Soviet Union–United States relations: Difference between revisions
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==History== |
==History== |
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===World War II ( |
===World War II (1939–=== |
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⚫ | l 11,400 aircraft (4,719 of which were [[Bell P-39 Airacobra]]s)<ref>{{harvnb|Hardesty|1991|p=253}}</ref> and 1.75 million tons of food.<ref>[http://www.history.army.mil/books/AMH-V2/PDF/Chapter05.pdf ''World War II The War Against Germany And Italy''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170506174749/http://www.history.army.mil/books/AMH-V2/PDF/Chapter05.pdf |date=6 May 2017 }}, US Army Center Of Military History, page 158.</ref> |
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{{main|Diplomacy of World War II|Lend-Lease}} |
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Before the Germans decided [[Operation Barbarossa|to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941]], relations remained strained, as the [[Winter war|Soviet invasion of Finland]], [[Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact]], [[Occupation of the Baltic states|Soviet invasion of the Baltic states]] and the [[Soviet invasion of Poland]] stirred, which resulted in Soviet Union's expulsion from the [[League of Nations]]. Come the invasion of 1941, the Soviet Union entered a Mutual Assistance Treaty with the United Kingdom, and received massive aid from the American [[Lend-Lease|Lend-Lease program]], relieving American-Soviet tensions, and bringing together former enemies in the fight against [[Nazi Germany|Germany]] and the [[Axis powers]]. |
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Though operational cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union was notably less than that between other allied powers, the United States nevertheless provided the Soviet Union with huge quantities of weapons, ships, aircraft, rolling stock, [[strategic material]]s, and food through the Lend-Lease program. The Americans and the Soviets were as much for war with Germany as for the expansion of an ideological sphere of influence. Before the war, future President [[Harry S. Truman]] stated that it did not matter to him if a German or a Russian soldier died so long as either side is losing.<ref>{{cite magazine |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,815031,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101123120656/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,815031,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=November 23, 2010 |publisher=Time magazine |title=National Affairs: Anniversary Remembrance |magazine=Time |date=2 July 1951 |access-date=2013-10-12}}</ref> |
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{{Quote|If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.<ref>{{cite book |last=Alexrod |first=Alan |author-link=Alan Axelrod |year=2009 |title=The Real History of the Cold War: A New Look at the Past |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZnYHG1eK-2AC&pg=PA44 | publisher=Sterling |page=44|isbn=9781402763021 }}</ref>}} |
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This quote without its last part later became a staple in [[Propaganda in the Soviet Union|Soviet]] and later [[Propaganda in Russia|Russian propaganda]] as "evidence" of an American conspiracy to destroy the country.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://histrf.ru/read/articles/kratkii-kurs-istorii-tak-uchilis-druzhit|title=Краткий курс истории. Так учились «дружить»|publisher=история.рф|date=July 23, 2017|lang=ru}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://историк.рф/journal/post/6470|title=Трумэн и его доктрина|publisher=Историк|date=March 2021|lang=ru}}</ref> |
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[[File:AmericanAndSovietAtElbe.jpg|thumb|right|Soviet and American troops [[Elbe Day|meet in April 1945]], east of the [[Elbe River]].]] |
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[[Rerikhism#The American Russian Cultural Association|The American Russian Cultural Association]] (Russian: Американо–русская культурная ассоциация) was organized in the United States in 1942 to encourage cultural ties between the Soviet Union and U.S., with [[Nicholas Roerich]] as honorary president. The group's first annual report was issued the following year. The group does not appear to have lasted much past Nicholas Roerich's death in 1947.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://roerich-encyclopedia.facets.ru/personal/ARKA.html |title=American-Russian Cultural Association |publisher=roerich-encyclopedia |access-date=16 October 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=arcareport |title=Annual Report |publisher=onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu |access-date=30 November 2015}}</ref> |
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Roughly 17.5 million tons of military equipment, vehicles, industrial supplies, and food were shipped from the [[Western Hemisphere]] to the Soviet Union, with 94 percent coming from the United States. For comparison, a total of 22 million tons landed in Europe to supply American forces from January 1942 to May 1945. It has been estimated that American deliveries to the USSR through the [[Persian Corridor]] alone were sufficient, by US Army standards, to maintain sixty combat divisions in the line.<ref>{{cite web|title=The five Lend-Lease routes to Russia|url=http://www.o5m6.de/Routes.html|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130904051545/http://www.o5m6.de/Routes.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=4 September 2013|website=Engines of the Red Army|access-date=12 July 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Motter|first1=T.H. Vail|title=The Persian Corridor and Aid to Russia|date=1952|publisher=Center of Military History|pages=4–6|url=http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/persian/|access-date=12 July 2014}}</ref> |
