Soviet Perspectives After World War II, Joseph Stalin saw the world as divided into two ca

                             Soviet Perspectives

     After World War II, Joseph Stalin saw the world as divided
into two camps:  imperialist and capitalist regimes on the one
hand, and the Communist and progressive world on the other.  In
1947, President Harry Truman also spoke of two diametrically
opposed systems:  one free, and the other bent on subjugating
other nations.
     After Stalin's death, Nikita Khrushchev stated in 1956 that
imperialism and capitalism could coexist without war because the
Communist system had become stronger.  The Geneva Summit of 1955
among Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States,
and the Camp David Summit of 1959 between Eisenhower and
Khrushchev raised hopes of a more cooperative spirit between East
and West.  In 1963 the United States and the Soviet Union signed
some confidence-building agreements, and in 1967 President Lyndon
Johnson met with Soviet Prime Minister Aleksei Kosygin in
Glassboro, New Jersey.  Interspersed with such moves toward
cooperation, however, were hostile acts that threatened broader
conflict, such as the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 and
the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia of 1968.
     The long rule of Leonid Brezhnev (1964-1982) is now referred
to in Russia as the "period of stagnation."  But the Soviet
stance toward the United States became less overtly hostile in
the early 1970s.  Negotiations between the United States and the
Soviet Union resulted in summit meetings and the signing of
strategic arms limitation agreements.  Brezhnev proclaimed in
1973 that peaceful coexistence was the normal, permanent, and
irreversible state of relations between imperialist and Communist
countries, although he warned that conflict might continue in the
Third World.  In the late 1970s, growing internal repression and
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan led to a renewal of Cold War
hostility.
     Soviet views of the United States changed once again after
Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in early 1985.  Arms control
negotiations were renewed, and President Reagan undertook a new
series of summit meetings with Gorbachev that led to arms
reductions and facilitated a growing sympathy even among
Communist leaders for more cooperation and the rejection of a
class-based, conflict-oriented view of the world.
     With President Yeltsin's recognition of independence for the
other republics of the former USSR and his launching of a full-
scale economic reform program designed to create a market
economy, Russia was pledged at last to overcoming both the