A Cold War road trip

Nikita Khrushchev’s Journey into America

By Lawrence J. Nelson & Matthew G. Schoenbachler

In September 1959, Nikita Khrushchev became the first Soviet leader to set foot in the United States — touring Washington, Hollywood, an Iowa farm, and Camp David at the height of Cold War anxiety. Nelson and Schoenbachler follow his route coast to coast, into what the authors call “easily the most democratic event of the Cold War.”

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University Press of Kansas · 296 pages · ISBN 978-0-7006-2788-2

About the Book

When Khrushchev toured America in 1959, the country was riding a wave of record prosperity even as the Cold War stoked bone-deep dread of nuclear annihilation.

Nelson and Schoenbachler trace Khrushchev’s route from his arrival at Andrews Air Force Base through his address to the United Nations, a tense visit to a Hollywood soundstage, and a wander through a San Francisco grocery store that left him marveling at American abundance. Along the way, the authors capture the crowds, the press corps, and the sheer theater of a Soviet premier loose in Eisenhower’s America.

The visit, they argue, was as much about Americans as it was about Khrushchev — a chance for a nation steeped in prosperity and dread to confront, in the flesh, the ideology it defined itself against. Religion, the authors show, shaped that confrontation as much as politics did.

The Journey

Thirteen days across Cold War America

Sept. 15, 1959

Arrival in Washington

Khrushchev lands at Andrews Air Force Base with his wife Nina and their children — the first Soviet leader ever to set foot in the United States.

Sept. 17–18, 1959

New York and the U.N.

He arrives by train in New York City and addresses the United Nations General Assembly with a sweeping proposal for world disarmament.

Sept. 19, 1959

Hollywood

On the set of Can-Can, Khrushchev meets Gary Cooper, Frank Sinatra, and Marilyn Monroe. A planned stop at Disneyland is canceled over security concerns.

Sept. 20–21, 1959

San Francisco

A tour of an IBM plant and an unplanned wander through a grocery store leave Khrushchev alternately impressed and suspicious of American abundance.

Sept. 22–23, 1959

Iowa

At Roswell Garst’s farm in Coon Rapids, a swarm of reporters, a corn-silage skirmish, and a Soviet premier’s genuine curiosity about American agriculture collide.

Sept. 25–27, 1959

Camp David

Two days of private talks with President Eisenhower close the tour before Khrushchev’s delegation departs for home in the early hours of September 27.

Praise

“The opportunity to share in this journey, to imagine the complications and sheer exhaustion of meals, receptions, speeches, and transit from one site to another, is simply delightful.”

Origins — Current Events in Historical Perspective

“The genuine humanity of the Soviet premier comes out, and in a way that is the most powerful part of the book.”

Origins — Current Events in Historical Perspective

Also reviewed in Foreign Affairs, the Journal of American History, the Western Historical Quarterly, and H-Diplo.

About the Author

Matthew G. Schoenbachler

Matthew G. Schoenbachler is a professor of history at the University of North Alabama, where he specializes in the early American republic. His writing has appeared in numerous publications. Read more about the author →