Peaceful coexistence at all costs: Cold War exchanges between Britain and the Soviet Union in 1956

Abstract

Khrushchev's visit to Britain in 1956 exemplified and gave impetus to the proliferation of transnational ties that connected Britain and the Soviet Union during the period of de-Stalinisation. This article shows how Khrushchev's visit affected British–Soviet relations at the levels of policy and mass perceptions. It analyses the significance of the exchanges that resulted in the areas of trade, technology transfer, culture, science, and the professions. The article concludes that the Suez and Budapest crises of 1956 were only superficial disruptions to the increasingly powerful and elaborate British–Soviet connections that de-Stalinisation set in train.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Dr Scott Anthony of Christ's College, Cambridge, for his very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Notes

Mark B. Smith is Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Leeds. His publications include Property of Communists: the Urban Housing Program from Stalin to Khrushchev (Northern Illinois University Press, 2010). He is working on two projects: on East–West exchanges in Europe after the Second World War, and on the history of welfare in late imperial Russia and the Soviet Union.

  [1] The National Archives, London (hereafter, TNA): FO 371/122836. ‘Visit of Mr NA Bulganin and Mr NS Khrushchev to the UK’, May 1956.

  [2] For a typology of state visits, see Goldstein, ‘Politics of the State Visit’.

  [3] E.g. TNA: WO 32/16261. Ministry of Defence to Ellis-Rees, War Office, 4 April 1956.

  [4] TNA: FO 371/122838. Report by Mr Paton-Smith in ‘Notes and Records Prepared by Interpreters’, 9.

  [5] See, notably, Jones, ‘From the Secret Speech’ and her ‘Introduction’ to the same volume.

  [6] For a critical overview, see Zubok, Failed Empire, ch. 4.

  [7] TNA: FO 371/122836. ‘Visit of Mr NA Bulganin and Mr NS Khrushchev to the UK’, May 1956.

  [8] Examples with specific detail on British–Soviet relations in the 1950s include Keeble, Britain, the Soviet Union and Russia, and Bevins and Quinn, ‘Blowing Hot and Cold’; a recent summary of Britain's position in the early Cold War is Deighton, ‘Britain and the Cold War’. Different aspects of the Soviet position are considered in general terms in, e.g., Iakovenko, ‘Zakliuchenie’, and Zubok, Failed Empire.

  [9] The most detailed account of Khrushchev's visit is provided by Swann, ‘British Attitudes’, but that still provides much less evidence than is cited here.

 [10] Jackson, Economic Cold War.

 [11] Most notably in a number of important contributions to the three volumes of Leffler and Westad, Cambridge History.

 [12] E.g. Clarke, ‘British Perspectives’; Gilburf, ‘Books and Borders’, is an exception.

 [13] For the shared European heritage that underpinned this, see Gould-Davis, ‘Logic’.

 [14] Iakovenko, ‘Zakliuchenie’, 304.

 [15] Fateev, Obraz vraga.

 [16] Graffy, ‘Scant Sign’.

 [17] Afanas'eva, Apparat, 499 (doc. 130).

 [18] Afanas'eva, Apparat, 502 (doc. 132).

 [19] His real desire, to visit the United States, was eventually achieved in 1959. See Carlson, K Blows Top.

 [20] TNA: FO 418/96. Hayter to Macmillan, 15 December 1955.

 [21] TNA: FO 371/116686. E.g. paper of H.A.F. Hohler, 30 November 1955.

 [22] Eden, Full Circle, 355.

 [23] As Eden wrote to Eisenhower on 19 November 1955. Boyle, Eden–Eisenhower Correspondence, 101.

 [24] TNA: FO 371/116683. Handwritten note from Sir John G. Ward on paper of R.A. Hibbert, 27 August 1955.

 [25] The Times, 20 March 1956, filed in TNA: PREM 11/1617/6.

 [26] The Economist, 24 March 1956, 19.

 [27] Rosenberg, Soviet–American Relations, 95.

 [28] Petrov, Ivan Serov, 175.

 [29] TNA: FO 371/122827. Minute by Lord Reading for attention of Selwyn Lloyd, 18 April 1956.

 [30] Visit to Britain, 5.

 [31] TNA: FO 371/122827. Minute by Lord Reading for attention of Selwyn Lloyd, 18 April 1956.

 [32] TNA: FO 371/122836. ‘Visit of Mr NA Bulganin and Mr NS Khrushchev to the UK’, May 1956.

 [33] Pravda, 20 April 1956.

 [34] TNA: FO 371/122836. ‘Visit of Mr NA Bulganin and Mr NS Khrushchev to the UK’, May 1956.

