ABSTRACT
When Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev came to power, he became the leader of a new era. The Soviet Union was now the other pole of a bipolar world, as well as leader of the Socialist bloc, surrounded by newly developed people’s democracies. The clear aim of the Khrushchev leadership was not only to strengthen the Soviet Union’s status as a superpower in world politics, but also to boost its economic and ideological role as leader of the Eastern bloc. In the new structure of world politics, this was no longer a question of the Soviet Union alone; it now had ramifications for the entire bloc, and for the historically determined victory of communism over capitalism. The Second World War and rapid technological progress in the West had created a technological gap between East and West. Khrushchev was aware of the gap but did not give it too much weight, since he was convinced that it was only a matter of time before the main capitalist countries would fall behind the Soviet Union technologically.1 After the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and subsequent successes in the Soviet space programme, this seemed entirely plausible. During his visit to the United States in 1959, Khrushchev took every chance to propagate the superiority of the Socialist system over the West.2
