Spaso House - Detente and The End of The Cold War

Detente and The End of The Cold War

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Soviet-American relations began to improve again. On May 26, 1972, President Richard Nixon, Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and Premier Alexei Kosygin used Spaso House as the venue to announce their agreement on the first round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT 1) and on an Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The treaties were signed shortly afterwards at the Kremlin.

The visit of President Nixon was the first visit of a U.S. President to Moscow, and the second visit of a U.S. President to the USSR since Franklin Roosevelt went to Yalta in February 1945. While Nixon did not stay at Spaso House, staying at the Kremlin instead, he did host a dinner for Soviet leaders in the ballroom of Spaso House on May 26, 1972, after the announcement of the START and ABM agreements. That evening the pianist Van Cliburn also played a concert at Spaso House, the first of a long series of performances at Spaso by major American artists.

The early 1980s saw a series of turnovers in the Soviet leadership. Vice President George H. W. Bush came to Spaso house three times to attend the funerals of General Secretaries Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko.

In April, 1986, another American cultural envoy, pianist Vladimir Horowitz, stayed at Spaso House, along with his own Steinway piano, shipped by diplomatic pouch from New York, preparing for his historic April 20 concert at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, marking his return to his homeland after an absence of 60 years. Other notable American musicians who performed at Spaso were Leonard Bernstein, Mstislav Rostropovich, Ray Charles, and Chick Corea. On May 31, 1988, the jazz pianist Dave Brubeck performed in the Spaso House ballroom for President Ronald Reagan and the new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.

The 1991 Fourth of July Reception at Spaso House was not attended by President Gorbachev, but it was attended by Boris Yeltsin, the President of the Russian Federation. A month later, an attempted coup against Gorbachev failed, the Soviet Union collapsed, and Yelstin became the leader of the new Russia. The 1992 Fourth of July Reception was not attended by Boris Yeltsin, but it was attended by Mikhail Gorbachev, who no longer had a job. The occupant of Spaso House, Ambassador Robert Strauss, had a new title; he was the last Ambassador to the Soviet Union and the first Ambassador to the Russian Federation.