The End of the Cold War 19851991, Robert Service
The End of the Cold War 19851991, Robert Service
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The End of the Cold War 1985-1991

Author: Robert Service

Narrator: Ralph Lister

Unabridged: 21 hr 58 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 04/19/2016


Synopsis

The Cold War had seemed like a permanent fixture in global politics, and until its denouement, no Western or Soviet politician had foreseen that an epoch defined by games of irreconcilable one-upmanship between the world's most heavily armed superpowers would end in their lifetimes. Under the long, forbidding shadow of the Cold War, even the smallest miscalculation from either side could result in catastrophe.

Everything changed in March 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union. Just four years later, the Cold War and the arms competition was over. The USSR and the US had peacefully and abruptly achieved an astonishing political settlement. But it was not preordained that a global crisis of unprecedented scale could and would be averted peaceably.

Drawing on new archival research, Robert Service's gripping new investigation of the final years of the Cold War—the first to give equal attention to the internal deliberations from both sides of the Iron Curtain—opens a window onto the dramatic years that would irrevocably alter the world's geopolitical landscape, and the men at their fore.


About Robert Service

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. He is the author of many 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.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Anthony

The Experiment Ends. Robert Service’s The End of the Cold War is excellent. It is a highly readable and easy to follow study of how the super powers the USSR and USA worked together in order to avert Armageddon. This period of history is usually outside of my remit, falling to a more modern era than......more

Goodreads review by Stefan

Доскоро знаех съвсем малко за края на Студената война и реформите в СССР, известни като "перестройка". В края на осемдесетте години съм бил прекалено малък, за да осъзная значимостта на историческите промени. Бързам да се похваля, че закупих книгата с твърди корици за по-малко от десет лева с включен......more

Unsurprising: Ronald Reagan's huge role in ending the Cold War (and, after he left office, the Soviet Union itself). Reagan charmed the birds out of the trees at every summit meeting, much to the shock of the Russians who had expected an anti-communist war-monger. Instead, Reagan pressed for a total......more

Goodreads review by Joseph

I think certain people would enjoy this book as long as they know what they are getting into. This is a very top-down, diplomacy-centered history of the end of the Cold War. It does an excellent job explaining the evolution of the Soviet-US relationship throughout the 1980's. The tracking of diploma......more