Detente or Razryadka? The Kissinger-Dobrynin Telephone Transcripts and Relaxing American-Soviet Tensions, 1969-1977

The 1970s witnessed improved relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. After twenty-five years of the Cold War, President Nixon made a historic visit to Moscow in May, 1972, to sign both the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) with Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. SALT I froze the offensive nuclear arsenals of both sides at then-current levels for five years, while the ABM treaty limited defensive nuclear weapons permanently. The leaders of the two superpowers also concluded agreements on trade, sharing scientific and communication technology, as well as cultural exchanges. Several more US-Soviet summits followed throughout the decade.;The Americans used a French word, detente, for this thaw in the Cold War. Meanwhile, the Russians preferred razryadka. While both can be translated as "relaxing tensions," the difference in terms was indicative of a difference in understanding of what "relaxing tensions" actually meant. For the Americans, detente meant peace through arms control, trade, and various forms of scientific, technical, and cultural exchanges. However, it also included an anticipated change in Soviet behavior, both domestically by respecting Western notions of human rights and internationally by refraining from interference in nations of the developing world. For the Soviets, razryadka referred strictly to those subjects they considered appropriate topics of state-to-state relations: arms control to prevent nuclear war, trade, and earning respect as a co-equal superpower.;One of the principle means of conducting US-Soviet detente was through a private "backchannel" between US National Security Adviser and later Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Soviet Ambassador to the US Anatoly Dobrynin. This dissertation argues that transcripts of their telephone conversations from 1969-1977 reveal that the backchannel enabled Kissinger and Dobrynin to establish a relationship which provided the empathy needed to bridge many of the ideological differences between their two countries. Consequently, the Kissinger-Dobrynin backchannel serves as a case study of the effectiveness of back channels in international diplomacy.