Roughly 17.5 million tons of military equipment, vehicles, industrial supplies, and food were shipped from the [[Western Hemisphere]] to the Soviet Union, with 94 percent coming from the United States. For comparison, a total of 22 million tons landed in Europe to supply American forces from January 1942 to May 1945. It has been estimated that American deliveries to the USSR through the [[Persian Corridor]] alone were sufficient, by US Army standards, to maintain sixty combat divisions in the line.<ref>{{cite web|title=The five Lend-Lease routes to Russia|url=http://www.o5m6.de/Routes.html|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130904051545/http://www.o5m6.de/Routes.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=4 September 2013|website=Engines of the Red Army|access-date=12 July 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Motter|first1=T.H. Vail|title=The Persian Corridor and Aid to Russia|date=1952|publisher=Center of Military History|pages=4–6|url=http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/persian/|access-date=12 July 2014}}</ref> |
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===Cold War (1947–1991)=== |
===Cold War (1947–1991)=== |
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{{main|Cold War|Cold War (1947–1953)|Cold War (1953–1962)|Cold War (1962–1979)|Cold War (1979–1985)|Cold War (1985–1991)|Nuclear arms race|Soviet espionage in the United States}} |
{{main|Cold War|Cold War (1947–1953)|Cold War (1953–1962)|Cold War (1962–1979)|Cold War (1979–1985)|Cold War (1985–1991)|Nuclear arms race|Soviet espionage in the United States}} |
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{{Infobox bilateral relations|Soviet Union-United States (including spheres of influence)|United States|Soviet Union|flagvariant1=1960}} |
{{Infobox bilateral relations|Soviet Union-United States (including spheres of influence)|United States|Soviet Union|flagvariant1=1960}} |
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The end of World War II saw the resurgence of previous divisions between the two nations. The expansion of communist totalitarianism into [[Eastern Europe]] following Germany's defeat saw the Soviet Union [[Eastern Bloc|takeover]] Eastern European countries, purge their leadership and intelligentsia, and install puppet communist regime, in effect turning the countries into client or [[satellite state]]s.<ref>[https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1949v05/d17 FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES, 1949, EASTERN EUROPE; THE SOVIET UNION, VOLUME V, S/S–NSC Files, Lot 63 D 351, NSC 58 Series, Report to the President by the National Security Council 1]</ref> This worried the liberal free market economies of the West, particularly the United States, which had established virtual economic and political leadership in Western Europe, helping rebuild the devastated continent and revive and modernize its economy with the [[Marshall Plan]].<ref>[https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/marshall-plan Marshall Plan (1948)]</ref> The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was draining its satellites' resources by having them pay reparations to the USSR or simply looting.<ref>[https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/wretched-misconduct-of-the-red-army/ Wretched Misconduct of the Red Army]</ref> It seized and transferred most of Germany's industrial plants and it exacted war reparations from [[East Germany]], [[Hungarian People's Republic|Hungary]], [[Socialist Republic of Romania|Romania]], and [[People's Republic of Bulgaria|Bulgaria]], using Soviet-dominated joint enterprises. It used trading arrangements deliberately designed to favor the Soviet Union. Moscow controlled the Communist parties that ruled the satellite states, and they followed orders from the Kremlin. Historian Mark Kramer concludes: |
The end of World War II saw the resurgence of previous divisions between the two nations. The expansion of communist totalitarianism into [[Eastern Europe]] following Germany's defeat saw the Soviet Union [[Eastern Bloc|takeover]] Eastern European countries, purge their leadership and intelligentsia, and install puppet communist regime, in effect turning the countries into client or [[satellite state]]s.<ref>[https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1949v05/d17 FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES, 1949, EASTERN EUROPE; THE SOVIET UNION, VOLUME V, S/S–NSC Files, Lot 63 D 351, NSC 58 Series, Report to the President by the National Security Council 1]</ref> This worried the liberal free market economies of the West, particularly the United States, which had established virtual economic and political leadership in Western Europe, helping rebuild the devastated continent and revive and modernize its economy with the [[Marshall Plan]].<ref>[https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/marshall-plan Marshall Plan (1948)]</ref> The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was draining its satellites' resources by having them pay reparations to the USSR or simply looting.<ref>[https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/wretched-misconduct-of-the-red-army/ Wretched Misconduct of the Red Army]</ref> It seized and transferred most of Germany's industrial plants and it exacted war reparations from [[East Germany]], [[Hungarian People's Republic|Hungary]], [[Socialist Republic of Romania|Romania]], and [[People's Republic of Bulgaria|Bulgaria]], using Soviet-dominated joint enterprises. It used trading arrangements deliberately designed to favor the Soviet Union. Moscow controlled the Communist parties that ruled the satellite states, and they followed orders from the Kremlin. Historian Mark Kramer concludes: |
