Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev's Soviet Union

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, and Chile and the Nazis, and the coauthor of Invisible and
Inaudible in Washington: American Policies To

This book covers more than Canada–USSR relations in the post-Stalin
era. It also summarizes Canada’s relations with the United States, the
People’s Republic of China, and Castro’s Cuba. India and Korea make
the occasional appearance. Partisan politics (most notably John
Diefenbaker’s eccentricities) are a continual theme.

This book originated with Glazov’s Ph.D. thesis, and what he’s done
he’s done well. Glazov read a wide range of secondary literature
(including the Woodrow Wilson Society’s collection of translated
Soviet and Soviet-bloc documents, The Cold War International History
Project), examined documents that were in previously closed files at the
National Archives of Canada, reviewed the manuscript collections of the
principal actors, and interviewed key Canadians who were still alive.
The topic is an important one, and Glazov’s interpretations are
usually sound. Scholars interested in Canadian foreign relations will
definitely have to consult this book.

Of course, the book is less than perfect. According to Glazov,
Diefenbaker was a staunch opponent of Communist governments as long as
Dwight Eisenhower was the U.S. president; then his personal animosity
against Jack Kennedy overrode his anti-Communism. However, documents in
Foreign Relations of the United States indicate that
Eisenhower–Diefenbaker relations became strained in the summer of 1960
when Diefenbaker would not support an economic embargo against Cuba.
Canadian support mattered to the Eisenhower White House because Canadian
technology was interchangeable with American. If Castro could buy from
Canada what he could not purchase from the U.S., the embargo would lose
much of its impact. A second criticism is that Glazov should have
consulted Jocelyn Maynard Ghent on the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Nevertheless, this is a fine book. Much of the text confirms what has
appeared elsewhere, but the end of the Cold War and the availability of
Soviet documents require that it be said again.