 Innis 's trip to Moscow and Leningrad came shortly before U.S. – Soviet rivalry led to the hostility of the Cold War . Innis lamented this rise in international tensions . He saw the Soviet Empire as a stabilizing counterbalance to the American Empire 's emphasis on commercialism , the individual and constant change . For Innis , Russia was a society within the Western tradition , not an alien civilization . He <unk> the nuclear arms race , seeing it as the triumph of force over knowledge , a modern form of the medieval Inquisition . " The Middle Ages burned its heretics " , he wrote , " and the modern age threatens them with atom bombs . " 