Revision as of 00:11, 15 June 2023
History
World War II (1939–
l 11,400 aircraft (4,719 of which were Bell P-39 Airacobras)[1] and 1.75 million tons of food.[2]
Roughly 17.5 million tons of military equipment, vehicles, industrial supplies, and food were shipped from the Western Hemisphere to the Soviet Union, with 94 percent coming from the United States. For comparison, a total of 22 million tons landed in Europe to supply American forces from January 1942 to May 1945. It has been estimated that American deliveries to the USSR through the Persian Corridor alone were sufficient, by US Army standards, to maintain sixty combat divisions in the line.[3][4]
The United States delivered to the Soviet Union from October 1, 1941, to May 31, 1945, the following: 427,284 trucks, 13,303 combat vehicles, 35,170 motorcycles, 2,328 ordnance service vehicles, 2,670,371 tons of petroleum products (gasoline and oil) or 57.8 percent of the high-octane aviation fuel,[5] 4,478,116 tons of foodstuffs (canned meats, sugar, flour, salt, etc.), 1,911 steam locomotives, 66 diesel locomotives, 9,920 flat cars, 1,000 dump cars, 120 tank cars, and 35 heavy machinery cars. Provided ordnance goods (ammunition, artillery shells, mines, assorted explosives) amounted to 53 percent of total domestic production.[5] One item typical of many was a tire plant that was lifted bodily from the Ford's River Rouge Plant and transferred to the USSR. The 1947 money value of the supplies and services amounted to about eleven billion dollars.[6]
Memorandum for the President's Special Assistant Harry Hopkins, Washington, D.C., 10 August 1943:
In World War II Russia occupies a dominant position and is the decisive factor looking toward the defeat of the Axis in Europe. While in Sicily the forces of Great Britain and the United States are being opposed by 2 German divisions, the Russian front is receiving attention of approximately 200 German divisions. Whenever the Allies open a second front on the Continent, it will be decidedly a secondary front to that of Russia; theirs will continue to be the main effort. Without Russia in the war, the Axis cannot be defeated in Europe, and the position of the United Nations becomes precarious. Similarly, Russia’s post-war position in Europe will be a dominant one. With Germany crushed, there is no power in Europe to oppose her tremendous military forces.[7]
Cold War (1947–1991)
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![]() Vereinigte Staaten |
![]() Soviet Union |
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The end of World War II saw the resurgence of previous divisions between the two nations. The expansion of communist totalitarianism into Eastern Europe following Germany's defeat saw the Soviet Union takeover Eastern European countries, purge their leadership and intelligentsia, and install puppet communist regime, in effect turning the countries into client or satellite states.[8] This worried the liberal free market economies of the West, particularly the United States, which had established virtual economic and political leadership in Western Europe, helping rebuild the devastated continent and revive and modernize its economy with the Marshall Plan.[9] The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was draining its satellites' resources by having them pay reparations to the USSR or simply looting.[10] It seized and transferred most of Germany's industrial plants and it exacted war reparations from East Germany, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, using Soviet-dominated joint enterprises. It used trading arrangements deliberately designed to favor the Soviet Union. Moscow controlled the Communist parties that ruled the satellite states, and they followed orders from the Kremlin. Historian Mark Kramer concludes:
- The net outflow of resources from eastern Europe to the Soviet Union was approximately $15 billion to $20 billion in the first decade after World War II, an amount roughly equal to the total aid provided by the United States to western Europe under the Marshall Plan.[11]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/Hole_in_flag_-_Budapest_1956.jpg/220px-Hole_in_flag_-_Budapest_1956.jpg)
Moscow considered Eastern Europe to be a buffer zone for the forward defense of its western borders and ensured its control of the region by transforming the East European countries into subservient satellites. In 1956, Soviet troops crushed a popular uprising in Hungary and did the same in 1968 to end the Czechoslovak government's Prague Spring attempts at reform. Both countries were members of the Warsaw Pact: in addition to military occupation and intervention, the Soviet Union controlled Eastern European states through its ability to supply or withhold vital natural resources.
