Alexander Yakovlev And The Roots Of The Soviet Reforms

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Alexander Yakovlev

Author : Richard Pipes
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 160909185X
Total Pages : 137 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (9 download)

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Book Synopsis Alexander Yakovlev by : Richard Pipes

Download or read book Alexander Yakovlev written by Richard Pipes and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-14 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A significant political figure in twentieth-century Russia, Alexander Yakovlev was the intellectual force behind the processes of perestroika (reconstruction) and glasnost (openness) that liberated the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe from Communist rule between 1989 and 1991. Yet, until now, not a single full-scale biography has been devoted to him. In his study of the unsung hero, Richard Pipes seeks to rectify this lacuna and give Yakovlev his historical due. Yakovlev's life provides a unique instance of a leading figure in the Soviet government who evolved from a dedicated Communist and Stalinist into an equally ardent foe of everything the Leninist-Stalinist regime stood for. He quit government service in 1991 and lived until 2005, becoming toward the end of his life a classical western liberal who shared none of the traditional Russian values. Pipes's illuminating study consists of two parts: a biography of Yakovlev and Pipes's translation of two important articles by Yakovlev. It will appeal to specialists and students of Soviet and post-Soviet studies, government officials involved with foreign policy, and general readers interested in the history of Russia and the Soviet Union.

A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia

Author : Alexander N. Yakovlev
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780300103229
Total Pages : 278 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (32 download)

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Book Synopsis A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia by : Alexander N. Yakovlev

Download or read book A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia written by Alexander N. Yakovlev and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He unhesitatingly names those individuals who bear responsibility for these catastrophic deaths, bringing into sharper focus than ever before the facts, the perpetrators, and the events of the Soviet Union's years of terror."--BOOK JACKET.

The Fate of Marxism in Russia

Author : Alexander Yakovlev
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780300105407
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (54 download)

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Book Synopsis The Fate of Marxism in Russia by : Alexander Yakovlev

Download or read book The Fate of Marxism in Russia written by Alexander Yakovlev and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1993-09-10 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alexander Yakovlev, a major architect of perestroika and a leading sponsor of glasnost, was a senior Soviet official who worked at the highest echelon of government side by side with Mikhail Gorbachev. In this powerful book, Yakovlev acknowledges the decay of his country and reveals his painful intellectual and political odyssey as he progressed from stalwart Party ideologist and propagandist to disillusioned critic of Marxism and Communism. Yakovlev vividly describes the ways that Marxism has proven to be not only wrong but ruinous to Russia, as it demolished civil society and ruthlessly replaced it with immorality and state-supported atheism. He discusses the pervasive, historical roots of the Russian authoritarian consciousness that helps explain why Russian society was so susceptible to the totalitarian implications of Marxism. He describes the triumvirate structure of power in the USSR before and during perestroika, the political reforms that were initiated, the ways that Soviet attitudes toward glasnost and perestroika evolved in both the reformist and conservative wings of the Party, and the reasons for the seemingly final swift collapse of the old ruling structures--the crushing defeat of the Party--in August 1991. Assessing the situation in Russia now that Marx's teachings and the Communist Party have been rejected, Yakovlev warns that if the economic situation worsens further, Russian society will be prepared to sacrifice democracy for even modest economic growth. He urges the restructuring of Soviet society on a new basis of democracy, morality, common sense, and economic efficiency. The book includes as appendixes five speeches given by Yakovlev in the West between November 1991 and January 1992 that provide further insight into his thinking after the collapse of the Communist Party.

The Geneva Summit

Author : United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan)
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 4 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (319 download)

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Book Synopsis The Geneva Summit by : United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan)

Download or read book The Geneva Summit written by United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan) and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 4 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Last Superpower Summits

Author : Svetlana Savranskaya
Publisher : Central European University Press
ISBN 13 : 9789633861691
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (616 download)

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Book Synopsis The Last Superpower Summits by : Svetlana Savranskaya

Download or read book The Last Superpower Summits written by Svetlana Savranskaya and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book publishes for the first time in print every word the American and Soviet leaders – Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, and George H.W. Bush – said to each other in their superpower summits from 1985 to 1991. Obtained by the authors through the Freedom of Information Act in the U.S., from the Gorbachev Foundation and the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow, and from the personal donation of Anatoly Chernyaev, these previously Top Secret verbatim transcripts combine with key declassified preparatory and after-action documents from both sides to create a unique interactive documentary record of these historic highest-level talks – the conversations that ended the Cold War. The summits fueled a process of learning on both sides, as the authors argue in contextual essays on each summit and detailed headnotes on each document. Geneva 1985 and Reykjavik 1986 reduced Moscow's sense of threat and unleashed Reagan's inner abolitionist. Malta 1989 and Washington 1990 helped dampen any superpower sparks that might have flown in a time of revolutionary change in Eastern Europe, set off by Gorbachev and by Eastern Europeans (Solidarity, dissidents, reform Communists). The high level and scope of the dialogue between these world leaders was unprecedented, and is likely never to be repeated.

