The Cuban missile crisis in the context of the U.S.-Soviet negotiations in the second half of the 1950s - beginning of the 1960s

The article examines the dialectics of the negotiation process between the USSR and the USA, analyzes the motives and interests of the two sides, the resources and the limits of acceptable compromises in the context of the emerging system of peaceful coexistence. On the basis of archival documents from the the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI), Archive of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation, as well as The Department of State Bulletin and others, the author reconstructs the stages of the bilateral relations, the core of which was the nuclear dialogue. Soviet and American documents of the time reflect the challenges of promoting the idea of continuous negotiations between the two superpowers in order to reconcile their conflicting interests. By the early 1960s, the USSR and the USA were already using diplomatic practices to overcome acute situations fraught with a military clash. The mechanism for finding a compromise, which was developed by both Soviet and American The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 showed all the advantages of this approach. The negotiations between the USSR and the USA gradually turned into a continuous process that developed regardless of the tensions present at the time. The two ideologically opposed superpowers came to realize the benefits of political bargaining-to promote their own and probe others interests, regardless of the political climate of the day. Intense competition and, at the same time, the search for a way out of strategic impasses became the norm of the Cold War. The historical experience of the Cuban Missile Crisis played an important role as well.