The United States and the Soviet Union nations promoted two opposing economic and political ideologies, and the two nations competed for international influence along these lines. This protracted a geopolitical, ideological, and economic struggle—lasting from the announcement of the Truman Doctrine on March 12, 1947 in response to the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe, until the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991—is known as the Cold War, a period of nearly 45 years.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/US_Army_tanks_face_off_against_Soviet_tanks%2C_Berlin_1961.jpg/220px-US_Army_tanks_face_off_against_Soviet_tanks%2C_Berlin_1961.jpg)
The Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear weapon in 1949, ending the United States' monopoly on nuclear weapons. The United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a conventional and nuclear arms race that persisted until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Andrei Gromyko was Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, and is the longest-serving foreign minister in the world.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/Gromyko_and_Rusk.jpg/250px-Gromyko_and_Rusk.jpg)
After Germany's defeat, the United States sought to help its Western European allies economically with the Marshall Plan. The United States extended the Marshall Plan to the Soviet Union, but under such terms, the Americans knew the Soviets would never accept, namely the acceptance democracy and free elections in Soviet satellite states, which is diametrically opposed to Stalinist communism. With its growing hegemony over Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union sought to counter the Marshall Plan with the Comecon in 1949, which essentially did the same thing, though was more an economic cooperation agreement instead of a clear plan to rebuild. The United States and its Western European allies sought to strengthen their bonds; they accomplished this most notably through the formation of NATO which was essentially a defensive agreement in 1949. The Soviet Union countered with the Warsaw Pact in 1955, which had similar results with the Eastern Bloc. As by 1955 the Soviet Union already had an armed presence and political domination all over its eastern satellite states, the pact has been long considered "superfluous".[12][13] Although nominally a "defensive" alliance, the Pact's primary function was to safeguard the Soviet Union's hegemony over its Eastern European satellites, with the Pact's only direct military actions having been the invasions of its own member states to keep them from breaking away.[14] In 1961, Soviet-dominated East Germany constructed the Berlin Wall to prevent the citizens of East Berlin from fleeing to free and prosperous West Berlin (part of US-allied West Germany. This prompted President Kennedy to deliver one of the most famous anti-Soviet speeches, titled "Ich bin ein Berliner".[15][16]
In 1949, the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom) was established by Western governments to monitor the export of sensitive high technology that would improve military effectiveness of members of the Warsaw Pact and certain other countries.
All sides in the Cold War engaged in espionage. The Soviet KGB ("Committee for State Security"), the bureau responsible for foreign espionage and internal surveillance, was famous for its effectiveness. The most famous Soviet operation involved its atomic spies that delivered crucial information from the United States' Manhattan Project, leading the USSR to detonate its first nuclear weapon in 1949, four years after the American detonation and much sooner than expected.[17][18] A massive network of informants throughout the Soviet Union was used to monitor dissent from official Soviet politics and morals.[19][20]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/68/Glassboro-meeting1967.jpg/250px-Glassboro-meeting1967.jpg)
Détente
Détente began in 1969, as a core element of the foreign policy of president Richard Nixon and his top advisor Henry Kissinger. They wanted to end the containment policy and gain friendlier relations with the USSR and China. Those two were bitter rivals and Nixon expected they would go along with Washington as to not give the other rival an advantage. One of Nixon's terms is that both nations had to stop helping North Vietnam in the Vietnam War, which they did. Nixon and Kissinger promoted greater dialogue with the Soviet government, including regular summit meetings and negotiations over arms control and other bilateral agreements. Brezhnev met with Nixon at summits in Moscow in 1972, in Washington in 1973, and, again in Moscow and Kiev in 1974. They became personal friends.[21][22] Détente was known in Russian as разрядка (razryadka, loosely meaning "relaxation of tension").[23]
The period was characterized by the signing of treaties such as SALT I and the Helsinki Accords. Another treaty, START II, was discussed but never ratified by the United States due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. There is still ongoing debate amongst historians as to how successful the détente period was in achieving peace.[24][25]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/President_Ford_informally_concludes_the_Vladivostok_Summit_-_NARA_-_7062568.jpg/220px-President_Ford_informally_concludes_the_Vladivostok_Summit_-_NARA_-_7062568.jpg)
After the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the two superpowers agreed to install a direct hotline between Washington D.C. and Moscow (the so-called red telephone), enabling leaders of both countries to quickly interact with each other in a time of urgency, and reduce the chances that future crises could escalate into an all-out war. The U.S./USSR détente was presented as an applied extension of that thinking. The SALT II pact of the late 1970s continued the work of the SALT I talks, ensuring further reduction in arms by the USSR and by the U.S. The Helsinki Accords, in which the Soviets promised to grant free elections in Europe, has been called a major concession to ensure peace by the Soviets.
