The origins of Russian-American relations are deeply rooted in 17th -18th century. The first Russian emperor, expressed interest in a faraway country, was Peter I. In January 1719, surveyors were instructed "to go to Kamchatka and then where indicated, to describe those places, whether America converged with Asia". During the reign of Anne of Russia, Bering made two expeditions to those regions: in 1725-1730 and 1733-1741 years he was in the Chukotka Peninsula and Alaska, reaching North America. During the war the United States for independence in the 18th century Catherine II refused to allocate to the English King George III troops. Thus, it is Catherine who helped Americans to win independence. So England lost all its American colonies. In any case, supporting the Americans in the struggle for independence, Catherine did not want their fast official recognition. In 1798, Paul I raised the question of establishing diplomatic relations with the United States.
In July 1799 according to the decree of Paul I "Russian-American Company" was formed from several private Russian merchant companies. The Emperor approved the rules for its functioning, and privileges granted to it. However, the murder of Paul prevented the establishment of diplomatic relations between Russia and America. In 1808, the Russian Foreign Ministry and the US State Department by a simple correspondence inter se with no official agreements on establishing diplomatic relations between Russia and the United States for the first time exchanged ambassadors. In 1824, Russian-American Convention was signed, according to which, eager to maintain good relations with the United States, Russia ceded their territory of "Russian America", retaining only Alaska and the Aleutian Islands.
Despite the auspicious beginning, for most of the nineteenth century, the Russian-American relations have been correct, but not very promising. For example, when interests coincided, Russia and the United States were able to conclude an agreement on the sale of Alaska in 1867. When the United States entered the First World War in April 1917, Russia's role in the war was approaching to its end, and the communication between the two countries was rapidly deteriorating. After some hesitation, the United States took part in the military intervention on the side of the anti-Bolshevik forces in the North and East of Russia. Undoubtedly, when the communist revolution in Russia, proclaimed the ideals of peace, disarmament and “genuine” democracy, Washington has led to confusion and forced the American diplomacy to complex maneuvering.
The US leaders understood that a revolutionary party came to power in Russia. The focus of the US ruling circles was the question of finding the "anti-Bolshevik forces" that Washington was ready to provide all possible assistance. The first landing was in the port of Murmansk where the invaders occurred on March 9th 1918. In parallel with the intervention in the north of the United States prepared the intervention in the Far East. From 1921 to 1933 the United States did not have any official relations with the Soviet regime. The exchange of diplomatic notes, in 1933, was made possible only because both countries shared the perception of a growing danger in the early thirties was the fascism. Experience of the Soviet-American cooperation in the framework of the anti-Hitler coalition convincingly demonstrated the possibility of constructive cooperation between states with different ideologies and social systems.
Speaking of the Soviet-American cooperation in the war years, it should be noted that the development of this cooperation proceeded difficult and uneven, marked by ups and downs. In March 1941 the US Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act. The law provided that the US President had a right to lease and to otherwise transfer services and military materials to the countries which are vital to the United States. Among these countries were the United Kingdom, its colonies and dominions, the organization of "Free France", China, and later the Soviet Union.
Despite the fact that the US and Germany were not in a war, after the German attack on the Soviet Union the United States decided to provide immediate aid to the Soviet Union. In November, 1941 the US Congress decided to extend the program to the Soviet lend-lease. In toto, during the war, the USSR received lend-lease products worth more than $ 11 billion, including the following: 2 million tons of steel, 170 thousand tons of aluminum, 29.4 thousand tons of tin, 240 tons of copper, 330 thousand telephones. In the USSR, it was delivered 28 000 aircraft (approximately 12% of the number issued in the USSR), 10 000 tanks (10%) and 10 000 pieces of artillery (2%) (Nelson and Anderson, 154). So, in a joint struggle against the Nazi the cooperation between the two countries in the military field was successful. There is a coordination of actions of the US and the USSR as parts of the anti-Hitler coalition. It was carried out by correspondence between the heads of government, heads of state at the conference with the participation of chiefs of staff and other military leaders. In a number of cases to determine the urgent issues practiced personal communication agents (Dukes, 76).
