ABSTRACT
In the context of international relations, 'peace' is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as 'freedom from, or cessation of, war or hostilities'; and the Russian word for 'peace' in the same context is defined by the Slovar' Sovremennogo Russkogo Lityeratumogo Yazyka as 'the absence of war or armed conflict between peoples or States'. In this case, therefore, both East and West appear to have the same notion of peace; and consequently it might be thought that there was no need for author to devote a chapter to it. The volume of the encyclopaedia was published in 1957, but subsequent Soviet definitions of the 'cold war' of comparable official status followed the same line. In what is said about the 'Soviet' attitude to peace, it must be understood that it is referring solely to the orthodox communist view, and hence to the official view of the Soviet Communist Party and of the Soviet Government.
