Interview with Norman Cousins, 1986 [1]

Item Information

Title:
Interview with Norman Cousins, 1986 [1]
Description:
Norman Cousins was a writer, an essayist, a citizen diplomat, and, for nearly four decades, executive editor of the Saturday Review. In his interview conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age, Cousins recalls his shock upon first seeing the headlines about the bombing of Hiroshima. He challenges the Harry S. Truman administration’s official rationale for dropping the bomb, and he discusses the duty of a democratic society to “face up to everything in our history.” During the Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy administrations, Cousins became an unofficial citizen diplomat, facilitating communication among the Vatican, the Kremlin, and the White House. Both presidents, he recounts, recognized the need to reduce tensions between the superpowers as well as the value of out-of-channel dialogue to advance diplomatic talks and strengthen ties. Following a visit to the Soviet Union in 1960, Cousins initiated a series of cultural exchanges between Americans and Russians that became known as the Dartmouth Conferences. The Cuban missile crisis unfolded at the beginning of one of these sessions. In his interview, he describes how the influential group he pulled together functioned as a clearinghouse for both sides as the crisis ran its course. The confrontation, he recalls, was both a personal and a historical watershed that gave both Khrushchev and Kennedy a “blazing awareness of the implications of nuclear warfare” and the understanding that both countries share the “same lifeboat.” When test-ban treaty talks stalled in 1963, Cousins visited Khrushchev and brokered a fresh start to negotiations. Striking to viewers of this interview is Cousins’s ability, through the unusual access he had to the secretary general, to decode the Soviet leader. Through personal anecdotes, he illuminates Khrushchev’s character, leadership style, national ambitions, and reactions to events and to domestic and international pressures. Cousins describes his personal conversations with Secretary General Nikita Khrushchev about the legacy of fear that still paralyzed the Russian people a decade after Soviet premier Joseph Stalin’s death. Cousins also recounts the 1956 controversy sparked when Khrushchev used the expression commonly translated as “We will bury you” at a Moscow reception for Western ambassadors.
Interviewee:
Cousins, Norman
Date:
March 3, 1986
Format:
Film/Video
Location:
WGBH
Collection (local):
WGBH Open Vault
Series:
War and Peace in the Nuclear Age
Subjects:
Soviet Union
Nuclear weapons
Catholic Church
Communism
International relations
Nuclear weapons--Testing
Kremlin (Moscow, Russia)
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963)
Hiroshima-shi (Japan)--History--Bombardment, 1945
Nuclear arms control
Nuclear warfare
Leahy, William D.
Nagasaki-shi (Japan)--History--Bombardment, 1945
John XXIII, Pope, 1881-1963
Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963
Byrnes, James F. (James Francis), 1882-1972
Teller, Edward, 1908-2003
Marshall, George C. (George Catlett), 1880-1959
MacArthur, Douglas, 1880-1964
Stalin, Joseph, 1879-1953
Reuther, Walter, 1907-1970
Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973
Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972
Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969
Forrestal, James, 1892-1949
Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971
Places:
Cuba
Japan
China
United States
Extent:
00:57:10:03
Link to Item:
https://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_329C06A5E8FA47C5AAE40EF0BD66C4BD
Terms of Use:
Rights status not evaluated.
Contact host institution for more information.
Publisher:
WGBH Educational Foundation
Identifier:
V_329C06A5E8FA47C5AAE40EF0BD66C4BD