The Kremlin and the Peace Movement During the Early 1980s

The Kremlin and the Peace Movement During the Early 1980s Both internal sources and actual policies indicate that the Soviet leadership saw the Western peace movement as a crucially important element in the East-West conflict. This position formed the foundation of its relationship with the peace movement. Therefore the question to what extent the USSR was capable of using this movement for its own purposes cannot be answered by simply pointing out that the majority of the participants in this protest movement espoused views different from those of the Kremlin. Instead the decisive question is to what degree - even contrary to its own intentions - the movement allowed itself to be politically exploited by the Soviet Union and thereby de facto aided Soviet goals against NATO, even if this did not correspond with the peace movement's underlying intentions.