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Soviet Union–United States relations

  • Cold WarOn the 16th of April 1947, an influential advisor to Democratic presidents named Bernard Baruch stood before an audience and declared, "we are today in the…
  • Baruch PlanOn the 14th of June 1946, Bernard Baruch walked into the first meeting of the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission and offered the world a bargain that…
  • Four PolicemenFranklin D. Roosevelt first voiced the idea of a global police force in August 1941 during his initial meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
  • Communist Party USAThe Communist Party USA entered 2026 claiming 20,000 members, a figure it had not approached in generations. That number sits at the end of a long story.
  • Kennan InstituteThe Kennan Institute carries a name that belongs to two very different men, separated by nearly a century and connected by blood.
  • Reagan DoctrinePresident James Monroe issued the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 to establish a new boundary for American foreign policy. Theodore Roosevelt followed with his own…
  • Outer Space TreatyThe Outer Space Treaty was opened for signature on the 27th of January 1967, with the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union all signing on…
  • Truman DoctrineThe Truman Doctrine began with an eighteen-minute speech. On the 12th of March 1947, President Harry S. Truman stood before a joint session of Congress and…
  • Evil Empire speechRonald Reagan gave the Evil Empire speech on the 8th of March 1983. Speaking before the National Association of Evangelicals, the American president called…
  • 1980 Summer Olympics boycottThe 1980 Summer Olympics boycott began at a NATO meeting on the 20th of December 1979, just days after Soviet troops entered Afghanistan.
  • Able Archer 83Able Archer 83 was a NATO military exercise that began on the 7th of November 1983, and it nearly ended the world. For five days, military commands across…
  • Korean Air Lines Flight 007Korean Air Lines Flight 007 departed Gate 15 of John F. Kennedy International Airport on the night of the 31st of August 1983, bound for Seoul.
  • Stalin NoteThe Stalin Note reached representatives of the United States, Britain, and France on the 10th of March 1952. Andrei Gromyko delivered it on behalf of the…
  • Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to GermanyOn the 1st of August 1945, the Potsdam Agreement established provisional terms for governing Germany after World War II.
  • Miracle on IceThe Miracle on Ice was an ice hockey game played on the 22nd of February 1980, at Lake Placid, New York, between the United States and the Soviet Union.
  • Space RaceThe Space Race was a contest between two superpowers that began not in the stars but deep underground, in the firing pits of missile test ranges.
  • Nuclear arms raceThe nuclear arms race began not with a treaty or a speech, but with 187 liters of heavy water smuggled out of Norway ahead of a German invasion.
  • NSC 68NSC 68 opened with a stark warning: the issues at stake were momentous. As the document itself put it, they involved "the fulfillment or destruction not only…
  • Tear down this wall!At 2:00 p.m. on the 12th of June 1987, Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, shielded from East Berlin by two panes of bulletproof…
  • 1960 U-2 incidentOn the 1st of May 1960, a United States spy plane took off from Peshawar, Pakistan, bound for a mission the American government would spend days desperately…
  • Berlin Crisis of 1961The Berlin Crisis of 1961 brought the Cold War closer to open conflict than any event since the Second World War ended. At its peak, American and Soviet…
  • Jackson–Vanik amendmentThe Jackson-Vanik amendment started as a wager about human nature. A Senate staffer named Richard Perle explained the thinking behind it in an interview.
  • X ArticleThe Sources of Soviet Conduct, known as the X Article, ran in the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs, signed only with the letter X.
  • Elbe DayElbe Day, the 25th of April 1945, began with a small boat crossing a river in Germany. First Lieutenant Albert Kotzebue paddled across the Elbe near Strehla…
  • Radio Free Europe/Radio LibertyRadio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was born out of a calculation that the Cold War would ultimately be decided not by armies, but by ideas.
  • Sputnik crisisThe Sputnik crisis began on the 4th of October, 1957, when a Soviet satellite the size of a beach ball began beeping its way around Earth.
  • We will bury youNikita Khrushchev stood before Western ambassadors at the Polish embassy in Moscow on the 18th of November 1956. The room held envoys from twelve NATO…
  • Strategic Defense InitiativeThe Strategic Defense Initiative arrived in the public imagination on the 23rd of March 1983, when President Ronald Reagan looked into a camera and asked…
  • Turkish Straits crisisThe Turkish Straits crisis began in the summer of 1946 when the Soviet Union handed Turkey a note demanding that the rules governing the narrow waterways…
  • Lend-LeaseLend-Lease was not charity. It was not a loan in any conventional sense. When President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Act into law on the 11th of…
  • Persian CorridorThe Persian Corridor carried 45 percent of all American Lend-Lease aid shipped to the Soviet Union during World War II. That works out to 7.9 million long…
  • Samantha SmithSamantha Reed Smith was ten years old when she looked at the cover of Time magazine and asked a question that would change her life. It was November 1982.
  • Apollo–SoyuzApollo-Soyuz brought together the two most powerful space programs on Earth for the first time in July 1975. On the 17th of July, an American spacecraft and…
  • Partial Nuclear Test Ban TreatyOn the 5th of August 1963, three governments gathered in Moscow to sign a document that had taken nearly two decades of argument, scientific dispute, and…