 [35] TNA: FO 371/122836. ‘Visit of Mr NA Bulganin and Mr NS Khrushchev to the UK’, May 1956

 [36] Though Labour politicians, including Attlee and Bevan, had enjoyed a successful visit to Moscow in August 1954: see Hayter, Kremlin, 37. Harold Wilson had been particularly keen to develop ties. For his personal talks with Khrushchev in January 1956 (not his only visit), see Smith, Property of Communists, 69.

 [37] Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, 131.

 [38] Gaitskell, Diary, 509. Dairy entry for week beginning 23 April 1956, dictated 28 April.

 [39] E.g. TNA: PREM 11/1615/70–3. Joint Pastoral Letter of the Hierarchy of England and Wales on the Persecuted Church, 1956. TNA: PREM 11/1615/55. Norfolk to Eden, 25 March 1956.

 [40] TNA: LCO 2/5181. Letter from International Council to Viscount Kilmuir.

 [41] The Tablet, 14 April 1956, 339.

 [42] TNA: FO 371/116684. Letter of 15 October 1955, signed by League chairman John F. Stewart; long quotation from letter of Alice Hogan, also of the League.

 [43] TNA: LCO 2/5181. Scottish Polish Society, Public Meeting, 16 April 1956.

 [44] TNA: FO 371/116687: letters of Leonora M. Cashman, 28 November 1955; J.L. O'Connor, 11 December 1955; H.R. Gillman, 6 December 1955'; TNA: FO 371/122809: ‘worthies’ is Lord Reading's ironic summary of the comments in such letters: minute of 9 January 1956; TNA: FO 371/122810: ‘thugs’ is from J.H. Lockwood to Sir Roland Jennings MP, and is also found in TNA: FO 371/122811, in Constance N. Allen to Macmillan, Selwyn Lloyd, 1 February 1956; TNA: FO 371/122815: ‘godless’, in a letter from the secretary of the North Cheshire Circle of the Catenian Association to Eden, 9 March 1956; TNA: FO 371/122816: ‘creatures’ in letter of 4 March 1956 from J.P. Heatherington, and ‘butchers’ in letter from D.M. Barrow; TNA: FO 371/122820: from correspondent in Heswell, Cheshire, 22 March 1956; TNA: FO 371/122821: ‘Al Capones’ in Denzil Freeth MP to Dodds-Parker, 27 March 1956.

 [45] Daily Sketch, 9 December 1955.

 [46] TNA: FO 371/122821. Letters of G.M. Savage (22 March 1956), Robert L. Hurst (22 March 1956).

 [47] The Sunday Times, 19 February 1956.

 [48] TNA: FO 371/122815. Paper signed by D.J.D. Maitland, 1 March 1956.

 [49] TNA: FO 371/122815. Paper signed by Hohler, 3 March 1956.

 [50] TNA: FO 371/122816. From NUM Morlais Lodge (Llanelly), 8 March 1956.

 [51] Numerous examples in, e.g., TNA: FO 371/116683, 122811, 122812.

 [52] Manchester Guardian, 20 April 1956, 1.

 [53] The Times, 19 April 1956, 10.

 [54] Catholic Herald, 4 May 1956, 4.

 [55] Birmingham Post, 24 April 1956, 6.

 [56] The Times, 19 April 1956.

 [57] The Times, 23 April 1956, 10; Catholic Herald, 27 April 1956, 1–2.

 [58] The Times, 23 April 1956.

 [59] Oxford Times, 27 May 1956, 13.

 [60] The Listener, 3 May 1956, 541.

 [61] Hayter, Double Life, 138.

 [62] Bevins and Quinn, ‘Blowing Hot and Cold’, 212.

 [63] Hayter, Double Life, 114.

 [64] The Listener, 3 May 1956, 536.

 [65] Lur'e and Maliarova, 1956 god, 200.

 [66] Eden, Full Circle, 360–61.

 [67] The Times, 27 April 1956.

 [68] Gilburf, ‘Books and Borders’, 229.

 [69] Pravda, 17 April 1956.

 [70] Vecherniaia Moskva, 18 April 1956.

 [71] Pravda, 19–29 April 1956.

 [72] E.g. Leningradskaia pravda, 18 April 1956, 4.

 [73] Pravda, 28 April 1956, 3.

 [74] Literaturnaia gazeta, 19 April 1956, 4.

 [75] Trud, 28 April 1956.

 [76] Fursenko, Prezidium, vol. 2, 273. Before 1952 and after 1966, the Party's Presidium was known as the Politburo.

 [77] Fursenko, Prezidium, vol. 1, 126–7.

 [78] Hayter, Double Life, 139. Note that the text of Hayter's two overlapping books quoted in this article is in some places identical.

