Previous Chernyaev Diary Postings
The Diary of Anatoly Chernyaev, 1973
Eigth Installment of Former Top Soviet Adviser's Journal Available in English for First Time
The Diary of Anatoly Chernyaev, 1972
Seventh Installment of Former Top Soviet Adviser's Journal Available in English for First Time
The Diary of Anatoly Chernyaev, 1991
Sixth Installment of Former Top Soviet Adviser's Journal Available in English for First Time
Washington, D.C., August 2, 2013 – The United States and Soviet Union conducted underground testing that sometimes produced significant "venting" of radioactive gases and particles which crossed international borders, even after signing the Limited Test Ban Treaty fifty years ago, in August 1963. That posed potential health hazards, but also created problems for U.S.-Soviet relations, according to documents recently uncovered through archival research. To minimize the problem, both superpowers tacitly agreed to keep their disagreements secret.
Washington, D.C., May 25, 2013 – Today the National Security Archive is publishing — for the first time in English — excerpts from the diary of Anatoly S. Chernyaev from 1973, along with edits and a postscript by the author. As in the previous installment of the diary, for 1972, 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.
Related Links
New Documents Reveal How a 1980s Nuclear War Scare Became a Full-Blown Crisis By Robert Beckhusen, Wired, May 16, 2013
The USSR and US Came Closer to Nuclear War Than We Thought By Douglas Birch, The Atlantic, May 28, 2013
War Scare By Nate Jones, ForeignPolicy.com, May 21, 2013
Nate Jones and Robert Farley Discuss Able Archer 83 Blogging Heads "Foreign Entanglements," May 31, 2013
The 1983 War Scare, Part II By Nate Jones, May 21, 2013
The 1983 War Scare, Part I By Nate Jones, May 16, 2013
Related Links
New Documents Reveal How a 1980s Nuclear War Scare Became a Full-Blown Crisis
By Robert Beckhusen, Wired, May 16, 2013
The USSR and US Came Closer to Nuclear War Than We Thought
By Douglas Birch, The Atlantic, May 28, 2013
War Scare
Nate Jones, ForeignPolicy.com, May 21, 2013
Nate Jones and Robert Farley Discuss Able Archer 83
Blogging Heads "Foreign Entanglements," May 31, 2013
Related Links
New Documents Reveal How a 1980s Nuclear War Scare Became a Full-Blown Crisis By Robert Beckhusen, Wired, May 16, 2013
The USSR and US Came Closer to Nuclear War Than We Thought By Douglas Birch, The Atlantic, May 28, 2013
War Scare By Nate Jones, ForeignPolicy.com, May 21, 2013
Nate Jones and Robert Farley Discuss Able Archer 83 Blogging Heads "Foreign Entanglements," May 31, 2013
The 1983 War Scare, Part III By Nate Jones, May 22, 2013
The 1983 War Scare, Part II By Nate Jones, May 21, 2013
Washington, D.C., November 12, 2012 – 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 the National Security Archive.
Washington, DC, October 27, 2012 – 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. This is the second installment from the Mikoyan archive donated to the National Security Archive and featured in the new book, The Soviet Cuban Missile Crisis.
Washington, DC, October 10, 2012 – In November 1962, Cuba was preparing to become the first nuclear power in Latin America—at the time when the Kennedy administration thought that the Cuban Missile Crisis was long resolved and the Soviet missiles were out. However, the Soviet and the Cuban leadership knew that the most dangerous weapons of the crisis—tactical Lunas and FKRs—were still in Cuba. They were battlefield weapons, which would have been used against the U.S. landing forces if the EXCOMM had decided on an invasion, not the quarantine.
Washington, DC, August 15, 2012 – High hopes for a "reset" of U.S.-Soviet relations in the late 1970s were shattered by ingrained suspicions and negative international trends to which both sides contributed under President Jimmy Carter and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, according to declassified documents and unique "critical oral history" transcripts posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.