The Soviet Union and détente of the 1970sVladislav Zubok is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Temple University, Philadelphia. He was born and educated in Russia and received his Ph. D. at the Institute for the US and Canada Studies, Academy of Science, Moscow. His recent book, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachevpublished last fall by the University of North Carolina Press. Another book, Zhivago's Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia(Harvard University Press) is forthcoming in the Spring of 2009.

Vladislav Zubok is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Temple University, Philadelphia. He was born and educated in Russia and received his Ph. D. at the Institute for the US and Canada Studies, Academy of Science, Moscow. His recent book, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachevpublished last fall by the University of North Carolina Press. Another book, Zhivago's Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia(Harvard University Press) is forthcoming in the Spring of 2009.

Abstract

Détente of the 1970s was a vital stage in global history of the 20th century, when the rise of Soviet communism stopped and the collapse of the Soviet bloc began. Soviet behaviour during détente was not a consistent policy, but rather an extension of Soviet conservative ideological regime under Leonid Brezhnev. Despite some windfall gains, the Soviet Union failed to capitalize on détente as it expected. Soviet overextension in the Third World and growing dependence of Soviet semi-autarchic economy on global trends prepared the ground for Soviet collapse one decade later.

Notes

Vladislav Zubok is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Temple University, Philadelphia. He was born and educated in Russia and received his Ph. D. at the Institute for the US and Canada Studies, Academy of Science, Moscow. His recent book, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachevpublished last fall by the University of North Carolina Press. Another book, Zhivago's Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia(Harvard University Press) is forthcoming in the Spring of 2009.

 [1] See Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 1133–65; , For the Soul of Mankind, part IV.

 [2] Pipes, Vixi, 125–129; Malia, The Soviet Tragedy, 378–9.

 [3] Evans et al. , Double-Edged Diplomacy; Hopf, Social Construction of International Politics.

 [4] Alexandrov-Agentov, Ot Kollontai do Gorbacheva, 93, 94.

 [5] Dobrynin, In Confidence, 640; for more details see Zubok, A Failed Empire, chapter 4; , For the Soul of Mankind, chapters 2 and 3.

 [6] Sutton, Western Technologies and Soviet Economic Development, 139.

 [7] Taubman, Khrushchev, 508–511; English, Russia and the Idea of the West, 72–3, 122; Arbatov, The System, 85–86, and Arbatov, Zatianuvsheesia vyzdorovlenie (1953–1985 gg.), 45; Burlatskii, Vozhdi i sovetniki, 257; Bovin, XX vek kak zhizn, 144–7; Tvardovsky, ‘Rabochie tetradi 60-kh godov’, 165.

 [8] Georgi Kornienko, then head of the US desk in the Foreign Ministry remarked on the harmful spillover of Vietnam war into Soviet–American relations in his Kholodnaia voina, 123.

 [9] Mikoyan, Tak Bylo, 619–20.

[10] Bystrova, ‘Voienno-promyshlennyi kompleks SSSR’, 246; Bystrova, Sovetskii voienno-promyshlennyi kompleks, 258–61.

[11] Information from KGB general Nikolai Leonov to the author at the conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis, Havana, 12 October 2002; On Brezhnev's criticism of Khrushchev see the Diary of Anatoly Chernyaev, 1 January 1976, on file at the National Security Archive.

[12] Bovin, XX vek kak zhizn, 256–7.

[13] Victor Sukhodrev at the Conference ‘Salt II and the Growth of Mistrust’, Organized by the Carter-Brezhnev Project, Musgrove Plantation, St. Simons Island, Georgia, 6–9 May 1994. A version of Brezhnev's sermon is taken from Memorandum of conversation of W. Averell Harriman with Brezhnev, 4 June 1974, The Harriman Collection, Library of Congress, the Manuscript division.

[14] Bovin, XX vek kak zhizn, 194–5.

[15] Kvitsinsky, Vremia i sluchai, 278.

[16] On the details of the US–Soviet back-channel see the excellent new source: Keefer et al., (eds) Soviet–American Relations. The Détente Years, 1969–1972; the insight on (albeit biased and exaggerated) of Andropov's role is in Kevorkov, Tainii Kanal.

[17] Bahr, Zu meiner Zeit, 420; more on the Brezhnev factor in Zubok, A Failed Empire, chapt. 7.

[18] Kornienko, ‘US–Soviet Relations’, 78.

[19] Westad, Global Cold War, 206.

[20] On the concept of the revolutionary-imperial paradigm see Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War.

[21] Furman, ‘Perestroika glazami moskovskogo gumanitariia’, 316–19.

[22] Brudny, Op. Cit., 59–60, 127–112; Mitrokin, Russkaia partiia, 548–9.

[23] Brezhnev at a CPSU Plenum, 22 November 1971, RGANI, fond. 2, opis 3; Troyanovsky, Cherez godi i rassotiiania, 292; also Alexandrov-Agentov, Ot Kollontai do Gorbacheva.

[24] Westad, The Global Cold War, esp. 206.

[25] Nezhinsky, Sovetskaia vneshniaia politika, 408; Bystrova, Sovetskii voienno-promyshlennyi kompleks, 395.

[26] Westad, The Global Cold War, chapt. 8, esp. 299.

[27] The diary of Chernyaev, 6 April 1972, on file at the National Security Archive.

[28] See excellent analysis of the growing Soviet financial and trade vulnerability is in Gaidar, Gibel Imperii.

[29] Hanson, Rise and Fall, 140–41, 163; Baibakov, interview.

[30] Suri, ‘Promise and Failure’.

[31] Smith, The Russians, 30–43.

[32] On the “little deal” see Millar, ‘The Little Deal’; Derluguian, ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, 47–8.

[33] The research on Soviet behavior abroad in those years still has to be done. See, for instance, Vail, Stikhi pro menia, 30, 37–8; Berezin, Piki-Kozyri, 244–61.

[34] Rothschild and Wingfield, Return to Diversity, 73.

[35] English, Russia and the Idea of the West, chapter 4; Yurchak, ‘Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More’.

[36] Dobrynin, Sugubo doveritelno, 333; the author's conversation with Dobrynin, Oslo, Norway, 20 September 1995.

[37] Alexeyeva and Goldberg, The Thaw Generation, 288–9; RGANI, f. 89, op. 25, doc. 44.

[38] Neuburg, The Hero's Children; Mazover, Dark Continent, 280–82.