This issue begins with three articles looking at various aspects of the situation in Chile before and during the three-year reign (1970–1973) of the Marxist president Salvador Allende, who was a long-time friend and admirer of the Cuban Communist leader Fidel Castro. Upon taking office, Allende had pledged to follow the “Chilean road to socialism” (La vía chilena al socialismo), emulating the Soviet Union and Cuba in economic policies (though not necessarily in politics), but he was overthrown in a military coup in September 1973. Many aspects of the Allende era—the international dimensions as well as the domestic—have been analyzed in exhaustive detail over the past 45 years, but the recent opening of important archival collections in former East-bloc countries, in Washington, DC, and in Santiago allows scholars to shed new light on the crucial role that Chile came to play in U.S. policy and East-West relations during...

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