ABSTRACT
Stalin supported the idea of easing trade restrictions after the war, and he agreed to joint occupation and control of Germany following its defeat. Beneath this atmosphere of allied cooperation, however, disagreements over political and diplomatic questions cropped up. These differences led to the disruption of the alliance and the beginning of a long, hostile relationship between the Soviet Union and the West known as the Cold War. Human rights proved to be a thorny issue in Soviet-Western relations. Efforts by Brezhnev and Richard Nixon in the early 1970s to expand trade greatly between the superpowers foundered on public and congressional criticism of Soviet restrictions on the emigration of dissatisfied Soviet Jews, who wished to leave the USSR for Israel or the West. Brezhnev's emphasis on political stability masked deep-seated changes in Soviet society from the 1960s to the early 1980s. Soviet citizens became increasingly urbanized and more highly educated in that period.
