DOC Heart of the Century: 1949 to 1951; Korea; the shadow of a Third World War...and everyday life in the daily newspaper by Tom Mueller in History

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 Gorbachëv 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; Gorbachëv; 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.