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The End of the Cold War: 1985-1991
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PublicAffairs 2015
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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.
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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
11/10/2015
Language:
English
ISBN:
9781610395007, 9781610399524
ASIN:
B012271MFA
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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Robert Service. (2015). The End of the Cold War: 1985-1991. PublicAffairs.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Robert Service. 2015. The End of the Cold War: 1985-1991. PublicAffairs.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Robert Service, The End of the Cold War: 1985-1991. PublicAffairs, 2015.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Robert Service. The End of the Cold War: 1985-1991. PublicAffairs, 2015.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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      • bioText: Robert Service is a British historian, academic, and author who has written extensively on the history of Soviet Russia, particularly the era from the October Revolution to Stalin's death. Service is the author of twelve books, including Spies and Commissars; the acclaimed Lenin: A Biography; Stalin: A Biography; and Comrades: A History of World Communism. He is currently a professor of Russian history at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of St. Antony's College, Oxford, and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
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title
The End of the Cold War
fullDescription
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.
reviews
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        Starred review from July 27, 2015
        In this authoritative and deeply informed political and diplomatic history, Service (Trotsky), a seasoned British historian specializing in studies of Soviet Russia, delivers a masterful account of the final years of the Cold War, when a small, remarkable group of statesmen sought an end to the dangerous standoff between superpowers. Deteriorating economic conditions prompted Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to introduce radical political and economic reforms and seek rapprochement with the U.S. Meanwhile, American President Ronald Reagan, consumed by the potential horror of thermonuclear holocaust and driven by a vision of global military denuclearization, proved open to the initiatives of the Kremlin reformers. Both leaders contended with domestic sectors of resistance who grumbled at moves toward reconciliation—hard-line American right-wingers skeptical of Soviet reforms and “communist-conservative critics” in the U.S.S.R. uneasy with Gorbachev’s concessions—and pushed through a series of agreements on nuclear arms reduction. Based on deep, impressive archival research and previously unpublished material, Service strays from triumphalist narratives typical in the West, adopting a bilateral analysis that gives “equal attention to the Soviet Union and America and their interaction in a churning world of transformation.” This study of the end of a cardinal episode of modern history is scholarly yet accessible: detailed, expansive, and engaging.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        Starred review from June 15, 2015
        In this thoughtful re-evaluation of a stunning historical watershed, British Soviet specialist Service (Emeritus, Russian History/Univ. of Oxford; Trotsky, 2009, etc.) concentrates on the political maneuvering that was Byzantine and often wrongheaded but rarely dull. In 1985, the Soviet Union's elderly leaders knew that their backward economy was incapable of maintaining its superpower status. That year, Mikhail Gorbachev assumed power, vowing to change matters. His initial efforts produced deep suspicion in the United States, but Service writes that Ronald Reagan dreaded nuclear war far more than most advisers and led the way. From this point, the author offers an engrossing description of three years during which Reagan and Gorbachev led negotiations that vastly reduced the threat of war. Almost everyone approved of this course of action. Sadly, by 1988, Gorbachev's liberal reforms had not revived the Soviet Union but reawakened nationalist, anti-Russian, and often nasty ethnic feeling, and his already moribund economy continued to decline rapidly. Exhilarated at the success of the U.S., American leaders delivered free-market platitudes but little aid in response to Gorbachev's pleas. "Neither Reagan nor Bush," writes the author, "was minded to bail him out-their priority was to secure international stability and America's global primacy and they could see no benefit in subsidizing Moscow's doomed economic reform. Behind the friendly facade of successive summits there lay American toughness in laying down the terms for conciliation." Of course, in 1991, the Soviet Union disintegrated. Service emphasizes that victory over the Soviets was a good thing, but it was not a good thing to rub their nose in it. These days, Russians dislike America more than they did under Leonid Brezhnev and mostly approve of their pugnacious autocrat, Vladimir Putin, who aims to re-establish his nation as a major power and possesses the nuclear weapons to back this up. A wholly satisfying, likely definitive, but not triumphalist account of the end of an era.

        COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        Starred review from June 15, 2015

        The catastrophic price of nuclear war threatened the world for decades and nearly threatened humankind's existence. The irony is that it was not the use of the weaponry but the cost of maintenance and upgrades that ultimately led to the dissolution of the USSR. Service (history, Oxford; Stalin: A Biography; Lenin: A Biography) thoroughly details how the Soviets were hampered by an overreliance on nuclear and military expenditures at the detriment of society and recognizes this as the catalyst for former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and former minister of foreign affairs Eduard Shevardnadze reaching out to their American counterparts Ronald Reagan and George P. Shultz in an effort to reduce or eliminate nuclear weapons. Service re-creates the diplomatic gamesmanship of the encounter by using firsthand accounts. The only criticism of this absorbing study about leaders ending the Cold War through diplomacy is its lack of documentation of the devastating and lingering effects on Soviet society. To cover that discrepancy, refer to David Remnick's Lenin's Tomb. Other works that will mesh well include Sergei Plokhy's The Last Empire and James Wilson's The Triumph of Improvisation. VERDICT Recommended for political scientists, historians, Cold Warriors, and those who value diplomacy.--Jacob Sherman, John Peace Lib., Univ. of Texas-San Antonio

        Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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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,...
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      • description: History / Modern / 20th Century
      • code: POL060000
      • description: POLITICAL SCIENCE / World / Russian & Soviet