Soviet Perceptions Of The United States

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.

79 concise essays on fifteen topics designed to explore Soviet interests, attitudes, objectives and capabilities and U.S. policy responses.

This book discerns Soviet leaders' views of the United States and sees them in relation to foreign policy statements and actions. Hermann first examines the subtle problem of analyzing perceptions and interpreting motives from the words and deeds of national leaders. He then turns to cases, measuring the dominant U.S. hypotheses about the USSR against Soviet behavior in Central Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, as well as Soviet participation in the arms race. Finally, he weighs his conclusions against a thematic study of speeches and publications by members of the Politburo.

This book investigates perceptions—including strategic, normative and imagined perceptions—of long-range political goals both in the East and in the West, discussing the arguments which are used to support each of these perceptions.

The study of Soviet attitudes towards the role of Congress in U.S. foreign policy concerns an area of Soviet foreign policy considerations that has received little attention by Western scholars and that offers valuable new insights for the study of Soviet foreign policy and U.S.-Soviet relations. As such, this initial treading onto empirical virgin lands has required the thoughtful, meticulous, and in many instances indispensable guidance and support of a number of individuals.