act of war) in a televised address on 22 October.

US strategic forces went to DEFCON 2 on 24 October, the only time in history. Soviet ships en route to Cuba turned back on 24 October. Khrushchev sent two letters on 26 and 27 October: the first softer, the second harder (demanding US removal of Jupiter missiles from Turkey).

Black Saturday (27 October 1962). 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. Two of three Soviet officers (Captain Savitsky and political officer Maslennikov) voted to fire; second-in-command Vasili Arkhipov refused. Robert Kennedy met Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin that night and conveyed a deal: public US no-invasion pledge in exchange for Soviet missile withdrawal, plus a secret promise to remove Jupiter missiles from Turkey within months (executed by April 1963, presented publicly as a routine NATO decision).

Khrushchev accepted the public terms on 28 October 1962. Soviet missiles were withdrawn from Cuba by 20 November 1962. The American quarantine ended that day.

Consequences and the limits of the thaw

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.

Khrushchev's fall. 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.

Soviet arms build-up. 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 and Vietnam. Kennedy was assassinated on 22 November 1963. Lyndon Johnson inherited the deepening Vietnam commitment.

Crisis management as doctrine. 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.

Historiography

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).

Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali (One Hell of a Gamble, 1997) use Soviet archive material on Khrushchev's reasoning.

Graham Allison (Essence of Decision, 1971, revised with Philip Zelikow 1999) offers three competing models of decision-making during the crisis.

Robert Service (Comrades, 2007; Khrushchev, 2008) treats Khrushchev as an adventurer whose ad hoc reasoning produced both the deployment and the climbdown.

Csaba Bekes, Malcolm Byrne and Janos Rainer (eds, The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, 2002) is the major archive-based account of Hungary.

Common exam traps

Calling the Cuban deal a clean American victory. 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.

Forgetting Hungary's Suez context. The crushing of Hungary on 4 November 1956 happened during the Suez Crisis. Britain, France and Israel were attacking Egypt; Eisenhower was forcing them to withdraw. Western capacity to act on Hungary was negligible.

Treating the Berlin Wall as a failure for the USSR. The Wall was an embarrassment but solved the problem it was built to solve. The flow of East Germans west collapsed from around 200,000 per year to near zero.

Calling Khrushchev's removal a coup. It was a Central Committee vote (October 1964), not a military coup. Khrushchev was pensioned off; he died in 1971.

In one sentence

Between 1956 and 1962 the era of "peaceful coexistence" produced the most dangerous crises of the Cold War as Soviet tanks crushed Hungary (4 November 1956), the U-2 shoot-down (1 May 1960) wrecked Eisenhower-Khrushchev detente, the Berlin Wall (13 August 1961) sealed the inner-German border for 28 years, and the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962) brought the superpowers within hours of nuclear war before producing the hotline, the Partial Test Ban Treaty (5 August 1963), and a new doctrine of crisis management.