 Complete the following phrase:  Following the death of Stalin a cautious political thaw emerged in the Soviet Union. The new First Party Secretary, Nikita Khrushchev, was keen to reach out to foreign governments so as to try and improve the Soviet Unions international standing. In September 1955, following several months of behind the scenes diplomacy, Chancellor Adenauer visited Moscow in order to agree the return home of the surviving German detainees still being held in the Soviet Union. Negotiations involved slightly under 10,000 prisoners of war who had arrived as members of Hitlers invading armies during the early 1940s and approximately 20,000 German civilians, many of whom had arrived as political refugees and fallen foul of Stalins purges or been imprisoned in the atmosphere of intensified paranoia that took hold in the Soviet Union following the 