82. Editorial Note
Following his meetings with President De Gaulle in Paris, President Kennedy arrived in Vienna at 10:45 a.m. on June 3, 1961. After a ceremonial meeting with Austrian President Schaerf the President and Secretary of State went to the U.S. Embassy residence for the first meeting with Chairman Khrushchev, who had arrived in Vienna the previous day. This meeting lasted until 1:30 p.m. when the President hosted a luncheon for the Chairman at the residence. Following lunch the President again met with Khrushchev, while Rusk and Foreign Minister Gromyko met separately. These sessions ended shortly before 7 p.m. in order to allow Kennedy and the Chairman to prepare for a State dinner given by the Austrian Government and attended by the First Ladies. Records of the two formal meetings, the luncheon discussion, and Ruskʼs conversation with Gromyko are printed as Documents 83–86.
On June 4 the President and the Chairman met at the Soviet Chancery from 10:15 to 1 p.m. during which the President was given aide-memoires on disarmament and Germany and Berlin. Following lunch at the Soviet Chancery, Kennedy and Khrushchev met again at 3:15 for about 15 minutes. For records of the two meetings and the discussion at lunch, see Documents 87–89. At the conclusion of the meeting Secretary Rusk returned to Paris to brief President De Gaulle and to report to the North Atlantic Council. The President stopped in London for a similar briefing of Prime Minister Macmillan, while Assistant Secretary of State Kohler went to Bonn to brief Chancellor Adenauer.
U.S. memoranda of the conversations between Kennedy and Khrushchev were drafted by Alexander Akalovsky, the Presidentʼs interpreter. These records are presented here. Following each meeting the U.S. delegation also prepared summaries that were transmitted to Washington. These telegrams are identified in the footnotes. After the Summit Conference the Bureau of European Affairs of the Department of State prepared a 47-page “Transcript of the Vienna Meeting,” which closely follows Akalovskyʼs drafts with minor errors and repetitions corrected. A copy of this transcript is in Department of State, Central Files, 711.11/KE/6-461.
The only personal record by a participant in all the meetings is Khrushchevʼs The Last Testament, pages 492-501, and it is incomplete and selective. Ambassador Bohlen, who participated in all but one of the meetings, has also presented a personal account in Witness to History, pages 480-482. The Presidentʼs Press Secretary, Pierre Salinger, describes some of the conversation at the luncheons in With Kennedy, pages 175-180. Two other accounts based on reading the official records also bear note. Sorensen in Kennedy, pages 543-550, gives details of some [Page 172] aspects of the meetings indicating that he read the memoranda of the conversations, while Beschloss, The Crisis Years, pages 192-224 captures both the essence of the meetings and the atmosphere of the summit conference.