This chapter shows how Soviet policymakers thought about foreign trade and the role of natural resources in the early Cold War, focusing on the Khrushchev period and the conflicting views on the use of energy.

This chapter examines the evolution of Soviet foreign policy from Stalin's death in 1953 until the 1956 Suez Crisis. It begins with a discussion of the power struggle in the Soviet leadership, which led to the arrest and execution of Lavrentii Beria. Beria, as well as his rivals in leadership, briefly explored prospects for detente with the West, including by effectively giving up on socialism in East Germany. By 1955, when Nikita Khrushchev consolidated power in his hands, such prospects faded for two reasons. First, the nuclear revolution emboldened Khrushchev, eliminating the need for concessions to the West. Second, decolonization in the “third world” opened new horizons for the Soviet leader as he embraced opportunities to project Soviet influence to remote shores, seeking a clientele and – through their recognition of Soviet greatness – a form of revolutionary legitimacy. The chapter offers an in-depth analysis of Khrushchev's bromance with Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser and an overview of the consequences of the Suez Crisis for Soviet foreign policy.

Why did Nikita Khrushchev send missiles to Cuba? This chapter argues that Cuba was important to him for two reasons: it bolstered his self-perception as an equal to the United States and addressed his concerns over a potential US invasion of Cuba, which would affect his reputation in the revolutionary world. He faced a challenge from Mao Zedong, who wanted to wrest the mantle of revolutionary leadership from the Soviets. Yet, having come to the brink over Cuba, Khrushchev backed off, understanding that reputational concerns were not as important as the imperative of avoiding a global nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis provides not just a useful window into understanding Khrushchev's American policy, with its perennial fears of humiliation and sensitivity to slights, but also a crucial snapshot of Sino-Soviet relations on their downward slide towards an outright confrontation.

De-Stalinization in the Soviet Union deepened the crisis within the international Communist movement. The exposure of Stalin's crimes led to widespread disillusionment in Communist parties in the West, while the Soviet intervention in Hungary in 1956 highlighted the moral bankruptcy of the Communist project. This chapter offers a broad overview of this difficult year, discussing why Khrushchev refrained from invading Poland and why he ordered the invasion of Hungary. It also provides new details on the joint Sino-Soviet effort to pressure North Korea's Kim Il Sung to ease brutal repressions. Lastly, the chapter argues that Mao Zedong's efforts to define Stalin's legacy contributed to his emergence as the self-proclaimed strategist for the socialist camp, bolstering China's influence.

In 1958–59, Khrushchev acted aggressively, most notably with his ill-conceived attempt to force the Allies out of Berlin. This move was partly a response to Mao's actions in the Taiwan Strait and a similar calculation of war risks. Both leaders believed their gambles would not trigger a military response from the United States, but Khrushchev soon realized he had miscalculated. Instead of adhering to his deadline, Khrushchev engaged the West in a dialogue. In September 1959, he visited the United States, gaining the recognition he so desired. Meanwhile, the Great Leap Forward, which Mao launched to prove that China was better than the USSR at building socialism, resulted in a massive famine in China. The failure of the Great Leap boosted Khrushchev's confidence, but Sino-Soviet relations continued to worsen.

Could the Cold War have ended at the turn of the 1960s? This chapter argues against viewing the downing of Gary Powers' U-2 plane as an unfortunate incident that precluded a superpower agreement. Khrushchev skillfully used the incident to embarrass Eisenhower and ruin the May 1960 Paris summit. However, it is doubtful that Khrushchev could have ever made the concessions – not least over Berlin – that would have led to the end of the Cold War. He remained determined to defend his revolutionary credentials, particularly against his Chinese critics. Fundamentally, the Soviet Union faced an identity crisis: was it a content superpower seeking to maintain its position or the center of world revolution aiming to overthrow the existing order? The roads not taken in 1960 remain unknown, but the sequence of events that played out over the spring and summer of 1960 led to a heating up of the Cold War.

