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Author: Robert Service
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 161039500X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 688
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Book Description
On 26 December, 1991, the hammer-and-sickle flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time. Yet, 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 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 that the Soviet political leadership would undertake a huge internal reform of the USSR, or that the threat of a nuclear Armageddon could or would be peacefully wound down. Drawing on pioneering archival research, Robert Service's gripping 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. A story of American pressure and Soviet long-term decline and overstretch, The End of the Cold War: 1985-1991 shows how a small but skillful group of statesmen grew determined to end the Cold War on their watch and transformed the global political landscape irreversibly.
Author: Robert Service
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 161039500X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 688
Get Book
Book Description
On 26 December, 1991, the hammer-and-sickle flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time. Yet, 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 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 that the Soviet political leadership would undertake a huge internal reform of the USSR, or that the threat of a nuclear Armageddon could or would be peacefully wound down. Drawing on pioneering archival research, Robert Service's gripping 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. A story of American pressure and Soviet long-term decline and overstretch, The End of the Cold War: 1985-1991 shows how a small but skillful group of statesmen grew determined to end the Cold War on their watch and transformed the global political landscape irreversibly.
Author: Robert Service
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 1447287282
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 656
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Book Description
The Cold War had seemed like a permanent fixture in global politics, and until its denouement, no Western or Soviet politician foresaw that the stand-off between the two superpowers - after decades of struggle over every aspect of security, politics, economics and ideas - would end in their lifetimes. Even after March 1985 when Mikhail Gorbachëv became the leader of the Soviet Union it was not preordained that global nuclear Armageddon could or would be averted peaceably. But just four years later, the Berlin Wall was dismantled and perestroika spread throughout the former Soviet bloc. It was a sea change in world history, which resulted in the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Drawing on pioneering archival research, Robert Service's gripping new investigation of the final years of the Cold War pinpoints the astonishing relationships among President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachëv, Secretary of State George Shultz and the USSR's last Foreign Affairs Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, who found a way to cooperate during times of extraordinary change around the world. The story is of American pressure and Soviet long-term decline and over-stretch. The End of the Cold War shows how that small, skillful group of statesmen were determined to end the Cold War on their watch. In the process, they irreversibly transformed the global geopolitical landscape. Authoritative, compelling and meticulously researched, this is political history at its best.
Author: Robert Service
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 174354023X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
The first comprehensive account to reveal exactly how the Cold War - and the Soviet Union - came to an end, a process which transformed the world in the late 20th century. "Our leading historian of the Soviet Union ... magisterial" Observer The dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the spread of Perestroika throughout the former Soviet bloc was a sea change in world history and two years later resulted in the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In The End of the Cold War, acclaimed Russian historian Robert Service examines precisely how that change came about. Drawing on a vast and largely untapped range of sources, he builds a picture of the two men who spearheaded the breakthrough: Ronald Reagan, President of the United States, and Mikhail Gorbachev, last General Secretary of the Soviet Union and first and last President of the USSR. He also analyses the role of influential players not only in America and the USSR, but throughout Eastern and Western Europe, and focuses especially on Pope John Paul II, Lech Watesa and Vaclav Havel. Authoritative, compelling and meticulously researched, this is political history at its best. PRAISE FOR ROBERT SERVICE "An abundance of superbly organized material" Independent "Detailed and clear ... his main strength is his forensic challenge to the clichés and myths on which western triumphalism about the Cold War is based ... Service is an authoritative voice offering a more nuanced view." Sunday Times "Well-written and thought-provoking" Literary Review "Masterful chronicle about personalities and ideas ..." Times Higher Education Supplement "A magisterial account of a turning point in modern history, whose intellectual rigour and robustness make it unlikely to be bettered" Spectator
Author: Robert J. McMahon
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198859546
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 201
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Book Description
Vividly written and based on up-to-date scholarship, this title provides an interpretive overview of the international history of the Cold War.
