The Cold War afterStalins Death06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage i THE HARVARD COLD WAR STUDIES BOOK SERIESSeries EditorMark Kramer, Harvard UniversityThe Struggle for the Soul of the Nation:Czech Culture and the Rise of CommunismBradley F. AbramsResistance with the People: Repression and Resistance in Eastern Germany 19451955Gary BruceTriggering Communisms Collapse:Perceptions and Power in Polands TransitionMarjorie CastleAt the Dawn of the Cold War: The Soviet-American Crisis over Iranian Azerbaijan, 19411946Jamil HasanliMao and the Economic Stalinization of China: 19481953Hua-yu LiRedrawing Nations: Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 19441948Edited by Philipp Ther and Ana Siljak06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage iiThe Cold War afterStalins DeathA Missed Opportunity for Peace?Edited by Klaus Larres and Kenneth OsgoodROWMAN&LI TTLEF I ELDP UBLI S HERS , I NC.Lanham Boulder New York Toronto Oxford06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage iiiROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.Published in the United States of Americaby Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706www.rowmanlittlefield.comP.O. Box 317, Oxford OX2 9RU, UKCopyright 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrievalsystem, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information AvailableLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataPrinted in the United States of AmericaThe paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of AmericanNational Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed LibraryMaterials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage ivFor Rachel and Joseph Osgood and in memory of Norbert Larres (19612005)06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage v06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage viPreface ixKlaus Larres and Kenneth OsgoodIntroduction: International Politics in the Early Post-Stalin Era: A Lost Opportunity, a Turning Point, or More of the Same? xiiiMark KramerPart I The Soviet Union and the United States after Stalin1 The Elusive Dtente: Stalins Successors and the West 3Vojtech Mastny2 The Perils of Coexistence: Peace and Propaganda in Eisenhowers Foreign Policy 27Kenneth Osgood3 A Missed Chance for Peace? Opportunities for Dtente in Europe 49Jerald A. Combs4 Poisoned Apples: John Foster Dulles and the Peace Offensive 73Lloyd GardnerPart II The Peace Offensives in Cultural Context5 Meanings of Peace: The Rhetorical Cold War after Stalin 95Ira ChernusviiContents06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage vii6 Stalins Ghost: Cold War Culture and U.S.-Soviet Relations 115Jeffrey BrooksPart III Fragile Coalitions, East and West7 The Road to Geneva: Anglo-American Relations and Western Summit Diplomacy 137Klaus Larres8 Alliance Politics after Stalins Death: Franco-American Conflict in Europe and Asia 157Kathryn C. Statler9 Coexistence and Confrontation: Sino-Soviet Relations after Stalin 177Qiang Zhai10 The New Course: Soviet Policy toward Germany and the Uprising in the GDR 193Hope M. HarrisonPart IV Assessing Peaceful Coexistence11 Cold War, Dtente, and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution 213Csaba Bks12 The Robust Assertion of Austrianism: Peaceful Coexistence in Austria after Stalins Death 233Gnter Bischof13 The Lure of Neutrality: Finland and the Cold War 257Jussi M. Hanhimki14 Treacherous Ground: Soviet-Japanese Relations and the United States 277Tsuyoshi HasegawaIndex 303About the Contributors 000viii Contents06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage viiiWhen Joseph Stalin died on 5 March 1953, Cold War tensions were at theirworst. Meaningful diplomatic negotiations between the communist and capi-talist adversaries had long since ceased, and the nuclear arms race was enter-ing a new and more dangerous phase with the development of thermonuclearweapons. Anatmosphereofhysteriaandsuspiciongrippedtheworldstwosuperpowers. In Moscow, the aging despot had spent his last days laying thegroundworkforanothermurderouspurgewhile,inWashington,SenatorJoseph McCarthy continued his elusive pursuit of the spectre of communism.Soviet-American relations were further poisoned by Moscows hate-Amer-icacampaign.ThisvisceralpropagandacampaignincludingchargesthatWashington had been conducting bacteriological warfare in Koreawhereabrutalandbloodywarwasgrindingintoanagonizingstalemate.GeneralDwightD.Eisenhowersvictoryinthe1952election,moreover,broughttopower a new administration promising to win the Cold War, leading Sovietintelligence officials to conclude that World War III was a real possibility.Then Stalin died. Almost overnight, the whole atmosphere of the Cold Warseemedtochange.Stalinsheirapparent,GeorgiMalenkov,promptlyan-nounced his governments willingness to resolve international disputes peace-fully, thus inaugurating a peace blitz that continued in fits and starts for nearlya decade. Only a few months after Stalins death, the dictators mantra of ir-reconcilableconflictbetweenthecapitalistandcommunistcampshadbeenreplacedbypeacefulcoexistenceastheprofesseddoctrineofSovietfor-eign policy. Between 1953 and 1955 cease-fires were achieved in Indochinaand Korea; the Soviet and Chinese governments indicated their willingness tonormalize relations with Japan; an Austrian peace treaty was signed; and theheads of the American, British, and French governments met in Geneva withixPreface06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage ixtheir Soviet counterparts at the first Cold War summit conferencethe firstsuchmeetingsincethe1945Potsdamconference. Aroundtheglobe,worldleaders spoke urgently and eloquently of the very real possibility of creatinga just and durable peace.But despite these positive signs, the Cold War continued as Stalin lay en-tombed on Red Square. Indeed, by the end of the decade the most divisive is-sues remained unsettled despite repeated pledges by both sides of their will-ingnesstoresolvetheEast-Westconflictassoonaspossible.By1960theU.S.andSovietnucleararsenalsandthecapacitytodelivertheseweaponshad grown exponentially. Less than ten years after Stalins death, the super-powers found themselves perilously close to war over the placement of So-viet nuclear missiles in Cuba. The few substantive agreements reached in themid-1950s as well as the test ban treaty signed in 1963 did nothing to slowdown the arms race. No meaningful form of coexistence developed. AfterStalins death the Cold War continued for nearly four more decades consum-ing untold riches and claiming countless lives.Did this have to be? Was an opportunity missed to overcome and terminatethe Cold War? Was there a possibility for the creation of a more stable, lessthreatening, and less costly world in both human and material terms?Such questions about the possibilities of missed opportunities after Stalinsdeath have occupied scholars, journalists, and policy makers for decades. Yearsafter his tenure as ambassador, Charles Bohlen expressed regret that the UnitedStates had not responded more positively to Soviet peace feelers in the imme-diate aftermath of Stalins death. There might have been opportunities for anadjustmentofsomeoftheoutstandingquestions,particularlyregardingGer-many, he observed. In retrospect Bohlen regarded Malenkov as an affable fig-ure, less ideological and with a more Western-oriented mind than other Sovietleaders. Twenty years after Stalins death Bohlen had arrived at the convictionthat Malenkov was someone with whom the West could have conducted fruit-ful negotiations.1His feelings have been shared by many other observers overthe years, including former national security advisors Zbiginiew Brzezinski andHenry Kissingerhardly apologists for the Soviet system.2Despite the sudden end of the Cold War in the late 1980s, inquiries into pos-siblemissedopportunitiesafterStalinsdeathcontinueapace.Revelationsfromonce-closedSovietarchivesandthepublicationofnumerousmemoirsfrom former Soviet officials have shed much light on the nature of Soviet do-mesticandinternationalpoliciesduringthiscrucialperiodoftheCold War.Numerous analysts have suggested that at least two of the Kremlins new lead-ers, Georgi Malenkov and secret police chief Lavrenty Beria, were seriouslyinterested in a relaxation of tensions, perhaps including a neutralized, reunitedGermanyandaformofglobaldisarmament.Thisalsoraisesthequestionwhether or not it was inevitable that the Cold War lasted as long as it did.x Preface06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xTheessaysinthisvolumetracetheevolutionoftheColdWarafterStalins death from an international perspective. Some of them focus on thefirstfewmonthsoftheStalinsuccession,whentheinternationalatmos-phere was most fluid, and others take a longer view, assessing the policy ofpeacefulcoexistencefromStalinsdeathuntilthelate1950sandearly1960s. Although the opportunities and challenges created by Stalins deathguide all of the essays, they are not concerned with rehashing old Cold WardebatesabouttheultimateintentionsofStalinssuccessors.Instead,thechaptersinthisbookseektoarriveatamorenuancedhistoricalunder-standing of this crucial period of the Cold War, assessing both the possibil-ities for change and the obstacles to dtente. Some of the articles focus pri-marilyontheUnitedStatesandtheSovietUnion,analyzingsuperpowerforeignpoliciesandpersonalitiesaswellasrhetoricandpoliticalculture.Others explore intra-alliance politics in both East and West to uncover theinfluenceofactorsinEasternandWesternEuropeaswellasin