Xi Jinping is about to fulfill President Donald Trump on the White Home in 9 days. It will likely be the Chinese language chief’s first journey to Washington, DC, in eleven years. DC residents can count on journey disruptions as motorcades lower by the town and the Secret Service closes streets across the White Home. However barring one thing uncommon, most Individuals will barely discover the journey. Xi isn’t anticipated to remain greater than a day in Washington, and his assembly with Trump is unlikely to supply any main agreements or settle any main disagreements between the 2 superpowers.

The shortage of buzz surrounding Xi’s journey to Washington is a far cry from what greeted the primary go to by a Communist chief to the USA. On September 15, 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev stepped off a aircraft at what was then Andrews Air Power Base in Maryland for a twelve-day go to. He subsequently crisscrossed the USA, stopping in California, Iowa, New York, and Pennsylvania, earlier than concluding his journey with a closing assembly within the White Home. The journey dominated headlines throughout the nation as Individuals seemingly couldn’t hear or learn sufficient in regards to the man who led America’s rival superpower. However very similar to the possible consequence of Xi’s upcoming go to, Khrushchev’s journey did little to defuse superpower tensions.

Khrushchev’s go to was the results of an error. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had supposed his invitation for the Soviet premier to go to the USA to be conditional: Khrushchev was welcome to come back supplied the 2 nations settled their variations over West Berlin. However the formal invitation letter that went to Moscow inadvertently omitted that situation. Khrushchev instantly mentioned sure to the invite. Eisenhower honored it.

The deserves of letting the Soviet chief go to the USA had been hotly debated. Tensions between the USA and the Soviet Union had been excessive in 1959. Three years earlier, Soviet troops had crushed an anti-communist rebellion in Hungary. A month later, Khrushchev had used a gathering with Western ambassadors and diplomats on the Polish embassy in Moscow to declare: “We are going to bury you!” In October 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, turning into the primary nation to ship a satellite tv for pc into house and prompting many Individuals to worry that the USA was falling behind the Soviet Union.

So criticism of Khrushchev’s go to was each inevitable and substantial. Offended letters and telephone calls flooded the White Home. Labor unions, spiritual teams, and teams representing Individuals of Japanese European descent denounced the thought of the USA internet hosting the “Butcher of Budapest.” The Nationwide Overview offered bumper stickers that learn: “Khrushchev Not Welcome Right here!” The fitting-wing John Birch Society shaped a entrance group referred to as the Committee Towards Summit Entanglements (CASE) that ran nationwide newspaper advertisements demanding that Eisenhower cancel the journey. The sense that the Eisenhower administration was committing an ethical crime was summed up by Democratic Sen. Thomas J. Dodd of Connecticut, who thundered that “through the years there should have been an imperceptible erosion of our ethical consciousness…which represents a softening of our willpower to withstand.”

However not everybody on Capitol Hill believed that Eisenhower was making a mistake in having Khrushchev go to the USA. Dodd’s fellow Democrat, Senate Majority Chief Lyndon Johnson of Texas, referred to as the go to a “very wonderful factor.”

Khrushchev’s journey stoked the hopes, fears, and curiosities of the nation. The press adopted his each transfer. Each time they might, they wrote catchy headlines about his actions. And the Soviet premier, residing as much as his popularity, gave them loads of materials.

Khrushchev’s itinerary started with a cease in Washington. However he was quickly on the highway. Over the following ten days, he crisscrossed the nation. He petted a pig in Maryland, noticed the Empire State Constructing (he was not impressed), triggered close to pandemonium at a San Francisco grocery store, and ate his first sizzling canine in Des Moines, Iowa (he cherished it). Khrushchev additionally spent a day in Los Angeles, the place he toured Twentieth Century Fox studios (and the set of the film *Can Can*) and dined with Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, and a bunch of different Hollywood stars.

Khrushchev ended his journey again in Washington with a gathering with Eisenhower. Vice President Richard Nixon, who simply two months earlier had jousted with Khrushchev of their well-known “kitchen debate” on the American Nationwide Exhibition in Moscow, took the Soviet premier to the airport to catch his flight again to Moscow.

In all, Khrushchev acquired to see a giant chunk of the USA. However he didn’t get to go to one place he wished to see: Disneyland. The Secret Service and native police frightened that crowds on the park would make it not possible to ensure Khrushchev’s security. So that they nixed a deliberate go to. The fiery-tempered Khrushchev didn’t take the information properly:

And I say, I’d very very similar to to go and see Disneyland. However then, we can not assure your safety, they are saying. Then what should I do? Commit suicide? What’s it? Is there an epidemic of cholera there or one thing? Or have gangsters taken maintain of the place that may destroy me?

The press cherished the outburst. The New York Every day Information ran the headline, “Denied Tour of Disneyland, Ok Blows Prime.” Whereas Khrushchev returned to the USA in 1960 to attend the UN Common Meeting, he by no means made it to Disneyland.

Khrushchev’s U.S. go to didn’t enhance U.S.-Soviet relations. Certainly, they acquired worse. In Might 1960, tensions between the 2 superpowers spiked after the Soviets shot down a U-2 spy aircraft flown by CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers over Soviet territory. In August 1961, East Germany started development of the Berlin Wall at Khrushchev’s course. And Khrushchev’s choice to base nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba prompted the Cuban missile disaster. Private diplomacy has its limits.

Oscar Berry assisted within the preparation of this text.

The US celebrates its 250th anniversary in 2026. To mark that milestone, I’m resurfacing essays I’ve written through the years about main occasions in U.S. overseas coverage. A model of this essay was revealed on November 18, 2014.