Conference on Soviet-American Relations, 1945–1950

Abstract

first agreement ever between Soviet and American scholars to undertake a comprehensive joint examination of the postWorld War It relationship between their two countries, based on the maximum possible use of archival and oral as well as published source materials. The first conference in this series, dealing with the 1945-50 period, took place in Moscow on June 1618, 1987. Ambassador George F. Kennan headed the American delegation, which included M. Steven Fish (representing Alexander George, of Stanford University), George Herring (University of Kentucky), Michael J. Hogan (Ohio State University), David Holloway (Stanford University), Deborah Welch Larson (Columbia University), Vojtech Mastny (Boston University), Ernest R. May (Harvard University), Thomas G. Paterson (University of Connecticut), as well as the two conference organizers, John Lewis Gaddis (Ohio University), and William Taubman (Amherst College). Academician S. L. Tikhvinsky, Chairman of the National Committee of Soviet Historians, headed the Soviet delegation, which included R. G. Bogdanov (Institute of the USA and Canada), A. Yu. Borisov (Moscow State Institute of International Relations), N. I. Egorova (Institute of General History), A. M. Filitov (Institute of General History), N. S. Ivanov (Institute of General History), V. L. Mal'kov (Institute of General History), B. I. Marushkin (Institute of General History), A. I. Schapiro (Institute of World Economy and International Relations), A. I. Utkin (Institute of the USA and Canada), and the Soviet conference organizer, A. O. Chubarian, Vice Chairman of the National Committee of Soviet Historians. The conference sessions focused on the following topics, with presentation of a Soviet and an American paper on each of them: World War II cooperation and its legacies; postwar planning; economic reconstruction; military and diplomatic strategies; nuclear weapons; crisis management; Europe as an issue in SovietAmerican relations; and perceptions and misperceptions. Although the American delegation was most hospitably received and our discussions proceeded in a thoroughly professional manner, it rapidly became clear that substantial differences still remain in the way Soviet and American scholars treat the events of the early Cold War. Despite striking manifestations of glasnost in other areas of contemporary Soviet life, we detected no discernible tendency on the