The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Digital Library

The Vladivostok Summit Meeting on Arms Control
November 23-24, 1974

Following their bilateral talks, President Ford and Soviet General Secretary Leonid I. Brezhnev sign a joint communique on the limitation of strategic offensive arms in the Conference Hall of the Okeansky Sanitorium, Vladivostok, USSR.

The United States and the Soviet Union first reached an agreement on strategic arms limitation in May 1972. That agreement was set to expire in 1977, so both sides pressed for a permanent and more encompassing accord. Soon after President Gerald Ford took office in 1974 he agreed to meet Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in Vladivostok if preliminary meetings could develop the basis for an agreement. Talks between Ford and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in Washington and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's visit to Moscow laid the groundwork for the President's meeting with Brezhnev.

This exhibit consists of a narrative written by President Ford along with a selection of digitized photographs and documents from the Ford Library's holdings.
Library intern Daniel J. Story researched and created a preliminary list of documents for digitization and created an arms control glossary, working under the direction of David Horrocks and Helmi Raaska. Nancy Mirshah selected and digitized photographs, Anne-Louise Mittal digitized documents, and William McNitt planned and constructed the web pages.