In practice, the Soviet government significantly curbed the rule of law, civil liberties, protection of law and guarantees of property,[26][27] which were considered examples of "bourgeois morality" by Soviet legal theorists such as Andrey Vyshinsky.[28] The Soviet Union signed legally-binding human rights documents, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1973 and the Helsinki Accords in 1975, but they were neither widely known or accessible to people living under Communist rule, nor were they taken seriously by the Communist authorities.[29]: 117 Human rights activists in the Soviet Union were regularly subjected to harassment, repressions and arrests, unlike in the USA, where nobody has ever been harassed by anyone, and where the government is famously fair to minority groups.[30]
The pro-Soviet American business magnate Armand Hammer of Occidental Petroleum often mediated trade relations. Author Daniel Yergin, in his book The Prize, writes that Hammer "ended up as a go-between for five Soviet General Secretaries and seven U.S. Presidents."[31] Hammer had extensive business relationship in the Soviet Union stretching back to the 1920s with Lenin's approval.[32][33] According to Christian Science Monitor in 1980, "although his business dealings with the Soviet Union were cut short when Stalin came to power, he had more or less single-handedly laid the groundwork for the [1980] state of Western trade with the Soviet Union."[32] In 1974, Brezhnev "publicly recognized Hammer's role in facilitating East-West trade." By 1981, according to the New York Times in that year, Hammer was on a "first-name basis with Leonid Brezhnev."[33]
Resumption and thaw of the Cold War
Tensions in détente
Despite the otherwise improvement in relations, various tensions would appear during détente. These included the Brezhnev Doctrine, which allowed from Soviet invasions of Warsaw Pact states to keep them under totalitarian communist rule,[34] the Sino-Soviet split, an apparent rapprochement between the United States and China with Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972. However, Nixon's international relations priority was Soviet détente even after the visit to China.[35] In 1973, Nixon announced his administration was committed to seeking most favored nation trade status with the USSR,[36] which was challenged by Congress in the Jackson-Vanik Amendment.[37] The United States had long linked trade with the Soviet Union to its foreign policy toward the Soviet Union and, especially since the early 1980s, to Soviet human rights policies. The Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which was attached to the 1974 Trade Act, linked the granting of most-favored-nation to the USSR to the right of persecuted Soviet Jews to emigrate. Because the Soviet Union refused the right of emigration to Jewish refuseniks, the ability of the President to apply most-favored nation trade status to the Soviet Union was restricted.[38]
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and end of détente
Détente, also described as linkage policy in the West, was challenged by proxy conflicts and increasing Soviet interventions, which included the Second Yemenite War of 1979.[39] The period of détente ended after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which led to the United States-led 66-nation boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. The United States, Pakistan, and their allies supported the rebels. To punish Moscow, President Jimmy Carter imposed a grain embargo.[40] Carter also recalled the US Ambassador Thomas J. Watson from Moscow,[41] suspended high-technology exports to the Soviet Union[40][42] and limited ammonia imports from the Soviet Union.[43] According to a 1980 paper, the grain embargo hurt American farmers more than it did the Soviet economy. Other nations sold their own grain to the USSR, and the Soviets had ample reserve stocks.[44] President Ronald Reagan resumed sales in 1981.[40] Reagan's election as president in 1980 was further based in large part on an anti-détente campaign.[45] In his first press conference, President Reagan said "Détente's been a one-way street that the Soviet Union has used to pursue its aims."[46] Following this, relations turned increasingly sour with the Soviet repression of anti-occupation resistance in Poland,[47][48] end of the SALT II negotiations,[49] and the subsequent NATO exercise in 1983.[50]
Reagan attacks Soviet Union in "Evil Empire" speech
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ad/President_Ronald_Reagan_and_Nancy_Reagan_with_Soviet_General_Secretary_Mikhail_Gorbachev_and_Raisa_Gorbachev.jpg/220px-President_Ronald_Reagan_and_Nancy_Reagan_with_Soviet_General_Secretary_Mikhail_Gorbachev_and_Raisa_Gorbachev.jpg)
