Cold War: Peaceful Coexistence & Internal Bloc Conflicts
The Years of Peaceful Coexistence
The First Signs of Thawing
The new Party Secretary General, Nikita Khrushchev, publicly denounced the mistakes and crimes of Stalinism. A decolonization process was launched. Congress approved new directives, such as not exporting revolution and the possibility of accessing multiple paths to socialism, and also tested the dissolution of Kominform. In the United States, Republican President Eisenhower was re-elected. The government was left to anticommunist radicals, thus destroying Senator J.R. McCarthy. The most important turn in U.S. foreign and domestic policy occurred with the election in 1960 of a Democratic president, John F. Kennedy. His government program, the New Frontier, meant a change of management objectives and noted the development of social programs to fight poverty and racial discrimination, and the fight for science and technology.
The Relaxation of International Tension
Khrushchev announced the principles of peaceful coexistence, which consisted of a reorientation of relations between the two blocs, based on respect, non-aggression, and non-interference in internal affairs. A period of dialogue between the two superpowers began, to stop the arms race. In 1959, Khrushchev was the first Soviet leader to travel to the United States to meet with Eisenhower. After Kennedy’s election, an interview between the two top leaders was held in Vienna. Treaties were signed: Moscow and Washington signed the SALT Agreements (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks), limiting the increase of nuclear weapons; Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev signed a treaty on preventing nuclear war.
Internal Problems of the Blocs
Yugoslavia and China’s Dissent
The economic, social, and political reforms of Tito led to a departure from communism and opened a new model of socialism, known as self-managed socialism. Marshal Tito became one of the promoters of the Non-Aligned Movement. Stalin denounced “Titoism.” Since 1959, relations between China and the Soviet Union began to deteriorate when the Chinese leaders expressed their willingness to initiate a socialist path of development different from the Soviet one and pointed to Soviet directives. Sino-Soviet differences radicalized.
Revolts in Hungary and Czechoslovakia
In Hungary, a trade union movement and university students demanded the improvement of living conditions. One of the measures of the new Cabinet was to declare the neutrality of Hungary and leave the Warsaw Pact, which agreed to intervene militarily in Hungary. In Czechoslovakia in 1968, a process similar to Hungary’s took place. Alexander Dubček began a process of openness and democratization that was called the Prague Spring. He intended to establish what was called “socialism with a human face.” These changes unleashed political and cultural changes.
Dissent in the Western Bloc
The U.S. leadership and the climate of confrontation with the East were questioned. The German Chancellor approached the Eastern bloc. The normalization of relations between the two Germanys resulted in both being supported by the UN in 1973. France was one of the states most reluctant to accept U.S. leadership. The beginning of discrepancies goes back to the last years of the 1950s, when France refused to put its fleet under the guidelines of NATO. The Council of Europe promoted Franco-German rapprochement as a counter to American leadership. The Treaty of Rome led to the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC). The U.S. policy in Latin America led to severe criticism. The U.S. administration was to guide efforts to prevent a revolutionary expansion there. The USA presented itself to the world as a defender of freedom, but it offered support to dictatorial regimes.