At the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers in October 1943, from which emerged a "Declaration of the Four Nations on General Security" in which the basic principles of the future United Nations Organization were identified. The Moscow Conference prepared the conditions for the first meeting of heads of governments of the three states, which was held in Tehran from 28 November to 1 December 1943. It as heads of delegations participated Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill. The focus of the conference was given to military issues, especially the issue of opening a second front. In August and September 1944 there was a conference at Dumbarton Oaks, which has developed the UN Charter. It is important to emphasize that in spite of the differences of the parties in the approaches to the solution of a number of key issues. Many of them consolidated the foundations of the postwar world, the question of new state borders in Europe and the Far East, laid the foundation of the UN.
The consent of the USSR, USA and Great Britain on the main issues of the postwar peace device adoption was recorded in Yalta joint "Declaration on Liberated Europe". The overall goal - to defeat Nazi Germany - has led the countries to the alliance during the Second World War, but tensions over the postwar Eastern European future were evident even before the war, and soon led to the "cold war". On May, 12, 1945, just three days after the end of the war in Europe, the US president has undertaken frankly hostile action on the termination of supplies to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease Act, which is believed to American historians, marked a milestone in the transition from a wartime alliance to hostility "cold war" (Grant, 99).
In 1949, a change of emphasis in US policy toward the Soviet Union emerged even more clearly. For service has been taken "atomic diplomacy", the rate of economic exhaustion of the Soviet Union, the creation of anti-Soviet bloc. In April 1949 the US initiative, the Alliance has been formed (NATO), which depicts that its American organizers as a regional pact, created for the purpose of "collective self-defense", but in fact serve as an instrument intended military pressure on the Soviet Union. 1950s entered the history of Soviet-American relations as the time of the edge of the "Cold War." A special feature of this period were the attempts of Washington to follow the most extreme concepts of confrontation with the USSR, which often led up the world to the brink of nuclear war. Soviet-American relations in the first half of the 1950s were kept to a minimum.
The volume of trade was on the meager level, virtually no cultural, scientific and other exchanges. On July, 18, 1955 in Geneva, meeting at the highest level with the participation of the USSR, USA, Great Britain and France started its work. No concrete decisions at the Geneva meeting were accepted, but this meeting was the first since 1945, meeting of the leaders of the USSR and the USA. After the Geneva meeting there were some signs of normalization of Soviet-American relations. There was an exchange of trade and economic exhibition, scientists, artists (Dukes, 96). In the late 1950s American leadership has taken steps to reduce tensions with the Soviet Union. On January, 27, 1958 the first Soviet-US agreement on exchanges in the field of culture, art and education was signed. In 1958-1959 there was the beginning of effective cooperation between the two countries in these areas.
In September 1959, on the initiative of the American side the meeting of heads of the USSR and the USA was held. The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 has fully demonstrated the fact that the policy "from positions of strength", conducted directly or indirectly, sooner or later is detrimental to US-Soviet relations, increasing the danger of military confrontation and threatening to international security. In 1970s a positive turn in the relations between the USSR and the United States in the direction of discharge. In the most general terms this is reflected not only in the improvement of the political atmosphere, but also in the development of several dozen specific treaties and agreements, covering key areas of mutual relations between the two countries, ranging from measures to prevent a military conflict to the development of scientific-technical and cultural relations.
In 1971-1979 more than 60 agreements were signed, i.e. more than half of the documents of this kind in the history of relations between the USSR and the United States since the establishment of diplomatic relations (Grant, 117). The "Basic Principles of Relations between the USSR and the United States" was signed in 1972 during the Soviet-American Summit. Both sides have pledged to do their utmost to prevent military confrontation and nuclear war, to exercise restraint in their mutual relations and the willingness to negotiate and settle their differences through peaceful means. During the summit in Moscow in May and June 1972 was established by the Soviet-American commission on trade issues, which developed and prepared for signing a number of agreements (Dukes, 116).
