But because of the peculiar nature of the military situation in Laos, the Soviet leader must be tempted to let things ride -- a course that would appear to cost him little on the spot, but would bog Washington in a tactical mess.

The heightened tension, in fact, had been a major factor in the President's change of view about the urgency of a meeting with the Soviet leader.

Shortly before his nomination he had set forth his basic view about the problem of negotiations with the Soviet leader in these words:

At the same time the President took pains not to rule out an eventual meeting with the Soviet leader.

The question arose as to whether a frank discussion of that danger with the Soviet leader had not become urgent.

At the same time, there was increased reason for a quick meeting lest the Soviet leader, as a result of those episodes, come to a dangerously erroneous conclusion about the West's ability and determination to resist Communist pressure.

Thus he will be in a position to disabuse the Soviet leader of any notions he may have about grave Allied disunity.

Moreover, the President is meeting the Soviet leader at a time when the Administration has still not decided on the scope of America's firm foreign policy commitments.

* 1968 – Nicolae Ceaușescu, leader of Communist Romania, publicly condemns the Soviet led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, encouraging the Romanian population to arm itself against possible Soviet reprisals.

* 1989 – Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev arrives in Havana, Cuba to meet with Fidel Castro in an attempt to mend strained relations.

After the Soviet occupation of 1979, his role as an insurgence leader earned him the nickname of " Lion of Panjshir " ().

After the Soviet withdrawal, between 1992 and 1996, he was minister of defense in the new government of the Islamic State of Afghanistan under president Burhanuddin Rabbani, and acted as its military leader in the civil war against competing militias around Kabul.

* 1945 – Cold War: Yugoslav leader Josip " Tito " Broz signs an agreement with the Soviet Union to allow " temporary entry of Soviet troops into Yugoslav territory ".

* 1996 – Dzhokhar Dudaev, Soviet Air Force general and Chechen leader, 1st President of Ichkeria ( b. 1944 )

* 1983 – American schoolgirl Samantha Smith is invited to visit the Soviet Union by its leader Yuri Andropov after he read her letter in which she expressed fears about nuclear war.

* 1985 – Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declares a moratorium on the deployment of middle-range missiles in Europe.

During the 1930s and 1940s Joseph Stalin's NKVD carried out numerous assassinations outside of the Soviet Union, such as the killings of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists leader Yevhen Konovalets, Ignace Poretsky, Fourth International secretary Rudolf Klement, Leon Trotsky, and the Workers ' Party of Marxist Unification ( POUM ) leadership in Catalonia.

In the conferences during World War II, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin openly requested the concession of Soviet military bases on the Straits, even though Turkey was not involved in the war.

Karmal would remain in exile until December 1979, when the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan ( with the consent of the Afghan government ) to stabilise the situation in the country, they killed Amin, the leader of the PDPA and the Afghan government.

Bolshevik revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky commonly used the terms " Bolshevism " and " Bolshevist " after his exile from the Soviet Union to differentiate between what he saw as true Leninism and the state and party as they existed under Joseph Stalin's leadership.

" Meanwhile, the Soviet Union brandished its position as the leader of the " progressive " and " anti-imperialist " camp.

After disagreements between Yugoslavian leader Josip Broz Tito and the Soviet Union regarding Greece and the People's Republic of Albania, a Tito-Stalin split occurred, followed by Yugoslavia being expelled from the Cominform in June 1948 and a brief failed Soviet putsch in Belgrade.

President Kennedy will meet with Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev in Vienna June 3 and 4.

In conversation with Ivinskaya, Pasternak explained that the swine dictator Napoleon, " vividly reminded ," him of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

In response, Pasternak wrote directly to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, " I am addressing you personally, the C. C.

Membership in the party was as much a prerequisite for admission to colleges and for government jobs as in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin or Nikita Krushchev.

But six months after the crisis, a Gallup Poll found that public worry about nuclear weapons had fallen back to its lowest point since 1957, and there was a view, disputed by CND supporters, that U. S. President John F. Kennedy's success in facing down Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev turned the British public away from CND.

On the Soviet side, Premier Nikita Khrushchev wrote in a letter to Kennedy that his blockade of " navigation in international waters and air space " constituted " an act of aggression propelling humankind into the abyss of a world nuclear-missile war ".

" The half-hearted invasion left Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and his advisers with the impression that Kennedy was indecisive and, as one Soviet adviser wrote, " too young, intellectual, not prepared well for decision making in crisis situations ... too intelligent and too weak.

In May 1962, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was persuaded by the idea of countering the United States ' growing lead in developing and deploying strategic missiles by placing Soviet intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Cuba.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the CPC experienced a significant ideological breakdown with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev, and later, Leonid Brezhnev.

After Nikita Khrushchev's " secret speech " to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, which revealed that the Soviet party leadership had long been aware of Stalin's crimes, Thompson ( with John Saville and others ) started a dissident publication inside the CP, called The Reasoner.

However, the Soviet Union was fiercely competitive in holding the early lead it had gained in manned spaceflight, so the Soviet Communist Party, led by Nikita Khrushchev, ordered the hasty conversion of its single-pilot Vostok capsule into a two-or three-person craft named Voskhod, in order to compete with Gemini and Apollo.

* 1956 – In his speech On the Personality Cult and its Consequences Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union denounces the cult of personality of Joseph Stalin.

For example, Nikita Khrushchev never headed the Supreme Soviet but was First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party ( party leader ) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers ( head of government ).

Only two weeks before Kennedy had spoken in more conciliatory tones, speaking of " improving relations with the Soviet Union ": in response to Kennedy's Berlin speech, Nikita Khrushchev, days later, remarked that " one would think that the speeches were made by two different Presidents.

Regardless of whether a plot to deport Jews was planned, in his " Secret Speech " in 1956, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev stated that the Doctors Plot was " fabricated ... set up by Stalin ", that Stalin told the judge to beat confessions from the defendants and had told Politburo members " You are blind like young kittens.

The harshness with which Soviet affairs were conducted during Stalin's rule was subsequently repudiated by his successors in the Communist Party leadership, most notably by Nikita Khrushchev's repudiation of Stalinism in February 1956.

* 1959 – At the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, U. S. Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev have a " Kitchen Debate ".

Many more non-Kazakhs arrived in the years 1953 – 1965, during the so-called Virgin Lands Campaign of Soviet premier Nikita S. Khrushchev ( in office from 1956 to 1964 ).

In 1964 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was deposed, and succeeded by Leonid Brezhnev.

Stalin's death on 5 March 1953 prompted major changes in the Soviet leadership and in March 1953, Voroshilov was approved as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet ( i. e., the head of state ) with Nikita Khrushchev as First Secretary of the Communist Party and Georgy Malenkov as Premier of the Soviet Union.