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{{Information
|university = UC Berkeley 
|course-code = HIST 186
|course-name = International and Global History Since 1945
|lecture = 20 The End of the Cold War
|instructor = Daniel Sargent
|semester = Spring 2012
|license = {{cc-by-nc-nd-3.0}}
}}

-->

== The Final Paper ==

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=00:00]]
<nowiki>[00:00]</nowiki>

Okay, it's about time for us to get going. And I wanted to start out today by saying a few words about the final papers. It's about the time in semester after spring break in which you're probably starting to think about the final papers. Or maybe the particularly diligent among you are starting to think about the final papers.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=00:19]]
<nowiki>[00:19]</nowiki>

But I thought it would be good to prompt some pondering on your part, and to answer any questions that you might have about the final papers. Let me, you know, start this just by kind of rearticulating the expectations that are laid out in the syllabus. What is it that we expect from you by way of the final assignment in the class?

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=00:39]]
<nowiki>[00:39]</nowiki>

The terms are fairly simple: six to seven page paper -- that's a little under 2,000 words due on May 4th to your GSI. These are the expectations as stipulated in the syllabus. The syllabus also tells you that you have the option of either engaging a historical problem drawing on course materials, or of writing a paper that explores the lessons of history for a particular dilemma in the present day world.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=01:05]]
<nowiki>[01:05]</nowiki>

What do we mean when we offer you these two options? I thought that it would be most straightforward to illustrate the distinction by giving you some examples of the kinds of problems that you might engage with the two kinds of paper. So let's do that.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=01:20]]
<nowiki>[01:20]</nowiki>

What are the kinds of historical problems that you could engage? You could, for example ask, how did West European countries shape the origins of the Cold War? You might want to write a paper that focuses on, you know, say British foreign policy and the advent of the Cold War. You might be interested in the {{WPExtract|Sino-Soviet split}} in the 1960s.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=01:37]]
<nowiki>[01:37]</nowiki>

You might want to write a paper that evaluates the relative importance of say ideological disagreements in geopolitical rivalries in the estrangement between the Soviet Union and the United -- and the Soviet -- and China during the '60s.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=01:51]]
<nowiki>[01:51]</nowiki>

You might, you know, prefer to focus on a political economic theme and look at the slowdown in growth in the Western world during the 1970s. You might want to evaluate in your paper sort of the hypothesis that the end of extensive growth is responsible for the slowdown in aggregate growth rates in the West during this era.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=02:10]]
<nowiki>[02:10]</nowiki>

So these are, you know, the kinds of historical problems that you could engage in a classic kind of historical final paper.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=02:18]]
<nowiki>[02:18]</nowiki>

Alternatively, and this is the second option, you could explore the lessons of history for some, you know, dilemma in the present day world. You might want to ask what the oil crises of the 1970s have to teach us about, you know, the prospects for energy security and insecurity in our own times. You might want to ask what the lessons of the so-called third wave of democratization teach us about the prospects for democracy in the Middle East today.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=02:43]]
<nowiki>[02:43]</nowiki>

You know a topic that would obviously have some resonance with the Arab Spring ongoing in that region. You might be interested in geopolitics and you know ask what the lessons of the Cold War, perhaps the lessons of the Cold War's origins, might teach us about the risks and of the opportunities for Sino-American relations today.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=03:02]]
<nowiki>[03:02]</nowiki>

So this would be a different kind of paper -- a paper that sort of locates its central problem not in the past but in the present, but which is still a historical paper because it relies upon sort of processes of historical reasoning and argument to construct its analysis.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=03:19]]
<nowiki>[03:19]</nowiki>

These are just examples. These are not the you know final paper questions which you are expected to answer; rather, we expect you to devise your own problem. The topic of your final paper will be for you to determine. So how are you going to determine it?

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=03:35]]
<nowiki>[03:35]</nowiki>

I would just start by saying that you should think about what interests you. Of all of the you know diverse themes and issues that we've dealt with in the class this far, thus far, are there any which are of particular interest to you? Are you interested in the history of particular nation-state? The history of a particular region?

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=03:52]]
<nowiki>[03:52]</nowiki>

Are you interested in particular historical episodes or crises? Particular historical themes or problems? This is for you to determine. But I would like for you to determine your final paper topic in consultation with your GSI. So I would suggest, I think the syllabus suggests, that at some point in the next couple of weeks, you arrange a appointment to go and speak with your GSI about the you know sort of possible range of topics for your final paper.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=04:21]]
<nowiki>[04:21]</nowiki>

That sort of consultation will be really useful as you try to whittle down the range of opportunities and to determine what your final paper is going to be about. If your final paper topic requires that you do any extra reading -- some may, some may not -- it will depend upon the nature of the topic -- then your GSI will be able to give you some advice about things that you might read.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=04:40]]
<nowiki>[04:40]</nowiki>

You are also very welcome to come and talk with me about your final paper topics. So my office hours as you know are Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11 until noon -- right after lectures. Quick caveat: I'm not having office hours today, so it wouldn't be a good option to come and see me today, because you'll be standing outside my office for an hour.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=05:01]]
<nowiki>[05:01]</nowiki>

But any other Tuesday or Thursday straight after lecture you can come talk with me about your final papers. You can also come and see me at other times besides Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11 until noon because I know some of you have classes or the office hours are not convenient for other reasons. If you want to come see me at a different time just email me to set up an appointment, and we can talk about possible final paper topics.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=05:24]]
<nowiki>[05:24]</nowiki>

Now for the most sort of important question: what are our expectations? What do we want you to do in this final paper? I don't have a rigid blueprint to which you ought to try to adhere. I'm really very open-minded, as the GSIs are, as to the kind of final paper that you want to write.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=05:44]]
<nowiki>[05:44]</nowiki>

Your historical range can be very broad. You can deal with a substantial chunk of history and offer your own analysis of it. Or you can do something which is more focused, more fine grained, dealing with a particular historical episode or problem. So the scale of the final paper is really for you to determine.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=06:02]]
<nowiki>[06:02]</nowiki>

All that we expect is that your final paper have a cogent analysis and argument. We're really concerned by how you sort of use the historical evidence to sustain and defend a particular sort of argument as to why things unfolded the way they did, or how things developed according, you know, in one way rather than another.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=06:23]]
<nowiki>[06:23]</nowiki>

And it's important that you sustain your argument with appropriate historical evidence. So if you want to make the argument that the {{WPExtract|Sino-Soviet split}} in the 1960s was all about ideology -- that it had very little to do with sort of realistic differences in national interest and it had to do primarily with ideas -- then you should try to muster appropriate historical evidence to support that claim.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=06:46]]
<nowiki>[06:46]</nowiki>

You should also, you know, so far as you can, try to anticipate what the alternative points of view might be, and think about the evidence that could be used to discredit opposing perspectives. You don't do so in a sort of...character...you try not to do so in a, you know, simplistic or one-dimensional way, but to the extent that you can anticipate arguments that might be made against your argument, your paper will be all the stronger for it.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=07:11]]
<nowiki>[07:11]</nowiki>

But the basic criteria which we will be applying when we grade your final papers have to do with: first, the clarity of your analysis and argument, and second the aptitude with which you use historical evidence to defend the argument that you choose to make. So that's essentially what we're doing in the final paper.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=07:30]]
<nowiki>[07:30]</nowiki>

If you have questions about this it may be best to bring them to office hours or to submit them over email because I don't want to devote a substantial portion of today's session to a discussion of the final paper cause we have a lot of history to get through. But if anybody has sort of any urgent questions that this prompts, if there are things that I've missed out, then I would be glad to take questions about the final paper right now.