Gorbachev: His Life and Times

Author : William Taubman
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393245683
Total Pages : 541 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (932 download)

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Book Synopsis Gorbachev: His Life and Times by : William Taubman

Download or read book Gorbachev: His Life and Times written by William Taubman and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction The definitive biography of the transformational Russian leader by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Khrushchev. "Essential reading for the twenty-first [century]." —Radhika Jones, The New York Times Book Review When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, the USSR. was one of the world’s two superpowers. By 1989, his liberal policies of perestroika and glasnost had permanently transformed Soviet Communism, and had made enemies of radicals on the right and left. By 1990 he, more than anyone else, had ended the Cold War, and in 1991, after barely escaping from a coup attempt, he unintentionally presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union he had tried to save. In the first comprehensive biography of the final Soviet leader, William Taubman shows how a peasant boy became the Soviet system’s gravedigger, how he clambered to the top of a system designed to keep people like him down, how he found common ground with America’s arch-conservative president Ronald Reagan, and how he permitted the USSR and its East European empire to break apart without using force to preserve them. Throughout, Taubman portrays the many sides of Gorbachev’s unique character that, by Gorbachev’s own admission, make him "difficult to understand." Was he in fact a truly great leader, or was he brought low in the end by his own shortcomings, as well as by the unyielding forces he faced? Drawing on interviews with Gorbachev himself, transcripts and documents from the Russian archives, and interviews with Kremlin aides and adversaries, as well as foreign leaders, Taubman’s intensely personal portrait extends to Gorbachev’s remarkable marriage to a woman he deeply loved, and to the family that they raised together. Nuanced and poignant, yet unsparing and honest, this sweeping account has all the amplitude of a great Russian novel.

Reagan and Gorbachev

Author : Jack Matlock
Publisher : Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN 13 : 0812974891
Total Pages : 402 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (129 download)

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Book Synopsis Reagan and Gorbachev by : Jack Matlock

Download or read book Reagan and Gorbachev written by Jack Matlock and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2005-11-08 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[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.

The Future Is History

Author : Masha Gessen
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 159463453X
Total Pages : 530 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (946 download)

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Book Synopsis The Future Is History by : Masha Gessen

Download or read book The Future Is History written by Masha Gessen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS WINNER OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2017 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, LOS ANGELES TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, BOSTON GLOBE, SEATTLE TIMES, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, NEWSWEEK, PASTE, and POP SUGAR The essential journalist and bestselling biographer of Vladimir Putin reveals how, in the space of a generation, Russia surrendered to a more virulent and invincible new strain of autocracy. Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own--as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings. Gessen charts their paths against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all, and against the war it waged on understanding itself, which ensured the unobstructed reemergence of the old Soviet order in the form of today's terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state. Powerful and urgent, The Future Is History is a cautionary tale for our time and for all time.

The Invention of Russia

Author : Arkady Ostrovsky
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0399564187
Total Pages : 402 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (995 download)

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Book Synopsis The Invention of Russia by : Arkady Ostrovsky

Download or read book The Invention of Russia written by Arkady Ostrovsky and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE WINNER OF THE CORNELIUS RYAN AWARD FINALIST FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR “Fast-paced and excellently written…much needed, dispassionate and eminently readable.” —New York Times “Filled with sparkling prose and deep analysis.” –The Wall Street Journal The breakup of the Soviet Union was a time of optimism around the world, but Russia today is actively involved in subversive information warfare, manipulating the media to destabilize its enemies. How did a country that embraced freedom and market reform 25 years ago end up as an autocratic police state bent once again on confrontation with America? A winner of the Orwell Prize, The Invention of Russia reaches back to the darkest days of the cold war to tell the story of Russia's stealthy and largely unchronicled counter revolution. A highly regarded Moscow correspondent for the Economist, Arkady Ostrovsky comes to this story both as a participant and a foreign correspondent. His knowledge of many of the key players allows him to explain the phenomenon of Valdimir Putin - his rise and astonishing longevity, his use of hybrid warfare and the alarming crescendo of his military interventions. One of Putin's first acts was to reverse Gorbachev's decision to end media censorship and Ostrovsky argues that the Russian media has done more to shape the fate of the country than its politicians. Putin pioneered a new form of demagogic populism --oblivious to facts and aggressively nationalistic - that has now been embraced by Donald Trump.

