68. Editorial Note
The 21st Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union met in Moscow January 27–February 5, 1959. The Congress was attended by more than 1,200 delegates from the Soviet Union and delegations from some 70 other Communist nations. The focus of the congress was on the long opening speech on January 27 by Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers, on the Seven-Year Plan (1959–1965) of economic development and on other aspects of Soviet domestic and foreign policies. For complete text of this speech, see Current Digest of the Soviet Press, February 18, 1959, pages 12–19, February 25, 1959, pages 3–10, March 4, 1959, pages 17–25, and March 11, 1959, pages 13–20. Regarding the evaluation of Director of Central Intelligence Allen W. Dulles of this speech, see Document 69. A summary and analysis of Khrushchev’s speech is contained in Intelligence Report No. 7942, “Foreign Policy Implications of Khrushchev’s Report to the XXI CPSU Congress” which the Division of Research and Analysis for the USSR and Eastern Europe, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, prepared on February 5. (National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, OSS-INR Reports)
Other speakers at the congress reiterated Khrushchev’s emphasis on overtaking and outstripping the West in per capita output in key [Page 259] kinds of production by the end of the Five-Year Plan and on assuming by about 1970 first place in the world in both absolute and per capita production. They, like Khrushchev, emphasized a foreign policy based on the Leninist principle of “peaceful coexistence” and an end to the cold war but also predicted that increased Communist strength relative to the non-Communist world would result in more assertive policies toward the West. For the condensed texts of many speeches given at the congress, see Current Digest of the Soviet Press, March 11–June 3, 1959, inclusive.
Khrushchev’s concluding remarks to the congress on February 5, which reiterated many of the same themes, are printed ibid., June 10, 1959, pages 23–30. For complete text of the Seven-Year Plan Goals adopted by the congress, see ibid., April 1, 1959, pages 3–30.
A summary and analysis of the entire congress, prepared by the Division of Research and Analysis for USSR and Eastern Europe, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, is printed in “The Twenty-First CPSU Congress,” Soviet Affairs, February 1959, pages 26–33.