This collection of essays makes a significant contribution to the historiography of the end of the Cold War. Research on the causes and consequences of the end of the Cold War is constantly growing. Initially, it was dominated by fairly simplistic, and often politically motivated, debates revolving around the role played by major "winners" and "losers". This volume addresses a number of diverse issues and seeks to challenge several "common wisdoms" about the end of the Cold War. Together, the contributions provide insights on the role of personalities as well as the impact of transnational movements and forces on the unexpected political transformations of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Geographically, the chapters largely focus on the United States, Europe, with special emphasis on Germany, and the Soviet Union. The individual chapters are drawn together by the overarching theme relating to a particular "common wisdom": were the transformations that occurred truly "unexpected"? This collection of essays will make an important contribution to the growing literature on the developments that produced the collapse of the Iron Curtain, the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. This volume will be of much interest to students of Cold War Studies, International History, European Politics and International Relations in general.

This book brings together recent research on the end of the Cold War in the Third World and engages with ongoing debates about regional conflicts, the role of great powers in the developing world, and the role of international actors in conflict resolution. Most of the recent scholarship on the end of the Cold War has focused on Europe or bilateral US-Soviet relations. By contrast, relatively little has been written on the end of the Cold War in the Third World: in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. How did the great transformation of the world in the late 1980s affect regional conflicts and client relationships? Who "won" and who "lost" in the Third World and why do so many Cold War-era problems remain unresolved? This book brings to light for the first time evidence from newly declassified archives in Russia, the United States, Eastern Europe, as well as from private collections, recent memoirs and interviews with key participants. It goes further than anything published so far in systematically explaining, both from the perspectives of the superpowers and the Third World countries, what the end of bipolarity meant not only for the underdeveloped periphery so long enmeshed in ideological, socio-political and military conflicts sponsored by Washington, Moscow or Beijing, but also for the broader patterns of international relations. This book will be of much interest to students of the Cold War, war and conflict studies, third world and development studies, international history, and IR in general.

Exploring the visions of the end of the Cold War that have been put forth since its inception until its actual ending, this volume brings to the fore the reflections, programmes, and strategies that were intended to call into question the bipolar system and replace it with alternative approaches or concepts. These visions were associated not only with prominent individuals, organized groups and civil societies, but were also connected to specific historical processes or events. They ranged from actual, thoroughly conceived programmes, to more blurred, utopian aspirations -- or simply the belief that the Cold War had already, in effect, come to an end. Such visions reveal much about the contexts in which they were developed and shed light on crucial moments and phases of the Cold War.

This book brings together recent research on the end of the Cold War in the Third World and engages with ongoing debates about regional conflicts, the role of great powers in the developing world, and the role of international actors in conflict resolution. Most of the recent scholarship on the end of the Cold War has focused on Europe or bilateral US-Soviet relations. By contrast, relatively little has been written on the end of the Cold War in the Third World: in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. How did the great transformation of the world in the late 1980s affect regional conflicts and client relationships? Who "won" and who "lost" in the Third World and why do so many Cold War-era problems remain unresolved? This book brings to light for the first time evidence from newly declassified archives in Russia, the United States, Eastern Europe, as well as from private collections, recent memoirs and interviews with key participants. It goes further than anything published so far in systematically explaining, both from the perspectives of the superpowers and the Third World countries, what the end of bipolarity meant not only for the underdeveloped periphery so long enmeshed in ideological, socio-political and military conflicts sponsored by Washington, Moscow or Beijing, but also for the broader patterns of international relations. This book will be of much interest to students of the Cold War, war and conflict studies, third world and development studies, international history, and IR in general.

“[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.

In this magisterial and pathbreaking work, Csaba Bekes shares decades of his research to provide a sweeping examination of Hungary's international relations with both the Soviet Bloc and the West from the end of World War II to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Unlike many studies of the global Cold War that focus on East-West relationships—often from the vantage point of the West—Bekes grounds his work in the East, drawing on little-used, non-English sources. As such, he offers a new and sweeping Cold War narrative using Hungary as a case study, demonstrating that the East-Central European states have played a much more important role in shaping both the Soviet bloc's overall policy and the East-West relationship than previously assumed. Similarly, he shows how the relationship between Moscow and its allies, as well as among the bloc countries, was much more complex than it appeared to most observers in the East and the West alike.

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.