The Moscow economic conference of April 1952: a tactical manoeuvre or a new strategy of USSR?

In the article analyzes the prehistory, history and the meaning of a large soviet international action - the Moscow economic conference in April 1952. With a use of new evidences from the Russian state archive of social and political history the author argues that the Conference was not just a reaction to the Marshall Plan and Shuman Plan in Western Europe. It was the first attempt to open the iron curtain and change the logic of international relations towards peaceful coexistence. The Conference turned into quite unusual for the period of late Stalin's rule nursery for fresh ideas used in full by USSR later in 1950-1970s.

USSR, economics, diplomacy, peaceful coexistence, integration, cold war, international trade