AsiaandelsewhereininfluencingMoscowandWashingtonandshapingColdWargeopolitics.StillotheressaysassessthenewcoursesinSovietforeignpolicy through the eyes of countries such as Austria, Finland, Japan, and theGerman Democratic Republic.Recognizing that, as John Lewis Gaddis has written, few if any historianswill master all of archives and all of the languages required for comparativecomprehensiveColdWarinternationalhistory,3thisbookdrawsfromthecollective talents of an international group of scholars with a wide range ofhistorical, geographical and linguistic expertise. All of the essays are based onoriginalresearch,manyofthemdrawingfrompreviouslyinaccessiblearchivaldocumentsfrombothEastandWest.Collectivelythebookrepre-sents research in seven different languages from nearly twenty archival col-lectionsintencountriesataskwellbeyondtheabilitiesofanysinglescholar. The editors have attempted to ensure that all the chapters constituteindependent works which can stand on their own; at the same time overlapshave been avoided as much as possible so that the volume also constitutes anintegrated and coherent whole which can be read from cover to cover.The book thus attempts to do justice to the multi-dimensional nature of theCold War after Stalins death. At the most basic level, the essays in this vol-ume illustrate how the death of Stalin and the ensuing changes in Soviet for-eign policy had worldwideimplications thatvaried dramaticallyfromplaceto place. The view from Moscow or Washington looked quite different fromthatofParis,London,Tokyo,Helsinki,Vienna,Beijing,Budapest,andBerlin. It is our hope that the book will not only contribute to scholarly un-derstanding of this crucial period in international politics, but that its globalperspective will provide students with insights into the new international his-tory of the Cold War.Preface xi06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xiThe planning and preparation of this book was as multinational as the es-says it contains, with Klaus Larres in Belfast and Kenneth Osgood in SantaBarbara and Boca Raton communicating to contributors spread widely acrossNorth America and Europe. The book was facilitated by a productive confer-encesponsored by the Center for Cold War Studies at the University of Cal-ifornia,SantaBarbarathatbroughtourinternationalcontributorstogetherfor a dialogue about the changing nature of the Cold War after Stalin. We aremost grateful to Fredrik Logevall, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, and Leonard Wallockfor their valuable support in planning this event and indeed to the many par-ticipants in the conference for their help in turning our original ideas into aunited and coherent project. For the generous funding that made the confer-ence possible, we are indebted to the Institute on Global Conflict and Coop-eration,theHistoryDepartmentandInterdisciplinaryHumanitiesCenteratUC Santa Barbara, and the University of Californias Presidents Office. Fi-nally, we would like to thank Mark Kramer and the editorial staff of Rowmanand Littlefield for all their help and support.Klaus LarresBelfastKenneth OsgoodBoca RatonNOTES1. CharlesE.Bohlen,WitnesstoHistory, 19291969(New York: W. W.Norton,1973), 36972.2. ZbiginiewBrzezinski,HowtheColdWarWasPlayed,ForeignAffairs51(October 1972): 205. In this article, he observed, A more active policy, combininga willingness to contrive a new European relationship (including perhaps a neutral-ized Germany) with a credible inclination to exploit Soviet difficulties in Eastern Eu-rope, might have diluted the partition of Europe and maybe even transformed the ri-valryintoalesshostilerelationship.HenryKissinger,Diplomacy (NewYork:Simon and Schuster, 1994).3. JohnLewisGaddis,WeNowKnow: RethinkingColdWarHistory (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1997), ix.xii Preface06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xiiJoseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union with an iron hand for a quarter of a cen-tury. So long a shadow did he cast both at home and abroad that his death on5 March 1953 sent shockwaves around the world. Because Stalin had been socrucial in the onset of the Cold War and the dangerous crises that ensued inthe late 1940s and early 1950s, his demise introduced a striking degree of flu-idityintotheinternationalsystem.ThechangesthatoccurredintheUSSRimmediatelyafterStalinsdeathweresoimportantthatmanyobserversnowadays from across the political spectrum have looked back at this periodand asked: Was an opportunity missed to bring an early end to the Cold War?The fourteen essays that follow explore this question from a broad, interna-tional perspective by analyzing the impact of the early post-Stalin successionon Cold War politics in the Soviet Union and the United States as well as inGreat Britain, France, Austria, Finland, Hungary, Germany (East and West),China, Japan, and Indochina. Although few if any of the authors believe thata lasting East-West settlement was possible in 1953 and that a real opportu-nity was missed, the essays leave no doubt that Stalins death was a turningpoint in the Cold War.Thepotentialformomentouschangeontheinternationalscenein1953is something I emphasized in 1999 when I published a series of articles ti-tledTheEarlyPost-StalinSuccessionStruggleandUpheavalsinEast-CentralEurope.1ThearticlesshowedhowinternaleventsintheSovietUnionin1953specifically,thedeathofStalininMarchandtheearlypost-StalinsuccessionstruggleaffectedSovietforeignpolicy,whichinturn had a far-reaching impact on internal developments in Eastern Europeand on the whole nature of Soviet-East European relations. By tracing thelinkagesbetweeninternaleventsandexternalpoliciesandoutcomes,IxiiiIntroduction: International Politics in the Early Post-Stalin Era: A Lost Opportunity, a Turning Point, or More of the Same?Mark Kramer06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xiiisought to highlight the fluidity of the early post-Stalin era. Not only was ita time of rapid domestic flux in the Soviet Union, but it was also a periodin which long-standing assumptions about Soviet foreign policy were up forreconsideration. Theinternal-externaldynamicin1953ultimatelyworkedagainst fundamental change in Soviet foreign policy and in East-West rela-tions (the sort of change that occurred at the end of the 1980s under MikhailGorbachev), but my reassessment of this period led me to conclude that theprospectofareorientationofSovietforeignpolicyafterStalinsdeathwasat least for a short whilenot as far-fetched as most scholars had pre-viously believed.This does not necessarily mean, however, that the early post-Stalin era wasalostopportunitytoendtheCold War. TheperiodofgreatestfluidityontheSovietside,frommid-MarchtolateJune1953,wasverybriefbarelythree months. It came to an end not because of any Western actions but be-cause of exogenous developments in East Germany (the June 1953 uprising)and in the Soviet Union itself (the downfall and denunciation of Lavrentii Be-ria). Many U.S. officials, including President Dwight D. Eisenhower, recog-nized the importance of Stalins death and wanted to encourage an easing ofrepression in the Soviet Union, but in the short term they could not be certainthatSovietforeignpolicywouldchangeinanymeaningfulway,muchlessthat a genuine opportunity would exist to restructure East-West relations.AlthoughU.S.policymakerswelcomedtheinitialflurryofdomesticre-forms in the USSR, they suspected that the peace overtures from Moscow inthespringof1953mightsimplybeaformofpoliticalwarfareintendedtosow disunity within the North Atlantic alliancea ploy that Stalin had oftenused in the final years of his life.2The ambivalence felt by many U.S. offi-cials in the aftermath of Stalins death was evident at a meeting of the U.S.NationalSecurityCouncil(NSC)on8 April1953.ThenewdirectoroftheCentral Intelligence Agency (CIA), Allen Dulles, presented a detailed brief-ing to the NSC on the post-Stalin changes in the Soviet Union. After notingthat the CIA had originally believed that after Stalins death [the new lead-ers in Moscow] would play a very cautious game [and] . . . would faithfullyadheretoStalinspoliciesforaveryconsiderabletime,Dullesacknowl-edged that neither of these estimates had actually proved to be true. He re-ported that the new Soviet leaders were adopting quite shattering departures...fromthepoliciesoftheStalinregime,includingboldstepsinforeignpolicy as well as major domestic reforms that in his view were not only sig-nificant but astonishing. Dulles conceded that this new course had comemuch earlier and was being pursued much more systematically than the CIAhad expected. But instead of regarding all these developments as an oppor-tunity for the United States to pursue a different relationship with the USSR,xiv Mark Kramer06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xivhe simply concluded that there was no ground for the belief that there [will]be any change in the basic hostility of the Soviet Union to the free world.3EisenhowerhimselfwasmoreoptimisticthanDullesabouttheprospectsfor improving ties with Moscow, but he, too, could not be confident that theremarkablechangesunderwayintheSovietUnionwouldlastindefinitely.Moreover, even if Eisenhower had felt certain that the astonishing reformsadopted by Stalins successors would lead to a permanent moderation of So-viet foreign policy, he would not have had enough time to carry out the radi-cal adjustments that would have been required to overcome the Cold War. ThesweepingreorientationofEast-Westrelationsinthelatterhalfofthe1980soccurred over several years, giving policymakers on both sides sufficient lee-way to adjust and to learn new