Russia's Transformation

Author : Robert Vincent Daniels
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 9780847687091
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (87 download)

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Book Synopsis Russia's Transformation by : Robert Vincent Daniels

Download or read book Russia's Transformation written by Robert Vincent Daniels and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1998 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An astute observer of the Soviet Union, Bill Daniels collects here his observations of political change in the USSR over a twenty-five-year period. Complete with a new introduction, conclusion and explanatory notes, these essays offer a moment-by-moment picture of the decline and fall of the Communist state. Beginning with the era of impasse from Brezhnev to Chernenko, Daniels then traces the beginnings of reform initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev, the crisis and failure of perestroika, and the tribulations of Boris Yeltsin's government. Capturing the weaknesses of past and present regimes, while illustrating the difficulties of anticipating the course of events in Russia, Daniels's commentaries will have a central place in the ongoing debate about the failure of Western scholarship to predict the Soviet collapse and its aftermath. Specialists, students, and general readers alike will find his work a stimulating point of departure for considering the Soviet and post-Soviet paradox.

Armageddon Averted

Author : Stephen Kotkin
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199743843
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (997 download)

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Book Synopsis Armageddon Averted by : Stephen Kotkin

Download or read book Armageddon Averted written by Stephen Kotkin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-12-23 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring extensive revisions to the text as well as a new introduction and epilogue--bringing the book completely up to date on the tumultuous politics of the previous decade and the long-term implications of the Soviet collapse--this compact, original, and engaging book offers the definitive account of one of the great historical events of the last fifty years. Combining historical and geopolitical analysis with an absorbing narrative, Kotkin draws upon extensive research, including memoirs by dozens of insiders and senior figures, to illuminate the factors that led to the demise of Communism and the USSR. The new edition puts the collapse in the context of the global economic and political changes from the 1970s to the present day. Kotkin creates a compelling profile of post Soviet Russia and he reminds us, with chilling immediacy, of what could not have been predicted--that the world's largest police state, with several million troops, a doomsday arsenal, and an appalling record of violence, would liquidate itself with barely a whimper. Throughout the book, Kotkin also paints vivid portraits of key personalities. Using recently released archive materials, for example, he offers a fascinating picture of Gorbachev, describing this virtuoso tactician and resolutely committed reformer as "flabbergasted by the fact that his socialist renewal was leading to the system's liquidation"--and more or less going along with it. At once authoritative and provocative, Armageddon Averted illuminates the collapse of the Soviet Union, revealing how "principled restraint and scheming self-interest brought a deadly system to meek dissolution." Acclaim for the First Edition: "The clearest picture we have to date of the post-Soviet landscape." --The New Yorker "A triumph of the art of contemporary history. In fewer than 200 pagesKotkin elucidates the implosion of the Soviet empire--the most important and startling series of international events of the past fifty years--and clearly spells out why, thanks almost entirely to the 'principal restraint' of the Soviet leadership, that collapse didn't result in a cataclysmic war, as all experts had long forecasted." -The Atlantic Monthly "Concise and persuasive The mystery, for Kotkin, is not so much why the Soviet Union collapsed as why it did so with so little collateral damage." --The New York Review of Books

Autopsy For An Empire

Author : Dmitri Volkogonov
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439105723
Total Pages : 841 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis Autopsy For An Empire by : Dmitri Volkogonov

Download or read book Autopsy For An Empire written by Dmitri Volkogonov and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1999-05-01 with total page 841 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The late Dmitri Volkogonov emerged in the last decade of his life as the preeminent Russian historian of this century. His crowning achievement is the account of the seven General Secretaries of the Soviet Empire in Autopsy for an Empire, a book that tells the entire history of the Soviet failure. Having utilized his still-unequaled access to the Soviet military archives, Communist Party documents, and secret Presidential Archive, Volkogonov sheds new light on some of the major events of twentieth-century history and the men who shaped them. We witness Lenin’s paranoia about foreigners in Russia, and his creation of a privileged system for top Party members; Stalin’s repression of the nationalities and his singular conduct of foreign policy; the origins and conduct of the Korean War; Kruschev’s relationship with the odious secret service chief, Beria, and his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis; Brezhnev’s vanity and stupidity; a new view of Poland and Solidarity; the ossification of Soviet bureaucracy and the cynicism of the Politburo; and Mikhail Gorbachev’s Leninism and his role in history. By profiling the seven successive Soviet leaders from Lenin to Gorbachev, Volkogonov also depicts in painstaking detail the progressive self-destruction of the Leninist system. In his clear-eyed character assessments and political evaluations, lucidly translated and edited by Harold Shukman, Dmitri Volkogonov has once again performed an invaluable service to twentieth-century history.

