The Soviet leader was acclaimed as the architect of Glasnost and Perestrolka, policies that gave the citizens of the Soviet Union, what Ronald Reagan called 'the Evil Empire,' a chance to be free. He even tore down the Berlin Wall. But at the same time, under his rule, the Chernobyl nuclear facility exploded and its destruction was concealed. Citizens demanding independence in the Baltic states died. Soldiers wielding shovels brutally suppressed protesters...

Recounts the events of Reagan's historic, three-day 1988 Moscow Summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, examining the importance of Reagan's speech at Moscow State University that offered a new vision of the future to the Soviet people.

The Cold War's last act was a magnificent dark drama played out in the shadows of the Kremlin. O'Clery has written a unique and truly suspenseful thriller of the day the Soviet Union died, combining internal power plays, shifting alliances, betrayals, and three mysterious colonels carrying the briefcase with the nuclear codes.

"In this penetrating analysis of the role of political leadership in the Cold War's ending, Archie Brown shows why the popular view that Western economic and military strength left the Soviet Union with no alternative but to admit defeat is wrong. To understand the significance of the parts played by Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in East-West relations in the second half of the 1980s, Brown addresses several specific questions:...

In 1945 the Soviet Union controlled half of Europe and was a founding member of the United Nations. By 1991, it had an army four-million strong, five-thousand nuclear-tipped missiles, and was the second biggest producer of oil in the world. But soon afterward the union sank into an economic crisis and was torn apart by nationalist separatism. Its collapse was one of the seismic shifts of the twentieth century. Thirty years on, Vladislav Zubok offers...