ways of interacting.4By contrast, the win-dow of opportunity in 1953insofar as it existed at allwas much too com-pressedtoallowforfundamentaladjustmentsandlearningoneitherside.Deep reservoirs of mistrust and suspicion in both Washington and Moscow,asreflectedin AllenDullesscomments,couldnotbedissipatedovernight,and any headlong attempt to surmount the East-West divide would have beenvulnerable to derailment. This is precisely why the aging British prime min-ister, WinstonChurchill,encounteredsuchstrongskepticismandresistancewithin his own government (and within the Eisenhower administration) whenhe proposed to end the Cold War in one fell swoop.5Except in the immediateaftermath of war, drastic change in international relations is apt to require alengthy period of gestation.Furthermore, even if U.S. officials had been inclined to push immediatelyfor a wholesale accommodation with the Soviet Union in the spring of 1953,the domestic barriers to any precipitate action would have been formidable.AlthoughopinionpollsinlateMarchandearly April1953revealedthatalarge majority (78 percent) of Americans were in favor of having Eisenhowerand Churchill meet with Soviet Prime Minister Georgii Malenkov to try tosettle world differences, this did not mean that the leeway for compromisewas unlimited.6The United States at the time was still in the throes of Mc-Carthyism,andU.S.troopswerestillfightinginKorea,awarthathadre-sulted in tens of thousands of American deaths over the previous few years.The Soviet Union in the late 1940s and early 1950s had imposed harsh Com-munist rule in Eastern Europe and had engaged in ugly anti-Semitic repres-sions both at home and in Eastern Europe, underscoring the odious nature ofStalins regime. Moreover, in the two years before Stalin died, the Soviet andEast European armed forces had been engaged in a huge military buildup, adevelopmentthatraisedconcernaboutSovietmilitaryintentionsvis--visWestern Europe.7Although Western commentators and government officialswerepleasedthatStalinsdeathhadledalmostimmediatelytowhat AllenInternational Politics in the Early Post-Stalin Era xv06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xvDulles described as a relaxation of domestic pressures in the Soviet UnionandalessbellicoseSovietapproachtotheoutsideworld,memoriesoftheStalin era were still vivid. These memories caused many to be wary of actingtoo hastily, lest they find that the situation in the USSR and the direction ofSoviet foreign policy would suddenly revert back to the policies of the Stal-inist regime.The residue of the early Cold War years meant that any U.S. official in thespring of 1953 who would have publicly called for a much more conciliatorypolicy toward the Soviet Uniona policy going far beyond the idea of sim-ply holding a high-level meetingwould likely have been accused of beingsoftonCommunism.EisenhowerhadwonthepresidencyinNovember1952onaplatformofrollingbackCommunismandliberatingtheop-pressed countries in Eastern Europe. Although Stalins death changed the po-litical equation, a radical departure from that declared lineor even from themore modest goal of containing Soviet expansionat the start of the Eisen-hower administration would have been infeasible even if the state of affairsin Moscow had been less murky. Not only would there have been domesticopposition,butU.S.policymakersalsowereworriedaboutthelikelyreac-tions of U.S. allies in Western Europe and East Asia. At an NSC meeting on11March1953,SecretaryofStateJohnFosterDulles(theelderbrotherofAllen) claimed that the West European countries and Japan favored a policyof proceeding with great caution and that we must not jeopardize the unityof our own coalition.8Given these constraints, Eisenhower fluctuated between more conciliatoryand more aggressive options in the spring of 1953. On the one hand, he, un-likesomeofhisadvisers,wasrelativelyoptimisticthattheadventofnewmen in Moscow would enable the two sides to begin talking to each otherwith a clean slate.9At the NSC meeting on 8 April, the president said it wasquite possible that the [new] Soviet leaders may have decided that the timehad come to shift resources from military programs into consumer produc-tion and to adopt a less threatening posture abroad. He instructed the NSC andthe State Department to study the problem constantly in an effort to deter-mine whether the Soviets [are] really changing their outlook, and accordinglywhether some kind of modus vivendi might not at long last prove feasible.10On the other hand, Eisenhower was tempted by the arguments of those likeC.D.Jackson,hischiefadviseronpsychologicalwarfare,whoviewedthepost-Stalin interregnum as a time to press American advantages and to seekchangesinSovietpolicythatwouldsettletheColdWaron Americasownterms. Although Eisenhower did not share the pessimistic outlook expressedbyJacksonorSecretaryofStateDullesorsomeotherseniorU.S.officials(including Jacksons associate, William Morgan, who urged the president toxvi Mark Kramer06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xvido everything [possible] to encourage and promote chaos within the USSR),he wanted more evidence that the spate of changes in the Soviet Union andthe new tenor of Soviet foreign policy would be preserved.11The East Ger-man uprising and the downfall of Beria caused Eisenhower to shift more inthe direction of the rollback policies he and John Foster Dulles had espousedduringthecampaign.Althoughthepresidentremainedcommittedtothechanceforpeace,healsowasintentonrectifyingU.S.vulnerabilities,shoring up Western military alliances, and pursuing victory in the Cold War.In hindsight we can see that the fluid nature of Soviet foreign policy dur-ingthefirstfewmonthsafterStalinsdeathmayhaveallowedforgreaterchange in East-West relations than actually occurred, but policymakers in thenew Eisenhower administration had no benefit of hindsight and were still get-tingacclimatedtotheirjobswhenStalindied.They,likemanyobservers,tookforgrantedthattheSovietUnion,evenifitunderwentsignificantchange, would remain fundamentally at odds with the democratic polities ofthe West. Although Eisenhower left open the possibility that basic changesin Soviet policy toward the United States and its allies might eventually ma-terialize, he could not be confident, at least in the near term, that the basichostility of the Soviet regime toward the free world would sharply and per-manentlydiminish.12ThroughouttheColdWar,leadersonbothsideswereoften deeply uncertain about the other sides motivations and intentions, andthe period immediately after Stalins death was no exception.Nonetheless,eventhoughtheColdWarpersistedlongafter1953,thechangesthatultimatelyoccurredinEast-Westrelationsduringthefirsttwoyears after Stalins death, including the signing of the armistice in Korea in July1953, the Geneva conference on Vietnam and Korea in April 1954, the conclu-sion of the Austrian State Treaty in May 1955, and the spirit of Geneva con-ference in July 1955, were by no means insignificant. None of these develop-mentswouldhavebeenconceivableunderStalin.FurtherimprovementsinEast-Westrelationsseemedlikelyinthefirstseveralmonthsof1956afterNikitaKhrushchevlaunchedade-Stalinizationcampaignatthe20thSovietParty Congress with a secret speech denouncing Stalin. The speech generatedwidespreadpoliticalfermentinEasternEuropeandeven,toadegree,inChina.13ButtheboundsofpermissiblechangeintheSovietblocweremadeclear in November 1956 when Khrushchev sent Soviet troops into Hungary tocrushananti-Communistuprisingandtorestoreapro-SovietCommunistregime.Wenowknow,fromdeclassifiedSovietarchivalmaterials,thatKhrushchev and his colleagues initially decided on 30 October 1956 to let theCommunistregimeinHungarycollapseandtopullallSoviettroopsoutofHungary, but they reversed that decision the following day and approved an in-vasion.14The Stalinist legacy in Eastern Europe endured for another 35 years.International Politics in the Early Post-Stalin Era xvii06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xviiThus,whateveropportunitiesmayhavebrieflyexistedin1953,StalinsdeathultimatelymarkednottheendoftheColdWarbutmerelyaturningpoint in it. The belligerence of Soviet policy vis--vis the West diminished af-ter Stalin, and the prospects for East-West cooperation and arms control in-creased, but dangerous East-West crises still cropped up periodically duringthe post-Stalin era, most notably in October 1962. The two sides continued todeployimmensenumbersofcombat-readytroopsandnuclearweaponsagainstoneanotherinEuropeandelsewhere.TheSovietblocsupportedMarxist guerrillas in the Third World and provided training and weapons toleftistandPalestinianterrorists.CharlesGatirightlyobservedin1980thatStalinslegacywasstillevidentinSovietforeignpolicyunderKhrushchevand Leonid Brezhnev.15YeteventhoughStalinslegacyinSovietforeignpolicyoutlivedhimbysomethree-and-a-halfdecades,hislegacyinSovietdomesticpoliticswasmodified in important ways that ultimately permitted the rise of a new gener-ation of leaders who were willing to undertake a fundamentally new coursein foreign policy. Stalins death brought an end to violent mass terror in theSoviet Union and led, within a few years, to the release of millions of peoplefromthegulagandthereturnofdeportednationalitiestotheirhomelands.The cultural thaw and greater openness under Khrushchev did not last afterBrezhnevcametopower,butevenintheBrezhneveraSovietcitizenshadmuch greater contact with the outside world and greater access to a range ofculturalandliterarymaterialsthantheyevercouldhaveimaginedwhenStalinwasalive. TheSovietUnionremainedarepressivedictatorshipuntilthe latter half