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First-strike attack was greatly feared during the Cold War and was the belief that either side would attack the other, especially with nuclear weapons, without warning.
In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War the Soviet Union feared the United States would use its nuclear superiority to devastate the motherland, though, in fact, NATO later explicitly ruled out a first-strike posture - a pledge not matched by the Soviets.
At various points of the cold war, the fear of a first strike attack was fuelled by changes in posture and technology used by either side.
In the 1940s the US enjoyed a monopoly of nuclear forces, while in the late 1950s and early 1960s Khrushchev incautiously and inaccurately boasted of a Soviet superiority in missile forces. The arrival of Soviet missiles in Cuba was meant to weaken the US as it exposed the homeland to attack almost without warning, but instead exposed Khrushchev to personal humiliation as the "Cuban Missile Crisis" resulted in him backing down rather than risk war.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s the decision of NATO to deploy new intermediate nuclear forces through Cruise and Pershing missiles (along with Ronald Reagan's talk of 'limited' nuclear war) increased Soviet fears that Nato was planning an attack.
In fact Soviet military theory was dominated by the theory of the "deep operation" - a large scale armoured offensive into enemy-held territory - rather than a nuclear offensive. Soviet "conventional" superiority and the fact the the Soviet Union certainly considered the deep operation as a potential first strike weapon in a time of increased tension, increased Nato reliance on nuclear weapons.
Although neither side was actively persuing a first-strike policy (since the time of Khrushchev the leaders of orthodox communism believed that "peaceful coexistence" with the "imperialist" powers was possible) both sides relied on military strategies that could have still caused a general nuclear war.
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