I think it was more a case of that through the 50s and maybe later, the US and it’s allies- working from limited data and assuming the worst- presumed that the USSR was deliberately hiding how strong and prepared it was for a surprise attack; when in fact the USSR went to great lengths to hide just how weak it was.
Not always the case - one anecdotal story posits that Eisenhower was trumped by congressional democrats during the campaign for re-election - he presumably had access to the latest, classified intelligence, (and of course so did congress) which showed that the Russkies were publicly overstating certain weapons capabilities, so Ike wanted to cut back on certain defense spending. So, the loyal opposition publicly claimed that the president was “soft on communism”. :rolleyes:
no wonder they collapsed, it’s an insoluble problem, and outrageously expensive
Ah, but we tricked them into it with our own program. Research data cleverly leaked to the SDMB.
McCarthy was wrong on almost everything, and certainly didn’t submit verifiable evidence to substantiate his outrageous, broader claims. The case against Hiss is compelling to some, but better evidence is needed. As for much of the rest: feh.
was that after they perfected the 1920’s death rays?
Yes.
It is a 1920’s death ray set on stun that keeps Lenin looking so perky.
In an additional bit of subterfuge, the Russian scientists assumed we had encoded our instructions in traditional American lingo, and they transposed several objects and subjects in the documentation as was the custom between the Cold War opponents.
Later, they were to find out that attempting to have airplanes launch them was not the intended result.
We didn’t (or haven’t yet) found out any startling revelations (Stalin was actually a woman; Soviet bombers burned coal). It’s more along the lines of confirming stuff we had already guessed at, and getting details about stuff.
I think most people believed the Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were spying for Russia. The evidence was always there. The controversy was much more about their punishment, and not their guilt. Richard Rhodes believes that the real value of the information the Soviets stole from us was confirmatory; they could build bombs much faster because they had our results as well as theirs. We will never know what would have happened if we had given the Soviets the information freely, or had kept it from them entirely. It’s ironic that the Soviets decided to take it regardless of our decision, and did a lot of taking without the help of spies. We were cooperating heavily with them at the time, and they figure out many ways to walk off with material and information. They may have felt that, considering how hard the war was on them, they deserved whatever they could take, regardless of whether or not we wanted to give it.
Remember, though, that the major ideas of both the fission and fusion bombs were “secret” only in that we developed them first and hid them from the Soviets. They would have found them eventually.
If you mean “did we discover that stuff we thought Germany did in WWII was actually done by the USSR”; no. Even before the USSR fell, we knew that it (mostly at the direction of Stalin) had committed its own atrocious, horrible acts. Stalin was an obsessive, narrow, arrogant, paranoid and thoroughly evil person. Intelligent people rightly feared him. Because of intense propaganda, most Soviets credited him with the improvement in the life of the working class in the USSR, but we have to wonder if it could have been even better with democracy instead of dictatorship.
The only event I can think of that there was ever much ambiguity about was the Katyn Massacre. And it was resoved (that it was carried out by the soviets not the nazis) long before the USSR collapsed.
Yes, and we learned which deep location in the Pacific they used, how many times they did it, how long they were there, what year they used it, and even what song they were listening to at the time…
The Volga River Boatmen, no doubt.
The Soviets vehemently denied that they invented nesting dolls (true,) and The Pet Rock (false.) :eek: Those evil, devious Rooskies!
What was he correct on?
We learned heavy things, silly things, things that make you go hmmm. Like:
That the Communist Party USA and it’s multi-time Presidential candidate Gus Hall received several million dollars from the Soviet government for the party’s expenses in publishing the Daily Worker and for rental fees for the party headquarters. If that had been known, and Hall denied it several times running for President, I am not sure it would have been made any difference to those inclined to vote for them or join up. But the WaPo put it on the front page, Hall, the CPUSA, the USSR all kept it secret.
The USSR provided Training, weapons and false documents to the communists fighting Pinochet.
Warsaw-Pact Strategy would involve first use of nukes.
Just days after the assassination of JFK, Jackie
wrote Khruschev to appeal for him to continue peaceful relations with the United States.
Weird coincidence. I just started the second book today.
As a footnote, I believe that a large chunk of the KGB files are still classified. The secrets are still secrets.
After reading the Wiki article on Alger Hiss I would say that this is still up in the air.
We learned that that extreme socialist or capitalism is not a good thing, and the dissatiafaction of most citizens of state can led to it’s end reguardless of how ruthless the government is. Didn’t we? We learned that as most Americans suppected, the Soviets were as worried about nuclear holocaust as we were.