of the 1980s, but the changes that occurred after Stalins deathbrought a measure of relief for those living under Soviet Communism.These internal changes also eventually had momentous consequences forSoviet foreign policy. Gorbachev and other officials who became the leadingproponentsofsweepingpoliticalreformandnewthinkinginSovietfor-eign policy in the late 1980s would never have risen as far as they did in theclimate that prevailed under Stalin. After Gorbachev came to office in 1985and encountered resistance to his initial reform program, he realized that un-less he eliminated the pernicious residue of Stalinism in the Soviet Union hewould be unable either to carry out revolutionary changes in the politicalsystemortotransformSovietforeignpolicy.AlthoughKhrushchevsde-Stalinization campaign in the 1950s and early 1960s was the first crucial stepin dismantling the vestiges of the Stalin era, Khrushchevs condemnation ofStalin was highly selective. Moreover, Brezhnev had abandoned and partlyreversed the de-Stalinization campaign after he ousted Khrushchev in 1964.One of the hallmarks of the Gorbachev era was an attempt to expose the fullmagnitude of Stalins crimes. The wide-ranging denunciation of Stalinism inxviii Mark Kramer06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xviiithe late 1980s and early 1990s facilitated radical changes in both domesticpoliticsandforeignpolicychangesthatGorbachevexplicitlyclaimedwouldovercomeStalinslegacyonceandforall.16ThedissolutionofStalinslegacy,bothathomeandabroad(particularlyinEasternEurope),ended the Cold War.The fourteen essays in this book take us back to the early post-Stalin era andoffer a panoramic view of the impact of Stalins death in numerous parts ofthe world. Whereas my articles focused mainly on the political fallout in East-ern Europe and the Soviet Union, the contributors here go well beyond that,looking at Western Europe, Scandinavia, the United States, China, Japan, andIndochina as well as Eastern Europe and the USSR. Although the book doesnot include any chapters on Latin America, South Asia, the Middle East, orAfrica, that is mainly because Stalin attached little importance to these partsof the world.17Not until decolonization gained pace and the number of inde-pendent countries in Africa and Asia sharply increased in the 1950s and 1960s(and until a Communist regime came to power in Cuba in 1959) did the com-petition for influence in the Third Worlda competition involving China andCubaaswellastheUnitedStatesandtheSovietUnionbecomeasalientfeature of the Cold War.The authors of the fourteen chapters present varied perspectives on the op-portunities that existed after Stalins death and the magnitude of the changesthat ultimately occurred. None of the contributors believes that the Cold Warcoulddefinitelyhavebeenendedforgoodin1953,butseveraldocontendthat greater room was available to move toward the kind of dtente that even-tually emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s.Vojtech Mastny provides an overview of U.S.-Soviet relations in 1953 andhighlightsthesundryobstaclestoabroadaccommodationbetweenthetwosides. Drawing on former East-bloc as well as Western archives, Mastny ar-gues that the Cold War adversaries [were] working at cross-purposes dur-ing most of 1953 and that, under those circumstances, no opportunity to endthe Cold War really existed. He contends that by the time the best momentfor[pursuing]dtente[came]ontheWesternsideinSeptember1953,thefleeting window of opportunity on the Soviet side had already been lost forextraneous reasons. Although one might question whether the policies of thetwo sides were as much out of sync as Mastny suggests, there is little doubtthat insufficient time was available for a far-reaching rapprochement.KennethOsgood,inachapterfocusingontheUnitedStatesanditspsy-chological warfare programs, is more inclined than the other contributors toleave open the question of whether the Eisenhower administration missed anopportunitytobringanearlyendtotheColdWar,butheconcedesthatInternational Politics in the Early Post-Stalin Era xix06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xixAmerican sources alone tell us little if anything about the Soviet Unions trueintentionsin1953.Osgoodaversthat,inthefirstfewmonthsafterStalinsdeath, some of the most influential U.S. policymakers assumed that nothingof importance would change in the Soviet Union. Most of these officials, heargues, were wont to disregard evidence to the contrary. This characterizationis not appropriate for Eisenhower (who was surprisingly optimistic in the im-mediate aftermath of Stalins death about the prospects for meaningful nego-tiations with the new leaders in Moscow), but it would apply reasonably wellto officials like C. D. Jackson, William Morgan, and John Foster Dulles, allof whom were supremely skeptical about the desirability of offering any con-cessions to the Soviet Union. Osgood faults the U.S. government for never[having]testedtheSovietleadershipsintentionsthroughnegotiationsandforneverseriously[having]entertainedtheprospectthatachanceforpeace was at hand, though it is difficult to see how, in light of the factors dis-cussedabove,theUnitedStatescouldhaverespondedinatimelyenoughmanner to take advantage of opportunities that may (or may not) have beenbriefly available.Indeed, an overly hasty response, as Jerald Combs emphasizes in his chap-ter on the military situation in Europe and its diplomatic implications, mostlikely would have failed and [would] probably [have] left matters worse thanthey already were. Some of the key goals that would have been under con-siderationinhigh-levelU.S.-Soviettalks,Combscontends,wereneitherachievablenordesirable,inpartbecauseoftheirimpactonthebalanceofpower in Europe. In particular, he argues that two extremely ambitious ob-jectivestheunificationofaneutralGermanyandtotalnucleardisarma-mentwere at odds with the military realities in Europe. In that sense, no op-portunity to end the Cold War truly existed. Combs does, however, fault theEisenhoweradministration(andalsotheSovietUnion)fornothavingseri-ously pursued limited bilateral arms control negotiations that could have en-sured a more stable conventional force balance in Europe and that might havekeptthetwosidesfromeventuallyamassingtensofthousandsofnuclearwarheads and bombs. Combs maintains that with a little more flexibility onbothsides,theobstaclestonuclearandconventionalarmscontrolmighthave been resolved. The U.S. position on these matters, he argues, not onlywas inflexible but was essentially designed to forestall any progress.Lloyd Gardners chapter examines how the Eisenhower administration, par-ticularlySecretaryofStateDulles,respondedtoaseriesofdiplomaticchal-lenges after Stalins death. Gardner avers that Dulles and several other seniorU.S.officialsweresocommittedtothereconstructionof[West]Germanyand Japan and the reestablishment of a liberal free-market world economythat they did not really consider the possibility of meaningful change in Sovietxx Mark Kramer06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xxforeign policy or an early end to the conflict between East and West (a pointalsostressedbyOsgood).FarfromseekingdirecttalkswiththenewSovietleaders,Dulleswasdeterminedtoavoidtherisksthatahigh-levelmeetingmight entail. The secretary of state attempted to deflect pressure both at homeandabroadtoopenmeaningfulcontactswiththeUSSR.Gardneracknowl-edges that there may not have been a real chance for [comprehensive] nego-tiationsintheimmediateaftermathofStalinsdeath,buthemaintainsthaton the American side there was little inclination to risk alliance cohesion ordomestic willingness to stay the course to probe those possibilities.Ira Chernuss chapter analyzes the rhetorical discourse of the Cold War intheimmediatewakeofStalinsdeath,asreflectedinfourkeypeacespeechesdeliveredbyEisenhowerandSovietPrimeMinisterGeorgiiMalenkov in 1953.18Chernus emphasizes that U.S. and Soviet leaders haddifferent rhetorical visions of peace because they began from different places,giventhepowerinequitybetweenthem.Eisenhower,astheleaderofthestronger power overall, constructed a meaning of peace that entailed a static,divided world, whereas Malenkov spoke of peace as a way of creating andmaintainingdynamicinteractionbetweenthetwopolesofthedividedworld, allowing change to take place that would favor Soviet interests andobjectives. Chernus contends that this rhetorical disparity helped set in mo-tion a fateful process of historical change that resulted in greater cooperationbetweenthetwocountriesbutpreventedthemfromreachingabroaderandmore durable accommodation until the late 1980s.Jeffrey Brooks arrives at a similar conclusion in his chapter on the tenacityof Cold War culture and rhetoric among senior U.S. and Soviet officials dur-ing the first few months after Stalins death. Brooks persuasively argues thatin this critical period when messages on both sides were framed, delivered,interpretedandmisinterpreted,parsed,andpondered,neithersideprovedcapable of escaping the patterns of thinking and communicating that had be-come ingrained in [both sides] cultures. Brooks avers that if a window ofopportunity opened on Stalins death, neither side used it to envisage a non-Manichean discourse, and he therefore concludes that rhetorical constraints,largelyofexpressionontheSovietsideandofperceptiononthe Americanside, closed the window before anyone had a chance to consider the view.Klaus Larres and Kathryn Statler consider the impact of Stalins death ontwo key U.S. allies, Great Britain and France, and how the two countries af-fectedWesternpolicytowardtheSovietUnionduringtheearlypost-Stalinperiod. Larres focuses on the role of Winston Churchill, who was much moreinclined than any other senior Western official to pursue a far-reaching rec-onciliationwiththeUSSR.19LarresshowsthatChurchillsmotiveswerecomplexthe British prime minister genuinely believed there was a chanceInternational Politics in the Early Post-Stalin Era xxi06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xxifor a lasting peace in the wake of Stalins death, but he also wanted to en-hanceandmaintainBritainspositionasagreatpower,reduceBritishde-pendence on the United States, and go down in history as a peacemaker, andperhaps win the Nobel Peace Prize which he coveted. Whatever the precisereason, Churchill, who by then was nearly 80 years old, made a vigorous ef-fort in the spring of 1953 to convene a high-level U.S.