Editing Nikita Khrushchev (section)

=====U-2 and Berlin crisis (1960–1961)=====
[[File:Nikita Khrushchev 1960.jpg|thumb|alt=An older man sits among United Nations delegation tables, looking at the camera.|Khrushchev and head of USSR delegation [[:ru:Миронова, Зоя Васильевна|Zoya Mironova]] at the United Nations, September 1960]]

A constant irritant in Soviet–U.S. relations was the overflight of the Soviet Union by American [[Lockheed U-2|U-2 spy aircraft]]. On 9 April 1960, the U.S. resumed such flights after a lengthy break. The Soviets had protested the flights in the past but had been ignored by Washington. Content in what he thought was a strong personal relationship with Eisenhower, Khrushchev was confused and angered by the flights' resumption, and concluded that they had been ordered by [[CIA]] Director [[Allen Dulles]] without Eisenhower's knowledge. Khrushchev planned to visit the U.S. to meet Eisenhower, but the visit was canceled when [[Soviet Air Defence Forces]] brought down the U.S. U-2.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/2000/11/10/gem-of-a-jeweler-faces-a-final-cut/d2394c5f-de3a-4db3-8792-3c1ddeba959c/|url-access=limited|title=Gem of a Jeweler Faces a Final Cut|last=Hamilton|first=Martha|date=10 November 2000|newspaper=The Washington Post|access-date=6 April 2019}}</ref> On 1 May, a U-2 [[U-2 crisis of 1960|was shot down]], its pilot, [[Francis Gary Powers]], captured alive.{{sfn|Tompson|1995|pp=219–220}} Believing Powers to have been killed, the U.S. announced that a weather plane had been lost near the Turkish-Soviet border. Khrushchev risked destroying the summit, due to start on 16 May in Paris, if he announced the shootdown, but would look weak in the eyes of his military and security forces if he did nothing.{{sfn|Tompson|1995|pp=219–220}} On 5 May, Khrushchev announced the shootdown and Powers' capture, blaming the overflight on "imperialist circles and militarists, whose stronghold is the Pentagon", and suggesting the plane had been sent without Eisenhower's knowledge.{{sfn|Tompson|1995|p=223}} Eisenhower could not have it thought that there were rogue elements in the Pentagon operating without his knowledge, and admitted that he had ordered the flights, calling them "a distasteful necessity".{{sfn|Tompson|1995|p=224}} The admission stunned Khrushchev and turned the U-2 affair from a possible triumph to a disaster for him, and he even appealed to U.S. Ambassador [[Llewellyn Thompson]] for help.{{sfn|Tompson|1995|p=225}}

Khrushchev was undecided what to do at the summit even as he boarded his flight. He finally decided, in consultation with his advisers on the plane and Presidium members in Moscow, to demand an apology from Eisenhower and a promise that there would be no further U-2 flights in Soviet airspace.{{sfn|Tompson|1995|p=225}} Neither Eisenhower nor Khrushchev communicated with the other in the days before the summit, and at the summit, Khrushchev made his demands and stated that there was no purpose in the summit, which should be postponed for six to eight months, until after the [[1960 United States presidential election]]. The U.S. president offered no apology but stated that the flights had been suspended and would not resume and renewed his [[Treaty on Open Skies|Open Skies]] proposal for mutual overflight rights. This was not enough for Khrushchev, who left the summit.{{sfn|Tompson|1995|pp=219–220}} Eisenhower accused Khrushchev "of sabotaging this meeting, on which so much of the hopes of the world have rested".{{sfn|UPI 1960 Year in Review}} Eisenhower's visit to the Soviet Union, for which the premier had even built a golf course so the U.S. president could enjoy his favorite sport,{{sfn|Taubman|2003|p=441}} was cancelled by Khrushchev.{{sfn|Taubman|2003|p=469}}

Khrushchev made his second and final visit to the US in September 1960. He had no invitation but had appointed himself as head of the USSR's UN delegation.{{sfn|Carlson|2009|pp=265–266}} He spent much of his time wooing the new [[Third World]] states which had recently become independent.{{sfn|Tompson|1995|p=230}} The U.S. restricted him to the island of [[Manhattan]], with visits to an estate owned by the USSR on [[Long Island]]. The notorious [[shoe-banging incident]] occurred during a debate on 12 October over a Soviet resolution decrying colonialism. Khrushchev was infuriated by a statement of the [[Philippines|Filipino]] delegate [[Lorenzo Sumulong]] charging the Soviets with employing a double standard by decrying colonialism while dominating Eastern Europe. Khrushchev demanded the right to reply immediately and accused Sumulong of being "a fawning lackey of the American imperialists". Sumulong accused the Soviets of hypocrisy. Khrushchev yanked off his shoe and began banging it on his desk.{{sfn|Carlson|2009|pp=284–286}} This behavior by Khrushchev scandalized his delegation.{{sfn|Zubok|2007|p=139}}

[[File:John Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev 1961.jpg|thumb|left|alt=A younger man and an older one confer together.|Khrushchev and [[John F. Kennedy]], Vienna, June 1961]]

Khrushchev considered U.S. Vice President Nixon a hardliner and was delighted by his defeat in the 1960 presidential election. He considered the victor, [[John F. Kennedy]], as a far more likely partner for détente, but was taken aback by the newly inaugurated U.S. President's tough talk and actions in the early days of his administration.{{sfn|Tompson|1995|p=232}} Khrushchev achieved a propaganda victory in April 1961 with [[Vostok 1|the first human spaceflight]], while Kennedy suffered a defeat with the failure of the [[Bay of Pigs invasion]]. While Khrushchev had threatened to defend Cuba with Soviet missiles, the premier contented himself with after-the-fact aggressive remarks. The failure in Cuba led to Kennedy's determination to make no concessions at the [[Vienna summit]] scheduled for 3 June 1961. Both Kennedy and Khrushchev took a hard line, with Khrushchev demanding a treaty that would recognize the two German states and refusing to yield on the remaining issues obstructing a test-ban treaty. Kennedy, in contrast, had been led to believe that the test-ban treaty could be concluded at the summit, and felt that a deal on Berlin had to await easing of east–west tensions.{{sfn|Tompson|1995|pp=233–235}}

[[File:Soviet empire 1960.png|thumb|The maximum territorial extent of countries in the world under Soviet [[Sphere of influence|influence]], after the [[Cuban Revolution]] of 1959 and before the official [[Sino-Soviet split]] of 1961]]

An indefinite postponement of action over Berlin was unacceptable to Khrushchev if for no other reason than that East Germany was suffering a continuous [[brain drain]] as highly educated East Germans fled west through Berlin. While the [[Inner German Border|boundary between the two German states]] had elsewhere been fortified, Berlin, administered by the four Allied powers, remained open. Emboldened by statements from former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow [[Charles E. Bohlen]] and [[United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations]] Chairman [[J. William Fulbright]] that East Germany had every right to close its borders, Khrushchev authorized East German leader [[Walter Ulbricht]] to begin construction of what became known as the [[Berlin Wall]]. Construction preparations were made in great secrecy, and the border was sealed off in the early hours of Sunday, 13 August 1961, when most East German workers who earned hard currency by working in West Berlin would be at their homes. The wall was a propaganda disaster and marked the end of Khrushchev's attempts to conclude a peace treaty among the Four Powers and the two German states.{{sfn|Tompson|1995|pp=235–236}} [[Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany|That treaty]] would not be signed until September 1990, as an immediate prelude to [[German reunification]].