Introduction: The Communist Challenge

Abstract

From George Kennan’s description of the Soviet government as “a conspiracy within a conspiracy” in 1946 to President Reagan’s vilification of the USSR as an “evil empire” in 1983, US-Soviet relations were marked during the Cold War by deep aversion and distrust.2 Attempts to normalize these relations through diplomacy proved difficult, if not impossible. Leaders in both East and West occasionally recognized the futility of the superpower contest, but convictions on both sides that they represented “a superior way of life” ultimately prevented any real concessions.3 In this fundamental clash of interests, both sides “needed to change the world in order to prove the universal applicability of their ideologies”.4 The existence of an enemy also served useful purposes. Stalinist propaganda directed its criticism at a duplicitous West encircling and threatening the Soviet Union, thereby justifying the Soviet empire abroad and the repression of dissent at home.5 This “war on the mind” was driven by fear — fear of defeat, of destruction, of being inferior and second-best to a despised adversary.6 This fear was expressed on both sides, from the witch-hunts of Senator McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s through to the silencing of Sakharov and other Soviet dissidents in the 1970s and 1980s. “Don’t talk to communists,” the message went in the West, “because if you do, you’ll lose the debate and become brainwashed.”