-British-Soviet summitthat would seek to resolve all the major issues dividing East and West. He en-counteredstrongresistancefromU.S.andWestGermanleadersandfromseniorofficialsinhisowngovernment,especiallytheForeignOffice.ChurchillsufferedadebilitatingstrokeinJune1953shortlyaftertheEastGerman uprising and a few days before the arrest of Beria. The combinationof these three events derailed Churchills bid for a trilateral summit in 1953.Larres acknowledges that Churchills approach, emphasizing high-level sum-mitry and an inflated role for Britain, was partially based on unrealistic as-sumptions and was not a sensible concept for the future, but he argues thatChurchills campaign also had a very positive and constructive side that ul-timately bore fruit with the Geneva summit in July 1955 and that contributedto greater cooperation in avoiding war.Statler,forherpart,showsthatdisagreementsbetweenFranceandtheUnitedStatesabouttwokeyissuestheongoingwarinIndochinaandtheproposed formation of a supranational European Defense Community (EDC)thatwouldincludearearmedWestGermanysparkedtensionsinU.S.-French relations after Stalins death. She points out that by 1953 the FrenchpublicwasdemandinganendtothecostlywarinIndochinaandwasam-bivalent about the EDC because of continued anxiety about German rearma-ment. By contrast, Secretary of State Dulles repeatedly urged France to con-tinuefightingtheVietminhandtoratifytheEDCtreaty.Thisdivergence,Statler argues, ultimately stemmed from conflicting French and American as-sessmentsofSovietintentionsinthewakeofStalinsdeath.Shemaintainsthat French leaders viewed the Soviet peace offensive [in 19531954] as agenuineopportunitytoreduceCold Wartensions,whereasmostU.S.offi-cials regarded it as a menacing strategy to weaken the West. Secretary ofStateDulles,inparticular,wasconvincedthatthenewleadersinMoscowwere engaging in a cynical peace campaign to expedite a Communist victoryin Indochina and to thwart West German rearmament.20In the end, Statlerwrites,Americanpredictionsofallieddisunitybecameaself-fulfillingprophecy. The USSRs newfound willingness to facilitate a settlement in In-dochina,culminatinginthe April1954Genevaconferenceandtheaccordssigned two months later, created a more positive image of the USSR withinFrance and thus undercut the French publics already faltering support for theEDC.21In August 1954 the French parliament voted against ratification of thexxii Mark Kramer06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xxiiEDCtreaty.TheensuingriftbetweenFranceandtheUnitedStatesadum-brated the more serious divisions that emerged in subsequent years.The chapters by Qiang Zhai, Hope Harrison, and Csaba Bks shift the fo-cus from the Western alliance to three Soviet allies, namely, the Peoples Re-public of China (PRC), the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and Hun-gary. Zhai avers that Stalins death did not affect Mao [Zedong]s perceptionof the Cold War and that the Chinese leader continued to see no alternativeto close alignment with the Soviet Union. What changed the Sino-Soviet re-lationship, Zhai argues, was not Stalins death but Khrushchevs decision in1956tolaunchthede-Stalinizationcampaign.22Maoandhiscolleagues,Zhai writes, were enraged by Khrushchevs failure to consult with them inadvanceonsuchanimportantissue.Moreover,MaobelievedthatKhrushchev had gone too far. Although the Chinese leader disliked some as-pects of Stalins policy toward China, Mao was, according to Zhai, still firmlyconvinced that Stalin had been a great Marxist whose achievements far out-weighed his mistakes. With the Soviet leader gone, Mao gradually began pur-suing a more independent approach to building socialism in China even ashe preserved a close alliance with the USSR. Maos changing domestic pri-orities,Zhaiargues,ledinturntoagradualreorientationofhispoliciesabroad, as he increasingly doubted the ability of Khrushchev to lead [the in-ternational Communist] movement. Among other things, Mao believed thatKhrushchev was too timid in confronting the United States and in supportinganti-Western guerrillas in the Third World. Maos bid to pursue a more mili-tant anti-American posture and to challenge the Soviet Unions leadership oftheCommunistmovementdeepenedtheCold WarandhelpedbringontheSino-Soviet rift.Harrisons chapter focuses directly on the early post-Stalin era. She traceshowSovietpolicytowardtheGDRchangeddramaticallyinthefirstfewmonthsafterStalinsdeathbutwasthenderailedbydevelopmentsonthegroundinEastGermanyandbythepost-StalinsuccessionstruggleinMoscow.BecausepopularexpectationsintheGDRhadbeenraisedbythesuddenintroductionofsweepingreformsafteryearsofStalinistrepression,pressure from below quickly gave rise to a violent rebellion. Through a flukeof timing, the uprising was followed within days by the ouster of Beria. Thecombination of the East German revolt and Berias downfall soon resulted ina long-term hardening of Soviet policy.23Harrison argues that if the changesinSovietpolicypriortotheEastGermanuprisinghadbeensustained,theymight have led to very different developments in the GDR and probably inGermanyasawhole.Shecontendsthatinboth1953and1956therewassomechancethattheColdWarcouldendthroughamellowingofSovietpolicies,butpopularmovementsformorerapidandfar-reachingchangeinInternational Politics in the Early Post-Stalin Era xxiii06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xxiiiEastern Europe, combined with domestic politics in the Kremlin, induced So-viet leaders in both cases to retract their more liberal policies. She concludesthat this episode, with its unintended twists, confirms that the dynamics of theCold War made its perpetuation much easier than its mellowing.CsabaBks,inhischapteronHungary,dealslesswiththeimmediatepost-Stalin period than with the broader trends he believes were in place bythe time of the Hungarian revolution in OctoberNovember 1956. He arguesthat the most important trend from 1953 to 1956 was the gradual realiza-tionandacceptanceofthenecessityof[U.S.-Soviet]coexistence.Bkscontends that a tacit agreement between the opposing power blocs emergedduring these years, one that accepted the status quo in East Central Europe es-tablishedattheendofWorldWarII.DespitetheEisenhoweradministra-tionsrhetoricofrollbackandliberation,theUnitedStatesneverreallyintended to come to the aid of a violent rebellion in Eastern Europe, for fearthat it would provoke a war with the Soviet Union.24The Hungarian revolu-tion, according to Bks, was inconvenient for the Western powers becauseitexposedwhattheyhadnotbeenwillingtoenunciatepubliclynamely,their acceptance of the post-1945 status quo in Europe and their inability toroll back the Soviet sphere of influence. Largely for this reason, the tragicoutcome in Hungary caused senior U.S. officials to abandon the rhetoric ofliberation once and for all, easing Soviet concerns about Western policy dur-ing future crises in Eastern Europe.25Gnter Bischofs chapter looks at an issue that changed a great deal as a re-sultofStalinsdeaththesigningoftheAustrianStateTreaty.Stalinhadbeen a fatal obstacle to any progress in negotiations about the status of Aus-tria, which, like Germany, had been divided into four occupation zones at theendofWorldWarII.BischofarguesthatSovietmovesinthespringandsummerof1953,especiallytheeasingofitsoccupationregime,wereastrikingexampleofanewcourse unleashedbyStalinssuccessors.26Al-thoughtheUSSRsubsequentlyexhibitedcontinuedintransigenceinthefour-powerdiplomacyontheAustrianquestion,thechangesthatbeganshortly after Stalins death led to a dramatic rise of faith that progress on theAustrian treaty would be possible. The new Soviet policy, as Bischof pointsout, also resulted in a greater willingness on the part of the Austrian govern-menttosafeguarditsowninterests,afactorthatultimatelyencouragedprogressinthefour-powertalks.AfterKhrushchevdisplacedGeorgiiMalenkovandoutflankedVyacheslavMolotovinearly1955,theSovietUnion no longer hindered the negotiations. The successful conclusion of theAustrianStateTreatyinMay1955anachievementthatwouldhavebeenimpossibleunderStalinpavedthewayforthespiritofGenevatwomonths later.xxiv Mark Kramer06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xxivJussi Hahnimkis chapter explores a topic that has been given scant treat-ment in the literature on the Cold Warthe role of neutrality in East-Westrelations in Europe. Neutrality was widely seen as a possible solution to twokey problems in Europe in the early and mid-1950sthe status of GermanyandAustriabutonlyinthelatterinstancediditactuallyprovefeasible.Hahnimki looks not at these two cases but at Finland, a country that foughtan intense war with the Soviet Union in 19391940. At the end of World WarII, the Soviet Union formally annexed parts of Finnish territory but eventu-ally