In July–September 1958, the world faced the threat of war twice due to a revolution in Iraq and Mao's actions near China's shores. The Iraqi Revolution led to the landing of US Marines in Beirut, prompting the Kremlin to brandish the nuclear stick, though it is clear that Khrushchev was simply bluffing: he had no intention of starting a nuclear war over US actions in the Middle East. Elsewhere, Mao Zedong, leveraging his belief that the socialist camp held the upper hand in the historic struggle against capitalism, pushed the world to the brink by provoking a crisis in the Taiwan Strait. Khrushchev's performance in these crises was mixed. The coup in Iraq weakened the Eisenhower doctrine and the Baghdad Pact, and Khrushchev claimed credit for these outcomes. However, his hopes for extending Soviet influence in the Middle East were left unfulfilled. The crisis off the Chinese coast forced Khrushchev to commit to defending an unpredictable ally in a nuclear war with the United States, undermining his faith in the alliance. In 1959, he cancelled an agreement to supply China with a prototype nuclear bomb. The Sino-Soviet alliance survived the tribulations of 1958, but the crises exposed their rivalry in the socialist camp, the third world, and their respective quests for America's recognition.

This chapter accounts for the twists and turns of Soviet–American and Sino-Soviet relations in 1960–61. Khrushchev's primary concern was resolving the Berlin issue, and he hoped that the new US president, John F. Kennedy, would be more amenable to finding a solution than Eisenhower had been. China continued to be a problem for Khrushchev. During the November 1960 Moscow conference of Communist parties, he faced Chinese resistance and criticism but ultimately prevailed in having the conference adopt a declaration that largely ignored Beijing's objections. After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, the Soviet leader became increasingly concerned with the prospect of Cuba's survival. Berlin, Cuba, and other global issues were at the center of his discussions with Kennedy in Vienna in June 1961. The summit ended on a sour note, but despite Khrushchev's bluster and his optimistic evaluation that the chances of a war with the United States stood at merely 5 percent, he proved unwilling to push his luck over Berlin and ultimately authorized the building of the Berlin Wall to stem the flow of refugees and stabilize a highly volatile situation in East Germany.

Whereas in the rest of Europe World War II brought about the rapid decline in residential domestic service, the Soviet Union saw a significant growth of the domestic service sector. Even though many Soviet citizens felt uneasy about the class inequality that was at the heart of domestic service, there were no public discussions of the issue during the last decade of Stalin’s rule. Only after Stalin’s death did the country’s new leader Nikita Khrushchev allow for more open conversations about social problems. In these debates, domestic service became a vehicle to discuss class inequality in Soviet society. Gender inequality, however, was never questioned. On the contrary, the debates around paid domestic labor only reinforced the notion that was fundamental to gender inequality in the Soviet Union: that housework was women’s work. The failure to question the gendered division of labor in the home demonstrated the limits of the Bolsheviks’ program of women’s emancipation during a crucial period when the regime sought to reimagine socialism.

Continuity in Russian strategy reflects a set of enduring predilections indicative of strategic culture preferences, and habitual responses to persistent, or recurring challenges. While individual leaders and their ideas matter, the pursuit of a geopolitical space where Russian interests predominate has remained central to Russian thinking, along with a quest for status, and influence as a Great Power. The strategy for pursuing these goals, and for dealing with other leading powers like the United States, has proven sticky. Contemporary Russian strategy reprises the offensive approach which defined much of the Soviet Union’s consensus, investing in the military means for direct competition and leveraging indirect approaches to sustain a contest against a much stronger opponent in the international system. Russian grand strategy has proven evolutionary: While it grapples with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the post-Cold War world, there is greater continuity than change in the calculus and ambitions that define Russian decision-making.

This chapter focuses on efforts to de-Stalinize the war’s memory and recalibrate Soviet identity in the wake of Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin’s personality cult. It shows that the Khrushchev-era program to create a distinctly Soviet historical mythology was contested and had a number of unintended consequences. The project to eradicate Stalin’s cult prompted a critical engagement with the Russian historical motifs that had been a staple of Stalinist patriotic culture. As Khrushchev picked up his assault on the personality cult in 1961, there emerged what this chapter identifies as a “crisis of patriotic identity,” which centered on renewed friction between the pan-Soviet and Russocentric paradigms. The more overt push to instill a pan-Soviet sense of allegiance raised concerns among Russophile intellectuals about the preservation of unique ethnic identities, histories, and hierarchy. Ideologists attempted to forestall this crisis through the “doctrine of the Soviet people,” which elevated the war victory as an exclusively pan-Soviet achievement, while cordoning off Russocentric themes within prerevolutionary and early Soviet narratives.

This chapter examines how kolkhozniki and their supporters in the state and party structure went about recovering land and resources taken from them and punishing the local officials responsible. Similarly, examining how local authorities avoided punishments handed down to them for illegal appropriations offers insights into broader difficulties faced by central authorities in re-establishing control over the post-war agricultural sector.