Thawing
The thawing of the Cold War started with Destalinization. Destalinization was a political reform in the Soviet Union after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. It was launched by the new leader of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev. This was an attempt by Khrushchev to taint the image of Stalin. This confused many people especially communists because they were taught to admire Stalin. This lead to some uprisings in Poland and Hungary in 1956. Then in 1963 the Chinese and the Soviets split because they had different ideas. Although they were both communist countries they had different perspectives and this lead to disagreements and eventually a split between the two. One reason which lead to the arguments and hatred of one another was because the Chinese asked the Soviets for nuclear weaponry but the Soviets didn't trust them with nuclear weapons. There were many factors to the split of the two nations but the last straw was with the Chinese openly criticizing Khrushchev about backing down in the Cuban Missile Crisis. The talks between the two nations officially ended in 1963. Then for the United States they had been using the foreign policy of brinkmanship during the Cold War through the presidencies of Kennedy, Johnson, and Eisenhower. When president Nixon took over for the United States he decided to move away from this policy and he made detente the US foreign policy. Detente was a policy that had to do with realistic, practical and flexible manner. This was used to try to reduce tensions between the two countries. President Nixon decided to visit the Soviet Union in 1972 to talk to the leader of the USSR. Nixon and Brezhnev discussed and signed the first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks treaty (SALT). This improved the relations between the US and the USSR and relieved tensions.
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