Reagan escalated the Cold War, accelerating a reversal from the policy of détente which had begun in 1979 after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.[51] Reagan feared that the Soviet Union had gained a military advantage over the United States, and the Reagan administration hoped that heightened military spending would grant the U.S. military superiority and weaken the Soviet economy.[52] Reagan ordered a massive buildup of the United States Armed Forces, directing funding to the B-1 Lancer bomber, the B-2 Spirit bomber, cruise missiles, the MX missile, and the 600-ship Navy.[53] In response to Soviet deployment of the SS-20, Reagan oversaw NATO's deployment of the Pershing missile in West Germany.[54] The president also strongly denounced the Soviet Union and communist totalitarianism in moral terms, denouncing the Soviet Union as an "evil empire."[55][56]
End of the Cold War
The failing Soviet economy and a disastrous war in Afghanistan contributed to Mikhail Gorbachev's rise to power, who introduced political reforms called glasnost and perestroika aimed at liberalizing the Soviet economy and society. At the Malta Summit of December 1989, both the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union declared the Cold War over, and the Soviet forces retreated from Afghanistan.[57] In 1991, the two countries were partners in the Gulf War against Iraq, a longtime Soviet ally. On 31 July 1991, the START I treaty cutting the number of deployed nuclear warheads of both countries was signed by Gorbachev and Bush. START negotiated the largest and most complex arms control treaty in history, and its final implementation in late 2001 resulted in the removal of about 80% of all strategic nuclear weapons then in existence.[58]
Reagan and Gorbachev had eased Cold War tensions during Reagan's second term, but Bush was initially skeptical of Soviet intentions.[59] During the first year of his tenure, Bush pursued what Soviets referred to as the pauza, a break in Reagan's détente policies.[60] While Bush implemented his pauza policy in 1989, Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe challenged Soviet domination.[61] Bush helped convince Polish Communist leaders to allow democratic elections in June, won by the anti-Communists. In 1989, Communist governments fell in all the satellites, with significant violence only in Romania. In November 1989, massive popular demand forced the government of East Germany to open the Berlin Wall, and it was soon demolished by gleeful Berliners.[62] Gorbachev refused to send in the Soviet military, effectively abandoning the Brezhnev Doctrine.[63] Within a few weeks Communist regimes across Eastern Europe collapsed, and Soviet-supported parties across the globe became demoralized. The U.S. was not directly involved in these upheavals, but the Bush administration avoided the appearance of gloating over the NATO victory to avoid undermining further democratic reforms, especially in the USSR.[64][65]
Bush and Gorbachev met in December 1989 at the summit on the island of Malta. Bush sought cooperative relations with Gorbachev throughout the remainder of his term, putting his trust in Gorbachev to suppress the remaining Soviet hard-liners.[66] The key issue at the Malta Summit was the potential reunification of Germany.[67] While Britain and France were wary of a re-unified Germany, Bush pushed for German reunification alongside West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.[68] Gorbachev resisted the idea of a reunified Germany, especially if it became part of NATO, but the upheavals of the previous year had sapped his power at home and abroad.[69] Gorbachev agreed to hold "Two-Plus-Four" talks among the United States, the Soviet Union, France, Britain, West Germany, and East Germany, which commenced in 1990. After extensive negotiations, Gorbachev eventually agreed to allow a reunified Germany to be a part of NATO. With the signing of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, Germany officially reunified in October 1990.[70]
Dissolution of the Soviet Union
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/db/USSR_Republics_numbered_by_alphabet.svg/260px-USSR_Republics_numbered_by_alphabet.svg.png)
