Introduction
The appearance of this book will mark for its author (or so，
at least， he hopes) the end of an epoch of some thirty-five years
duration. It has been a period during the course of which I have
tried， in occasional bouts of writing or speaking for publication，
to contribute wherever 1 could to American understanding in
matters of foreign policy， particularly policy towards the Soviet
Union. The documents included in this volume are meant to
be a reasonably representative selection of the results of this
effort.
At no time during these three-and-a-half decades did the
subjects treated here constitute my principal professional
preoccupation. During six of these years I was on active duty
in the American Foreign Service. During the remaining period
my professional dedication was that of a scholar in the field of
recent diplomatic history--not that of a pundit on current
affairs. These contributions were therefore， as were the many
similar ones from among which these were selected， mainly the
products of purely extracurricular effort. Seldom were they
spontaneously motivated. Many were speeches， delivered in
response to pressures to which 1 found it diffacult， for one
reason or another， not to yield. All of them， however， whether
externally provoked or spontaneously engendered， reflected a
strongly felt need to make available to others， for whatever they
were worth， impressions and views about Soviet-American rela-
tions drawn from many years of professional preoccupation
with Russia and the Soviet Union， and from a compelling sense
of the immense importance of the questions at issue.
When the war in Europe came to an end in May 1945， 1
was serving in the capacity of deputy to Ambassador Averell
Harriman， in the American Embassy at Moscow. I was already
at that time greatly depressed and concerned--concerned al-
most to the point of despair---over what， as it seemed to me，
the outcome of the ~var was leading to in the relationship
between the Soviet Union and the Western powers. The So-
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