Since 1917, relations between Russia (or the Soviet Union) and the United States have been marked by extraordinary hostility occasionally tempered by periods of cooperation.

The US refused to recognize the new Bolshevik government when it assumed power in 1917, and even contributed several thousand troops to an international military force intended to dislodge the new regime from power from 1918 to 1920. These actions left a legacy of hostility on the part of the Soviets who treated the invasion as proof of the determination of capitalist countries to subvert the Soviet Republic. The United States withheld diplomatic recognition of the USSR until 1933.

Relations between the two countries remained tense until the United States entered the Second World War, at which time they became allied against the Axis powers. In the US, sympathy and affection for “Mother Russia” and “Uncle Joe”Z Stalin developed. From the Soviet perspective, however, American unwillingness to open a second front in continental Europe until 1944, after the Red Army had been combating Nazi armies for three years at the cost of nearly 20 million Soviet lives, left the impression that the US was willing to let Soviet citizens fight Hitler alone in order to spare American casualties.

Resentment helped to fuel Soviet suspicion of American postwar intentions at the outset of the Cold War.

Any lingering benevolent wartime feelings between the two countries evaporated during the Cold War, which periodically flared into “hot” wars, on the Korean peninsula and in Vietnam, and nearly over the Cuban missile crisis (1962) and the Berlin Crisis (1958–62). American suspicion of an expansionist, aggressive and Marxist Soviet Union exporting revolution and instability to capitalist nations friendly to the United States was a foundation of American foreign and domestic policy until the late 1980s.

The 1970s were largely a period of détente, a warming of relations highlighted by increased cultural and student exchanges and tourism. In light of an essential parity of nuclear weapons arsenals, arms-control treaties limited, but by no means stopped, the arms race. Nevertheless, much of the American media continued to depict the Soviet Union as a ruthless and cunning enemy, as did most of Congress, which in 1979 refused to ratify the SALT II arms-control treaty negotiated by President Carter.

The first half of the Reagan presidency (1981–9) brought renewed rhetorical battles and a reheated Cold War. Reagan coined the term “Evil Empire” to describe the Soviet Union, and effectively ended the 1970s détente. American spending on the development of new missile systems (and anti-missile systems) increased dramatically and the Soviets attempted, unsuccessfully to match American capabilities.

Only the unexpected ascension of the reformer Mikhail Gorbachev to the post of General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985 created the conditions for a new thaw in Soviet—American relations. Gorbachev, with his commitment to reducing Soviet expenditures on defense, which were severely damaging an already weakening Soviet economy to increased “openness” (glasnost) in the press, and his rhetoric of liberalizing the socialist system, eventually became enormously popular among Washington elites and the American public, softening anti-Soviet attitudes. His efforts to introduce “socialism with a human face” to the USSR met with an extraordinary enthusiasm in the US, not matched in his own country. His refusal to crush with force the Eastern European revolutions in 1989–91 also met with approval and raised him—and the Soviet Union— in the eyes of many Americans.

Gorbachev’s downfall, made inevitable with the failed right-wing putsch of August 1991, and the subsequent dissolution of the Communist Party by Russian President Boris Yeltsin, marked the end of Soviet—American relations.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian—American relations temporarily improved but have since cooled significantly. Many Russians blamed American economists for imposing upon Russia “shock-therapy” measures. These measures, including the privatization of state-owned property, the end to price subsidies and foreign investment, have been blamed for the sharp decline in living standards for the majority of Russians, while a small minority have quickly accumulated enormous wealth. More recently, America’s support for the expansion of the NATO military alliance into the countries of the former Eastern bloc, followed by the 1999 war with Serbia, provoked the worst American—Russian relations since the end of the Cold War. Many Russian leaders and citizens have accused America and its European allies of “aggression” in an attempt to isolate and humiliate Russia during this period of internal turmoil and economic collapse.