== Lecture Overview: The End of the Cold War ==

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=07:53]]
<nowiki>[07:53]</nowiki>

Okay, terrific. So what are we going to do today? Today we're talking about the end of the Cold War. This is a big topic hence my reluctance to enter into a protracted discussion about the final paper. We're going to be asking how the Cold War world changed during the 1980s.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=08:11]]
<nowiki>[08:11]</nowiki>

How did United States foreign policy change under Ronald Reagan? We've taken the story of US foreign policy in the Cold War all the way through to the end of the Carter administration. What we're going to do today is ask how US foreign policy changed under Reagan -- Carter's predecessor, sorry, successor as President of the United States.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=08:28]]
<nowiki>[08:28]</nowiki>

We're also going to ask how Soviet policy changed under Gorbachev -- not only how did Soviet policy change towards the world but also how did Soviet policy change at home, and whether there were relations between these two distinct categories of change: domestic and foreign.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=08:45]]
<nowiki>[08:45]</nowiki>

Finally we'll ask what happened to the Cold War in the 1980s. Did the Cold War end in the 1980s and if so when so? This is the central conundrum that we're going to try to answer today.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=08:57]]
<nowiki>[08:57]</nowiki>

It will also be essential to ask what came after the Cold War. How did the Soviet Empire, the system of political and security relationships that the Soviet Union constructed in Eastern Europe after the Second World War, come to an end? How did the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe collapse?

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=09:15]]
<nowiki>[09:15]</nowiki>

What would be the role of the United States -- the world's sole remaining superpower in a post Cold War world? After the Soviet Union's Cold War empire collapsed what would be the fate for the United States and the West in a post Cold War world?

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=09:29]]
<nowiki>[09:29]</nowiki>

What kind of international order would follow the bifurcated international order of the Cold War? This is a different set of questions -- a set of questions that has to do with the constitution of post Cold War international relations. And we're going to address this second set of questions next Tuesday when we talk about the post Cold War world.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=09:48]]
<nowiki>[09:48]</nowiki>

Today what I'm going to focus upon is the end of the Cold War in the 1980s -- the transformation of the Cold War order and the end of the Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=10:00]]
<nowiki>[10:00]</nowiki>

So our agenda is going to focus first upon Reagan, and transformations in the American Cold War, then on Gorbachev and transformations in the Soviet Union, and finally on the relational aspects of the Cold War in the 1980s -- the developments in Sino-American, sorry, in Soviet-American relations, that are a consequence of changes implemented by leaders on both sides.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=10:24]]
<nowiki>[10:24]</nowiki>

So this is essentially what we're going to do. As always if you have any questions please, you know, feel free to raise them as we go along. As you know I'm not very good at leaving time for questions at the end of lectures.

== Ronald Reagan and the Cold War ==

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=10:36]]
<nowiki>[10:36]</nowiki>

Okay, Ronald Reagan, first of all. What kind of Cold War president was Ronald Reagan? What did Ronald Reagan see as the primary challenges for the United States in the Cold War world? How did he define the Cold War adversary that the United States faced?

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=10:53]]
<nowiki>[10:53]</nowiki>

One of the really fundamental questions that Cold War presidents in the United States had to face when defining the foreign policy of the United States was the question of what was the primary adversary of the United States? Was it Communism? A nebulous ideological movement? Or was it the Soviet Union -- a superpower?

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=11:16]]
<nowiki>[11:16]</nowiki>

As we've already discussed, in the early Cold War, policymakers beginning with {{WPExtract|George F. Kennan|George Kennan}}, defined the Soviet Union as the problem. But then with the fall of China to Communism in 1949 and the Korean War there develops a tendency to see the Cold War adversary of the United States not as the Soviet Union, a great power, but as Communism -- an ideology, or sort of political movement.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=11:42]]
<nowiki>[11:42]</nowiki>

During the 1970s conversely Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger would redefine the challenges of the Cold War world in terms of geopolitics. Nixon and Kissinger as we've discussed downplayed ideology somewhat and tended to see the world more in terms of great power rivalries and geopolitical interests.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=12:02]]
<nowiki>[12:02]</nowiki>

So how do we situate Reagan in this analytical framework? Did Reagan see the Cold War world in terms of ideological confrontation or did he see a world comprised rather of geopolitical rivalries?

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=12:15]]
<nowiki>[12:15]</nowiki>

You know the Reagan Era is still a relatively fresh period for historical research, but based on, you know, what I have read and my understanding of the Reagan Era I would, you know, offer you the proposition that Reagan was an intensely ideological president.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=12:29]]
<nowiki>[12:29]</nowiki>

If you look at Reagan's own writings, both public and private, Reagan tended to define the challenges of a Cold War world in terms of ideological confrontation. Communism for Ronald Reagan was the fundamental problem -- not the Soviet Union as such.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=12:47]]
<nowiki>[12:47]</nowiki>

And this is really important. Henry Kissinger, conversely, paid relatively little attention to ideology. For Kissinger conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union is basically hardwired into the distribution of power in the international arena. For Kissinger a world in which you have two great superpowers is likely to be a world in which those two great superpowers exist in a relationship of rivalry or conflict -- it is ordained by the fact of there being geopolitical rivals.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=13:17]]
<nowiki>[13:17]</nowiki>

For Reagan on the other hand the problem is ideology -- the problem is the Communist system to which the Soviet Union adheres.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=13:26]]
<nowiki>[13:26]</nowiki>

By consequence Reagan will be a transformative Cold War president. But that's not to say that Reagan's Cold War foreign policy lacks precedence. We saw in our discussion of the Carter administration how Carter put new emphasis on sort of ideological goals in US foreign policy -- specifically on the pursuit of human rights as a global objective.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=13:47]]
<nowiki>[13:47]</nowiki>

Carter talks a great deal about human rights -- including the promotion of human rights within the Soviet Union. Carter also shifts US foreign policy vis-à-vis the Cold War's nuclear arms race. Nixon and Kissinger following, you know, strategic thinkers like {{WPExtract|Robert McNamara}} in the 1960s, see nuclear weapons as a potential source of stability in the international system.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=14:14]]
<nowiki>[14:14]</nowiki>

Carter sees things differently. Carter is very concerned about the prospects for nuclear war -- for unintended escalation. By consequence he seeks in a very bold...disarmament proposal in 1977 to denuclearize the Cold War -- to introduce sweeping reductions in Cold War nuclear weapon arsenals.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=14:36]]
<nowiki>[14:36]</nowiki>

Reagan, much like Carter, is disinclined to see nuclear weapons as a source of stability; rather, Reagan tends to see nuclear weapons as a threat to the stability of the world -- ultimately to the security of the United States.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=14:52]]
<nowiki>[14:52]</nowiki>

So Reagan...echoes Carter in two key respects. Like Carter he is somewhat more oriented towards ideological objectives. Like Carter he is disinclined to see nuclear weapons as a source of stability and by consequence somewhat prone to favor sweeping nuclear disarmament measures.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=15:12]]
<nowiki>[15:12]</nowiki>

The Cold War under Reagan will be transformed. But it's transformed in ways that seem on the surface to be sort of paradoxical and confounding. After all Ronald Reagan, in the early 1980s, escalates the Cold War militarily. Reagan will increase military spending. Reagan will also provide American support to anti-Communist resistance movements in the developing world -- another kind of military escalation.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=15:40]]
<nowiki>[15:40]</nowiki>

The global reach of the, sort of, Cold War as it is waged on the ground in the developing world, expands in the 1980s -- in large part in consequence of decisions that the Reagan administration takes. But it will also be Ronald Reagan that brings the Cold War to its [[wikt:dénouement|dénouement]] after 1985.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=15:59]]
<nowiki>[15:59]</nowiki>

After 1985 American Cold War policies undergo a sort of radical reorientation towards the pursuit of a new understanding with the Soviet Union. So making sense of Reagan's Cold War is really difficult for historians to do. Because Reagan starts out as one of the most hawkish of Cold War foreign policy presidents, and ends up as the Cold War's greatest dove -- as the man who reaches out to Gorbachev and works to bring the Cold War to an end.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=16:26]]
<nowiki>[16:26]</nowiki>

