Fifty Years Ago

My exams are graded and final grades turned in.  Now I can turn my thoughts to other matters, and I find myself thinking about many non-academic topics, including events that occurred 50 years ago.

On 1 May 1960 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (that's what it was called then) shot down an American spy plane--the highly secret U2 aircraft--over Soviet airspace.  The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, did not avail himself of the poison dart included in his kit and instead parachuted, where he was captured by Soviet authorities.

This cold war event was neither acknowledged nor reported at first.  After a couple of days of silence, the U.S. government announced that a "weather spotting"  aircraft had been lost.  In one of the few real propaganda victories for the Soviet government during these years of on-again, off-again tensions, Nikita Khrushchev announced that the Soviet air force had shot down the plane--but held off announcing that the pilot was in Soviet hands.  The cagey leader of the Soviet empire had set a trap, which the unwitting American President, stepped into.  It was only after the U.S. told a series of lies about the plane that Khrushchev paraded the pilot before the world.  It was now clear to everyone that the United States was engaged in espionage and that it was not willing to be forthcoming about the extent of its spying.

Pakistan was furious with the United States.  The U2 had taken off from a military base in Pakistan, and Pakistan had no idea that the plane was flying a reconnaissance mission over Soviet airspace.  A multi-party  international conference was already planned for mid May, involving the Soviet Union, France, Britain, and the U.S.  That conference was another casualty of the U2 incident.  Powers was convicted of spying in a Soviet court and was sentenced to several years of hard labor in a Soviet gulag.  Later he was exchanged for a Soviet spy in Potsdam, and he was returned to the U.S.

I, meanwhile, had just learned that I had been chosen as an American Field Service exchange student and was scheduled to leave for Berlin in June.  Berlin was still an occupied city with a French, English, American, and Soviet sector.  Most importantly, it was located in the heart of the German Democratic Republic--East Germany.  Because the U.S. did not recognize East Germany, Americans were not allowed to travel across East Germany to Berlin; the AFS students were to be flown from West Germany over East Germany to Berlin.

My parents were in a dither about letting me go off on this trip at a time of the highest tensions of the cold war--and they had friends who actively lobbied them to not allow me to go.  I don't know how it was that they acquiesced to my pleadings to be allowed to take this trip of a lifetime, but I will always be grateful that, in fact, I did make this trip--at a time of unparalleled international tension.