Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-03T16:47:02.080Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Soviet foreign policy from détente to Gorbachev, 1975–1985

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2010

By
Vladislav Zubok
Edited by
Melvyn P. Leffler  and
Odd Arne Westad
Melvyn P. Leffler
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
Odd Arne Westad
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
Get access

Summary

Soviet international behavior in the decade before Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika is still an understudied and highly controversial topic. Some authors have long argued that the Soviet Union was greatly interested in détente in Europe, while neoconservative critics claimed that the USSR masterfully used détente in its quest for inexorable expansion and military superiority. At the time, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and most Soviet dissidents energetically supported the latter view.

Critics of détente made some excellent points. Soviet power reached its pinnacle in the late 1970s. Military expenditures, after rapid increases in the previous decades, stabilized at a high level. Three-fourths of all the research and development (R&D) potential of the country was located within the military-industrial complex. There were forty-seven “closed cities” with 1.5 million inhabitants, where military R&D labs and nuclear reactors were located, under the jurisdiction of the Atomic Ministry and the Ministry of Defense. The Politburo and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev himself rarely argued with the decisions and programs of the Military-Industrial Commission. In April 1976, after the death of Andrei Grechko, the former head of this commission, Dmitrii Ustinov, became the minister of defense. In 1976, the Soviet military began to deploy the Pioneer – which the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) called the SS–20 – the new mobile, accurate, medium-range missile system carrying three warheads. Some experts had asserted that by the end of the 1970s the Soviet military would begin to surpass the United States in numbers of both missiles and nuclear warheads.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the Cold War , pp. 89 - 111
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Akhromeev, Sergei F. and Kornienko, Georgii M., Glazami marshala i diplomata: kriticheskii vzgliad na vneshniuiu politiku SSSR do i posle 1985 goda [Through the Eyes of a Marshal and a Diplomat A Critical View of the USSR’s Foreign Policy] (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1992);Google Scholar
Aleksandrov-Agentov, Aleksandr M., Ot Kollontai do Gorbacheva: vospominaniia [From Kollontai to Gorbachev: Memories] (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1994),Google Scholar
Alexeyeva, Ludmilla and Goldberg, Paul, The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990) –89.Google Scholar
Baibakov, Nikolai, “Mneniie” [Opinions] (interview), Segodnia [Today], November 20, 1998.Google Scholar
Brudny, Yitzhak M., Reinventing Russia: Russian Nationalism and the Soviet State, 1953–1991 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 127–29;Google Scholar
Brutents, Karen, Tridtsat let na Staroi ploshchadi [Thirty Years on Staraia Ploshchad] (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1998).Google Scholar
Bystrova, I. V., “Voienno-promyshlennyi kompleks SSSR v 1920-e–1980-e gg.: ekonomicheskie aspekty razvitie” [The USSR Military-Industrial Complex from the 1920s to the 1980s: Economic Aspects of Its Development], in Borodkin, L. I. and Petrov, Yu. A. (eds.), Ekonomicheskaia istoriia: ezhegodnik [Economic History: A Yearbook] (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2003).Google Scholar
Derluguian, Georgy, “A Tale of Two Cities,” New Left Review, 3 (May/June 2000).Google Scholar
Dobrynin, Anatolii, Sugubo doveritelno: posol v Vashingtone pri shesti prezidentakh SShA (1962–1986 gg.) (Moscow: Avtor, 1997).Google Scholar
Dobrynin, Anatolii in The Intervention in Afghanistan and the Fall of Détente: Transcript of the 1995 Nobel Symposium, Lysebu, September 17–20, 1995, ed. by Welch, David and Westad, Odd Arne (Oslo: Det Norske Nobelinstitutt, 1996) (hereafter Lysebu 2) ;Google Scholar
Dobrynin, Anatolii, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents (New York: Times Books, 1995).Google Scholar
English, Robert, Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
English, Robert D., “Sources, Methods, and Competing Perspectives on the End of the Cold War,” Diplomatic History, 23, 2 (Spring 1997).Google Scholar
Fischer, Ben, A Cold War Conundrum: The 1983 Soviet War Scare (Langley, VA: Center for the Study of Intelligence, September 1997).Google Scholar
Furman, Dmitry, “Perestroika glazami moskovskogo gumanitariia” [Perestroika through the Eyes of a Moscow Humanitarian] in Kuvaldin, Boris (ed.), Proriv k svobode: perestroike dvadisat let spustia (kriticheskii analiz) [Breakthrough to Freedom: On Twenty Years of Perestroika (A Critical Analysis)] (Moscow: Alpina Business Books, 2005) –19.Google Scholar
