Khrushchev and "Peaceful Coexistence": New Soviet Evidence |
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Wednesday, September 28, 2022
12:00 - 1:30 p.m.
In-Person Event
Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E St. NW, Washington, DC 20052
Voesar Conference Room, Suite 412
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In the late 1950s-early 1960s, Nikita S. Khrushchev was well-known for his strategy of "peaceful coexistence"--the idea that the Cold War competition should be waged, and ultimately resolved, through non-violent political competition rather than a cataclysmic war, particularly after the advent of thermonuclear weapons. This idea took on special meaning in the context of Khrushchev's 1959 visit to the United States and confrontations with Washington in crisis over Berlin and Cuba, and the intensifying Sino-Soviet split, when China's Mao Zedong, conversely, advocated armed struggle to achieve revolutionary victory.
Using Soviet documents recently obtained from Moscow archives (just before Russia's invasion of Ukraine), Prof. Hershberg presents new evidence on Khrushchev's "peaceful coexistence" policy, specifically concerning the case of Brazil, with which the USSR restored normal diplomatic relations in late 1961 after a 14-year break. Though Khrushchev, eager to lure another Western Hemispheric country besides Cuba towards the Soviet bloc, assiduously courted Brazil's government and quickly established friendly relations with its president, João Goulart, the Soviet leader's secret talks with Brazilian communist party (PCB) chief Luis Carlos Prestes show that he concurrently urged the PCB to prepare for both peaceful and violent means to seize power. The new Soviet records, which raise questions about Khrushchev's commitment to "peaceful coexistence" and the pressure he felt from a more militant Beijing (and Havana), compare intriguingly to a record Prestes kept which was seized by Brazilian authorities who overthrew Goulart and forced the BCP head to flee into exile in April 1964.
Speaker:
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James G. Hershberg, Professor of History and International Affairs, formerly ran the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and edited the CWIHP Bulletin. Author of James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age (Alfred A. Knopf, 1993; rev. e-book: Plunkett Lake Press, 2018), he is currently working on a study of Brazil, Cuba, and the Cold War. His most recent book is Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam (Stanford University Press/Wilson Center Press, 2012).
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Svetlana Savranskaya is director of Russia programs at the National Security Archive at George Washington University. She co-edited (with Thomas S. Blanton and Vladislav M. Zubok) "Masterpieces of History": The Peaceful End of the Cold War in Europe 1989 (Budapest/New York: Central European University Press, 2010) and co-authored (with Sergo Mikoyan) The Soviet Cuban Missile Crisis: Castro, Mikoyan, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Missiles of November (Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Stanford University Press, 2012). She has written extensively on Soviet foreign policy, particularly regarding Khrushchev and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
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Hope M. Harrison is Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University. Prof. Harrison is the author of Driving the Soviets up the Wall: Soviet-East German Relations, 1953-1961 (Princeton University Press, 2003), After the Berlin Wall: Memory and the Making of the New Germany, 1989 to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 2019), The Berlin Wall: A World Divided (Audible/The Great Courses, 2021), as well as numerous articles on Khrushchev, the Berlin Crisis, and Cold War history.
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This event is on the record and open to the media. |
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The Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES)
Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University
1957 E Street, NW / Suite 412 / Washington, DC 20052
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