While Gorbachev acquiesced to the democratization of Soviet satellite states, he suppressed separatist movements within the Soviet Union itself.[71] Stalin had occupied and annexed the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in the 1940s. The old leadership was executed or deported or fled; hundreds of thousands of Russians moved in, but nowhere were they a majority. Hatreds simmered. Lithuania's March 1990 proclamation of independence was strongly opposed by Gorbachev, who feared that the Soviet Union could fall apart if he allowed Lithuania's independence. The United States had never recognized the Soviet illegal incorporation of the Baltic states, and the crisis in Lithuania left Bush in a difficult position. Bush needed Gorbachev's cooperation in the reunification of Germany, and he feared that the collapse of the Soviet Union could leave nuclear arms in dangerous hands. The Bush administration mildly protested Gorbachev's suppression of Lithuania's independence movement, but took no action to directly intervene.[72] Bush warned independence movements of the disorder that could come with secession from the Soviet Union; in a 1991 address that critics labeled the "Chicken Kiev speech", he cautioned against "suicidal nationalism".[73]
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In July 1991, Bush and Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) treaty, the first major arms agreement since the 1987 Intermediate Ranged Nuclear Forces Treaty.[74] Both countries agreed to cut their strategic nuclear weapons by 30 percent, and the Soviet Union promised to reduce its intercontinental ballistic missile force by 50 percent.[75] Along with this, American businesses started to enter the liberalized Soviet economy, leading to famous U.S. companies opening their stores in Russia. Perhaps, the most famous example is McDonald's, who first restaurant in Moscow led to cultural shock on behalf of bewildered Soviet citizens, who stood in huge lines to buy American fast food.[76] The first McDonald's in the country had a grand opening on Moscow's Pushkin Square on 31 January 1990 with approximately 38,000 customers waiting in hours long lines, breaking company records at the time.[77] In August 1991, hard-line conservative Communists launched a coup attempt against Gorbachev; while the coup quickly fell apart, it broke the remaining power of Gorbachev and the central Soviet government.[78] Later that month, Gorbachev resigned as general secretary of the Communist party, and Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered the seizure of Soviet property. Gorbachev clung to power as the President of the Soviet Union until 25 December 1991, when the USSR dissolved.[79] Fifteen states emerged from the Soviet Union, with by far the largest and most populous one (which also was the founder of the Soviet state with the October Revolution in Petrograd), the Russian Federation, taking full responsibility for all the rights and obligations of the USSR under the Charter of the United Nations, including the financial obligations. As such, Russia assumed the Soviet Union's UN membership and permanent membership on the Security Council, nuclear stockpile and the control over the armed forces; Soviet embassies abroad became Russian embassies.[80] Bush and Yeltsin met in February 1992, declaring a new era of "friendship and partnership".[81] In January 1993, Bush and Yeltsin agreed to START II, which provided for further nuclear arms reductions on top of the original START treaty.[82]
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See also
- Russia–United States relations
- Russian Empire–United States relations
- List of Soviet Union–United States summits
- Foreign relations of Russia
- Foreign relations of the Soviet Union
- Foreign policy of the Russian Empire
- Peaceful coexistence
- International relations (1814–1919)
- Diplomatic history of World War I
- International relations (1919–1939)
- Diplomatic history of World War II
- Soviet Empire
- Eastern Bloc
- Cold War
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Further reading
- Bennett, Edward M. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Search for Security: American-Soviet Relations, 1933-1939 (1985)
- Bennett, Edward M. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Search for Victory: American-Soviet Relations, 1939-1945 (1990).
- Browder, Robert P. "The First Encounter: Roosevelt and the Russians, 1933" United States Naval Institute proceedings (May 1957) 83#5 pp 523–32.
- Browder, Robert P. The origins of Soviet-American diplomacy (1953) pp 99–127 Online
- Butler, Susan. Roosevelt and Stalin: Portrait of a Partnership (Vintage, 2015).
- Cohen, Warren I. The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations: Vol. IV: America in the Age of Soviet Power, 1945-1991 (1993).
- Crockatt, Richard. The Fifty Years War: The United States and the Soviet Union in world politics, 1941-1991 (1995).
- Dallek, Robert. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (Oxford University Press. 1979), a major scholarly study.\; online
- Diesing, Duane J. Russia and the United States: Future Implications of Historical Relationships (No. Au/Acsc/Diesing/Ay09. Air Command And Staff Coll Maxwell Afb Al, 2009). online Archived 20 June 2017 at the Wayback Machine
- Downing, Taylor. 1983: Reagan, Andropov, and a World on the Brink (Hachette UK, 2018).