Importance was given to the Agreement on Trade, dated 18 October 1972. It provides for the mutual provision of the parties to each other most-favored-nation treatment in matters of customs duties, fees and other formalities for the import and export of goods, i.e., it was about the construction of the economic relations between the USSR and the USA. The agreement also provides that each party not only rejects any discriminatory actions in trade relations, but also undertake to encourage the establishment of effective business relations between commercial organizations and firms of both countries. As a result, it managed to increase turnover between the USSR and the United States: if in 1970 it amounted to 161 million rubles, in 1979 - to more than 2.8 billion. The scale of the intergovernmental co-operation shown by the fact that at the end of 1979 operated some 100 mixed Soviet-US working groups, realizing about 300 joint projects in various fields of science.
In the late eighties the country suddenly had an opportunity to establish relations of a completely different type, based on the "new thinking" in Moscow and Washington. Words about Russian full-fledged integration into the community of democratic states began to sound like a call to Washington, at the headquarters of NATO in Brussels and other capitals.
Twelve years later, the Russian-American relations really radically changed. The center of gravity in the relationship steadily shifted from the strategic balance of forces and agreements on arms control to the common economic interests and business contacts. Common threats such as terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction led to closer interaction (Nelson and Anderson, 167). This cooperation may take the form of bilateral consultations on the Iranian nuclear program or multilateral diplomacy such as the six-party talks on North Korea or Russia-NATO Council. Today, relying on an expanding range of common interests, Russia and the US are working together so that no one could have imagined twenty years ago.
However, none of parties can be fully satisfied with the current state of Russian relations. In the modern period the relations between Russia and the United States there are too many unsaid and unresolved issues, these issues are mainly related to the issue of missile defense, the question of the disarmament of the START-1 and 2, terrorism, drug trafficking, etc. Recently, a very sharp debate over the events in Ukraine and the Georgian troops armed conflict and South Ossetia, the intervention of Russia, demonstrated how fragile and tenuous relations between Russia and the United States. In 2001 Washington and in Moscow as a "strategic partnership", this relationship had a crack, significantly increased the gap between glowing rhetoric about bilateral cooperation and its real insipid.
During the presidency of George W. Bush the US has opened a Pandora's box that no one tried to keep the eyelids closed, because they knew the future role, weight and their influence on the world. Only one conflict in South Ossetia make it clear to the world community, how fragile this relationship, even though it is between Russia and the United States is expressed in a narrow range of issues. Russia and the United States do not have the connection points in the economy, culture, and military field, especially in matters required the participation of the two sides. Objectively, the two countries differ significantly in their capabilities and role in the system of international relations.
After the process of «RESET» - restart, throughout Apparently, the parties decided to go to each other for the sake of solving the world's problems, not only with questions of military content, but also economic.
Although the tradition of extraordinary twists in relations and views on the problems of bilateral relations could lead to a dead end, matters of dispute may be. The issue of missile defense and the situation in Afghanistan, the construction of plants for the generation of uranium in Iran are also pressing. In the first months of 2009, Russian-American relations met positive trends. The Democratic administration of Barack Obama has sent Moscow a number of encouraging signals about Washington's readiness to start negotiations on the problems of the third position area and the extension of the START-1 Treaty. However, both sides realize that the solution to the accumulated problems will not be easy. The main difficulty lies in the accumulated for the past twenty years, the negative experience of Russian-American relations.
Currently due to the annexation of the Crimea and subsequent armed conflict in Ukraine and the imposition of sanctions against Russia by the USA and the West the relations between the two states are the worst since the end of the Cold War. Sanctions and autocratic policy of Russian President Putin contributed to further isolation of Russia in terms of technology, security, economy, trade. Only dramatic change of Russian leadership and approach to policy is likely to improve the situation.
Works cited
Dukes, Paul. The USA In The Making Of The USSR. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004. Print.
Grant, R. G. The Cold War. Mankato, Minn.: Arcturus Pub., 2008. Print.
Nelson, Daniel N, and Roger B Anderson. Soviet-American Relations. Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 1988. Print.
