The classical cold war period began with the founding of the Cominform in the fall of 1947 and ended with the death of Stalin in June, 1953. But, as the Soviet poet Yevtushenko has observed, “Stalin's Heirs” are still very much with us; not only Soviet but also U.S. policy is heavily burdened with the Stalinist heritage of the cold war period.

For the USSR the Geneva Summit Conference cleared the way for the 1956 20th Party Congress and the new General Line which recognized that in a world threatened with thermonuclear holocaust, coexistence is better thari no-existence, and that war —meaning general war—is no longer inevitable.