Soviet Detente With The West Delivered A Cold War Author Many Literary Ideas

By Marsha Klein


Immediately after the ending of World War II, the Soviet Union distanced itself politically and diplomatically from the West. In particular, it cold-shouldered the USA, created a wide diplomatic gap as well as an aggressive economic and military rivalry between the two nations. That rivalry, and its associated ideological divide, was the Cold War. Political defections, international intrigue, diplomatic dramas, national espionage and military grandstanding characterized the period. A cold war author was presented with a rich cascade of plots and sub-plots for many years.

During the Second World War, the Soviets fought as allies with the west against Germany and Nazism. Despite that cooperation, the Soviet relationship with western countries was brittle, even at that time, corroded by ideological mistrust. Communism and capitalism are not easy companions.

The war brought the Soviets closer to the West. A reasonable diplomatic dialogue existed during the war years. However, once the war ended, the Soviets almost totally closed their economy to foreign trade, diplomatically withdrew back within themselves and severely limited their dialogue with the West.

Winston Churchill lamented this detente in a speech he gave at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, in 1946. Churchill said Soviet isolationism had caused a large Iron Curtain to descend upon the European continent. This status divided its west from its east.

Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, as well as Romania were all subject to Soviet influence or control. In effect, they were nation satellites of the Soviet. The communist parties in these countries were significantly funded and otherwise bolstered by the Soviets. Churchill noted that the power and preeminence of these parties were raised well beyond their underlying support base and that police governments seeking totalitarian control. This Soviet sphere of influence was seen as expansionist and served to destabilize peace in Europe and the West more generally.

The Soviets repeatedly rejected economic and diplomatic ties with the USA and other western nations. It remained deliberately distant and difficult to access politically, economically and culturally. Its economy was essentially closed to the much of the outside world. Its reluctance to engage in dialogue with the West created an information vacuum. Lacking data, the West filled that vacuum with uncertainty, doubt and suspicion regarding Soviet military ambitions.

Churchill titled his Westminster College talk the Sinews of Peace. However, commentators quickly dropped that banner in favor of the Iron Curtain speech. Many analysts now consider that speech to be one of the first indications signaling the start of the intense detente between Soviet Russia and the West that was the Cold War.

Throughout that period of detente, limited data about its economic wealth and military capability was available to the West. Analysts such as the US Central Intelligence Agency badly over-estimated the power of the Soviet Union. That misunderstanding persisted for fifty years until Soviet President Gorbachev ushered in progressive policies known as Perestroika. Those policies dismantled many internal bureaucratic constraints, introduced market-driven mechanisms in the Soviet economy and opened it to the forces of international competition. Perestroika also ended the intense Soviet diplomatic detente with the West that for several decades provided rich literary fodder for a Cold War author.




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