Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

E

Relations with Western Europe

In 1955 the Soviet Union agreed to the independence and neutrality of Austria. The same year full diplomatic relations were established with West Germany, but the West German “economic miracle”—a “magnet” on the borders of Eastern Europe—and the new Ostpolitik of the West German foreign minister (later chancellor) Willy Brandt increased Soviet misgivings about its position in an Eastern Europe tempted by Western trade, technology, and ideas. The USSR championed East Germany against West Germany and caused repeated crises in the relations of the two Germanys. The problem of West Berlin, surrounded by East German territory, was particularly thorny. The USSR tried to bring all of Berlin under East German control and supported East German pressures for German unification. Relations with West Germany, however, improved at the end of the decade with the advent of a Social Democratic government in the Federal Republic. In August 1970 the Soviet and West German governments signed a treaty renouncing the use of force to settle disputes and accepting existing European frontiers, including the Oder-Neisse boundary between East Germany and Poland. Tensions were further reduced in 1973, when West and East Germany granted each other full diplomatic recognition.

F

Relations with the United States

Soviet relations with the United States after World War II were marked by alternating periods of crisis and cooperation.

In 1962 the USSR and United States clashed over Cuba. The USSR had maintained close relations with Fidel Castro's government, promising help in case of attack by the United States. In 1962, when the USSR provided Cuban bases with offensive missiles, and US President John F. Kennedy demanded their withdrawal, Premier Khrushchev yielded. The USSR continued to support the faltering Cuban economy through trade, loans, and technical aid, a policy that gave it great influence in Cuban affairs. The influence increased as a result of the cooperation between Soviet and Cuban advisers and soldiers in Africa and Asia after 1976.

F

1

Arms Control

Disarmament was considered of paramount importance, both inside and outside the UN. In 1954 and again in 1959, the Soviet Union suggested complete disarmament, but the proposals failed when the USSR rejected provisions for inspection to verify such an agreement. In 1960 the USSR announced a reduction of about one-third in its military strength, but again the Western nations would not follow such a lead without inspection provisions more stringent than the Soviet Union would accept.

By 1953 the USSR had a hydrogen bomb. In the following years test explosions, by all the major powers, of increasingly powerful nuclear bombs seemed to make agreement on limitation imperative. Little was accomplished, however, until 1963, when the USSR signed an agreement with the United States and Britain banning all nuclear tests except those underground. It also joined the United States in agreeing to keep outer space free of all armaments. A series of strategic arms limitation talks (SALT) between the two powers, begun in 1969, resulted in agreements in 1972, 1974, and 1979, limiting missile weapons and sites.

F

2

Détente

The Soviet Union pursued an active foreign policy backed by steadily increasing military strength, but it also showed a marked drive towards détente with the West, especially the United States. In May 1972, President Nixon visited the Soviet Union. Soviet-US agreements included cooperation on health research, environmental protection, science and technology, space ventures, avoidance of incidents at sea, and arms limitations. Following these came settlement of the Soviet World War II lend-lease debt, a 3-year trade pact, and cultural exchange programmes.

Efforts to reach a new SALT agreement after 1975 were hampered by such issues as Soviet and East European repression of dissidents, the Soviet involvement in Angola and other African states, and continued Soviet support of the Arab cause against Israel. Despite these sources of tension, Soviet and US negotiators reached an agreement on a new SALT treaty in May 1979, and Brezhnev met with US President Jimmy Carter in Vienna for a formal signing one month later. The Soviet armed intervention in Afghanistan in December of that year, however, doomed ratification of the accord by the US Congress.

US-Soviet relations worsened during the early 1980s. The United States condemned the Soviet role in the suppression of dissidence in Poland and the September 1983 shooting down of a Korean Air Lines civilian aircraft in Soviet airspace.

VIII

Gorbachev Era

Brezhnev died in November 1982. His successor as state president and Communist party general secretary, Yuri V. Andropov, succumbed to prolonged illness in February 1984. Andropov's successor, Konstantin Chernenko, who died after only 13 months in office, was followed in March 1985 by Mikhail Gorbachev.