| Summary/Abstract |
On October 14, 1964, Leonid Brezhnev, Aleksei Kosygin, and Nikolai Podgornii
deposed Premier and First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU) Nikita Khrushchev in a palace coup.1 Unthinkable during Stalin’s regime,
this bloodless ouster exemplified the new phase in the Cold War to which
Khrushchev himself had contributed.2 Outside the Soviet Union, the
incorporation of West Germany into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO), the successful conclusion of the Cuban and Berlin crises, and the
Limited Test Ban Treaty demonstrate that the Cold War had become a competition
between two essentially status quo, risk-averse powers over the course of Khrushchev’s
time in office.3 Lyndon Johnson’s presidency is not remembered as a moment that
ushered in a new era of U.S.-Soviet rapprochement;
|