Author: Pavel Palazchenko
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271040920
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 434
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Book Description
Author: Jack Matlock
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812974891
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402
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Book Description
“[Matlock’s] account of Reagan’s achievement as the nation’s diplomat in chief is a public service.”—The New York Times Book Review “Engrossing . . . authoritative . . . a detailed and reliable narrative that future historians will be able to draw on to illuminate one of the most dramatic periods in modern history.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review In Reagan and Gorbachev, Jack F. Matlock, Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to the U.S.S.R. and principal adviser to Ronald Reagan on Soviet and European affairs, gives an eyewitness account of how the Cold War ended. Working from his own papers, recent interviews with major figures, and unparalleled access to the best and latest sources, Matlock offers an insider’s perspective on a diplomatic campaign far more sophisticated than previously thought, waged by two leaders of surpassing vision. Matlock details how Reagan privately pursued improved U.S.-U.S.S.R. relations even while engaging in public saber rattling. When Gorbachev assumed leadership, however, Reagan and his advisers found a willing partner in peace. Matlock shows how both leaders took risks that yielded great rewards and offers unprecedented insight into the often cordial working relationship between Reagan and Gorbachev. Both epic and intimate, Reagan and Gorbachev will be the standard reference on the end of the Cold War, a work that is critical to our understanding of the present and the past.
Author: Frances FitzGerald
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743203771
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 592
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Book Description
Way Out There in the Blue is a major work of history by the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Fire in the Lake. Using the Star Wars missile defense program as a magnifying glass on his presidency, Frances FitzGerald gives us a wholly original portrait of Ronald Reagan, the most puzzling president of the last half of the twentieth century. Reagan's presidency and the man himself have always been difficult to fathom. His influence was enormous, and the few powerful ideas he espoused remain with us still -- yet he seemed nothing more than a charming, simple-minded, inattentive actor. FitzGerald shows us a Reagan far more complex than the man we thought we knew. A master of the American language and of self-presentation, the greatest storyteller ever to occupy the Oval Office, Reagan created a compelling public persona that bore little relationship to himself. The real Ronald Reagan -- the Reagan who emerges from FitzGerald's book -- was a gifted politician with a deep understanding of the American national psyche and at the same time an executive almost totally disengaged from the policies of his administration and from the people who surrounded him. The idea that America should have an impregnable shield against nuclear weapons was Reagan's invention. His famous Star Wars speech, in which he promised us such a shield and called upon scientists to produce it, gave rise to the Strategic Defense Initiative. Reagan used his sure understanding of American mythology, history and politics to persuade the country that a perfect defense against Soviet nuclear weapons would be possible, even though the technology did not exist and was not remotely feasible. His idea turned into a multibillion-dollar research program. SDI played a central role in U.S.-Soviet relations at a crucial juncture in the Cold War, and in a different form it survives to this day. Drawing on prodigious research, including interviews with the participants, FitzGerald offers new insights into American foreign policy in the Reagan era. She gives us revealing portraits of major players in Reagan's administration, including George Shultz, Caspar Weinberger, Donald Regan and Paul Nitze, and she provides a radically new view of what happened at the Reagan-Gorbachev summits in Geneva, Reykjavik, Washington and Moscow. FitzGerald describes the fierce battles among Reagan's advisers and the frightening increase of Cold War tensions during Reagan's first term. She shows how the president who presided over the greatest peacetime military buildup came to espouse the elimination of nuclear weapons, and how the man who insisted that the Soviet Union was an "evil empire" came to embrace the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and to proclaim an end to the Cold War long before most in Washington understood that it had ended. Way Out There in the Blue is a ground-breaking history of the American side of the end of the Cold War. Both appalling and funny, it is a black comedy in which Reagan, playing the role he wrote for himself, is the hero.
Author: David Armstrong
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135188378
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 211
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Book Description
Giving an overview of the origins and history of the Cold War, this work considers whether the Cold War is truly over, and what the effects have been on Europe, and the former Soviet Union, as well as US foreign policy.
Author: Aaron Donaghy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108838030
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 405
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Book Description
The compelling account of the last great Cold War struggle between America and the Soviet Union that took place between 1977 and 1985.
Author: Vladislav M. Zubok
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807899054
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 504
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Book Description
In this widely praised book, Vladislav Zubok argues that Western interpretations of the Cold War have erred by exaggerating either the Kremlin's pragmatism or its aggressiveness. Explaining the interests, aspirations, illusions, fears, and misperceptions of the Kremlin leaders and Soviet elites, Zubok offers a Soviet perspective on the greatest standoff of the twentieth century. Using recently declassified Politburo records, ciphered telegrams, diaries, and taped conversations, among other sources, Zubok offers the first work in English to cover the entire Cold War from the Soviet side. A Failed Empire provides a history quite different from those written by the Western victors. In a new preface for this edition, the author adds to our understanding of today's events in Russia, including who the new players are and how their policies will affect the state of the world in the twenty-first century.
