Svetlana Savranskaya
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NSA: Anatoly S. Chernyaev Diary, 1973 – Brezhnev Elevated Detente over Class Struggle — to the Dismay of his Politburo Colleagues
Chernyaev, deputy head of the International Department of the Central Committee (and later a key foreign policy aide to Mikhail Gorbachev), continues to marvel at the contradictory and enigmatic person at the pinnacle of the Soviet leadership — General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. Continue reading
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NSA: The Thatcher-Gorbachev Conversations
Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister who passed away this week, built a surprising mutual-admiration relationship with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s — including behind-the-scenes agreement against the reunification of Germany, and profound disagreement about nuclear abolition — according to translated Soviet records of key meetings between the two leaders, posted… Continue reading
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NSA: Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan Was Not a Grand Design But a Grand Entanglement Resulting from Faulty Intelligence, Excessive Secrecy…
On December 12, 1979, the Soviet Politburo gathered to formally approve the decision made several days earlier to send a “limited contingent” of Soviet forces into Afghanistan. Continue reading
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Global Competition and Deterioration of U.S.-Soviet Relations, 1977-1980
The U.S.-Soviet rivalry in the Third World created splits within the Carter administration and fundamental confusion in the Kremlin over the nature of U.S. motives to such a degree that they helped bring about the collapse of superpower detente, according to documents and transcripts from a conference of former high-level American-Russian policy-makers published today by… Continue reading
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Mikoyan’s “Mission Impossible” in Cuba: New Soviet Evidence on the Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis continued long after the “13 days” celebrated by U.S. media, with U.S. armed forces still on DEFCON 2 and Soviet tactical nuclear weapons still in Cuba, according to new documents posted today by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org) from the personal archive of the late Sergo Mikoyan. Continue reading
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Anatoly S. Chernayev Diary, 1972
Today the National Security Archive publishes excerpts from Anatoly S. Chernyaev’s diary of 1972 for the first time in English translation with edits and postscript by the author. Continue reading
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National Security Archive Update, May 25, 2011: THE DIARY OF ANATOLY CHERNYAEV, 1991
Marking the 90th birthday of former top Gorbachev advisor Anatoly Sergeevich Chernyaev, the National Security Archive today publishes on the Web at www.nsarchive.org the latest installment of the unique and invaluable Chernyaev diary, covering the final fateful year of the Soviet Union, 1991. Continue reading