So this is a real paradox. How are we to explain it? Did Reagan simply pursue inconsistent foreign policies? That's one very plausible explanation -- that the man simply made a hundred and eighty degree turn somewhere around the middle of his presidency.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=16:41]]
<nowiki>[16:41]</nowiki>

Or is there a sort of consistency or logic that helps us to make sense of both the military escalation in the early 1980s and the pursuit of peace in the late 1980s? Might there be some sort of ulterior logic that helps to explain how these two things occurred under the watch of the same administration.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=17:00]]
<nowiki>[17:00]</nowiki>

So this is I think one of the key questions that we ought to reflect upon when we're thinking about the Reagan administration.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=17:06]]
<nowiki>[17:06]</nowiki>

Let's go into some of Reagan's policies in a little bit more detail. This will help us to do that. Okay, why does Reagan escalate military spending? Why does Reagan escalate the Cold War militarily? He does so in part because he's determined to overcome what he sees as the {{WPExtract|Vietnam Syndrome}} in American politics.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=17:24]]
<nowiki>[17:24]</nowiki>

Reagan argues that the Vietnam War has sort of wounded Americans' sense of self, it's wounded the self-confidence of the United States as an international actor, and he is determined to reassert the United States as a sort of superpower of the first order.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=17:41]]
<nowiki>[17:41]</nowiki>

Accordingly he will increase defense spending substantially. If you look at the annual percentage change in US defense spending from the early 1970s through to the late 1980s you can see that in the early 1980s Reagan implements some fairly strident increases in the Pentagon's budget.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=18:00]]
<nowiki>[18:00]</nowiki>

It might also be noted however that the annual increases in US defense spending that are such a striking feature of this era do not begin under Ronald Reagan, but rather under Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter sort of initiates the military build-up with which Ronald Reagan will become very closely associated.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=18:19]]
<nowiki>[18:19]</nowiki>

Besides spending more on weaponry for the United States the Reagan administration provides military assistance to anti-Communist freedom fighters in the developing world. The term freedom fighters is presented in quotation marks on the slide because it is of course a loaded term. So whether you prefer that term or not will probably depend upon the sides that you take in the particular struggles that the United States is involving itself in.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=18:46]]
<nowiki>[18:46]</nowiki>

What are the particular struggles with which the United States gets involved during the early 1980s? Well, Central America is really important. Reagan's Cold War escalation has a Central American focus. Reagan provides extensive military assistance to the anti-Communist {{WPExtract|Contras|Contra}} rebels in Nicaragua.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=19:10]]
<nowiki>[19:10]</nowiki>

Nicaragua in 1979 became a sort of nominally Communist state when a socialist regime, the {{WPExtract|Sandinista National Liberation Front|Sandanista}} regime, comes to power. In the United States conservatives were very critical of the Carter administration in 1979 for failing to do enough to prevent the coming to power of the Sandinista regime. 

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=19:30]]
<nowiki>[19:30]</nowiki>

Following the inauguration of the Reagan administration in 1981 a new president will do a great deal to provide sort of military and materiel assistance to the opponents of the Sandanistas on the ground in Nicaragua. These opponents are known as the Contras because they are against the Sandanista regime.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=19:49]]
<nowiki>[19:49]</nowiki>

And the White House supplies them with military aid. And it does so through covert means. Some of the means by which the White House provides the contras with assistance are illegal. The {{WPExtract|United States National Security Council|National Security Council}} sets up a sort of illegal operation that sells weapons, US weapons, to Iran and then use the pro -- and then uses the proceeds to channel money to the Nicaraguan Contras.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=20:12]]
<nowiki>[20:12]</nowiki>

The reason that it does this is that Congress, after the Vietnam War as we've already discussed, puts extensive restrictions on the delivery of US military assistance to Third World insurgent movements because Congress does not want to embroil the United States in another Vietnam War.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=20:28]]
<nowiki>[20:28]</nowiki>

In order to avoid Congressional restrictions which would prohibit the delivery of aid to the Contras the Reagan administration sets up a, you know, sort of, illegal gun running operation -- which is run out of the White House, out of the National Security Council. This becomes the {{WPExtract|Iran–Contra affair|Iran-Contra scandal}} when it breaks publicly in 1986.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=20:49]]
<nowiki>[20:49]</nowiki>

It leads to the indictment and prosecution of {{WPExtract|Oliver North|Colonel Oliver North}} -- the man who was charged with running the operation. It comes very close to ending the Reagan presidency. There is talk of impeachment. Had Reagan been proven to be knowledgeable about the operation there would have been solid grounds for impeaching Reagan as President of the United States.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=21:11]]
<nowiki>[21:11]</nowiki>

Fortunately for Reagan his own involvement is never proven, and his presidency survives this scandal. Ultimately the Iran-Contra scandal will be overshadowed by what comes next which is the diplomacy of the Cold War's [[wikt:dénouement|dénouement]]. So Reagan is really a very fortunate president in that his great foreign policy triumph comes fast on the heels of this disgrace, and tends to obscure the disgrace, so far as his legacy is concerned.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=21:38]]
<nowiki>[21:38]</nowiki>

But Nicaragua is a central focus. Reagan escalates the Cold War. This escalation of the Cold War through the provision of materiel assistance to anti-Communist guerillas becomes known as the {{WPExtract|Reagan Doctrine}} -- a doctrine of providing aid to freedom fighters in the developing world. It's not Reagan who coins the phrase {{WPExtract|Reagan Doctrine}}.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=21:57]]
<nowiki>[21:57]</nowiki>

It is the conservative columnist {{WPExtract|Charles Krauthammer}} who coins the phrase Reagan Doctrine in the mid-1980s. But it applies to a sort of policy which the Reagan Administration follows in an fairly coherent manner -- a policy of providing aid to anti-Communist guerillas in the {{WPExtract|Global South}}.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=22:14]]
<nowiki>[22:14]</nowiki>

Another important site for the application of the Reagan Doctrine will be Afghanistan. The Soviet Union, as we've already discussed, invades Afghanistan at the very end of 1979. The Carter administration seizes this as a strategic opportunity. {{WPExtract|Zbigniew Brzezinski}} talks about making Afghanistan the Soviet Union's Vietnam.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=22:34]]
<nowiki>[22:34]</nowiki>

Accordingly the Carter administration begins to provide substantial amounts of materiel and military aid to the anti-Soviet {{WPExtract|Mujahideen|mujahideen}} fighting on the ground in Afghanistan to sort of repulse the Soviet invasion. Reagan steps up US support for the anti-Communist mujahideen in Afghanistan.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=22:52]]
<nowiki>[22:52]</nowiki>

Here in the slide you can see a sort of blurred picture of a couple of Afghan mujahideen<ref name="pronunce_mujahideen>Speaker pronounced this word like "mujahadis" ([[wikt:mujahideen|Wikitionary:mujahideen]]).</ref> meeting with Ronald Reagan at the White House. The US provides the materiel assistance that will help to transform Afghanistan into a graveyard for the Soviet Empire. One of the most important sort of military assets that the US provides the Afghan insurgents with is the {{WPExtract|FIM-92 Stinger|Stinger missile}}.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=23:17]]
<nowiki>[23:17]</nowiki>

A shoulder launched ground-to-air missile that the Afghan mujahideen <ref name="pronunce_mujahideen/> used to very good effect to shoot down Soviet helicopters, and this is really important if you think about the sort of military landscape in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is a very mountainous country. It's not a country which is well networked by roads and other land based communications like rail.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=23:39]]
<nowiki>[23:39]</nowiki>

Effective communications in Afghanistan depends upon air. So when the US provides shoulder launched ground-to-air missiles to the mujahideen<ref name="pronunce_mujahideen/> which they can use to shoot down Soviet helicopters -- Soviet military communications and transportation in the country become very difficult. This is one of the key sort of military innovations that helps to transform the Afghan War into the Soviet Union's Vietnam.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=24:04]]
<nowiki>[24:04]</nowiki>

