Office of the Historian

12. Message From Chairman Khrushchev to President Kennedy0

Moscow, April 30, 1961.

Excellency: Allow me to express to the people of the United States and to you personally gratitude for congratulations on the occasion of the unprecedented exploit of the Soviet people—the successful launching of the first human being into space.1

I express the hope that the Soviet Union and the United States may work together on the matter of mastering the universe, considering the mastering of the universe as a part of the great task of creating peace without armaments and war.

N. Khrushchev
  1. Source: Department of State, Presidential Correspondence: Lot 66 D 204. No classification marking. The source text is a Department of State translation of a commercial telegram from Moscow. The transliterated Russian text is ibid.↩
  2. See Document 8.↩