| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
THIS COMING APRIL, many countries will be marking the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The following documents from the Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation - a note by the USSR government to the U.S. administration, dated March 31, 1954, and a reply from the U.S. administration, dated May 1954 - refer to a crucial stage in the history of the Cold War. After Joseph Stalin's death, serious changes occurred in the Soviet policy. The USSR's successes in building nuclear and hydrogen bombs ended the U.S. monopoly over weapons of mass destruction. Acute confrontation in international relations, with the former anti-Nazi allies - the Berlin crisis and the War in Korea - gave way to a certain measure of warming in relations.
In March 1954, the Soviet government put forward a proposal to the governments of the United States, Great Britain, and France concerning the creation of a collective security system in Europe - the signing of an all-European collective security treaty and the possibility of the USSR's joining NATO. In May, Moscow received notes from the Western powers, all of them similar in content, with a negative reply to its proposals. The exchange of notes continued in the following months of 1954: The Soviet note of July 24 was followed by notes from the three Western powers of September 10, to which the USSR replied on October 23.
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