The Conflict between the CPSU and the Communist Party of Spain in the Lens of American and Soviet Diplomacy, the 1970s

Abstract

The article analyzes the conflict between the CPSU and the Communist Party of Spain (Partido Comunista de España, PCE) in the 1970s through the prism of Soviet-American relations during the era of Detente. Since the late 1960s, the Communist Party of Spain, headed by General Secretary S. Carrillo, began to distance itself from the CPSU, the leader of the International Communist Movement (ICM). In the conditions of the ongoing Cold War, the growing conflict between the parties meant the threat of a split within the ICM, which could not but attract the attention of the United States. The purpose of the article is to determine how the conflict between the CPSU and the Communist Party of Spain was perceived by American and Soviet state leaders, diplomats and the expert community during the 1970s, in order to establish how the assessments of this conflict in the United States and the USSR influenced the adjustment of the foreign policy strategies of these powers. The article examines the key stages of the development of relations between the leadership of the Soviet and Spanish Communist parties – "shadow" and public – as well as the perception of this conflict by Soviet and American diplomats, their assessments and reactions. The research is based on the sources of the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI), available documents of the US State Department and the CIA.