 [79] Andrew, Defence of the Realm, 328.

 [80] Eden, Full Circle, 365–6.

 [81] The judgement of Geraint Hughes – that the Crabb incident was ‘the most significant feature of the visit’ – is surprising. Hughes, Harold Wilson's Cold War, 24.

 [82] TNA: PREM 11/1603/9. Eden's comment in margin of Lord Reading's paper, ‘Invitation for a return visit to the United Kingdom by a delegation from the Supreme Soviet’, 25 October 1955.

 [83] TNA: PREM 11/1170. Correspondence exchanged between Mr Bulganin and Sir Anthony Eden during September and October 1956.

 [84] TNA: FO 371/122392. Telegram, Voroshilov to HM Queen, 13 November 1956.

 [85] Mastny, ‘Soviet Foreign Policy’, 321.

 [86] February to 2 March 1959. See Newman, Macmillan, Khrushchev, ch. 4.

 [87] See, e.g., Autio-Sarasmo, ‘Soviet Economic Modernisation’.

 [88] TNA: FO 418/95. Sir William Hayter, 12 March 1954.

 [89] TNA: FO 418/95. Grey to Eden, 16 February 1954 (received at FO).

 [90] TNA: BT 11/5468. ‘Exchange of Industrial Visits with the USSR’.

 [91] Voronin, ‘Na nive’.

 [92] TNA: FO 371/116805. Report by J.M. Mackintosh to Lord Jellicoe, 21 October 1955.

 [93] TNA: BT 11/5468. Malik to Mayhew, 21 May 1956.

 [94] Smith, Property of Communists, 75–6.

 [95] Manchester Guardian, 28 April 1956, 1.

 [96] The Economist, 5 May 1956, 450, 452.

 [97] TNA: BT 11/5468. D.N. Byrne to F.G.K. Gallagher, 31 September 1956.

 [98] TNA: BT 11/5468. P.F.D. Tennant to R.J.W. Stacey, 11 June 1956.

 [99] TNA: FO 371/116683. Paper of R.A. Hibbert, 27 August 1955.

[100] Many are recorded in the Anglo-Soviet Journal, such as that of the composer, A. Khachaturian: XVI, issue 3 (1955): 8. For the general process, see Gienow-Hecht, ‘Culture’.

[101] Gould-Davies, ‘Logic’, 205–6.

[102] TNA: BW 2/532. List of visits.

[103] TNA: FO 418/96. Hayter to Macmillan, 8 December 1955.

[104] VOKS Bulletin 1956, 1, 33.

[105] D. Polikarpov, head of Department of Culture of Central Committee of CPSU, report of 31 December 1955 and associated decree: Afanas'eva, Apparat, 462–3 (doc. 115).

[106] VOKS Bulletin 1954, issue 4, 36.

[107] VOKS Bulletin 1956, issue 5, 31–3.

[108] VOKS Bulletin 1956, issue 10, 34–6.

[109] Caute, Politics and the Novel, 229–30.

[110] TNA: BW 2/623. Passim.

[111] TNA: BW 64/101. Paper on Royal Society visit, May 1956.

[112] TNA: BW 64/101. Paper on Royal Society visit, May 1956

[113] TNA: BW 64/18. Mayhew to Ronald Gould, 10 June 1955; Gould to Mayhew, 15 June 1955; report of Mrs Sketch (Soviet Relations Committee interpreter).

[114] VOKS Bulletin 1956, issue 5, 35–6.

[115] TNA: FO 371/122821. A.E. Davidson, 18 April 1956.

[116] Berlin, ‘Four Weeks’, 121.

[117] Berlin, Enlightening, 541.

[118] Afanas'eva, Apparat, 477 (doc. 120).

[119] Afanas'eva, Apparat, 494 (doc. 128).

[120] TNA: BW 2/540. Soviet Relations Committee, Report of Special Meeting held on 6 November.

[121] Afanas'eva, Apparat, 605 (doc. 164).

[122] TNA: BW 2/532. ‘Cultural Relations with the USSR’, Soviet Relations Committee, 21 February 1957.

[123] TNA: PREM 11/3542. J.A.N. Graham to Philip de Zuluete, 1 May 1957.

[124] TNA: BW 2/539. N. Mikhailov to HM Ambassador, Moscow, 20 June 1957.

[125] TNA: BW 2/539. Notes on Mr Malik's Letter to Mr Mayhew dated 3 August 1957.

[126] Hennessy, Secret State, 1–2.

[127] Magnúsdóttir, ‘“Be Careful!”’.

[128] Holloway, ‘Nuclear Weapons’, 384.

[129] Hennessy, Secret State, 140.

[130] Deighton, ‘Britain and the Cold War’, 132.