Waubonsee Community College

The End of the Cold War, 1985-1991, Robert Service

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 501-518) and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

The End of the Cold War, 1985-1991

bibliography

903675822

Robert Service

On 26 December 1991, the hammer-and-sickle flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time. Just six years earlier, when Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and chose Eduard Shevardnadze as his foreign minister, the Cold War had seemed like a permanent fixture in world politics. Until its denouement, no Western or Soviet politician foresaw that the standoff between the two superpowers--after decades of struggle over every aspect of security, politics, economics, and ideas--would end within the lifetime of the current generation. Nor was it at all obvious that the Soviet political leadership would undertake a huge internal reform of the USSR, or that the threat of a nuclear Armageddon could be peacefully wound down. Drawing on pioneering archival research, Robert Service's investigation of the final years of the Cold War pinpoints the extraordinary relationships between Ronald Reagan, Gorbachev, George Shultz, and Shevardnadze, who found ways to cooperate during times of exceptional change around the world--, Adapted from book jacket"A British historian and author investigates the final years of the Cold War from both sides of the Iron Curtain, discussing the relationship between Reagan and Gorbachev whose unprecedented, historic cooperation worked against the odds to end the arms race."--, NoveList

Introduction -- Ronald Reagan -- Plans for Armageddon -- The Reaganauts -- The American challenge -- Symptoms recognized, cures rejected -- Cracks in the ice : Eastern Europe -- The Soviet quarantine -- NATO and its friends -- World communism and the peace movement -- In the Soviet waiting room -- Mikhail Gorbachëv -- The Moscow reform team -- One foot on the accelerator -- To Geneva -- Presenting the Soviet package -- American rejection -- The stalled interaction -- The Strategic Defense Initiative -- The lost summer -- Summit in Reykjavik -- The month of muffled drums -- The Soviet package untied -- The big four -- Getting to know the enemy -- Sticking points -- Grinding out the treaty -- Calls to Western Europe -- Eastern Europe : perplexity and protest -- The leaving of Afghanistan -- Spokes in the wheel -- Reagan's window of departure -- The fifth man -- The other continent : Asia -- Epitaph for world communism -- Revolution in Eastern Europe -- The Malta Summit -- Redrawing the map of Europe -- The new Germany -- Baltic triangle -- The third man breaks loose -- A new world order? -- Endings -- Postscript