ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the contribution of Professor Raymond Garthoff as a penetrating and very interesting piece of research. Professor Garthoff divides the Americans into three groups; essentialists, pragmatists, and interactionists. Some people in the USA think that the political processes in the USSR as well as the new political thinking result from the unsatisfactory state of the Soviet economy, and this is why they are of a temporary nature. A foreign airplane had penetrated Soviet air space for some hours, and the plane's crew ignored the order to land. From the viewpoint of the Soviet military, this could only have meant one thing: the foreign airplane had hostile intentions. It is a deep error to think that the character of Soviet actions or rhetoric will be able to control the character of American or Western perceptions of Soviet actions.
