In many ways, the liberal left viewed the United States as a greater
threat than the Soviet Union. Much was done, therefore, to denounce
the abuses of US policy. American sociologist C. Wright Mills inter-
preted Washington’s behavior as essentially dictated by the political,
economic, and strategic interests of a “power elite.”^61 Crises and
interventions in countries such as Guatemala, Cuba, Vietnam, and
Chile lent weight to this interpretation of American foreign policy.
Progressives also saw a “schizoid” dimension to the war on com-
munism.^62 They severely condemned Senator Joseph McCarthy’s
witch-hunt in the United States, and deplored the tendency to see all
Third World nationalist movements as infiltrated by communists, and
all communist parties as puppets of Moscow.
In keeping with its anti-militarist tradition, the left also denounced
the arms race as an irrational waste of resources. These criticisms were
aimed above all at the American government, because the United
States was at once the main producer and exporter of weapons. After
Soviet overtures, such as the unilateral halting of nuclear testing in
1958 and the proposition made by Premier Nikita Khrushchev in
1959 at the UN to carry out a “general and complete disarmament,”^63
the West was frequently blamed for its unwillingness to seize peace
opportunities.
Socialists finally showed some appreciation for the Soviet bloc’s
economic, technical, cultural, and athletic achievements. Although
unquestionably poorer than the United States, it was the Soviet Union
that set in motion the space age by launching the first Sputnik in 1957,
to the Americans’ great dismay. In 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first
man sent into orbit around the Earth. More generally, the international
success of the scientists, artists, and athletes of the East appeared as
proof that even though the citizens of socialist countries did not have
access to the same consumer goods as their counterparts in capitalist
countries, they nevertheless enjoyed a high standard of living and a
good quality of life. In the 1970s, however, with the economic decline
of the USSR and many revelations about the gulags, positive references
to communism vanished almost entirely from the left’s discourse.
(^61) C. Wright Mills,The Power Elite, Oxford University Press, 1956.
(^62) Hobsbawm,The Age of Extremes, p. 235.
(^63) John G. Stoessinger,The Might of Nations: World Politics in Our Time, eighth
edition, New York, Random House, 1985, p. 369.
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