Trust, but verify Trust, but verify Trust, but verify (; "Doveryat, no proverit") is a Russian proverb. The phrase became well known in English when used by President Ronald Reagan on multiple occasions in the context of nuclear disarmament. Suzanne Massie, an American writer, met with President Ronald Reagan many times between 1984 and 1987. She taught him the Russian proverb "Doveryai, no proveryai" (; "Trust, but verify"), advising him that "The Russians like to talk in proverbs. It would be nice of you to know a few. You are an actor – you can learn them very quickly." The proverb was adopted
Historiography of the Cold War had unfairly judged the Soviet Union by the cultural norms of Britain and the United States. The first school of interpretation to emerge in the United States was "orthodox". For more than a decade after the end of the World War II, few American historians challenged the official American interpretation of the beginnings of the Cold War. The "orthodox" school places the responsibility for the Cold War on the Soviet Union and its expansion into Eastern Europe. For example, Thomas A. Bailey argued in his 1950 "America Faces Russia" that the breakdown of postwar peace was the result of Soviet