Book excerpt: “A Different Russia” by Marvin Kalb

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In “A Different Russia: Khrushchev and Kennedy on a Collision Course” (BookBaby), veteran journalist Marvin Kalb writes about the 1963 Cold War summit between President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev (which he covered for CBS News), and the idea of a potential thaw in relations between the two superpowers – inconceivable then, even with regard to “a different Russia.”

Read an excerpt below, and don’t miss Marvin Kalb’s commentary about a potential Trump-Putin summit on “CBS Sunday Morning” February 16! 

“A Different Russia” by Marvin Kalb

Kennedy proved to be Khrushchev’s last chance for a meaningful boost in Soviet-American relations.  They met for one summit in Vienna in June 1961. After two days in the Austrian capital, gloom replaced their earlier hopes for a radically improved relationship.  Suspicions deepened, as both leaders stumbled into dangerous miscalculations about Berlin and Cuba.  Soon an ugly wall would be running through the divided German capital and, not too many months later, Khrushchev would foolishly decide to try to slip nuclear-tipped missiles and troops into Cuba.

Kennedy had once appealed to Khrushchev as a genuine partner for peace. He saw in the young president an adversary with whom he thought he could do business. For a brief time, one month on the 1963 calendar, shortly after signing the historic atmospheric nuclear test ban agreement with the U.S., he allowed himself to live inside a beautiful bubble of hope. Every now and then, with closest advisers or family members, he would imagine six more years of other major U.S.-Soviet agreements that would, among other things, control the spread of nuclear weapons, settle the Berlin crisis and lead to a period of genuine peace.

Why six years? he was asked.

Well, he’d reply, Kennedy has two more years in his current term, and then another four in his next term, which Khrushchev was certain he would win.

What Khrushchev did not know—could not know—was that within a month Kennedy would be dead and within a year he’d be ousted from power.

When Khrushchev heard Kennedy had been shot, he cried. His dreams for a new and glorious era in Soviet-American relations had just come to a tragic end.

        
From “A Different Russia: Khrushchev and Kennedy on a Collision Course” by Marvin Kalb. Copyright 2025 by Marvin Kalb. Reprinted with permission. 

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“A Different Russia” by Marvin Kalb