Six Crises

by Richard Nixon

  The idea that I go to the Soviet Union was conceived and first suggested to me by Abbott Washburn, Deputy Director of USIA, who was working at that time on the cultural exchange program between the United States and the USSR. When I indicated my willingness to undertake the assignment, the proposed trip was presented to and approved by his chief, George Allen, head of the USIA; Chris Herter, then Under Secretary of State; Foster Dulles and the President.

  The official purpose of my trip was to open the first United States Exhibition ever held in the Soviet Union, on July 24 in Sokolniki Park in Moscow. The national exhibition was part of a cultural exchange program which had been adopted in the “spirit of Geneva” as an attempt to thaw out the frozen relations between our two countries. The 1955 “spirit of Geneva” had not lasted long, but this exchange program had been one of the few positive results to flow from that meeting between Khrushchev and Eisenhower. A Soviet exhibition, which spotlighted recent scientific advances in the Soviet Union, including a model of the new Sputnik, had opened in New York the previous January. Frol Kozlov, Deputy Premier, represented the Soviet Union and I represented the United States in speaking at the opening ceremonies. The exhibition had had heavy overtones of Soviet military might. Our exhibition, under the direction of Chad McClellan, a Los Angeles businessman, stressed U. S. consumer goods. Its inevitable effect was to dramatize the difference in the standards of living here and in the Soviet Union.

  Because Kozlov and Mikoyan had received wide television coverage on their visits to the United States, the Soviet Government had agreed to give me the unique opportunity of speaking directly to the Russian people on a nationwide television hookup.

  My visit would also afford an opportunity for high-level talks with Khrushchev in which I could make clear the United States’ position on world issues and, at the same time, obtain for President Eisenhower and our policy makers some firsthand information as to Khrushchev’s attitudes and views on the points of difference between the United States and the USSR.

  As soon as final arrangements for the trip had been approved in Moscow and Washington, I began the most intensive series of briefings I had had for any of my trips abroad. In addition to such issues as the Berlin problem, atomic testing, and East-West trade—which are still with us today—I was prepared to discuss with Khrushchev such specific items as the long-missing U. S. airmen who had been shot down in a C-130 transport plane by Soviet fighters, the possible lifting of travel restrictions, censorship, opening of consular establishments, the jamming of radio broadcasts, and permission for a list of over a hundred Soviet relatives of United States citizens to leave the USSR to live with their families here. Scores of subjects I had been briefed on did not come up in my conversations with Khrushchev of course. But to the credit of the State Department and other briefing teams, he did not raise a single issue on which I had not been briefed.

  Beyond these briefings I tried to find, as many have before and after me, a new and fresh approach on how to talk to Nikita Khrushchev.

  I sought out men who had studied Soviet affairs and men who had met Khrushchev. I saw Hubert Humphrey and Averell Harriman; I met with journalists who had interviewed him in Moscow, such as Bill Hearst, Bob Considine, Walter Lippmann, and Turner Catledge. Catledge gave me the kind of advice you might expect from the managing editor of the New York Times. In effect, he said: “The trouble with most meetings with Khrushchev is that he dominates the conversation, and the talk dwindles off into a maze of generalities going all over the lot. Be specific, have some definite questions in mind that you want to ask him, and keep after him until you get the answer one way or the other.” This was to prove easier said than done, as I am sure he understood.

  Some of those to whom I talked urged that I try to “reassure” Khrushchev of the peaceful intentions of the United States and try to find out “what he wanted” in the way of guarantees from us which would remove any fears he had that our power was a potential aggressive threat against the USSR.

  William Yandell Elliott, professor of government at Harvard University, took an exactly opposite tack. In a detailed memorandum, he said: “Khrushchev doesn’t need to be reassured that we are for peace, and that we do not threaten him with aggression. He knows this. It is he who is threatening aggression and advocating revolution around the world. He should be told that we are ready to negotiate on equal terms but will not be bullied; we are willing to enter into peaceful competition between our two economic systems; that we are confident that we will win, but that we are ready to fight to defend our rights if necessary.”