withdrew its troops from Finland and did not set up a Soviet-style regimethere. In return for being allowed to keep a democratic capitalist system, Fin-land subordinated its foreign policy to Moscows preferences. Finlands sta-tus was therefore not one of strict neutrality la Switzerland; instead, as Hah-nimki puts it, it was a form of neutrality that enabled Moscow to hold theFinnsonaleash.27HahnimkiarguesthatafterStalinsdeaththeFinnsgradually searched for further openings to the West that were made possibleby the emerging thaw in East-West relations. With Moscows approval, Fin-land joined the United Nations in 1955 and the Nordic Council in 1956. Butthe peculiar nature of Finnish neutrality was underscored in February 1956whentheSovietUnionmanipulatedinternalFinnishpoliticstosecuretheelection of its favored candidate, Urho Kekkonen, as Finnish president. Hah-nimki shows that the new Soviet policy of coexistence with the West afterStalins death was designed in part to spread Finnish-style neutrality to therest of Scandinavia, particularly Norway and Denmark, which were firmlyalliedwiththeUnitedStatesintheNorthAtlanticTreatyOrganization(NATO). The Soviet Unions efforts in the mid-1950s to encourage Norwayand Denmark to abandon their NATO membership in favor of Finnish-styleneutrality sparked concern among a number of American [and British] poli-cymakers about the specter of neutralism in Scandinavia. In the end, how-ever, the Soviet Unions own actions, notably its invasion of Hungary in No-vember 1956, its domineering behavior toward Finland, and its intermittentinterventioninFinnishdomesticpolitics,greatlydiminishedthelureofneutrality elsewhere in Cold War Europe.Thefinalchapterinthebook,byTsuyoshiHasegawa,considershowtheU.S.-Japanese-Soviet relationship evolved in 19531956.28Stalin had soughtto prevent Japan from becoming closely aligned with the United States afterthe war, but he was unable to deter Tokyo from signing a mutual security treatywith Washington in 1951. Stalinsdeath, accordingtoHasegawa,markedanew departure for Soviet policy toward Japan. By August 1953, Stalins suc-cessors were making overtures to Japan [regarding the] normalization of re-lations. After a new Japanese government came to power in December 1954under Hatoyama Ichiro, Japan agreed to open talks with the Soviet Union toInternational Politics in the Early Post-Stalin Era xxv06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xxvnormalizerelations.TheEisenhoweradministrationwaswaryoftheSovietovertures to Japan, in part because of concern that a settlement of the Soviet-Japanese territorial dispute might induce the Japanese public and governmentto call on the United States to return Okinawa to Japan. In addition, U.S. offi-cials worried that improved ties between Tokyo and Moscow might eventuallyspur Japan to seek a rapprochement with Communist China as well. The U.S.governmenttried,throughavarietyofmeans,toensurethattheJapanesewould not be unduly swayed by Moscow. The Soviet authorities, for their part,tried to shift Japanese nationalism increasingly against the United States andto undermine the U.S.-Japanese military alliance. A series of bilateral Soviet-Japanese normalization talks that dragged on from January 1955 through Oc-tober1956ultimatelyresolvedthesecompetingobjectivesinfavoroftheUnited States. Although the Soviet Union and Japan adopted a Joint Declara-tion in late 1956 that ended the state of war between them, they failed to con-clude a formal peace treaty. The two countries inability to resolve their dis-pute over the southern Kurile Islands was partly the result of U.S. policy, butit stemmed even more from what Hasegawa aptly describes as the profounddifferences[between TokyoandMoscow]overhistoricalmemoryaboutthewar and the psychological need to cling to the myths they had created. ThepersistenceofthesemythsinbothcountriesevenafterStalinsdeathwasbound to forestall a full-fledged rapprochement.Some of the issues discussed in this book, such as the status of Germany, wereresolvedlongago,butotherproblemscoveredherenotablytheterritorialdispute between Tokyo and Moscow and the continued division of the KoreanpeninsularemainasfarfromresolutionnowastheywereduringStalinstime.Othertopics,notablythedifficultythatU.S.leadersencounteredindealingwithEuropeanallies(especiallyFrance),alsohaveacontemporaryresonance. Although frictions within NATO grew more acute after the Suezcrisis of 1956, the chapters by Kathryn Statler, Jerald Combs, and Klaus Lar-res make clear that intra-alliance tensions had emerged well before then, par-ticularly in connection with the abortive attempt to set up the European De-fenseCommunity.BythetimeStalindied,theNATOmember-stateshadalreadybeguntodivergesignificantlyintheirprioritiesvis--vistheSovietUnion, and those differences became more pronounced amid the uncertaintythat prevailed during the early post-Stalin era.Some readers of this book may ask: Does it really matter whether the ColdWar could have been ended or at least greatly diminished soon after Stalinsdeath? The Cold War eventually came to an end anyway in the Wests favor.Whyshouldwecarenowadayswhetheritendedin1953or1956or1989?Three points are worth emphasizing in response.xxvi Mark Kramer06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xxviFirst, the prolongation of the Cold War exacted high costs in large parts ofthe world. In the three-and-a-half decades after Stalins death, the United Statesand the Soviet Union expended vast amounts of resources on their respectivemilitaryestablishments. Althoughmilitaryspendingtosomedegreecanhelpstimulate a broader economy, important economic tradeoffs were unavoidableon both sides, particularly in the USSR.29No doubt, the level of military spend-ing would have been much lower if the Cold War had ended in 1953. The con-tinuation of the Cold War also meant that the East European countries had tolive for another 36 years under repressive Communist dictatorships and ineffi-cientstate-controlledeconomies.NotuntiltheColdWarfinallyendedwerethey able to adopt liberal democratic systems and free-market economies. Like-wise, a broad rapprochement in 1953 between the United States and the SovietUnion might have led to a moderation of the Communist system in China andhelped to avert the tens of millions of deaths that resulted from Maos domes-tic policies in the late 1950s and 1960s. By the same token, if the Cold War hadended in 1953, the United States would not have felt compelled to continue sup-portingauthoritarianregimesinLatinAmerica,Africa,andEastAsia.Thespread of democracy to many Third World countries as the Cold War waned andended was by no means accidental.Perhapsmostimportantofall,iftheColdWarhadendedshortlyafterStalins death, the United States almost certainly would have been spared itsdebacle in Vietnam, and the Soviet Union would likely have avoided its ener-vating war in Afghanistan. Many of the roughly 1 million Vietnamese and 1.5million Afghans who died in these wars would have survived, and so wouldthe 58,000 Americans and 14,450 Soviet soldiers. Some 1.5 million Cambodi-ans who were slaughtered by Pol Pots regime in 19771978, in the wake ofthe Vietnam War,wouldalsohavebeenspared.30Similarly,iftheCold Warhad ended in 1953, a long series of civil wars in Africa and Central Americafrom the 1960s through the 1980s that were fueled by the Cold Warwars thatcumulativelykilledmillionsofpeopleanddestroyedlargeswathsofterri-torywould likely have been settled more easily and with far less bloodshed.The major Arab-Israeli wars in 1967 and 1973, as well as lesser conflicts in theMiddle East such as the Yemeni civil war in the 1960s, the War of Attrition in19691970,andtheLebanesecivilwarinthemid-1970s,mighthavebeenaverted or kept at lower levels of intensity if the Cold War had ended in 1953.The Soviet Union, as part of its Cold War rivalry with the United States, fu-eled these conflicts by transferring vast quantities of weapons and providingdirect military support to the Arab states opposing Israel.Alandmark study published by the University of British Columbias HumanSecurityCentrein2005underscorestheenormouslybeneficialeffectoftheend of the Cold War. The report reveals that the number of interstate conflicts,International Politics in the Early Post-Stalin Era xxvii06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xxviicivil wars, battle-deaths, and military coups all declined sharply after the early1990s.31The report highlights a number of contributing factors but attributesthe bulk of the decline to the end of the Cold War. If the East-West standoffhad been settled in 1953 rather than 1989, a sizable portion of the human andmaterial losses associated with conflicts in the intervening 36 years might havebeen averted.Second,areconsiderationoftheopportunitiesthatmayormaynothaveexisted in 1953 is valuable not only in enriching the historical record but alsoinsheddinglightontheoreticaldebatesinthesocialsciences.Inmyownwork on Soviet-East European relations and the early post-Stalin successionstruggle,Ifoundthatareassessmentofthoseeventswashelpfulinunder-standing the strengths and weaknesses of contending theories about the linkbetween domestic and international politics. The essays in this book help il-luminate those same theories as well as other theoretical work on foreign pol-icy decision making, political rhetoric and culture, alliance politics, and real-ist conceptions of international relations.To illustrate this point, we need only consider one of the most salient find-ings in the book, namely, the extent to which some U.S. policymakers at thetime assumed that nothing