In 1956, the Hungarians revolted again Soviet control because since the Soviets had been in control, they had to pay war reparations to the Soviet Union, which decreased the Standard of Living and food shortages became common. Other long-term reasons for the Uprising were that they were controlled through terror as each satellite had its own feared secret police, prisons and labour camps, which had killed 25,000 people without trial. Also their immediate reason was that after Khrushchev’s De-Stalinisation speech in Feb.1957, they felt that they could rid themselves of the controls imposed on them by Stalin at the end of WWII.
One of the reasons Khrushchev took such strong action against Hungary was because he knew that the Western powers were involved in the Suez crisis and would be unlikely to take action to help Hungary by intervening. This made the relationship worsen further as the West realised it was not able to influence the Soviet Union behind the Iron Curtain, which made the West more determined to resist Soviet expansion. The USSR now accused the West of encouraging the rebellion in Hungary, which made the USSR more suspicious of the West.
By 1961, before the Vienna meeting between President Kennedy and Khruschev, their relationship seemed to be at an all time high, but after the ‘icy encounter’ at the Vienna meeting, their relationship dramatically worsened to the lowest point it had been, at the building of the Berlin Wall. In June 1961, Khruschev tried to persuade the new American Presidint, Kennedy, to agree to withdraw from West Berlin, Kennedy refused. At this time, West Berlin contained the largest number of spying agencies ever assembled in one area and all 110 miles from the enemy’s territory. The trigger for the building of the wall was that between 1949 and 1961, over 2 ½ million people had escaped from East Germany to the West. By August a barbed-wire barrier appeared along the frontier between East and West Berlin, which was quickly replaced by a large concrete wall. This, ironically, created greater understanding, as it stopped the loss of skilled workers; it saved East Germany from economic ruin. This then lessened the likelihood of desperate measures by the USSR to uphold the GDR, which the West would have to resist. However the Berlin wall did not help to improve the relations between the USA and the USSR, it became so poor that the world’s livelihood was at stake. After the building of the Berlin wall, Kennedy may of made the mistake of stating in a speech that ‘Freedom has many difficulties, and democracy is not perfect, but we never had to put up a wall to keep our people in.
Incredibly, their relationship worsened still to a point that their disagreements were threatening the very existence of life on Earth in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. When Fidal Castro began to turn Cuba Communist when he took over, the USA suspected the USSR’s involvement in this, but they were oblivious to the events in Cuba. Cuba’s main trading power was sugar and its main market was the USA. However as the USA was unhappy with the spreading of Communism to Cuba because of the foreign policy of containment of Communism, they cut off all trade links to Cuba. Cuba now needed a new market for its sugar and seeing as the USSR and the USA were not on good terms, Castro decided to make alliances with the USSR. After the failed attempt by the Cuban exiles to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961, it hade made Kennedy look foolish as the attempt had been backed by the USA. Cuba agreed to have missile sites placed on its islands, which allowed protection for Cuba against another, stronger attempt at invading Cuba and allowed a balance of weapons as the USA held missiles in Turkey and the USSR also wished for the spread of Communism into the Western hemisphere. He also hoped he could use the missiles in Cuba as a bargaining means to gain concessions from the US over Berlin.
The American U2 planes detected these missile sites and the government decided on the blockade of Cuba, by not allowing Soviet ships with offensive weapons to reach the Cuban shores. After eight days, the threat of the world on the brink of destruction through a nuclear war between the USA and the USSR slowly came to an end. This Cuban missile crisis showed the Soviets that the USA would stand firm, if they felt that US security was threatened. It showed the USA that the USSR could compromise. Also, the realisation of how close the USA and the USSR had come to nuclear war, lead to the installation of a telephone ‘hot-line’, directly linking the Whitehouse in Washington to the Kremlin in Moscow. After this, relations between East and West improved. Neither side wanted nuclear war and the crisis encouraged both sides to talk about limiting the growth of Nuclear weapons. The Test Ban Treaty of 1963 was a result of one of these talks.
In conclusion, the relations between the USA and the USSR changed dramatically, for better and for worse, over the course between 1948 and 1962. In 1948, their relationship began to deteriorate. However by the end of 1962 and 1963 the Cuban missile crisis frightened them into changing things to improve on their relationship so that the threat of total devastation through nuclear war could never occur again.