Lectures 10-11
END OF THE COLD WAR
Brief outline
I.
REAGAN’S FOREIGN POLICY GOALS
II.
MIKHAIL GORBACHEV’S “NEW THINKING”
III.
COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM IN EASTERN EUROPE
AND IN THE USSR
Detailed outline
I.
REAGAN’S FOREIGN POLICY GOALS
1980 Ronald Reagan defeats Carter, reelected 1984
Regan’s optimism and approach to USSR: “the evil empire”
“The zero option”
1983 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Strategic, political, and
fiscal implications.
II.
MIKHAIL GORBACHEV’S “NEW THINKING”
1982 Leonid Brezhnev dies
1984 Yurii Andropov dies
1985 Konstantin Chernenko dies
Mikhail Gorbachev’s acceleration policy.
April 1986 nuclear accident in Chernobyl
1987 The policy of Glasnost (openness) and perestroika
(restructuring)
Gorbachev’s “New thinking”
Gorbachev accepts “the zero option”
1988 George Walker Bush and Reagan’s legacy: can the Soviets
be trusted?
1989 Afghanistan: The Soviet pullout.
1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I).
III.
COLLPASE OF COMMUNISM IN EASTERN EUROPE
AND IN THE USSR
-Poland: Solidarity, Lech Walesa, John Paul II
9 November 1989 The Berlin Wall falls
-Czechoslovakia: Vaclav Havel
-Rumania: Nikolae Ceausesku
1991 Gorbachev announces the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact
Democratization of the Soviets
Boris Yeltsin challenges Gorbachev
June 1991 Yeltsin elected president of the Russian Federation
Bush’s skepticism about Yeltsin
August 1991 coup. The Russian “White House”
1993 START II
Capitalism sweeps across the former Soviet bloc