Was Khruschev's Foreign Policy Successful? Like Stalin in the early 1920s Krushchev was not seen as an eventual leader in 1953 and 1954. In the early years his political opponents underestimated him and again in 1957, but he in turn was to underestimate the force of opposition in 1964. An important area of change under Khushchev was foreign affairs. By the 1950s the United States and the Soviet Union were busy building arsenals of nuclear weapons. Fearing a possible nuclear confrontation particularly in the light of the stalemate in Korea, Malenkov moved to defuse tensions with