| Abstrakt: |
Abstract: a1_The Cold War dragged on for more than forty years. But early as 1953, after Stalin´s death when power was transferred into the hands of a collective leadership (particularly Malenkov, Molotov, Beria and Khrushchev), and the United States came under a new administration whose self-declared aim was to reverse its precedessors´ ineffectual management of the Cold War, there seem to have existed opportunities for rapprochement. To ask whether or not these were missed, says the author, yields only inconclusive answers. It is, however, still important, he maintains to ask why rapprochement did not occur. Did the objectives set by the Soviet and American governments and the methods employed to attain them preclude this possibility? Were other policies proposed but ignored? If so, why? Since the motives and results of Western decision-making in foreign policy are reasonably clear from the archival evidence, the author has turned his attention to the new collective Soviet leadership, considering alternative policies advocated by different individuals or groups. In ending the war in Korea, establishing relations with Yugoslavia similar to those with other bourgeois states linked with NATO, renouncing territorial claims against Turkey, restoring diplomatic relations with Greece and with Israel, Stalin´s successors sought to rectify some of his most egregious mistakes for which the USSR had been paying a price. And it sought to form a provisional unified government in Germany, and to conclude a peace treaty with her which would make German membership in either NATO or EDC impossible. |