Ultimately the Soviet Union loses some 15,000 lives in Afghanistan. Not quite as many as the United States loses in Vietnam, but it's still a substantial death toll. Afghanistan also becomes a substantial drain on the Soviet Union's economy.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=24:20]]
<nowiki>[24:20]</nowiki>

By the mid-1980s when a new leader becomes the sort of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union it has become very clear that Afghanistan, much as Vietnam was for the United States, is for the Soviet Union an ulcer that is sapping the strength of Soviet society.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=24:39]]
<nowiki>[24:39]</nowiki>

So this is Reagan's Cold War escalation -- an escalation in military spending, an escalation in the reach of US military assistance to the developing world.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=24:49]]
<nowiki>[24:49]</nowiki>

But there are other aspects to Reagan's Cold War policy that are also evident in the very first years of his administration. Reagan is very hostile to nuclear weapons in principle. And this is a somewhat surprising aspect of Reagan's foreign policy outlook that has only recently become obvious to historians as new documents have come to light that sort of shed illumination on the inner policy making of the Reagan administration.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=25:15]]
<nowiki>[25:15]</nowiki>

Reagan was intensely fearful of the prospect of a nuclear apocalypse. He worried about what the consequences of the nuclear war would be for American society. It's hard to explain this. Some historians have argued that because Reagan was a, you know, Hollywood actor who'd starred in {{WPExtract|B movie|B movies}}, science-fiction B movies, he had a particular sensitivity to you know sort of apocalyptic fiction and that this informed his attitudes towards nuclear weapons.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=25:42]]
<nowiki>[25:42]</nowiki>

Whereas, you know, Henry Kissinger's formative experience had been the Harvard Government Department, Kissinger was well schooled in, you know, theories of Cold War deterrence, Reagan's formative experience was Hollywood. And this may have inflected his attitudes towards nuclear weapons in ways that made them very different from Kissinger's attitudes towards atomic arms.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=26:02]]
<nowiki>[26:02]</nowiki>

Indeed when the made-for-TV movie, {{WPExtract|The Day After|''The Day After''}} is released in, what, 1982<ref>According to Wikipedia the film first aired on November 20, 1983 ({{WPExtract|The Day After|Wikipedia article on ''The Day After''}}).</ref>, I think, Ronald Reagan arranged a special viewing at the White House. The movie ''The Day After'' is a movie that sort of presents the day after a nuclear apocalypse in, you know, small town America -- actually in Lawrence, Kansas just outside of Kansas City, Missouri.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=26:23]]
<nowiki>[26:23]</nowiki>

And Reagan screened this film in the White House and was reportedly very affected by the sort of presentation of, you know, sort of cinematic construction of what a nuclear apocalypse might look like for ordinary Americans.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=26:38]]
<nowiki>[26:38]</nowiki>

Reagan's policies bear out his basic reflexive hostility towards nuclear weapons. In 1982 Ronald Reagan presents his first arms control proposal to the Soviet Union -- the so-called {{WPExtract|START I|START Proposal}}<ref>The [[wikipedia:START_I#Proposal|Proposal section of the Wikipedia START I article]] speaks about the proposal made by Ronald Reagan in May of 1982.</ref> -- S-T-A-R-T. The START Proposal proposes sweeping reductions in nuclear arsenals on both sides.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=27:00]]
<nowiki>[27:00]</nowiki>

Indeed the proposal is so ambitious that critics in the United States argue that the Reagan administration is not serious about it. That it is making such a sweeping proposal simply in order to...make no progress whatsoever on arms reductions. In fact, as more evidence has come to light, on the intentions of the Reagan administration, it's become more clear that Reagan was in fact quite serious when he put forward the START Proposal.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=27:26]]
<nowiki>[27:26]</nowiki>

Like Jimmy Carter in 1977 Reagan was willing to take bold and radical steps to deescalate the Cold War's nuclear arms race. But the Soviets, like many critics in the United States, didn't quite get this. They didn't think that Reagan was being serious. They were not willing to countenance massive reductions in nuclear armaments. As a consequence the Soviets rebuff Reagan's START Proposal.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=27:50]]
<nowiki>[27:50]</nowiki>

After this Reagan turns instead to missile defense. Reagan in the early 1980s introduces a proposal for what is called a {{WPExtract|Strategic Defense Initiative|Strategic Defense Initiative or SDI}}. This becomes known in the American media as {{WPExtract|Star Wars (film)|Star Wars -- sort of recognition of the 1977 movie}}.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=28:08]]
<nowiki>[28:08]</nowiki>

What the Star Wars concept envisages doing is using space based satellites to provide early warning of Soviet incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles which will then be intercepted using sort of ground launched anti-ballistic missile weapons.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=28:26]]
<nowiki>[28:26]</nowiki>

The technical aspects of this are not terribly important. What is really consequential is that SDI proposes to establish a sort of defensive shield against incoming Soviet ballistic missiles. Now Reagan sees the SDI initiative as wholly defensive. Reagan presents SDI as an alternative to bilateral arms reductions, and argues that the ultimate purpose of this will be much the same as arms control -- to protect the United States, to make it secure.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=28:56]]
<nowiki>[28:56]</nowiki>

But the Soviets see SDI as an offensive move. The Soviets are appalled by the Star Wars proposal and see it as an attempt to destabilize the stable nuclear stalemate that had set in during the 1960s and which was consecrated by the {{WPExtract|Strategic Arms Limitation Talks|SALT Agreement}} during the 1970s.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=29:14]]
<nowiki>[29:14]</nowiki>

Can any of you sort of hazard a guess as to why the Soviets might have seen SDI as an offensive move? It's a defensive system with no capacity to attack the Soviet Union, so why could it be offensive?

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=29:29]]
<nowiki>[29:29]</nowiki>

(student response)

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=29:34]]
<nowiki>[29:34]</nowiki>

Yeah.

(student response)

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=29:42]]
<nowiki>[29:42]</nowiki>

That's absolutely correct. What Star Wars would do, if it were enacted, and if it were effective as a system, would be to undermine entirely the deterrent capabilities of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. It would in effect make it possible for the United States to launch a preemptive nuclear war against the Soviet Union without any fear of retaliation.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=30:03]]
<nowiki>[30:03]</nowiki>

So SDI, or Star Wars, is profoundly destabilizing, in theory, to the Cold War military balance. Of course in practice SDI is very, very difficult to accomplish. We're still struggling to put together a working anti-ballistic missile system. Shooting down an incoming ballistic missile traveling at I don't know how many tens of thousand of miles per hour is harder than it might sound.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=30:31]]
<nowiki>[30:31]</nowiki>

Besides pursuing moves towards nuclear disarmament Reagan will, during his first term in office, make successive attempts to reach out to his Soviet counterparts. In 1981, shortly after Reagan survives an assassination attempt on his life, he drafts a letter, a handwritten letter to {{WPExtract|Leonid Brezhnev}}, the leader of the Soviet Union, calling for a sincere effort to surmount the differences and disagreements that exist between the two sides in the Cold War.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=31:02]]
<nowiki>[31:02]</nowiki>

After Brezhnev dies Reagan writes a similar letter to his successor {{WPExtract|Yuri Andropov}} calling for an honest meeting of minds, an honest effort to surmount Cold War difficulties and to resolve the Soviet American Cold War. Neither of these letters achieve the sort of Soviet reaction that Reagan hopes.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=31:22]]
<nowiki>[31:22]</nowiki>

So Reagan instead concentrates on bolstering US strength in the Cold War. But in 1984, this is three years into Reagan's presidency, Reagan delivers a landmark speech that sort of articulates his basic goals and purposes in foreign policy.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=31:37]]
<nowiki>[31:37]</nowiki>

And this is somewhat belated because Reagan hasn't previously set down, at least in public, an overarching foreign policy concept. But in 1984 Reagan does. And it's a somewhat dramatic move. Reagan talks about the need to reduce the role of force in international relations -- to build a peaceful international system in which law rather than force will prevail.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=31:58]]
<nowiki>[31:58]</nowiki>

