Although the Cold War was a stressful period to Larsen, he mostly kept to his communist creed. The first traces of doubt came shortly after Stalin's death when all defendants of the Doctors’ Plot trials were rehabilitated because their confessions had been made under torture. Larsen's doubt was however short-lived, and he was only strengthened in his views by Nikita Khrushchev’s thaw both inside the Soviet Union and internationally. A strike at a Philips plant and an increase in party membership, combined with a stronger communist presence in the trade unions, convinced Larsen that the party had a bright future.