Cold War in Chilean Agriculture: Allende S Agrarian Reform from the Soviet Perspective (1970-1973)

This paper addresses Salvador Allende s government Agrarian Reform, placing it within the context of the Cold War and focusing on how the Chilean left initiatives in agriculture were perceived by what was a natural ally for the Popular Unity s government: the Soviet Union (USSR). Based on archival documentation in which Soviet diplomats, analysts and intelligence agents analyze the process and the political debates that it generated, the work emphasizes the extremely critical diagnosis that they issued regarding the results of the Reform and its negative effects for the government s relations with the peasantry and the middle class. Such conclusions shed light on some of the main practical and ideological limitations that characterized, from the point of view of the USSR, the Chilean Revolution.