Peaceful Coexistence
By: Valerie Cuello
After the death of Stalin in March 1953, his successors adopted a more conciliatory attitude to the West. From 1955, Nikita Khrushchev, the new First Secretary of the CPSU, developed a policy of peaceful coexistence. Boosted by the advances that it had made in thermonuclear power and the space race, the USSR wanted to use the new climate of peace in the world to take the rivalry between itself and the United States onto a purely ideological and economic level.
In the United States, President Eisenhower had to make allowance for the risk of escalation and the hazards of direct nuclear confrontation with the Soviets. In 1953 he opted for the so-called ‘new look’ strategy. This combined diplomacy with the threat of massive retaliation. To complicate matters further, the United States was no longer the only country with nuclear weapons. It had to come to terms with technological progress made by the Soviet Union, which tested its first atomic weapon in 1949, with the first hydrogen bomb following in 1953.
Peaceful coexistence was a term of international politics coined by the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to refer to the relations that the Soviet Union and the United States would maintain in the future within the so-called Cold War, and which is generally accepted as Soviet policy in the period 1955-1962 from the Western point of view, 1955-1984 from the Soviet point of view. Peaceful coexistence was based on the communist doctrine because for a period, capitalist countries would have to coexist with communist countries, and that in order to avoid a world war it was necessary to maintain "peaceful coexistence presupposes the renunciation of war as a means of resolving international disputes.
Peace is a fundamental component of community development, personal growth, and survival of our planet. At the heart of every faithful community and culture, lies a need to advance peacefully to enhance a productive coexistence, meaningful lives, and sustainable societies.