significant would change in the Soviet Union af-terStalinsdeath.AlthoughEisenhowerhimselfdidnotsubscribetothatview, several of his closest advisers clearly did. Officials such as John FosterDulles and C. D. Jackson never seriously questioned this premise even afterdisconfirming evidence arose in the late spring of 1953. The book, in makingclear the strength of their assumptions, bears out key propositions in RobertJerviss work on foreign policy decision making.32Jervis emphasizes the like-lihood that policymakers will fit new information into their existing imagesand beliefsin other words, they tend to perceive what they expect. Thisis not to say that leaders are behaving irrationally when they adjust incominginformation to make it compatible with their existing beliefs. On the contrary,as Jervis points out, it would be unwise [for senior officials] to revise [theirdeeply-held views] in the light of every bit of [new] information that does noteasilyconformtothem.Decisionmakersconstantlyfacethedilemmaofhow open to be to new information, especially at a time of great flux anduncertainty on the international scene, as in the spring of 1953:Instancesinwhichevidenceseemstobeignoredortwistedtofittheexistingtheorycanoftenbeexplainedbythisdilemmainsteadofbyillogicalornon-logical psychological pressures toward consistency. This is especially true of de-cision-makers attemptstoestimatetheintentionsofotherstates,sincetheymustconstantlytakeaccountofthedangerthattheotherstateistryingtode-ceive them.33xxviii Mark Kramer06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xxviiiThe dilemma facing senior officials is even more acute when the incominginformation is of a contradictory or uncertain nature. In the spring of 1953, forexample, Soviet leaders continued to use rhetoric typical of the Stalin era, evenas they as they took steps that in effect repudiated some of the most basic as-pects of Stalinism. In light of these ambiguities and of decision makers incli-nation to stick with their existing beliefs and images, it is not surprising thatwhen proposals for high-level talks with the Soviet Union were broached dur-ing the initial post-Stalin period, Secretary of State Dulles was unreceptive be-causehewasworriedthattheadministrationandthewiderpublicmightbelulledintocomplacency.MemoriesofStalinsmalevolencewerestillfresh,and prudence alone dictated that U.S. officials be on their guard when dealingwith the new Soviet leaders, all of whom had loyally served Stalin.34Thedownside,ofcourse,isthatdecisionmakersmayendupbeingtooaversetonewinformationandtooweddedtotheirexistingassumptions.Even when a persistent stream of evidence raises serious doubts about theirassumptions,theymaydisregardordownplayit.SomecontributorstothisbookbelievethattheinformationflowingintoWashingtoninthespringof1953 was sufficiently persuasive to have merited a more accommodating U.S.response. Others would likely argue that the window of opportunity was tooephemeraltohavepermittedmeaningfuladjustments.Regardlessofwhichposition one takes, the point to be stressed here is that a reassessment of thisperiod can provide valuable empirical evidence for tests of cognitive expla-nations of foreign policy decision making and of sundry other social sciencetheories.Third, by having a better understanding of the impact of Stalins death onnumerouscountriesandregionsoftheworld,wearelikelytogainamuchmore solid basis for comparisons with other turning points in both the ColdWar and the postCold War era. This book permits us to see how the eventsof 1953 compare with the upheavals in the Communist world in 1956, the un-rest and turmoil in many countries in 1968, the end of the Cold War in 1989,the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and developments following theterrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001. What features of theearlypost-Stalinperiodareunique,andwhichonesaresimilartothosewefind in some or all of these other periods? When, if at all, did leaders on ei-ther side of the Cold War sense that 1953 (or 1956 or 1968 or 1989 or 1991)was a watershed moment and that the course of events had been changed ir-revocably? Towhatextentwereeventsinfactchanged?Didsomeofficialstend to overstate the degree of change, or did they consistently understate it?Comprehensive answers to these questions are beyond the scope of this book,but the wealth of information here about the early post-Stalin period providesa foundation for future comparative work.International Politics in the Early Post-Stalin Era xxix06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xxixNOTES1. See Mark Kramer, The Early Post-Stalin Succession Struggle and Upheavalsin East-Central Europe: Internal-External Linkages in Soviet Policy-Making (Part 1),Journal of Cold War Studies 1, no. 1 (Winter 1999): 356; Mark Kramer, The EarlyPost-StalinSuccessionStruggleandUpheavalsinEast-CentralEurope:Internal-External Linkages in Soviet Policy-Making (Part 2), Journal of Cold War Studies 1,no.2(Spring1999):339;andMarkKramer,TheEarlyPost-StalinSuccessionStruggle and Upheavals in East-Central Europe: Internal-External Linkages in SovietPolicy-Making (Part 3), Journal of Cold War Studies 1, no. 3 (Fall 1999): 366.2. SeethechaptersinthisvolumebyKennethOsgood,LloydGardner,andIraChernus.3. All quotations here are from the summary report, Memorandum: Discussion atthe139thMeetingoftheNationalSecurityCouncilonWednesday,April8,1953, 16 April 1953 (Eyes Only/Top Secret), declassified 20 April 1987, 34; fullscannedtextavailableinDeclassifiedDocumentsReferenceSystem,Doc.No.CK3100240898.4. OnlearninginforeignpolicyandinEast-Westrelations,seeGeorgeW.BreslauerandPhilipE.Tetlock,eds.,LearninginU.S.andSovietForeignPolicy(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991).5. OnChurchillsposition,seethechapterinthisvolumebyKlausLarres.Seealso the insightful account in Larress book, Churchills Cold War: The Politics of Per-sonal Diplomacy (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 2002), 189355.6. George H. Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 19351971, (New York:Random House, 1972), 2:1136. The question asked of respondents was: Would youfavor or oppose a meeting between President Eisenhower, Prime Minister Churchill,and Premier Malenkov of Russia to try to settle world differences? In addition to the78 percent who favored a meeting, 15 percent were opposed, and 7 percent expressedno opinion. The same question was asked in mid-October 1953, and the results wereessentially identical, with 79 percent in favor, 12 percent opposed, and 9 percent withno opinion. See ibid., 118283.7. U.S.CentralIntelligenceAgency,NationalIntelligenceEstimate:ProbableDevelopmentsintheEuropeanSatellitesThroughMid-1956,NIE1254(Top Secret),24 August1954,p.19,inDwightD.EisenhowerLibrary(DDEL),WhiteHouse Office (WHO), National Security Council Staff (NSCS), Papers, 19481961,Executive Secretarys Subject File Series, Box 1, Miscellaneous File.8. MemorandumofDiscussion,11March1953(TopSecret),reproducedinU.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 19521954 (Wash-ington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988), vol. VIII (Eastern Europe, theSovietUnion),111725.Forfurtherdiscussion,seethechaptersbelowbyLloydGardner, Kenneth Osgood, and Kathryn Statler.9. Cited in Emmet John Hughes, The Ordeal of Power: A Political Memoir of theEisenhower Years (New York: Atheneum, 1963), 1034.10. Discussion at the 139th Meeting of the National Security Council on Wednes-day, April 8, 1953, 4.xxx Mark Kramer06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xxx11. ImplicationsofStalinsPassing,Memorandumfrom WilliamJ.MorgantoHorace S. Craig, 4 March 1953 (Secret), in DDEL, WHO, NSCS, Papers, 19481961,Psychological Strategy Board, Central Files, Box 8, File 1 (USSR), Folder 2.12. Discussion at the 139th Meeting of the National Security Council on Wednes-day, April 8, 1953, 4.13. OnthefermentinChina,seeOtchetposolstvaSSSRvKitaiskoiNarodnoiRespublikeza1956god,Reportno.146(TopSecret),22 April1957,fromSovietAmbassador P. F. Yudin to the Soviet Foreign Ministry, in Rossiiskii Gosudarstven-nyi Arkhiv Noveishei Istorii (Moscow), Fond 5, Opis 28, Delo 409, List 153.14. Mark Kramer, The Soviet Union and the 1956 Crises in Hungary and Poland:Reassessments and New Findings, Journal of Contemporary History 33, no. 2 (April1998): 163214. My analysis of Soviet policy during the Hungarian revolution differsfrom the view expressed by Csaba Bks in his essay below.15. CharlesGati,TheStalinistLegacyinSovietForeignPolicy,inTheSovietUnion Since Stalin, ed. Stephen F. Cohen, Alexander Rabinowitch, and Robert Sharlet(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 27998.16. During Gorbachevs first three years in office, he was cautious in confrontingthe Stalinist legacy. Although in a major speech in early November 1987 he describedStalinscrimesasenormousandunforgivable,hethenclaimedthatonlythou-sands had died during the Stalin era. But soon thereafter the policy of glasnost (of-ficialopenness)spurredSovietjournalistsandcommentatorstodenounceStalinmuch more forcefully and to acknowledge the millions of victims. By the spring of1988,prominentSovietscholarsandjournalistswerealsocondemningStalinsfor-eign policy. Similar criticism was eventually expressed by such high-ranking officialsas Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and Gorbachev himself. From then on, So-viet newspapers, journals, and books featured a torrent of revelations about the Stal-inist terror, the mass deportations, the gulag, the destruction of the Soviet peasantryin the 1930s, and Stalins viciously