  One of our former Ambassadors to Moscow agreed substantially with this line. I remember his telling me that it had been a mistake for American officials after the Geneva Conference in 1955 to state that they believed Khrushchev was “sincere” in his desire for peace.

  “Do you mean,” I asked, “that Khrushchev does not want peace?”

  “That isn’t the question,” he replied. “Khrushchev wants the world. But he knows the consequences of modern war as well as we do. He wants to accomplish his objective without war. In that sense, he wants peace. The mistake is saying he is sincere. We have to understand that a Communist approaches world problems from an entirely different frame of reference from those in the non-Communist world. We are idealists. They are materialists.”

  Then, pointing to a coffee table in front of us, he said, “You can no more describe Khrushchev or any other Communist as being sincere than you can describe that coffee table as being sincere. He is for peace not because he is sincere but because he believes that his objective—world conquest—can best be furthered without war—at this time.”

  Britain’s Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of Germany gave me their personal appraisals of the Soviet Premier. Khrushchev had fluctuated between warm and frigid with Macmillan, even to the point of snubbing him publicly. Macmillan had met the snub with the icy reserve and dignity which centuries of experience in top-drawer diplomacy have brought to England’s leading statesmen. Then Khrushchev had reversed himself and once again played the gracious host. Macmillan came away from that visit to the Kremlin with an interesting insight into Khrushchev, one that is not often recognized. Khrushchev took a particular pride in showing off Russian state treasures to the British Prime Minister—the jewels and gold of the old Czarist Empire. Macmillan had sensed that Khrushchev desperately wanted to be “admitted into the club”—accepted and respected as a major world figure in his own right and not simply because he represented the great military and economic power of the Soviet Union.

  Adenauer told me, “There’s no question but that Khrushchev wants to rule the world. But he does not want war. He does not want to rule a world of ruined cities and dead bodies.” Adenauer reported one exchange between the two men which is characteristic of each of them. When Adenauer had been adamant on one particular issue, Khrushchev had burst out, “I will see you in Hell before I will agree with you on that!” Whereupon the ageless German leader shot back, “If you see me in Hell, it will only be because you were there before I got there.” The tone of the conversation changed perceptibly for the better after this interchange, Adenauer reported.

  The most memorable briefing I received came from John Foster Dulles, the man I had sought out for advice throughout my career since the night in 1948 when I had gone to see him in connection with the Alger Hiss case. His advice on Khrushchev is particularly clear in my mind, because of its intrinsic wisdom and because it was the last time I saw him alive.

  I believe the verdict of history will be that John Foster Dulles was one of the truly great men of our time. And he was never more heroic than during the tragic last months of his life.

  I saw him shortly after he returned on February 10, 1959, from his last trip to Europe, which had included stops in London, Paris, and Bonn to shore up our allies in the face of the Soviet ultimatum on Berlin. He knew before he started on this journey, on February 2, that he was fatally ill with
cancer. The aides who accompanied him on the trip said that during the eight days he was away from Washington he was never able to keep down a single meal. He suffered such intense pain that he could sleep at night only when given heavy sedation. But during the days he refused to take any sedatives to relieve the pain, for fear that his reasoning powers might be dulled as well.

  I asked him how he was able to go through the conferences. He answered, matter-of-factly, that once the conferences began and controversial subjects came up which required his complete concentration, he never felt a bit of pain. State Department officials who had accompanied him to other conferences told me that Dulles was never better, never more effective in presenting the U. S. point of view than during these meetings. In his hour of crisis, his performance was eloquent evidence of the truth of the adage that adversity breaks the weak but makes the strong.

  During this period, his thoughts were always of others and not of himself. He never dwelled on his own troubles. And under his austere exterior, Foster Dulles was one of the kindest and most thoughtful men I have ever known. Two personal incidents illustrate this little-known side of his character.

