ABSTRACT
The Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) which had opened on July 3, 1973, and was concluded on August 1, 1975, owes its historical significance in East-West relations to what did not happen. Detente as a consequence is the name for the current stage in an "irreversible" process of relations between the "socialist" States and those of the "opposite camp." It is common knowledge that the convening of CSCE had been made possible by the reluctant agreement of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries to such a conference, proposed by the Soviet Union since the early fifties. During the late 1950s, the development of nuclear weapons induced the Kremlin to revise its doctrine on the inevitability of war. Khrushchev, as a consequence, adapted Lenin's doctrine on "peaceful co-existence" in such a way that it could also be used as a "new" principle guiding relations between States belonging to the two hostile camps.