Gaidar, Egor, Gibel imperii: uroki dlia sovremennoi Rossii [Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia] (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2006).Google Scholar
Gartho, Raymond., Détente and Confrontation: American–Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution press, 1994) –65.Google Scholar
Geyer, David and Selvage, Douglas (eds.), Soviet–American Relations: The Détente Years, 1969–1972 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2007).Google Scholar
Gorbachev, Mikhail, Zhizn’ i reformi [Life and Reforms] (Moscow: Novosti, 1995), I.Google Scholar
Hanson, Philip, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Economy (London: Longman, 2003) –41, 163;Google Scholar
Kalugin, Oleg with Fen Montaigne, The First Directorate (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994) –33Google Scholar
Kamanin, N. P., Skrytii kosmos [Secret Universe], 4th book (Moscow, In for tekst, 2001).Google Scholar
Kornienko, G. in US–Soviet Relations and Soviet Foreign Policy toward the Middle East and Africa in the 1970s: transcript from a Workshop at Lysebu, October 1–3, 1994, transcribed by Kvam, Gail Adams, ed. by Westad, Odd Arne (Oslo: Norwegian Nobel Institute, 1995).Google Scholar
Kornienko, Georgii, Kholodnaia voina: svidetelstro ee uchastnika [The Cold War: An Account from a Participant] (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1994) –72;Google Scholar
Kramer, Mark, Soviet Deliberations during the Polish Crisis, 1980–1981, Special Working Paper no. 1 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1999), 24–34 –01.Google Scholar
Liakhovskii, Aleksandr, Plamia Afgana [The Afghan Con.agration] (Moscow: Vagrius, 1999).Google Scholar
Millar, James R., “The Little Deal: Brezhnev’s Contribution to Acquisitive Socialism,” Slavic Review, 4 (Winter 1985);Google Scholar
Mitrokhin, Nikolai, Russkaia partiia: dvizhenie russkikh natsionalistov v SSSR 1953–1985 [The Russian Party: Movements of Russian Nationalists in the USSR 1953–1985] (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozvenie, 2003) –49.Google Scholar
Mitrokhin, Vasiliy, The KGB in Afghanistan, Working Paper no. 40 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, 2002).Google Scholar
Nezhinskii, L. N. (ed.), Sovetskaia vneshniaia politika v godi “kholodnoi voini” (1945–1985): novoe prochtenie [Soviet Foreign Policy during the Cold War (1945–1985): A New Reading] (Novosibirsk: Sibirskii khronograf, 1995);Google Scholar
Njølstad, Olav, Peacekeeper and Trouble Maker: The Containment Policy of Jimmy Carter, 1977–1978 (Oslo: Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies, 1995).Google Scholar
Pearson, David E., KAL-007: The Cover-up (New York: Summit Books, 1987).Google Scholar
Pikhoia, Sovetskiisoiuz: istoriia vlasti [The Soviet Union: A History of Power] (Novosibirsk: Sibirskii Khronograf, 2000) –41;Google Scholar
Pipes, Richard, Vixi: Memoirs of a Non-Belonger (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003) –29.Google Scholar
Resort, Harbor Beach, Fort Lauderdale, FL., March 23–26, 1995 transcript edited by Welch, David and Savranskaya, Svetlana (Providence, RI: Center for Foreign Policy Development, Brown University, 1995) (hereafter Fort Lauderdale).Google Scholar
Rothschild, Joseph and Wingfield, Nancy M., Return to Diversity: A Political History of East Central Europe since World War II, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).Google Scholar
Shubin, Aleksandr, Istoki Perestroiki 1978–1984 [The Origins of Perestroika, 1978–1984], 2 vols., (Moscow: n.p., 1997), vol. I ;Google Scholar
Smith, Hedrick, The Russians, rev. ed. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1984).Google Scholar
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, “Ugodilo zernyshko promezh dvukh zhernovov: ocherki izgnania. Chast pervaia (1974–1978)” [The Little Grain Managed to Fall between Two Millstones: Sketches of Exile. Part I (1974–1978)], Novyi Mir [New World], 9 (1998).Google Scholar
Suri, Jeremi, “The Promise and Failure of ‘Developed Socialism:’ The Soviet ‘Thaw’ and the Crucible of the Prague Spring, 1964–1972,” Contemporary European History, 15, 2 (2006) –58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vance, Cyrus in Salt II and the Growth of Mistrust: Musgrove Plantation, St. Simons Island, Georgia, May 6–9, 1994, ed. by Welch, David with Savranskaya, Svetlana (Providence, RI: Center for Foreign Policy Development, Brown University, 1994);Google Scholar
Voronkov, Vladimir I., “Sobitiia 1980–1981 v Polshe: vzgliad so Staroi ploshchadi” [Meetings in Poland 1980–1981: A View from Staraia Ploshchad] Voprosi Istorii, 10 (1995).Google Scholar
Westad, Odd Arne (ed.), The Fall of Détente: Soviet–American Relations during the Carter Years (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1997).Google Scholar
Westad, Odd Arne, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zaloga, Steven J., The Kremlin’s Nuclear Sword: The Rise and Fall of Russia’s Strategic Nuclear Forces, 1945–2000 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002), 176.Google Scholar
Zubok, Vladislav and Pleshakov, Constantin, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996)Google Scholar
Zubok, Vladislav, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×