Dartmouth Conferences (peace)

Dartmouth Conferences on peace process begun at Dartmouth College in October 1960.^[1] It is one of the longest ongoing bilateral unofficial dialogues between American and Soviet (now Russian) representatives.^[2]

History and impact

The conferences began during the height of the Cold War, aiming to create a forum where leading American and Soviet intellectuals could meet and discuss peace initiatives.^[3] The meetings were restricted to American and Soviet non-governmental representatives only.^[1][3] Nonetheless, it was used as an unofficial channel of communication between the respective governments.^[4][5] The participants were in fact often briefed and debriefed by their respective state officials before and after the conference.

Funding came from the Ford Foundation and the Kettering Foundation on the American side and from the Soviet Peace Committee and the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies on the Soviet side.^[5][6]

The first conference was held at Dartmouth College; although the venue changed in later years, the name of the first venue became associated with the conference series.^[5] The organizers of the conference tried to keep a yearly schedule, but the Soviet side often refused the invitation; for example, there were no conferences in the years 1965–1968, as relations between USSR and United States cooled down and Soviet officials protested the growing U.S. involvement in Vietnam by ordering the invited Soviet representatives to turn down invitations to the conference.^[7]

During the Cold War, it has been noted that the Dartmouth Conferences became a front conference for the Soviet Union, whose agents often managed to weaken Dartmouth critique of the USSR and instead concentrate on blaming the United States and the West.^[1][8]

Nonetheless the Dartmouth Conferences continued after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, although the large conferences of the past have been replaced by meetings of specialized task forces (which were created in 1981).^[9] The Soviet Union was replaced by Russia, and their focus shifted to issues such as peace in post-Soviet states, like Tajikistan.^[10]

Notable participants

Notable participants included Norman Cousins (founder of the conference), Zbigniew Brzezinski, Georgi Arbatov, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, Evgeni Primakov, David Rockefeller, Yuri Zhukov, Andrei Kozyrev, Charles Yost, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Buckminster Fuller.^[11]

Locations and times

• Dartmouth I – Hanover, New Hampshire, USA, October 29 – November 4, 1960^[12]
• Dartmouth II – Nizhnaya Oreanda, Crimea, USSR, May 21–28, 1961^[12]
• Dartmouth III – Andover, Massachusetts, USA, October 21–27, 1962
• Dartmouth IV – Leningrad, USSR, July 21–31, 1964
• Dartmouth V – Rye, New York, USA January 13–18, 1969^[13]
• Dartmouth VI – Kiev, Ukraine, USSR, July 12–16, 1971^[13]
• Dartmouth VII – Hanover, New Hampshire, USA, December 2–7, 1972^[13]
• Dartmouth VIII – Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, USSR, April 21–24, 1974^[13]
• Dartmouth IX – Moscow, USSR, June 3–5, 1975^[13]
• Dartmouth X – Rio Rico, Arizona, USA, April 30 – May 2, 1976^[13]
• Dartmouth XI – Jūrmala, Latvia, USSR, July 8–13, 1977^[13]
• Dartmouth XII – Williamsburg, Virginia, USA, May 3–7, 1979^[13]
• Dartmouth Leadership Conference – Bellagio, Italy, May 22–26, 1980^[13]
• Dartmouth XIII – Moscow, USSR, November 16–19, 1981^[14]
• Dartmouth XIV – Hanover, New Hampshire, USA, May 14–17, 1984^[14]
• Dartmouth XV – Baku, Azerbaijan, USSR, May 13–17, 1986^[14]
• Dartmouth XVI – Austin, Texas, USA, April 25–29, 1989^[15]
• Dartmouth XVII – Leningrad, USSR, July 22–27, 1990^[15]

See also

• Pugwash Conferences
• List of anti-war organizations
• List of peace activists

Notes

Further reading

• James Voorhees, The Dartmouth Conference: The Influence of a Transnational Community on US-Soviet Relations, 1960–1991, paper presented at the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, 1998

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