Wars of Eduard Shevardnadze

Author : Carolyn Ekedahl
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 9780271039060
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (39 download)

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Book Synopsis Wars of Eduard Shevardnadze by : Carolyn Ekedahl

Download or read book Wars of Eduard Shevardnadze written by Carolyn Ekedahl and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the life and political career of the former foreign minister of the Soviet Union

Striving for Law in a Lawless Land

Author : Alexander M. Yakovlev
Publisher : M.E. Sharpe
ISBN 13 : 9781563246395
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (463 download)

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Book Synopsis Striving for Law in a Lawless Land by : Alexander M. Yakovlev

Download or read book Striving for Law in a Lawless Land written by Alexander M. Yakovlev and published by M.E. Sharpe. This book was released on 1996 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An insider account of the struggle to reform the Soviet/Russian legal system and create a law-based society. This text situates the formal commitment to democratic politics, and the creation of a legal and constitutional order within the context of Russian history and tradition.

Access to History for the IB Diploma: The Cold War: Superpower tensions and rivalries Second Edition

Author : David Williamson
Publisher : Hodder Education
ISBN 13 : 1471839257
Total Pages : 371 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (718 download)

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Book Synopsis Access to History for the IB Diploma: The Cold War: Superpower tensions and rivalries Second Edition by : David Williamson

Download or read book Access to History for the IB Diploma: The Cold War: Superpower tensions and rivalries Second Edition written by David Williamson and published by Hodder Education. This book was released on 2015-05-15 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new book for Paper 2, World History Topic 12: The Cold War: Superpower Tensions and Rivalries (20th Century) Readable and rigorous coverage that gives you the depth of knowledge and skills development required for the Diploma. Provides: - Reliable, clear and in-depth narrative from topic experts - Analysis of the historiography surrounding key debates - Dedicated exam practice with model answers and practice questions - TOK support activities and Historical Investigation questions to help with all aspects of the Diploma Tailored exactly to the Diploma, it also helps you develop analytical skills through the widest variety of sources at this level. Other titles in the series: - The Move to Global War - Rights and Protest - Authoritarian States

Gorbachev's Russia And American Foreign Policy

Author : Seweryn Bialer
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0429718640
Total Pages : 404 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (297 download)

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Book Synopsis Gorbachev's Russia And American Foreign Policy by : Seweryn Bialer

Download or read book Gorbachev's Russia And American Foreign Policy written by Seweryn Bialer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-01 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Soviet post-Stalin period is examined in its economic, political, and foreign policy dimensions, stressing the factors that provided the gestation environment for Gorbachev's reforms. There follows an analysis of the nature, sources, and plausible outcomes of Gorbachev's "revolution" and the strategies he is applying to it. A separate part of the book examines the changing goals of past U.S. policies toward the Soviet Union and their effectiveness in influencing Soviet behavior. The final part puts forth suggestions and prescriptions for a U.S.approach to the changes in Soviet economic, security, and foreign policies. The East-West Forum is a New York-based research and policy analysis organization sponsored by the Samuel Bronfman Foundation. Its goal is to bring together experts and policy leaders from differing perspectives and generations to discuss changing patterns of East-West relations. It attempts to formulate long-term analyses and recommendations. In preparing the chapters of this book, the authors drew upon the work of a series of workshops initiated by the Forum.

The Myth of Triumphalism

Author : Beth A. Fischer
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
ISBN 13 : 0813178207
Total Pages : 191 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (131 download)

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Book Synopsis The Myth of Triumphalism by : Beth A. Fischer

Download or read book The Myth of Triumphalism written by Beth A. Fischer and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2019-12-03 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This historical study dismantles the myth of Reagan’s hardline victory and sheds light on his true diplomatic success in cooperation with Gorbachev. Did President Reagan’s hawkish policies destroy the Soviet Union and enable the United States to win the Cold War? Many Americans believe this to be the case. In this view?known as “triumphalism”?Reagan’s denunciations of the “evil empire” and his military buildup compelled Moscow to admit defeat. The president’s triumph demonstrates that America’s leaders should stand strong and threaten adversaries into submission. Drawing on both US and Soviet sources, this study demonstrates that triumphalism is based on a series of falsehoods about President Reagan’s intentions, his policies, and the impact his administration had on the Soviet Union. In reality, the president’s initially hardline posture undermined US interests and brought the superpowers to the brink of war. Success only came when Reagan changed his approach to one of cooperation. Together, President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev were able to accomplish what no one at the time thought possible?the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War. The president’s opposition to nuclear weapons, his determined leadership, and his dedication to diplomacy are his most enduring legacies.