No 10 (2024)

The article examines a historical source of personal origin – an interview with former Soviet diplomat Yuri Ivanovich Pavlov, given by him in 1999 to the US National Security Archive. Diplomats are the guides of the state's foreign policy. Their role has been high at all times, it became especially important during the Cold War, when the fate of the whole world depended on the activities of diplomats of two antagonistic blocs – NATO and the ATS. If such sources from NATO countries are presented in sufficient detail and relatively everywhere, then in the case of our country the situation is completely different. Diplomats and employees of the foreign ministry do not leave and/or publish any of their memories or give interviews very often. Therefore, the study of sources left over from diplomats is incredibly important for understanding exactly how employees of foreign ministries treated their work, assessed the actions of their countries, and, in general, reflected. There are not many published sources left from the diplomats of the Soviet period, especially the Cold War period, especially those diplomats who were connected with Latin America. Thus, the interest in Yuri Pavlov's interview increases even more. The interview gives a view from the side of a diplomat with 37 years of experience on the entire foreign policy of the USSR in Latin America from the founding of the country to the collapse of the state. Also, in the responses of Yuri Pavlov, the sentiments of that group of diplomats who were disappointed in the Soviet Union and its policies both inside and outside the country resonated. Pavlov's life itself shows how the community of diplomats changed in their views: from convinced communists in the 1950s. (and Pavlov's service began in 1954), before the liberals-"sixties", who treat their Homeland as negatively as possible.

In 1967—1968. Yevgeny Yevtushenko was on a large Latin American tour, performing for five months in Chile, Uruguay, Colombia and Mexico. In the present article we continue to publish the poet's report from this tour with our comments. The report was written in the spring of 1968 for the internal use of the Soviet Writers' Union, which of course implied that the document would be passed on to the Central Committee, a fact of which the poet was well aware. After friendly Chile (see Latin America, 2024, no.5), Yevtushenko describes the countries less familiar to Soviet cultural diplomacy, Uruguay and Colombia, where “the conquest of souls who are subtly reaching out to us” was still to be achieved. He writes considerably less about both countries than about Chile: the former because of his short stay, and the latter probably because much of his time in Colombia was taken up by personal relations, which he could not in any way confess to the Writers' Union, let alone to the Central Committee.