This thesis explores how diplomatic relations between the US and the USSR changed during détente, specifically concentrating on the period between the 1972 Moscow Summit and the enactment of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the 1974 Trade Bill. I employ transcripts of diplomatic negotiations to investigate the ways that Soviet and American leaders used new personal relationships with their adversaries to achieve their foreign policy goals. In order to gain further understanding of the Soviet leadership's attitudes toward détente, I also examine how the Soviet government, through Pravda, communicated this new, increasingly complex diplomatic relationship to the Soviet public in a nuanced fashion, with multilayered presentations of American foreign policy that included portrayals of individual actors and not simply impersonal groups
