'New Thinking' for the Peace Movement

In this month's feature report on events surrounding the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in December, Joyce Hollyday juxtaposes two events that resound with irony for the U.S. peace movement and its thinking about the Soviet Union. On the Saturday before the summit, a number of U.S. peace organizations sponsored a demonstration in downtown Washington, D.C., to celebrate the treaty eliminating intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe. A similar, simultaneous action took place in Moscow, sponsored by the Soviet Peace Committee (SPC), an officially recognized institution devoted to propagandizing and mobilizing the Soviet population for the cause of peace. An official of the SPC was also featured prominently on the platform in Washington. As Hollyday recounts, the whole event conveyed a warm image of the Soviet Union as a humane, peace-loving nation.