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Thanks for the source LT. I searched everywhere of all difference combinations of terms. I never searched for "the last priest" though :) [[User:HelpJazz|Help]][[User talk:HelpJazz|Jazz]] 16:03, 29 December 2007 (EST)
 
Thanks for the source LT. I searched everywhere of all difference combinations of terms. I never searched for "the last priest" though :) [[User:HelpJazz|Help]][[User talk:HelpJazz|Jazz]] 16:03, 29 December 2007 (EST)
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On Khruschev, and the "Cold War" in general, a major factual point needs to be added.
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About 1961, just as other events in the "Cold War" were becoming very evident & yet more troublesome to US leadership as well as the public, the Soviets renewed testing of nuclear weapons. After Sputnik, this event most clearly marked the open threat that Khruschev verbally expressed.  Indeed, the Soviets exploded a number of huge thermonuclear bombs, obviously to boast their capabilities.  They gave a propaganda warning of an explosion that would be bigger than any other--then followed through with a blast of 58 megatons!  During that period, the US only exploded two or three tests.
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Having lived through the period, my own impression was, and still is, that the sudden, and powerful, nuclear tests contributed more than anything to the American "Cold War" psychology--more than Khruschev's verbal rantings, more than the Berlin Wall, more than Sputnik, and showed why the Cuban crisis of 1962 was a kind of cumulation.  Note that by fall 1963, the Soviets agreed to the nuclear test ban treaty that ended these explosions, except for those deeply buried.  And that was part of the easing of the Cold War in the view of the US public.  Possibly the sense had eased after the Cuban Crisis, and eased further when Khruschev himself fell about a year later, but the nuclear test ban was the most notable "end" of the psychology.  (Of course, the new Soviet leaders were just as dangerous, but they practiced much better "PR" by avoiding such a belligerent face.)
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Charles W. Miller PhD
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