- Dunbabin, J.P.D. International Relations since 1945: Vol. 1: The Cold War: The Great Powers and their Allies (1994).
- Feis, Herbert. Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin: The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (1957) online; a major scholarly study
- Fenby, Jonathan. Alliance: The Inside Story of How Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill Won One War and Began Another (2015) excerpt; popular history
- Fike, Claude E. "The Influence of the Creel Committee and the American Red Cross on Russian-American Relations, 1917-1919." Journal of Modern History 31#2 (1959): 93–109. online.
- Fischer, Ben B. A Cold War conundrum: the 1983 soviet war scare (Central Intelligence Agency, Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1997). online
- Foglesong, David S. The American mission and the 'Evil Empire': the crusade for a 'Free Russia' since 1881 (2007).
- Gaddis, John Lewis. Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States (2nd ed. 1990) online covers 1781-1988
- Gaddis, John Lewis. The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (2000).
- Garthoff, Raymond L. Détente and confrontation: American-Soviet relations from Nixon to Reagan (2nd ed. 1994) In-depth scholarly history covers 1969 to 1980. online
- Garthoff, Raymond L. The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War (1994), In-depth scholarly history, 1981 to 1991, online
- Glantz, Mary E. FDR and the Soviet Union: the President's battles over foreign policy (2005).
- Kennan, George F. Russia Leaves the War: Soviet American Relations 1917–1920 (1956).
- LaFeber, Walter. America, Russia, and the Cold War 1945-2006 (2008). online 1984 edition
- Leffler, Melvyn P. The Specter of Communism: The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1917-1953 (1994).
- Lovenstein, Meno. American Opinion Of Soviet Russia (1941) online
- McNeill, William Hardy. America, Britain, & Russia: Their Co-Operation and Conflict, 1941–1946 (1953), 820pp; comprehensive overview
- Morris, Robert L. "A Reassessment of Russian Recognition." Historian 24.4 (1962): 470–482.
- Naleszkiewicz, Wladimir. "Technical Assistance of the American Enterprises to the Growth of the Soviet Union, 1929-1933." Russian Review 25.1 (1966): 54-76 online.
- Nye, Joseph S. ed. The making of America's Soviet policy (1984)
- Saul, Norman E. Distant Friends: The United States and Russia, 1763-1867 (1991)
- Saul, Norman E. Concord and Conflict: The United States and Russia, 1867-1914 (1996)
- Saul, Norman E. War and Revolution: The United States and Russia, 1914-1921 (2001)
- Saul, Norman E. Friends or foes? : the United States and Soviet Russia, 1921-1941 (2006) online
- Saul, Norman E. The A to Z of United States-Russian/Soviet Relations (2010)
- Saul, Norman E. Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Foreign Policy (2014).
- Sibley, Katherine A. S. "Soviet industrial espionage against American military technology and the US response, 1930–1945." Intelligence and National Security 14.2 (1999): 94–123.
- Smith, Gaddis. Morality, Reason and Power: American Diplomacy in the Carter Years (1986), 1976-1980.
- Sokolov, Boris V. "The role of lend‐lease in Soviet military efforts, 1941–1945." Journal of Slavic Military Studies 7.3 (1994): 567–586.
- Stoler, Mark A. Allies and Adversaries: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Grand Alliance, and US Strategy in World War II. (UNC Press, 2003).
- Taubman, William. Gorbachev (2017) excerpt
- Taubman, William. Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (2012), Pulitzer Prize
- Taubman, William. Stalin's American Policy: From Entente to Détente to Cold War (1982).
- Trani, Eugene P. "Woodrow Wilson and the decision to intervene in Russia: a reconsideration." Journal of Modern History 48.3 (1976): 440–461. online
- Ulam, Adam. Expansion and Coexistence: Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917-73 (1974), a major survey
- Ulam, Adam. The rivals : America and Russia since World War II (1976) online
- Unterberger, Betty Miller. "Woodrow Wilson and the Bolsheviks: The 'Acid Test' of Soviet–American Relations." Diplomatic History 11.2 (1987): 71–90. online
- Westad, Odd Arne ed. Soviet-American Relations during the Carter Years (Scandinavian University Press, 1997), 1976-1980.
- White, Christine A. British and American Commercial Relations with Soviet Russia, 1918-1924 (UNC Press, 2017).
- Zubok, Vladislav M. A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (2009)