News - Local

Published: Saturday, Sep. 19, 2009

Soviet premier’s 1959 visit: Khrushchev warmed to SLO during Cold War

Leader unexpectedly hopped off the train and rubbed elbows with local spectators during a West Coast tour

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In a completely unexpected turn of events during the bitter frost of the late-1950s Cold War, when relations with the then-Soviet Union couldn’t have been any more strained, its premier, Nikita Khrushchev, toured the United States — the very country he’d promised to bury in a 1956 speech.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower had invited this bombastic, bald-headed, stout little man to America as a goodwill gesture. The premier accepted, arriving at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Sept. 15, 1959.

Five days later, the eyes of the world would be on San Luis Obispo.

From Russia to California

Following a round of Washington diplomatic dinners, during one of which a reporter asked: “How do you justify Russia’s armed intervention in Hungary?” and Khrushchev replied oddly: “We could think of quite a few dead cats we could throw at you,” he and his steely-eyed Soviet and American security agents headed West with Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge.

In Hollywood he noshed with Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope and Marilyn Monroe, among other luminaries. Yet, according to newspaper clippings at the time, the one thing he really wanted to see was Disneyland, but that was off limits because of security reasons.

According to Saul Peti, an AP correspondent who was there when Khrushchev was told “nyet” on the Magic Kingdom: “There followed then an oration singular in the annals of human contest and the conflicts of nations. Eyes flaming, voice thundering, fists pounding, the undisputed ruler of all the Russias demanded to know why he couldn’t go to Disneyland. ‘What is it? Are there rocket pads there? An epidemic of cholera? Gangsters who can destroy me? What must I do? Commit suicide? This is the situation I’m in, your guest.’ ”

Thwarted in his attempt to meet Mickey, the premier, Lodge and their respective security details loaded onto a train and headed north as part of their planned West Coast tour.

Fears for Khrushchev’s safety were so intense, according to reports at the time, that CHP, sheriff and police cruisers kept pace with the train on Highway 101 as it headed to San Luis Obispo from Santa Barbara; Army helicopters formed a phalanx overhead.

As the train pulled into the San Luis Obispo depot, police, sheriff’s deputies, Southern Pacific officers and State Department special service agents covered all of the tracks leading into and out of the station.

And then Khrushchev did something off message: He got out of his coach and began to mingle with the crowd.

A SLO stopover

According to the then-Telegram-Tribune, the crowd, which the newspaper estimated at 2,500, was “vastly curious and well- behaved” and “gazed in wonder, in awe and great excitement at the premier of (the Soviet Union).”

The headline read: “Soviet Premier Khrushchev Mixes With Friendly Crowd at Depot.” The sub-headline added: “Visit Takes Police By Surprise.”

As the crowd pushed passed the barricades, the newspaper reported, “Police were taxed but seemed swayed by the courteous attitude shown by the pressing throngs and the commendable comportment.”

Among those within the pressing throngs was a 9-year-old Sinsheimer Elementary School fourth-grader named Tracey Hasslein, daughter of the father of the School of Architecture at Cal Poly, George Hasslein.

According to a front-page story, she was standing near the front of the crowd behind one of the barricades when Khrush-chev stepped off the train.

“As the crowd surged forward, Tracey was pushed to the front and carried along by the wave of people. She wound up under the arm of the smiling premier. With the aid of an interpreter, Khrushchev asked her name, age and what her father did. He also patted her gently on the head.”

In a United Press International photo carried in the media around the world, there they are: Khrushchev looking all the world like a doting uncle leaning down toward the young Hasslein, looking all the world like the proverbial deer caught in headlights. It was 1:15 p.m., Friday, Sept. 20, 1959.

Today, Tracey Hasslein is a nurse who tracks and manages people with chronic diseases.

“It was overwhelming,” she said from her office at Kaiser Permanente Woodland Hills Medical Center. “I was scared. It started out calm. I was waiting for the train with my mom when he stepped off the train. He wasn’t allowed off the train, ever, so it was a big surprise when he got off and people stampeded.

“It was like he was a rock star. People were falling on the ground, and it looked like people were getting trampled. There I was in the midst of all these people and all these flashbulbs going off. He was leaning down to me, talking to me.”

As the newspaper noted, “During the melee the little girl became separated from her father. This and the resulting confusion of finding herself the subject of flashing cameras, questions from a (Soviet) premier, and numerous questions from the press left Tracey highly excited. She began to cry after being removed from the circle of security agents and deposited out of the crowd by a kindly guard.”

As Hasslein recalls today, “They finally stopped asking questions, and I got back to my parents. At that time period of the Iron Curtain, it was unusual to see someone from Russia.”

As students, Hasslein and her schoolmates had practiced duck-and-cover exercises, diving under their desks at school as a precaution against incoming nuclear warheads.

“I thought, ‘Wow, Russians look like regular people. They weren’t green with antennas. So I got to be in the paper around the world. I actually still have the dress I wore on that day; I saved it as a memento. It’s greenish with variegated colors.”

And there it was — four minutes of a Soviet premier working the crowd, the media capturing a little girl’s moment in the spotlight while telling the world what a bunch of friendly people those folks are who live in San Luis Obispo County.

Misunderstood threat

As to Nikita Khrushchev’s comments about burying America? They were somewhat distorted.

While addressing Western ambassadors in Mos-cow on Nov. 18, 1956, he actually said: “Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will dig you in.” Or not as it turned out.