Cold War Summit Collapses: Khrushchev Demands U-2 Apology

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev stood before the assembled leaders of the Cold War's major powers in Paris on May 16, 1960, and demanded that President Eisenhower apologize for American spy flights over Soviet territory. Eisenhower refused. The Paris Summit, which had been expected to produce progress on nuclear arms control and the status of Berlin, collapsed before it began. The U-2 incident had blown the fragile detente of the late 1950s apart. Two weeks earlier, on May 1, Soviet air defenses had shot down an American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft piloted by Francis Gary Powers near Sverdlovsk. The Eisenhower administration initially claimed the plane was a weather research aircraft that had strayed off course. Khrushchev then revealed that Powers had survived, that the Soviets had recovered the aircraft and its cameras, and that the pilot had confessed to espionage. The cover story disintegrated, humiliating the American government. Eisenhower made the unprecedented decision to publicly acknowledge the spy flights and take personal responsibility, reasoning that denying knowledge would have implied his government was operating without presidential control. The admission gave Khrushchev the ammunition he needed. Whether he intended to torpedo the summit all along or was forced by domestic pressure from Soviet hardliners remains debated. His performance in Paris was theatrical, pounding the table and demanding an apology he knew Eisenhower could not give. The summit's collapse ended the most promising period of Cold War diplomacy since Stalin's death. Plans for Eisenhower to visit Moscow were canceled. Arms control negotiations stalled. The relationship between the superpowers deteriorated through the Berlin Wall crisis of 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Powers was convicted of espionage in Moscow and sentenced to ten years, but was exchanged for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel in 1962 on Berlin's Glienicke Bridge.