The Cold War
Increased tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States, the division of Europe into eastern and western blocs, and the Korean War led to increased isolation for the residents of Spaso House. Ambassador George Kennan was always followed by plainclothes police when he left the house, and additional listening devices were found inside Spaso House in 1952, including the microphone hidden inside a wooden seal of the United States.
After the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953, the frozen American-Soviet relationship began little by little to thaw. Communist Party General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev made surprise appearances at the 4th of July receptions at Spaso House in 1954 and 1955. Vice President Richard Nixon stayed at Spaso House when he came to Moscow to open the first large-scale American National Exposition in Sokolniki Park, and dined with Khrushchev at a dinner at Spaso House hosted by Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson. The Cold War was still not over - shortly before Nixon's visit, a microphone was discovered hidden in the chandelier near Ambassador Thompson's office. Nonetheless, five thousand Soviet citizens attended events at Spaso House in 1957, more than in the previous twenty-three years.
The building of the Berlin Wall and Cuban Missile Crisis caused a new chill in Russian-American relations, but after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, both General Secretary Khrushchev and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko came to Spaso House to express their condolences to the new U.S. Ambassador, Foy D. Kohler.
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Famous quotes containing the words cold and/or war:
“To-night he noticed how the women’s eyes
Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.
How cold and late it is! Why don’t they come
And put him into bed? Why don’t they come?”
—Wilfred Owen (1893–1918)
“The funny part of it all is that relatively few people seem to go crazy, relatively few even a little crazy or even a little weird, relatively few, and those few because they have nothing to do that is to say they have nothing to do or they do not do anything that has anything to do with the war only with food and cold and little things like that.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)