He talks about his commitment to eliminate nuclear stockpiles. This is not taken very seriously at the time. But looking back with some better understanding of the inner history of Reagan's early attempts to pursue arms control agreements via the START proposal we can see Reagan's commitment to nuclear disarmament as coming from somewhere you know more sincere than it might have seemed to observers at the time.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=32:24]]
<nowiki>[32:24]</nowiki>

And Reagan also talks about the need to establish a new relationship with the Soviet Union, a relationship based upon cooperation, not upon conflict.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=32:33]]
<nowiki>[32:33]</nowiki>

But the key question for Ronald Reagan is whether there is a Soviet [[wikt:interlocutor|interlocutor]] who is willing and able to deal with Reagan. Reagan during his first term in office proves himself willing to explore the possibilities for a new kind of détente relationship with the Soviet Union -- a détente that will be based not upon the stabilization of the existing status quo but upon a constructive to overcome Cold War disagreements.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=32:59]]
<nowiki>[32:59]</nowiki>

During the 19 -- the first Reagan administration from 1981 to January 1985 -- it doesn't seem that there's a Soviet leader who is willing to play along. The Soviet Union remains sort of committed to a conflict...bound view of the international system and of the United States.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=33:19]]
<nowiki>[33:19]</nowiki>

But in 1985 there are dramatic changes in the Soviet Union, in the leadership of the Soviet Union, that will make the Soviet Union more amenable to the kind of Cold War resolution that Reagan has already demonstrated himself sort of eager to seek and build.

== The USSR in the 1980s ==

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=33:35]]
<nowiki>[33:35]</nowiki>

So it's at this point that will segue to talking about changes in the USSR during the 1980s.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=33:42]]
<nowiki>[33:42]</nowiki>

In the early 1980s the Soviet Union looks less like a sort of totalitarian dictatorship than it looks like a [[wikt:gerontocracy|gerontocracy]]. The leaders of the Soviet Union, in the early 1980s, are...to a man, old, even decrepit men.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=33:58]]
<nowiki>[33:58]</nowiki>

Brezhnev is exhibit A in this gallery of gerontocratic Soviet leaders. He'd led the Soviet Union since the late 1960s -- an architect of détente with the United States -- Brezhnev stood for stability both at home and abroad.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=34:17]]
<nowiki>[34:17]</nowiki>

It was certainly the case that Brezhnev was sincerely committed to peace. Brezhnev had fought in the Second World War; it was harrowing experience for him, and he was determined as General Secretary of the Communist Party to ensure that no major war was fought to between the United States and the Soviet Union.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=34:33]]
<nowiki>[34:33]</nowiki>

As such he proved himself a sincere bargaining partner for Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger during the détente of the early 1970s.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=34:42]]
<nowiki>[34:42]</nowiki>

But by the late 1970s Brezhnev's grip upon reality is already slipping. I think I told you some Brezhnev jokes -- did I -- when we talked about Brezhnev last time?

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=34:53]]
<nowiki>[34:53]</nowiki>

Did I tell you the joke about the Olympic rings?

(student response)

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=34:56]]
<nowiki>[34:56]</nowiki>

No, okay. So this is a Soviet joke which is popular at the time of the Moscow Olympics.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=35:02]]
<nowiki>[35:02]</nowiki>

I guess you know the Olympics were hosted in Moscow in 1980. Leonid Brezhnev is due to give the opening speech at the Olympic ceremony. And he gets up to speak. And he says: oh -- oh -- oh -- oh...an aide whispers, "You know, Leonid, that's not your teleprompter. Those are the Olympic rings." (laughter from the class).

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=35:25]]
<nowiki>[35:25]</nowiki>

Brezhnev dies in 1982, and is succeeded by another elderly man: {{WPExtract|Yuri Andropov|Andropov}}. Andropov was a reformer in some respects. He was a former head of the KGB, and was committed to increasing the sort of effectiveness and efficiency of the command economic system. He was also an authoritarian in political affairs as befits a former head of the KGB.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=35:50]]
<nowiki>[35:50]</nowiki>

Andropov was probably the outstanding intellect amongst the {{WPExtract|Politburo}} leaders of the late Brezhnev Era. You could probably construct a counterfactual argument along the lines that if Andropov had lived for longer he might have been able to reform the Soviet economic system without implementing a process of political change or reform which he would be disinclined to orchestrate as a political authoritarian.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=36:18]]
<nowiki>[36:18]</nowiki>

There's a sort of counterfactual that the Soviet Union might have followed something more like a Chinese model had Andropov become its leader, or had Andropov remained its leader, rather than dying in 1984.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=36:31]]
<nowiki>[36:31]</nowiki>

Andropov does die in 1984 and he is succeeded by another elderly leader -- {{WPExtract|Konstantin Chernenko}}. Chernenko lacks Andropov's intellect. He lacks Andropov's instincts to economic reform. Chernenko is a conservative choice as General Secretary of the Communist Party.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=36:52]]
<nowiki>[36:52]</nowiki>

Chernenko dies in 1985. The British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, attends his funeral as the representative of Great Britain and she has a conversation with Ronald Reagan, the US President, after returning to Great Britain. She's telling Ronald Reagan about Chernenko's funeral.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=37:09]]
<nowiki>[37:09]</nowiki>

And Thatcher tells Reagan -- it was a wonderful funeral -- you really should have come. They put on a great show. I'll be coming back next year.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=37:19]]
<nowiki>[37:19]</nowiki>

Fortunately for the Soviet Union, or fortunately, I guess for Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who becomes leader of the Soviet Union after Andropov's death, turns out not to be the case. Gorbachev is still very much alive and kicking.

=== Gorbachev and Reforms in the Soviet Union During the 1980s ===

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=37:34]]
<nowiki>[37:34]</nowiki>

Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union in 1985. He was aged just 54 at the time. This makes him very young as a sort of -- in relation to the men who have preceded him as the supreme leaders of the Soviet Union.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=37:49]]
<nowiki>[37:49]</nowiki>

Gorbachev is the youngest member of the Politburo in 1985. He is by far and away the outstanding intellect amongst the highest echelons of the Soviet leadership. Gorbachev also has a different set of generational experiences from those that the men who preceded had had.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=38:09]]
<nowiki>[38:09]</nowiki>

Gorbachev is the first Soviet leader not to have fought in the Second World War -- first postwar leader not to have fought in the Second World War. The Second World War for Gorbachev is not a defining experience. What is a defining experience for Gorbachev is the experience of the 1960s -- the experience in particular of the so-called thaw that sets in under Nikita Khrushchev.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=38:31]]
<nowiki>[38:31]</nowiki>

Remember that we talked about the 1960s as a period of relative opening in Soviet society -- a period when there was expanded opportunity for political dialog and discourse, an era which even heretical intellects like {{WPExtract|Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn}} had opportunities to publish -- {{WPExtract|One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich|''A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich''}}

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=38:51]]
<nowiki>[38:51]</nowiki>

Solzhenitsyn's fictionalized account of life inside the gulag appears in 1962. And it's in this intellectual climate, a climate of intellectual opening and political opportunity, that Mikhail Gorbachev comes of age.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=39:06]]
<nowiki>[39:06]</nowiki>

With that said -- it is important to underscore that Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 is not a secret liberal democrat. Gorbachev in 1985 remains a convinced Leninist. Gorbachev believes in the Soviet project; he believes in a Marxist-Leninist concept of history.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=39:25]]
<nowiki>[39:25]</nowiki>

The man whom Mikhail Gorbachev idealizes above all is Nikita Khrushchev. Gorbachev is an anti-Stalinist. He does not see Stalin's influence as having been positive or [[wikt:salutary|salutary]]. Rather Gorbachev from the very outset sees Stalin as a man who perverted the Soviet project -- who turned Lenin's socialist democracy -- this is sort of more fiction than reality, but it's what Gorbachev believes -- into a totalitarian state.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=39:53]]
<nowiki>[39:53]</nowiki>

