The American Slav congress: one of the USSR's allies in the struggle for peace during the cold war (1946 - 1951)

The American Slav Congress, founded in 1942, was at one time one of the largest leftist organizations of the Slav diaspora in the USA. The article analyzes its role in the struggle for peace during the Cold War. It focuses on interrelationships between the American Slav Congress and the post-war USSR as well Stalin’s stance on the Slav unity and “the Slavic factor” to be used in the interests of the USSR. At the beginning of the Cold War the leadership of the American Slav Congress supporting the USSR set the task to struggle against the remilitarization of Germany. As the international movement of the fighters for peace expanded, the leaders and activists of the Congress did not think that such principal tasks of the struggle for peace as disarmament and the end of the Korean War were essential enough for the Slav movement, with the German question, i.e. the threat of the revival of militarism in Germany, remaining the priority issue for them. It is due to these reasons that the American Slav Congress failed to unite the Slavs in the USA, even those who shared leftist views, and finally stopped its activities, argues the author.