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| 1960, Jan. 14 |
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| Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union would reduce its standing armed forces by a third in 1960–61. | 1 |
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| Jan. 14 |
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| Talks reopened with the United States, on lend-lease debts, after a lapse of seven years, but again broke off without agreement (Feb. 23). | 2 |
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| Feb. 13–March 5 |
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| Khrushchev toured Asia. | 3 |
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| March 29 |
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| A trade pact with China provided for an exchange of goods totaling 7.9 billion rubles. | 4 |
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| May 1 |
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| A high-altitude United States reconnaissance plane, a U-2, was shot down over Soviet Russia. Khrushchev used this incident to break up the Paris summit conference. | 5 |
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| May 7 |
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| Leonid Brezhnev replaced Marshal K. Y. Voroshilov as president of the Soviet Union. | 6 |
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| May 30 |
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| The Soviet defense minister announced that Soviet rockets had been ordered to fire on any foreign base from which an Allied plane took off for a flight over the USSR. | 7 |
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| Aug. 17 |
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| American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers pleaded guilty before a high Soviet military tribunal to charges of having flown an intelligence mission over the Soviet Union. On Aug. 19 he was found guilty of espionage for the United States and sentenced to ten years' loss of liberty. | 8 |
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