Mankind is living through a crucial period of its history. An arms race without precedent in intensity and duration, which developed in the postwar period, has left on our planet enor mous stockpiles of weaponry, which, should they be used in war, could cause irreparable damage to world civilization and even threaten the human race with extinction. Hence the most vital and urgent task in the world today is to end the arms race-as well as the mutual mistrust, tension, and hostility that it gener ates in relations between states. The Soviet Union and other countries of the socialist com munity have for many years concentrated their foreign policy efforts on clearing the dark and putrid atmosphere of the Cold War which poisoned relations between states with different social systems. Guided by the great Lenin’’s teachings, we have worked consistently for simple, reasonable, and realistic princi ples of peaceful coexistence, mutual respect for sovereign rights, and mutually beneficial cooperation to prevail in these relations. We have sought to counter the policy of alienation and hos tility among nations, resulting in the world balancing on the brink of war, by encouraging a transition to normal, courteous relations, to peaceful cooperation based on equality-in short, to what is now termed detente. Such is, in effect, the primary aim of the foreign policy guidelines established by the last two congresses of the Com munist Party of the Soviet Union-the 24th and 25th-known as the Soviet Peace Program.
