When historians discuss U.S.-Soviet relations, they tend to place a special emphasis on the personal relationships formed between the leaders of the two superpowers. The common examples include FDR and Stalin, Reagan and Gorbachev – but what was the relationship like between Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev? They met more often than any Soviet premier had with a U.S. President (save Reagan and Gorbachev ten years down the road) and their initial rapport of mistrust grew substantially into a cordial friendship that directly impacted arms negotiations.

RN and Brezhnev met for three summits while each was in office, totaling over one hundred hours of time: May 1972, June 1973, and June/July 1974. “I felt that the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union would probably be the single most important factor in determining whether the world would live at peace during and after my administration,” RN noted in his Memoirs. “I felt that we had allowed ourselves to get in a disadvantageous position vis-à-vis the Soviets.”

The openings to Mao’s China in February 1972 threatened to place the Soviets on the diplomatic backbench. Since the 1950s the Soviets and the Chinese had experienced a rift in relations, and RN tactfully exploited this to further U.S. interests. This only increased Moscow’s sense of urgency in talking to the Americans; pressured by America’s new relationship with China, Brezhnev wrote the President and invited him to the Soviet Union for a week of summits – the first time a sitting U.S. President would visit the USSR. But problems began to mount – only days before the summit, RN stepped up the bombings of North Vietnam, angering the Soviets.

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