“Negotiations with the USSR May Acquire a Broader Scope than We Can Foresee at Present”. Inclusion of Scientific and Technological Cooperation in the Agenda of the American-Soviet Detente, 1968—1972

Abstract

The interaction of the USA and the USSR in the field of scientific research and technological exchanges was an important meaningful aspect in the history of their relations in the 1970s. The article discusses the main milestones of the superpowers’ rapprochement at the stage of forming the agenda of the American-Soviet detente. Based on the study of American and Russian documents, including the funds of the Russian State Archive of Modern History and the Russian State Archive of Economics, the goals and motives of the Nixon administration in the process of constructing the American-Soviet dialogue and the place of scientific and technological issues in this process are clarified. The differences in the approaches of Washington and Moscow to establishing a constructive dialogue are studied. There are presented materials indicating the expansion of contacts between representatives of American big business involved in the fields of high-tech and innovative production with the State Committee for Science and Technology under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, interested ministries, institutes of the Academy of Sciences, individual scientific laboratories and enterprises. Notice is given to the role of the national academies of sciences in bringing bilateral relations to a normal track. The Moscow Summit of 1972 is regarded as one of the most important events of the American-Soviet detente, which created a real basis for the formation of long-term intellectual and infrastructural ties in the world entering the era of globalization. It is concluded that in the course of negotiations American diplomacy failed to implement its plan to reach bilateral agreements based on the use of “linking” tactics, which assumed that the extension of the most-favored-nation regime in trade and access to high technologies to the USSR were conditioned by political concessions. It is noted that at all stages of the negotiations Moscow consistently defended its technological sovereignty guided by the principles of equality and equal benefits. The data of American analytical services are presented indicating the high concern of US scientists in developing cooperation with representatives of Soviet science.