And Gorbachev idealizes Khrushchev as a reformer who tried to restore the true spirit of early Leninism. And as General Secretary of the Communist Party this is what Gorbachev will try to do himself.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=40:07]]
<nowiki>[40:07]</nowiki>

Why do Gorbachev, this reform minded sort of charismatic man, become General Secretary of the Communist Party? Why does his colleagues on the Politburo put him forward? It's a good question -- particularly given the transformative change that Gorbachev would enact very quickly subsequent to his installation as the Soviet Union's supreme leader.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=40:31]]
<nowiki>[40:31]</nowiki>

It's certainly the case there were leaders on the Politburo who had misgivings about Gorbachev -- who feared that he could not be trusted to uphold the you know post-Khrushchev orthodoxy -- who worry about Gorbachev's capacity for implementing radical change.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=40:48]]
<nowiki>[40:48]</nowiki>

But ultimately there are few plausible alternatives to Gorbachev. Gorbachev is the outstanding man on the Politburo. He was passed over in 1985 -- in 1984 when Konstantin Chernenko became General Secretary. Following Chernenko's death the election of Gorbachev to be the supreme leader looks basically...inevitable.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=41:11]]
<nowiki>[41:11]</nowiki>

On becoming General Secretary, upon his installation, Gorbachev tells his wife the morning of his installation as supreme leader, we can't go on living like this. Gorbachev at the very outset recognizes that the Soviet Union has become enmired in a serious social, economic and political malaise.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=41:31]]
<nowiki>[41:31]</nowiki>

We can't go on living like this is Gorbachev's instinct at the very beginning of his administration. And what ails the Soviet Union? Why can't we go on living like this in Gorbachev's view?

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=41:43]]
<nowiki>[41:43]</nowiki>

Gorbachev recognizes that the Soviet economy has become stagnant. He recognizes that public health is in decline amidst rampant alcoholism and degenerative disease. Indeed, in the Soviet Union, life expectancy for adult men, falls between 19 -- the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s. Adult life expectancy declines. And for an advanced industrial society, which the Soviet Union is, this is without precedent.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=42:12]]
<nowiki>[42:12]</nowiki>

There are very few sort of cases in which an advanced country experiences a decline in life expectancy. And the Soviet Union does, and this is something which is very troubling to Gorbachev.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=42:22]]
<nowiki>[42:22]</nowiki>

Gorbachev is also concerned by the Afghan War. He believes that the Afghan War has become a costly ulcer and is determined from the outset to do something about it -- presumably to bring the Afghan War to its conclusion.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=42:36]]
<nowiki>[42:36]</nowiki>

The difficulties that the Soviet Union faces, the obstacles to reform, become very clear in {{WPExtract|Chernobyl disaster|April 1986 when a nuclear reactor melts down at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant in the Ukraine}}. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster is the worst nuclear disaster of the atomic era -- far worse even than last year's {{WPExtract|Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster|Fukushima disaster}}.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=42:59]]
<nowiki>[42:59]</nowiki>

What's particularly pernicious about the Chernobyl disaster from Gorbachev's perspective is that it seems to encapsulate within itself all of the worst failures of the Soviet system. Local government authorities in Chernobyl are very slow to let authorities in Moscow know what has happened.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=43:17]]
<nowiki>[43:17]</nowiki>

They initially try to cover up the meltdown -- to pretend that this hasn't happened -- simply to bush the radiation under the rug. Of course this you know is unsuccessful particularly when West European countries report high levels of nuclear radioactivity in rainfall that is moving eastwards -- westwards from -- from the Soviet Union.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=43:37]]
<nowiki>[43:37]</nowiki>

So the thing can't be covered up. But the crisis -- the meltdown itself -- and then the effort to disguise it represents the failures of the command economic system: the unaccountability of low-level officials, the lack of market discipline and incentives, and so on and so forth.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=43:54]]
<nowiki>[43:54]</nowiki>

Insofar as Chernobyl indicts the system itself it's not a one-time event. It's the first in a long series of disasters that seem to strike at the very heart of the Soviet system's credibility. The Chernobyl disaster is followed by other major disasters in 1986.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=44:12]]
<nowiki>[44:12]</nowiki>

Later that year a cruise liner sinks on the Black Sea claiming some 400 lives. In October 1986 a Soviet nuclear submarine is lost without trace -- with all of the sailors on board. The system appears literally to be falling apart. The system appears like the Chernobyl reactor to be in a state of meltdown.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=44:31]]
<nowiki>[44:31]</nowiki>

So what is Gorbachev to do? What are the prospects for reforming and improving the system? What is Gorbachev's outlook? How does he seek to proceed?

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=44:41]]
<nowiki>[44:41]</nowiki>

It's important when we think about Gorbachev to remind ourselves that Gorbachev had some awareness of the wold beyond the Soviet Union. Gorbachev grows up in the closed world that is the USSR, but as he attains privilege and status within the Soviet bureaucracy he begins to enjoy opportunities to travel beyond the USSR.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=45:01]]
<nowiki>[45:01]</nowiki>

And these travels will be very influential on Gorbachev's own political and economic outlook. Gorbachev travels to Western Europe repeatedly in the 1970s. He goes to first to Italy in 1971 and then subsequently to the Netherlands, France and West Germany. And these travels open Gorbachev's eyes to the West.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=45:20]]
<nowiki>[45:20]</nowiki>

He comes to realize that the West is not so atrocious as Soviet propaganda would have Soviet citizens believe. But is in fact more prosperous, more efficient and in some ways more egalitarian than the Soviet Union itself.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=45:35]]
<nowiki>[45:35]</nowiki>

Gorbachev visits Canada in 1983 just a couple of years before he becomes General Secretary. He is very impressed by what he sees in Canada -- particularly by the efficiency of Canadian agriculture. As a Communist Party bureaucrat Gorbachev has a particular interest in and responsibility for agriculture, and he's blown away by what he sees in Canada -- you know agricultural productivity far in excess of that which the Soviet Union has been able to accomplish.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=46:03]]
<nowiki>[46:03]</nowiki>

And this is quite startling and it forces Gorbachev to rethink some of his own basic assumptions about how society and the economy should be organized.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=46:12]]
<nowiki>[46:12]</nowiki>

Gorbachev also gets to meet foreign leaders and these meetings will be influential upon him. Gorbachev meets in 1984, in December 1984, this is literally just months before his elevation to the General Secretaryship, with Margaret Thatcher -- the Prime Minister of Great Britain.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=46:29]]
<nowiki>[46:29]</nowiki>

Gorbachev makes a very positive impression on Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher reports after the meeting with Gorbachev: I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together. Thatcher hails Gorbachev as a different kind of Soviet leader -- a Soviet leader who is open and spontaneous -- not who is rigid and ideological as his predecessors had been.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=46:48]]
<nowiki>[46:48]</nowiki>

Gorbachev is also impressed by what he sees in Great Britain. He's impressed that Thatcher seems open and willing to engage with him -- not ideologically hidebound. Gorbachev too realizes that he can engage in constructive dialog with the leaders of foreign states -- including even Great Britain -- a close ally of the United States of America.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=47:09]]
<nowiki>[47:09]</nowiki>

So far as the United States, and the Reagan administration is concerned, Thatcher actually plays a really important role as a bridge between the Soviet Union and the United States. Thatcher, who is very close to Reagan, Reagan trusts Thatcher...reassure...Thatcher reassures the American President that Gorbachev is a different kind of Soviet leader -- that he is a man with whom the West can do business.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=47:32]]
<nowiki>[47:32]</nowiki>

So these international contexts, even before Gorbachev's ascension to the General Secretaryship, give Gorbachev a different kind of orientation -- an orientation to the world that is open and integrative rather than the sort of reflexive anti-Westernism which animated his predecessors.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=47:51]]
<nowiki>[47:51]</nowiki>

