SALT-I and II After Stalin died in 1953, Georgi Malenkov succeeded him, and then Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev started implementing reforms called the thaw, which included having “friendly cooperation” with the West and destroying the GULAG system, which involved numerous labour camps where political prisoners were incarcerated under Stalin. Leonid Brezhnev replaced Khrushchev in 1964. He cancelled the thaw and recentralized the government, halting nationalism which was growing in the Republics. In the 1970s, USSR and the US negotiated a nuclear arms deal. The Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty was signed; SALT-I by Brezhnev and Nixon in 1972. SALT-I limited the number of nuclear missiles each country could possess and their use. These limitations caused both countries to revise their nuclear strategies.