  One day I had lunch with him in his office. He happened to have some fresh figs for lunch that day, and I remarked casually that Pat was particularly fond of fresh figs but that they were hard to get in Washington. Two days later, by air express from California, a carton of fresh figs was delivered at our house with a friendly handwritten note for Pat from the busiest man in Washington at the time—Foster Dulles.

  After he resigned as Secretary of State, he returned to Washington from Florida to spend his last days at Walter Reed Hospital. I went to the airport to meet him, as I had on scores of previous occasions when he had returned from his diplomatic journeys abroad. I rode with him to the hospital and then returned to my office. A call was waiting for me on the White House line. It was Foster Dulles. When he came on the line he said that he just wanted to tell me how much he appreciated my coming to the airport. “You really didn’t have to do it, you know,” he added. After he hung up, I thought of how many times in his life Foster Dulles had done things “he really didn’t have to do” which the world would never know about.

  During the period he was at Walter Reed, I had several long talks with him. I always made it a point to have a subject on which I wanted his advice before asking for an appointment, because he wanted it that way. He wanted to lead a useful and constructive life at all times and this he succeeded in doing to the very day of his death. In our talks we often discussed my pending trip to Moscow. He had always taken a dim view of so-called “personal diplomacy” where the Communist leaders were concerned. He knew that more often than not these meetings were used by the Communists, not to settle differences but to exploit them and to gain propaganda advantage, but he had strongly supported the proposal that I make the trip to Moscow. He told me that we must always appear to be willing to do everything possible to settle the differences we had with the Soviet Union at the conference table rather than on the battlefield. He believed I could hold my own in conversations with Khrushchev and he thought the conversations might provide some additional insight into Khrushchev’s tactics and strategy which could be helpful in any meeting he might have with the President at a later date. He also believed that I might be able to use the forum of the exhibition opening to expose at least some segment of the Russian people to the reasonableness and justice of the American position on world issues.

  The last time I saw him, he was sitting propped up with pillows in a chair in the drawing room of the Presidential suite at Walter Reed. His body was wasted but his mind was as alert as ever. He sucked constantly on ice cubes to dull the burning in his throat. The doctors had told me that this might be the last time I would see him. I asked him the key question: “What above everything else should I try to get across to Khrushchev?” Dulles was never a man to give quick answers to important questions. This time he waited much longer than usual. Then he replied approximately like this:

  “Khrushchev does not need to be convinced of our good intentions. He knows we are not aggressors and do not threaten the security of the Soviet Union. He understands us. But what he needs to know is that we also understand him. In saying that he is for peaceful competition, he really means competition between his system and ours only in our world, not in his. He says he is for peaceful co-existence. What he means, as he has shown in Hungary, is that while a revolution against a non-Communist government is proper and should be supported, a revolution against a Communist government is invariably wrong and must be suppressed. Thus, the peaceful co-existence which he advocates represents peace for the Communist world and constant strife and conflict for the non-Communist world.

  “He must be made to understand that he cannot have it both ways. If we are to have peaceful competition of economic systems and political ideas, it must take place in the Communist world as well as ours. He will deny, of course, that he or his government are connected in any way with Communist activities in other countries—that those activities are simply spontaneous expressions of a people’s resentment against capitalistic regimes. Point the record out to him, chapter and verse. Show him that we are not taken in at all by the mock innocence of Soviet leaders, that we have concrete proof of the Kremlin’s activities around the world. He should be told that until he puts a stop to such activities, his call for reducing of tensions and for peaceful co-existence will have a completely false and hollow ring.”

  Dulles died four days later, on May 24, 1959. But his principles will live on after him through those of us who had the great fortune of knowing him and learning from him.

  Preparations for my trip continued. Mrs. Nixon and I took a crash course in learning some common Russian expressions from Alexander Barmine. I completed my briefings and wrote the speech I was to deliver at the opening of the exhibition.