Gorbachev, I should also, you know, just note, derives succor from his contacts with social democratic leaders in the West. The experience of Spain's {{WPExtract|Felipe González}} is particularly influential on Gorbachev. We talked about González on Tuesday when we talked about the third wave of democratization in the Iberian Peninsula.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=48:10]]
<nowiki>[48:10]</nowiki>

González is the socialist who becomes elected Spain's Prime Minister in 1981. And González's apparent ability to combine a commitment to socialism, to economic egalitarianism, with a commitment to democracy, with the rule of the ballot box, is very influential on Gorbachev. Gorbachev sees through the example of González and other West European social democrats that it might be possible to be both socially democratic and progressive on the one hand and committed to the rule of law and to electoral democracy on the other.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=48:43]]
<nowiki>[48:43]</nowiki>

So what does Gorbachev do as a reformer at home? How does Mikhail Gorbachev proceed? Gorbachev pursues a three pronged reform agenda. There are three Russian words that it would be useful for you to be able to associate with the Gorbachev administration in the Soviet Union.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=49:05]]
<nowiki>[49:05]</nowiki>

The first of these is {{WPExtract|Uskoreniye|uskoreniye}} it translates as acceleration loosely. And what is represents is a commitment to speeding up the Soviet system -- to making the command economic system more efficient, more effective, than it has become.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=49:22]]
<nowiki>[49:22]</nowiki>

Uskoreniye is the attempt to make the Soviet system work better without changing the basic paradigm of the system. The pursuit of uskoreniye involves a basic continuity with the reform agenda of Yuri Andropov -- a leader who had committed himself to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the command economic system.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=49:44]]
<nowiki>[49:44]</nowiki>

But Gorbachev's reform agenda will soon branch beyond the pursuit of uskoreniye or acceleration within an existing sort of socialist paradigm. Gorbachev will commit himself in fairly short order to a process of {{WPExtract|Perestroika|perestroika}} -- a word that translates as reconstruction.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=50:03]]
<nowiki>[50:03]</nowiki>

Perestroika goes beyond uskoreniye. It's not just an attempt to speed up the command economic system but it rather -- it will be an attempt to reform and even change the command economy.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=50:14]]
<nowiki>[50:14]</nowiki>

It will ultimately involve a willingness to countenance market oriented reforms -- to open up the command economic system to encompass some space for market based incentives. This...in contrast to uskoreniye which is an attempt to speed up and improve the existing paradigm will be an attempt to change the paradigm itself -- to take the Soviet command economic system and to turn it into a different kind of economic system -- one in which there will be more space for private enterprise and private individual economic initiative.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=50:47]]
<nowiki>[50:47]</nowiki>

Besides these two reform agenda, uskoreniye and perestroika, both of which are oriented towards the economy, Gorbachev will simultaneously pursue a reform agenda that is oriented towards politics and even civil society.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=51:03]]
<nowiki>[51:03]</nowiki>

This will be a reform agenda known as {{WPExtract|Glasnost|glasnost}}. Glasnost translates as openness. What is it? It is an attempt to increase political pluralism within the Soviet system -- to expand the space for political dialog -- even to transform the Soviet Union into a democratic kind of system. It is reform with democratizing intent.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=51:27]]
<nowiki>[51:27]</nowiki>

Glasnost is very difficult to accomplish. You have to remember that in the Soviet Union the party and the state are virtually indistinguishable. The party is the state -- hence the sort of aphorism<ref>[[wikt:aphorism|Wiktionary has an entry for aphorism]] and {{WPExtract|aphorism|Wikipedia has an entry for aphorism}}. The speaker is perhaps using the word in a somewhat non-conventional way. It's possible that neologism ([[wikt:neologism|Wiktionary entry]], {{WPExtract|Neologism|Wikipedia entry}}) is what was intended.</ref> party-state.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=51:40]]
<nowiki>[51:40]</nowiki>

What glasnost will involve in practice will be the reconstruction of civil institutions, of state institutions, as a counterweight to the party. Gorbachev will try to sort of rebuild the state as a counterbalance to the influence of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This will involve later in the 1980s creating and empowering new institutions.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=52:04]]
<nowiki>[52:04]</nowiki>

A Presidency of the Soviet Union will supplant the General Secretary of the Communist Party as a source of leadership authority. The Chamber of Deputies, an old Soviet Era institution, will be reformed to become something more like a representative parliament. So glasnost tries to expand the space for political discourse and dialog on the one hand, and on the other hand to build state institutions as a counterweight to the party.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=52:32]]
<nowiki>[52:32]</nowiki>

Reform however is an incremental process. The definition of each of these three major objectives: uskoreniye, perestroika and glasnost evolves over time. Reform passes through stages. Initially it's fairly cautious. It will become ambitious from 1987 onwards.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=52:52]]
<nowiki>[52:52]</nowiki>

Initially uskoreniye and then perestroika are the primary objectives of Gorbachev's reform agenda. Only later will Gorbachev commit himself more fully to political glasnost. As Gorbachev proceeds in this reformist project he builds upon the work of so-called internal dissidents.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=53:10]]
<nowiki>[53:10]</nowiki>

The internal dissidents are very important. These are not dissidents like {{WPExtract|Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn}} and {{WPExtract|Andrei Sakharov}} who live entirely outside of the party-state. Sakharov by the mid-1970s is totally outside of the mainstream of Soviet society.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=53:26]]
<nowiki>[53:26]</nowiki>

He is indeed sent off to a -- to the gulag in the late 1970s for his opposition to the party's rule. The men on whom Gorbachev draws for inspiration are not the out-and-out dissidents. They're not the people who are wholly opposed to the Soviet system; rather, they are insiders, party members, party bureaucrats, who have by the mid-1980s serious doubts about the future viability of the Soviet model.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=53:53]]
<nowiki>[53:53]</nowiki>

They are men like {{WPExtract|Alexander Yakovlev (Russian politician)|Alexander Yakovlev}}, a man who was a, you know, long party member of long and good standing, but who is dispatched to Canada, as the Soviet ambassador to Canada in 1973, in large part because he had become something of an internal heretic. Yakovlev questions sort of self-evident party truths. And as punishment was sent off to Canada for a decade.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=54:17]]
<nowiki>[54:17]</nowiki>

In Canada of course Yakovlev's intellectual [[wikt:heterodox|heterodoxy]] only expanded. Yakovlev becomes a more convinced reformer as a consequence of his genteel exile in the Canadian embassy. Yakovlev becomes a major influence on Gorbachev. The two men meet when Gorbachev visits Canada in 1983 and its Yakovlev who is tasked with showing Gorbachev around.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=54:40]]
<nowiki>[54:40]</nowiki>

After Gorbachev becomes General Secretary he brings Yakovlev back to the Soviet Union and installs him as his closest policy advisor. Yakovlev is a man who is you know, sort of, commonly described as the intellectual godfather of détente<ref>According to Wikipedia {{WPExtract|Alexander Yakovlev (Russian politician)|Yakovlev}} is described as the "godfather of {{WPExtract|Glasnost|glasnost}}".</ref> -- as the man who is more responsible than any other for orchestrating the policies that Mikhail Gorbachev would implement.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=55:02]]
<nowiki>[55:02]</nowiki>

Ultimately, Yakovlev will break with Gorbachev at the very end of the 1980s, because Yakovlev becomes convinced that Gorbachev is not reforming as quickly as he could. So Yakovlev is a very convinced systemic reformer. Other reformers who influence Gorbachev include {{WPExtract|Eduard Shevardnadze}}.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=55:20]]
<nowiki>[55:20]</nowiki>

Eduard Shevardnadze had been the head of the {{WPExtract|Communist Party of Georgia|Georgian Communist Party}}. You know as we've already discussed the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is the Communist Party that exists at the federation level. The Soviet republics that constitute the USSR have their own Communist parties. And Shevardnadze, a Georgian, is the head of the Georgian Communist Party.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=55:41]]
<nowiki>[55:41]</nowiki>

