Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 The Cold War and the intellectual history of the late twentieth century
- 2 The world economy and the Cold War, 1970–1990
- 3 The rise and fall of Eurocommunism
- 4 The Cold War and Jimmy Carter
- 5 Soviet foreign policy from détente to Gorbachev, 1975–1985
- 6 Islamism, the Iranian revolution, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
- 7 The collapse of superpower détente, 1975–1980
- 8 Japan and the Cold War, 1960–1991
- 9 China and the Cold War after Mao
- 10 The Cold War in Central America, 1975–1991
- 11 The Cold War and southern Africa, 1976–1990
- 12 The Gorbachev revolution and the end of the Cold War
- 13 US foreign policy under Reagan and Bush
- 14 Western Europe and the end of the Cold War, 1979–1989
- 15 The East European revolutions of 1989
- 16 The unification of Germany, 1985–1991
- 17 The collapse of the Soviet Union, 1990–1991
- 18 Science, technology, and the Cold War
- 19 Transnational organizations and the Cold War
- 20 The biosphere and the Cold War
- 21 The Cold War and human rights
- 22 The Cold War in the longue durée: global migration, public health, and population control
- 23 Consumer capitalism and the end of the Cold War
- 24 An ‘incredibly swift transition’: reflections on the end of the Cold War
- 25 The restructuring of the international system after the Cold War
- Bibliographical essay
- Index
- References
5 - Soviet foreign policy from détente to Gorbachev, 1975–1985
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2010
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 The Cold War and the intellectual history of the late twentieth century
- 2 The world economy and the Cold War, 1970–1990
- 3 The rise and fall of Eurocommunism
- 4 The Cold War and Jimmy Carter
- 5 Soviet foreign policy from détente to Gorbachev, 1975–1985
- 6 Islamism, the Iranian revolution, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
- 7 The collapse of superpower détente, 1975–1980
- 8 Japan and the Cold War, 1960–1991
- 9 China and the Cold War after Mao
- 10 The Cold War in Central America, 1975–1991
- 11 The Cold War and southern Africa, 1976–1990
- 12 The Gorbachev revolution and the end of the Cold War
- 13 US foreign policy under Reagan and Bush
- 14 Western Europe and the end of the Cold War, 1979–1989
- 15 The East European revolutions of 1989
- 16 The unification of Germany, 1985–1991
- 17 The collapse of the Soviet Union, 1990–1991
- 18 Science, technology, and the Cold War
- 19 Transnational organizations and the Cold War
- 20 The biosphere and the Cold War
- 21 The Cold War and human rights
- 22 The Cold War in the longue durée: global migration, public health, and population control
- 23 Consumer capitalism and the end of the Cold War
- 24 An ‘incredibly swift transition’: reflections on the end of the Cold War
- 25 The restructuring of the international system after the Cold War
- Bibliographical essay
- Index
- References
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 - 111Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
References
and , 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
, Ot Kollontai do Gorbacheva: vospominaniia [From Kollontai to Gorbachev: Memories] (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1994),Google Scholar
and , The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990) –89.Google Scholar
, Reinventing Russia: Russian Nationalism and the Soviet State, 1953–1991 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 127–29;Google Scholar
, Tridtsat let na Staroi ploshchadi [Thirty Years on Staraia Ploshchad] (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1998).Google Scholar
, “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 and (eds.), Ekonomicheskaia istoriia: ezhegodnik [Economic History: A Yearbook] (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2003).Google Scholar
, Sugubo doveritelno: posol v Vashingtone pri shesti prezidentakh SShA (1962–1986 gg.) (Moscow: Avtor, 1997).Google Scholar
in The Intervention in Afghanistan and the Fall of Détente: Transcript of the 1995 Nobel Symposium, Lysebu, September 17–20, 1995, ed. by and (Oslo: Det Norske Nobelinstitutt, 1996) (hereafter Lysebu 2) ;Google Scholar
, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents (New York: Times Books, 1995).Google Scholar
, Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Sources, Methods, and Competing Perspectives on the End of the Cold War,” Diplomatic History, 23, 2 (Spring 1997).Google Scholar
, A Cold War Conundrum: The 1983 Soviet War Scare (Langley, VA: Center for the Study of Intelligence, September 1997).Google Scholar
, “Perestroika glazami moskovskogo gumanitariia” [Perestroika through the Eyes of a Moscow Humanitarian] in (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
, Gibel imperii: uroki dlia sovremennoi Rossii [Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia] (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2006).Google Scholar
., Détente and Confrontation: American–Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution press, 1994) –65.Google Scholar
and (eds.), Soviet–American Relations: The Détente Years, 1969–1972 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2007).Google Scholar
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 , ed. by (Oslo: Norwegian Nobel Institute, 1995).Google Scholar
, Kholodnaia voina: svidetelstro ee uchastnika [The Cold War: An Account from a Participant] (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1994) –72;Google Scholar
, 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
, “The Little Deal: Brezhnev’s Contribution to Acquisitive Socialism,” Slavic Review, 4 (Winter 1985);Google Scholar
, 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
, The KGB in Afghanistan, Working Paper no. 40 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, 2002).Google Scholar
(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
, Peacekeeper and Trouble Maker: The Containment Policy of Jimmy Carter, 1977–1978 (Oslo: Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies, 1995).Google Scholar
soiuz: istoriia vlasti [The Soviet Union: A History of Power] (Novosibirsk: Sibirskii Khronograf, 2000) –41;Google Scholar
, Fort Lauderdale, FL., March 23–26, 1995 transcript edited by and (Providence, RI: Center for Foreign Policy Development, Brown University, 1995) (hereafter Fort Lauderdale).Google Scholar
and , Return to Diversity: A Political History of East Central Europe since World War II, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).Google Scholar
, Istoki Perestroiki 1978–1984 [The Origins of Perestroika, 1978–1984], 2 vols., (Moscow: n.p., 1997), vol. I ;Google Scholar
, “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
, “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
in Salt II and the Growth of Mistrust: Musgrove Plantation, St. Simons Island, Georgia, May 6–9, 1994, ed. by with (Providence, RI: Center for Foreign Policy Development, Brown University, 1994);Google Scholar
, “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
(ed.), The Fall of Détente: Soviet–American Relations during the Carter Years (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1997).Google Scholar
, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, 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
, 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
- 1
- Cited by