The End of the Cold War: 1985-1991

At the start of the 1980s it seemed that the Cold War, with its logic of 'mutually assured destruction', was a permanent stand-off between two irreconcilable foes. Yet the years between Mikhail Gorbachev becoming Soviet General Secretary in 1985 and the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 saw everything change. In this study Service analyses the thaw in US/USSR relations, focusing on the work of the 'big four': Gorbachev, Reagan and their foreign ministers Shevardnadze and Shultz.