  There was the usual haggling over arrangements with the Soviets. They insisted that my party use Soviet jet planes within their country. They tried to limit my travel to Moscow, but finally yielded to allow me to see Leningrad and two cities within central Siberia, Sverdlovsk and Novosibirsk. They refused to give me a travel carte blanche throughout their country, as we had extended to their two First Deputy Premiers, Mikoyan and Kozlov. They refused to permit me to travel across Siberia and leave the Soviet Union by way of Vladivostok. This decision boomeranged on them. Since I had to return to Moscow, I decided to accept a long-standing invitation to visit Poland after I left Russia, and this was to provide a memorable climax to the entire trip.

  On the eve of my departure for the Soviet Union, I had a final session with President Eisenhower about the trip. After discussing my mission, he told me he had decided to invite Khrushchev to visit the United States and he authorized me to discuss the trip privately with the Soviet Premier. The pros and cons of inviting Khrushchev here had been discussed at length within the Administration and I understood the overriding reason behind the President’s decision, which I agreed with wholeheartedly: while Khrushchev’s tour of the United States would lend a certain degree of respectability to the Soviet leader and allow him to spread his propaganda among the American people, the United States stood to gain a great deal more by convincing Khrushchev of the size, the strength, and the spirit of the United States through the first-hand information he would gather while crossing the North American continent. Furthermore, I was convinced that a private talk with President Eisenhower would go far in dispelling from Khrushchev’s mind any mistaken impression concerning the will and determination of the United States to stand up for its rights at the bargaining table of world affairs. I also believed that the President’s return visit to the Soviet Union would have a far greater impact on the Russian people than Khrushchev could ever have here. The Soviet Premier apparently recognized this after my own trip to the Soviet Union, for he soon afterwards seized upon the U-2 incident as a pretext to withdraw his invitation to President Eisenhower.

  We left
the United States from Baltimore’s Friendship International Airport at 9:06 on the night of July 22, aboard an Air Force jet transport. In my party were Milton Eisenhower, the President’s brother; Admiral Hyman Rickover, father of the atomic submarine; State Department experts, members of my staff, and representatives of the President’s Advisory Committee on the American National Exhibition. About seventy correspondents, columnists, and commentators flew from New York in their own chartered 707.

  There was a surprisingly large crowd at the airport. Despite our attempts to keep the trip in perspective by emphasizing that it was primarily ceremonial in character, press and public interest was very high. Milton Eisenhower pointed out, as the plane was taking off, that people had come to the airport not just out of curiosity, but because this trip combined all the elements of hope, mystery, and even fear. I had received hundreds of letters before taking off, expressing concern for our safety in the Soviet Union. Some referred darkly to what had happened in Caracas the year before.

  And there were some humorous sidelights. Just a week before I had been playing golf with Bill Rogers, the Attorney General. A Boeing 707 happened to fly overhead. Rogers told his caddy that that was the type of plane the Vice President would soon be flying to Russia in. The caddy stopped short, and asked, “You mean he is going to fly to Russia?” When Rogers replied in the affirmative, the boy, who was about twelve years old, said, “Won’t they shoot him down?”

  I had no concern whatever for our physical safety as our plane flew high over the Atlantic toward Moscow. My thoughts were on how I should conduct myself in my meeting with Khrushchev. As for information on issues that might arise, I was confident that I was better prepared than for any challenge I had faced in my entire life. But my problem was not what I knew: it was, how to use it. I fully realized that as Vice President I would be in no position to negotiate any issues with the Premier of the Soviet Union. But my talks could pave the way and set the tone for the exchange of visits between Khrushchev and Eisenhower. Khrushchev would have the advantage of being able to change the Soviet position on issues at any time. As Vice President I could only defend the publicly proclaimed American position. I decided that I should listen more than I should talk. Any additional insights into Khrushchev’s thinking and his tactics would eventually be helpful to President Eisenhower. Because negotiations at Geneva on the Berlin situation were in a delicate stage—stalled at dead center—I knew that I would again be in a situation to which I had become somewhat accustomed—walking on eggs.