Summit in Vienna

The summit in Vienna took place on June 3rd and 4th, 1961 between Nikita Khrushchev , head of government of the Soviet Union and party leader of the CPSU and John F. Kennedy , President of the United States . The meeting held in Vienna in neutral Austria was intended to reduce current tensions between the two superpowers who opposed each other in the Cold War . It had no immediate effect.

Khrushchev (left) and Kennedy on June 3, 1961

Confrontation of the world powers

The United States and the Soviet Union had been in the Cold War since around 1947 . Since Stalin's death in 1953, however, there have been approaches to relaxation. The dictator Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba on January 1, 1959 , and revolutionary leader Fidel Castro became Cuba's prime minister. The revolutionaries' offer to work with the United States was rejected by US President Eisenhower . Despite US involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion , the attempt to reverse the Cuban Revolution failed in April 1961.

The Soviet Union had observed the situation and established diplomatic relations with Castro in 1960. The United States had medium-range nuclear missiles and warplanes deployed in NATO member Turkey . Moscow now saw the opportunity to move similarly close to the United States in Cuba. ( This confrontation, which could have sparked World War III, reached its climax in the Cuban Missile Crisis of autumn 1962. )

Kennedy had won the presidential election in 1960 and became US President on January 20, 1961. Khrushchev had not seen him personally before the summit.

Place of meeting

The then Austrian Foreign Minister Bruno Kreisky is said to have conveyed the idea of ​​organizing the meeting of the two statesmen in Vienna to US President Kennedy. Khrushchev accepted Kennedy's proposal not to meet in any western country or in the eastern bloc .

The Hotel Imperial on Vienna's Ringstrasse

Kennedy traveled in his presidential plane on Saturday, June 3, 1961, from Paris , where he had met Charles de Gaulle , and landed at Vienna Airport . He was accompanied by his wife Jackie Kennedy and was welcomed by Federal President Adolf Schärf .

Khrushchev, his wife Nina Khrushchev and his delegation had already arrived at Vienna's Südbahnhof on Friday, June 2, after stopping off in Kiev and Bratislava and were also greeted by the Federal President.

Schärf gave a big dinner for the guests in Schönbrunn Palace on Saturday evening . During the summit meeting, both statesmen stayed in the Hotel Imperial on the Ringstrasse .

Around 1,500 media representatives from all over the world watched the meeting on the spot.

Kennedy and his companion flew from Vienna to London on Sunday evening, June 4th , where the US President wanted to meet with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan . Khrushchev and his companion flew back to Moscow on Monday morning, June 5, after an overnight stay in the residence of the Soviet ambassador in Purkersdorf .

Khrushchev (left) and Kennedy on June 3, 1961

conversations

The talks themselves, in which Andrej Gromyko , Stanislav Menshikov, Anatoli Dobrynin and the translator Viktor Suchodren took part for the Soviet Union and Dean Rusk , Charles E. Bohlen , Foy D. Kohler (State Secretary for European Affairs at the US State Department) , Ambassador Llewellyn E. Thompson and translator Alexander Akalovsky took place on Saturday, June 3, at the US Ambassador's residence in the 13th district and on Sunday, June 4, at the Soviet embassy in the 3rd district instead of. On Saturday there were also private talks between Kennedy and Khrushchev, on Sunday there was always communication within the team. Pierre Salinger and Kharlamov were responsible for media work , who, according to observers, were exceptionally friendly this time around.

Khrushchev and Kennedy dealt a. a. with the cessation of nuclear weapons tests and the hotspots of the East-West conflict : West Berlin and Laos .

In a joint communique on June 4th, evening, it was written of "useful meetings" and that the two politicians had agreed to "keep in touch on all matters of interest to both countries and the whole world" . In any case, Foreign Ministers Rusk and Gromyko would meet several times in the near future.

After the summit in Vienna, the east-west confrontation continued apart from the arms race with regard to strategic nuclear weapons: on August 13, 1961, the construction of the Berlin Wall began .

Kreisky's assessment

Bruno Kreisky wrote of the 1988 meeting in his memoir:

“The meeting of Khrushchev with Kennedy in Vienna on the 3rd / 4th. June 1961 seemed like a pointless conference to many people. If you see them in their larger context, Kennedy Khrushchev indicated at the time that he would definitely keep up in this dangerous game of going to the edge of the abyss. A year later, during the missile crisis around Cuba, he succeeded in getting the Russians to liquidate some of their missile positions, which were too great a provocation for America. Never before had the world been so close to the outbreak of a new war. And one should not be mistaken: this war would have broken out in Europe and also been fought in Europe, around Berlin for example, because if the Americans had done something in Cuba, there would certainly have been reprisals in Europe immediately. The apparently pointless encounter in Vienna had convinced both of them that the other was determined to the utmost, and this realization meant that ultimately the worst was prevented. "

Local references

Kreisky recalled in 1988:

“On the evening of our meeting with Kennedy in Vienna, Khrushchev invited us to a big farewell dinner in the Hotel Imperial as thanks; the Americans saw no reason to make such a gesture. "

The dinner took place on Sunday evening, June 4, 1961; by this time Kennedy had already left after he had praised Vienna as a meeting place.

The Viennese and their media were interested in the fact that John F. Kennedy and his wife attended the Sunday mass celebrated by Archbishop Cardinal Franz König in St. Stephen's Cathedral and the Vienna Boys' Choir , while Khrushchev laid wreaths at a plaque for Austrian freedom fighters and at the monument of the Red Army .

Web links

chronik-der-mauer.de: Transcript of the conversation between NS Khrushchev and JF Kennedy in Vienna, June 4, 1961 (pdf, 19 pages)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Frederick Kempe, Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev and the most dangerous place in the world . Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3886809943 , pp. 257ff.
2. ^ Daily newspaper Arbeiter-Zeitung , Vienna, June 6, 1961, p. 1, with caricature by Erich Sokol
3. ↑ ^{a b} Bruno Kreisky: In the stream of politics. The second part of the memoir , Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-218-00472-1 , p. 122.
4. ^ Foundation archive of the parties and mass organizations of the GDR in the Federal Archives: SAPMO-BA, DY 30/3663