Canadian Policy toward Khrushchev's Soviet Union: Volume 4

ISBN-13: 9780773522763 / Angielski / Miękka / 2003 / 264 str.

Jamie Glazov

Opis

Based on access to previously closed files in the National Archives of Canada, this is an account of Canada's diplomacy toward the Soviet Union in the immediate post-Stalin era. Jamie Glazov reveals that the approach taken by the Liberal government of Louis St Laurent (1953-57) was a remarkable achievement for Canadian foreign policy. He details how the St Laurent government backed the shrewd calculations of the Department of External Affairs and emphasized the wisdom of the containment-accommodation approach, an approach that, Glazov claims, would help win the Cold War 35 years later. Glazov shows that the strategy of accommodation, the main difference between Canadian and American Soviet policy, was ultimately vindicated by the eventual ascendancy of a liberal Soviet leader (Gorbachev), which led to increased East-West contact and Soviet liberalization, phenomena that led directly to the West's victory in the Cold War. Glazov's new assessment of Western policies toward Khrushchev's Russia is critical to our understanding of present-day Russia, since Gorbachev's democratization, which led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, had its origins in the Khrushchev thaw.