anti-Semitic policies of the late 1940s and early1950s. It is no small irony that Stalin was subjected to much sharper criticism in theSoviet Union in the early 1990s than he has been in Russia since Vladimir Putin cameto power. Soon after taking office, Putin condoned a partial rehabilitation of Stalin asthe leader of a great power. Putins admiration of Stalin has helped give rise to anunsavory nostalgia for the Stalin era in current-day Russian society.17. For detailed coverage of the Eisenhower administrations efforts to prevent So-viet inroads in the Third World, see the seventh volume in the Harvard Cold War Stud-ies Book Series: Andrew Johns and Kathryn Statler, eds., The Eisenhower Adminis-tration, theThirdWorld, andtheGlobalizationoftheColdWar (Lanham,MD:Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).18. For background on this subject, see Chernuss book, General Eisenhower: Ideol-ogy and Discourse (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2002), esp. 11751.19. ForamoreextensivediscussionofChurchillsviewsofEast-Westrelationsand his belief in the value of personal diplomacy both before and after Stalins death,see Larres, Churchills Cold War.20. InaconversationwithEisenhoweron8May1953,Dullesemphasizedthatthe existing threat posed by the Soviets to the Western World is the most terrible andInternational Politics in the Early Post-Stalin Era xxxi06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xxxifundamentalinthelatters1000yearsofdomination.Thisthreatdiffersinqualityfrom the threat of a Napoleon or a Hitler. It is like the invasion by Islam in the tenthcentury.Nowtheclearissueis:canwesterncivilizationsurvive?...Thepresentcoursewearefollowingisafataloneforusandthefreeworld. Thepresidentre-spondedthatwemustconvinceourselvesandourfriendsoftherightnessofanycourse we adopt. . . . We cannot live alone: we need allies. Quoted from U.S. StateDepartment, Solarium Project: Principal Points Made by JFD, 8 May 1953 (Top Se-cret/Security Information), declassified 17 October 1986, 1, 3; scanned full text avail-able in DDRS, Doc. No. CK3100116401.21. For an illuminating discussion of Soviet policy on this matter, see Ilya Gaiduk,Confronting Vietnam: Soviet Policy toward the Indochina Conflict, 19541963 (Stan-ford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), esp. 163.22. On this same point, see Chen Jian and Yang Kuisang, Chinese Politics and theCollapse of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, in Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of theSino-Soviet Alliance, 19451963, ed. Odd Arne Westad (Stanford, CA: Stanford Uni-versity Press, 1998), 24694, esp. 25864.23. For further discussion of all these points, see the three parts of Kramer, TheEarly Post-Stalin Succession Struggle and Upheavals in East-Central Europe.24. On this point, Bkss chapter is in line with other recent scholarship on the sub-ject, including Lszl Borhi, Rollback, Liberation, Containment, or Inaction? U.S. Pol-icy and Eastern Europe in the 1950s, Journal of Cold War Studies 1, no. 3 (Fall 1999):67110; Chris Tuda, Reenacting the Story of Tantalus: Eisenhower, Dulles, and theFailed Rhetoric of Liberation, Journal of Cold War Studies 7, no. 4 (Fall 2005): 335;andGregoryMitrovich,UnderminingtheKremlin: AmericasStrategytoSubverttheSoviet Bloc, 19471956 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000).25. Bks makes a stronger claim that Western inaction in 1956 gave Soviet lead-ers a firm guarantee that in resolving future conflicts within the boundaries of theirempire they would not have to consider the point of view of Western states. This as-sertion is not borne out by archival evidence. The Soviet Politburos deliberations in1968 reflected some degree of concern about the possibility of intervention by West-ern countries if the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia. The likelihood of a West-ernresponsewasnotdeemedhigh,butSovietPolitburomembersdidbelievethatthey had to take at least some account of the point of view of Western states. Sim-ilarly, during the 19801981 crisis in Poland, Soviet leaders expressed concern aboutthe possibility that Western governments would enact sanctions against the USSR inretaliationfortheimpositionofmartiallawinPoland.SeeMarkKramer,TheCzechoslovak Crisis and the Brezhnev Doctrine, in 1968: The World Transformed,ed. Carole Fink, Philipp Gassert, and Detlef Junker (New York: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 1998), 11174; and Mark Kramer, Soviet Deliberations during the PolishCrisis, 19801981,CWIHP SpecialWorkingPaperNo.1(Washington,DC:ColdWar International History Project, 1999).26. For an analysis of Soviet policy in the lead-up to the treaty (though focusingpredominantly on the Stalin period), based in part on declassified Soviet documen-tation,see WolfgangMueller,DiesowjetischeBesatzunginsterreich19451955und ihre politische Mission (Vienna: Bhlau, 2005). For a valuable collection of de-xxxii Mark Kramer06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xxxiiclassified Soviet documents pertaining to Soviet policy vis--vis Austria from 1945to1955,seeWolfgangMuelleretal.,eds.,SowjetischePolitikin sterreich19451955: DokumenteausrussischenArchiven (Vienna:Verlagdersterreichis-chen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2005). Unfortunately, the relatively small num-berofdocumentsfromthepost-Stalinerainthis1,119-pagebookshedalmostnolight on Soviet policymaking and high-level debates. Further valuable documents areavailableinthefirstvolume(titledDokumente)ofStefanKarner,BarbaraStelzl-Marx,and AleksandrChubaryan,eds.,DieRoteArmeeinsterreich: sowjetischeBesatzsung, 19451955, 2 vols. (Vienna: R. Oldenbourg, 2005), but these items, too,affordrelativelylittleinsightintoKhrushchevsdecisionmakingregardingthetreaty.ThesecondvolumeofthebookcontainsusefulessaysonthistopicbytheRussianarchivistsMikhailProzumenschikov(NachStalinsTod:Sowjetischesterreich-Politik19531955,72953)andIrinaKazarina(DieSowjetischeArmee in sterreich 19531955 im Spiegel von Dokumenten des ZK der KPdSU,75572), but they do not really explain how the leadership struggle affected Sovietpolicy. A forthcoming essay on the topic by the historian Aleksei Filitov, The Post-Stalin Succession Struggle and the Austrian State Treaty, to be published in ArnoldSuppan, Gerald Stourzh, and Wolfgang Mueller, eds., Der sterreichische Staatsver-trag (Vienna: Bhlau, 2006), is intriguing and insightful, but a good deal of murki-ness remains. For a definitive history of the Austrian State Treaty, along with docu-mentationandanextensivebibliography,seeGeraldStourzh,UmEinheitundFreiheit: Staatsvertrag, NeutralittunddasEndederOst-West-Besetzungsterre-ichs 19451955, 4th ed. (Vienna: Bhlau, 1999).27. For earlier assessments of Finnish neutrality, see Roy Allison, Finlands Rela-tions with the Soviet Union, 194484 (New York: St. Martins Press, 1985); GeorgeMaude, The Finnish Dilemma: Neutrality in the Shadow of Power (New York: OxfordUniversityPress,1976);andBurkhardAuffermann,DieAussenpolitikFinnlands,19441991:EinSonderfalleuropischerOst-West-BeziehungeninderradesKalten Krieges, Ph.D. Thesis, Freie Universitt Berlin, 1994. See also Hahnimkisown earlier book, Containing Coexistence: America, Russia, and the Finnish Solu-tion (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1997).28. For a more detailed analysis of (and different perspective on) the issues discussedbyHasegawa,seeV.P.Safronov,SSSRSShAYaponiyavgodykholodnoivoiny,19451960 gg. (Moscow: Institut Rossiiskoi Istorii, 2003), which draws extensively ondeclassifiedarchivaldocuments.SeealsoKimieHara,Japanese-Soviet/RussianRela-tions Since 1945: Difficult Peace (New York: Routledge, 1998), 8795.29. See,forexample,G.Kh.Shakhnazarov,Tsenasvobody: ReformatsiyaGor-bacheva glazami ego pomoshchnika (Moscow: Rossika-Zevs, 1993), 42, 49.30. Estimates of the number killed under Pol Pot vary considerably, but the totalcitedhere,roughly1.5million,istheoneusedbyBenKiernaninhisThePolPotRegime: Race, Power, andGenocideinCambodiaundertheKhmerRouge,19751979 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). For a meticulous discussionof the problem of estimating the number of deaths, as well as a riveting (if depress-ing) account of the slaughters, see Jean-Louis Margolin, Cambodia: The Country ofDisconcerting Crimes, in The Black Book of Communism, ed. Stphane Courtois andInternational Politics in the Early Post-Stalin Era xxxiii06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xxxiiitrans. by Mark Kramer and Jonathan Murphy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1999), 577635, esp. 58891.31. Human Security Centre/University of British Columbia, The Human SecurityReport 2005: War and Peace in the 21st Century (New York: Oxford University Press,2005).32. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Prince-ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), esp. 145 ff.; Robert Jervis, Hypotheseson Misperception, World Politics 20, no. 3 (April 1968): 45479; and Robert Jervis,The Logic of Images in International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 1970).33. Jervis, Hypotheses on Misperception, p. 459.34. Also relevant here is the tendency of decision makers to perceive rival statesas more hostile than they actually are. See Jervis, Perception and Misperception, 168,310;Jervis,HypothesesonMisperception,475;andOleHolsti,CognitiveDy-namics and Images of the Enemy, in Enemies in Politics, ed. David J. Finlay, Ole R.Holsti, and Richard R. Fagen (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1967), 2728.xxxiv Mark Kramer06-366_1FM.qxd7/17/065:56 AMPage xxxiv