In this sort of role as a regional boss he establishes a reputation for himself as something of a reformer -- as a man who is willing to experiment with new solutions in order to improve the operation of the socialist system. Gorbachev appoints Shevardnadze as his foreign minister.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=55:59]]
<nowiki>[55:59]</nowiki>

As foreign minister Shevardnadze after 1985 gets to travel extensively to the West. He strikes up good relationships with Western interlocutors. His experiences in the West confirm his own orientation towards reform. Shevardnadze becomes in particular a very strong proponent of Soviet-American détente -- of transforming the conflict relationship between the United States and the USSR into a relationship of cooperation.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=56:28]]
<nowiki>[56:28]</nowiki>

Bolstered by men like Yakovlev and Shevardnadze, internal reformers, inner critics of the system, Gorbachev following his installation in 1985, embarks upon a reform agenda. The initial process will be upon improving the efficiency of the socialist system.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=56:48]]
<nowiki>[56:48]</nowiki>

Mikhail Gorbachev seeks to pursue a reformed, improved Communism, a Communism that will in his expectation, come closer to achieving the results that Lenin intended for it. This will involve, for example, an anti-alcoholism campaign. Gorbachev is absolutely convinced when he becomes General Secretary that alcoholism is one of the primary ills that ails the Soviet economy.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=57:15]]
<nowiki>[57:15]</nowiki>

Alcoholism he sees it is responsible not only for rising incidents of alcohol related deaths amongst Russian men, but also for a slowdown in production for industrial absenteeism and so on. The answer for this should be obvious to anybody who's ever had a bad hangover. It's difficult to go to work and make things when you're really sick. (laughter from the class)

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=57:36]]
<nowiki>[57:36]</nowiki>

So Gorbachev tries to improve the efficiency of the system by implementing a tough campaign against alcoholism. This is important not so much for what it accomplishes -- which is not very much -- it actually accomplishes a substantial increase in the production of home brewed alcohol in the Soviet Union (laughter from the class) as Soviet citizens sort of try to avoid the official restrictions on alcohol.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=57:58]]
<nowiki>[57:58]</nowiki>

But it's important because of what it reveals about the nature of Gorbachev's reform agenda in the early stage. Fighting alcoholism is...revelatory because it suggests that Gorbachev's concern is with improving the system as it currently functions -- with eradicating specific social ills like alcoholism that act as impediments to the smooth operation of the socialist economic system.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=58:24]]
<nowiki>[58:24]</nowiki>

So refining the efficiency, improving the efficiency of the system, through a process of uskoreniye is Gorbachev's initial objective. This does not achieve the results that Gorbachev hopes to achieve. The efficiency of the Soviet economy does not substantially increase as a consequence of uskoreniye so Gorbachev begins around 1987 to embark upon more far reaching economic reforms.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=58:51]]
<nowiki>[58:51]</nowiki>

He begins to pursue a tentative economic liberalization. The 1987 law on state enterprises is an important turning point. What this law does is to devolve expanded control over industrial production to the factory level. It doesn't transfer factories to private ownership; rather, it seeks to give individual factory managers more autonomy -- autonomy to determine sort of what they will manufacture -- autonomy to determine how they will manufacture it.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=59:21]]
<nowiki>[59:21]</nowiki>

In the context of a command economic system in which production has previously been centralized in Moscow this is a bold step. What Gorbachev is trying to do with the 1987 law on state enterprises is to decentralize the command economic system -- to expand the latitude of opportunity for private initiative in industrial manufacturing.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=59:42]]
<nowiki>[59:42]</nowiki>

But there are series obstacles to reform. The Soviet economy has been socialized and centralized for a very long time. By the mid-1980s nobody in the Soviet Union can remember a pre-Soviet era.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=59:58]]
<nowiki>[59:58]</nowiki>

This is different by the way from the experience of China. In China the socialist system is not consolidated until the early 1950s. By consequence when {{WPExtract|Deng Xiaoping}} embarks upon a reform agenda, in the late 1970s, there is still in China extensive folk memory of a pre-Communist world, of a world in which property was private, and in which the market provided a framework for the exchange of goods.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:00:23]]
<nowiki>[1:00:23]</nowiki>

In the Soviet Union by contrast there is very little popular memory of life outside of a Communist world. And this is an obstacle to reform. Labor also turns out to be an obstacle to reform. Gorbachev removes legal restrictions on labor demonstrations. Under the Brezhnev regime laborers, laborers who protested, laborers who stopped work in protest to their work conditions, were punished. They were subject to criminal sanction.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:00:54]]
<nowiki>[1:00:54]</nowiki>

Gorbachev liberalizes the regime of labor control in the Soviet Union and as a consequence workers go on strike.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:01:03]]
<nowiki>[1:01:03]</nowiki>

In effect Gorbachev's liberalization of labor controls demonstrates how important labor controls were to making the system function under Brezhnev. And there's an irony to this, right. The Soviet Union proclaimed itself to be a workers' state -- a state that was run you know for the bourgeoisie, by the bourgeoisie, for the bourgeoisie and so on.<ref>Speaker likely meant what had been said earlier in [[UC_Berkeley_-_HIST_186_-_2012_Spring_-_Sargent_-_International_and_Global_History_Since_1945_-_Lecture_16_-_The_Cold_War_Resurges_-_01h_21m_20s#Upheaval_in_Poland_During_the_1970s|Lecture 16 - The Cold War Resurges - in the section speaking about the Polish Solidarity Movement]], "Remember that Communist governments, socialist governments as they you know call themselves, proclaim themselves to be governments of the workers, you know government of the workers, by the workers, and for the workers. That workers would need an independent labor union to represent their interests against the state is sort of anathema to the you know basic ideological framework that is Soviet-style Communism."</ref>

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:01:23]]
<nowiki>[1:01:23]</nowiki>

Well, what Gorbachev demonstrates once he begins to loosen the controls that had held the system together is that workers are not particularly happy. They go on strike. And this is revelatory but it also is an obstacle to the accomplishment of Gorbachev's reform project.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:01:39]]
<nowiki>[1:01:39]</nowiki>

As Gorbachev's reforms struggle to achieve their desired goals it becomes clearer and clearer to observers within the Soviet Union, as well as in the larger world, that Gorbachev does not have a particularly coherent agenda. Unlike Deng Xiaoping Gorbachev lacks a cogent sense of what he wants to accomplish.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:01:58]]
<nowiki>[1:01:58]</nowiki>

Gorbachev at some level is committed to refining the Leninist system -- to making socialism work better. But at another level he is willing to experiment so as to achieve his desired aim of reform and efficiency. And there is an obvious contradiction between these things. Gorbachev wants to preserve and improve the Soviet system, but he also wants to change the Soviet system so as to make it more productive and more efficient.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:02:22]]
<nowiki>[1:02:22]</nowiki>

And it's not entirely clear what Gorbachev proposes to do or how he proposes to accomplish it. Perestroika and uskoreniye point in different directions yet Gorbachev pursues them at the same time.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:02:36]]
<nowiki>[1:02:36]</nowiki>

Beset by the travails of economic reform Gorbachev turns instead after 1987 to political reform. The pursuit of political reform will become the primary focus of Gorbachev's reform agenda. Glasnost displaces uskoreniye and perestroika as the primary focus of Gorbachev's reform efforts.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:02:59]]
<nowiki>[1:02:59]</nowiki>

Here substantial progress is made. Gorbachev removes restrictive controls on Soviet intellectual, cultural, and even political life. The formation of new civil society organizations, the so-called informals, or informal organizations is encouraged. This is a major breakthrough. Previously the Communist Party had prohibited the existence of civil society organizations.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:03:27]]
<nowiki>[1:03:27]</nowiki>

Trade unions are an obvious example but also political organizations, organizations devoted to particular causes, the kind of civil societies organizations that flourish in the West had been prohibited in the Soviet Union. But Gorbachev encourages their formation. Something akin to a civil society begins to reassert itself in the context of glasnost.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:03:50]]
<nowiki>[1:03:50]</nowiki>

Gorbachev also encourages the formation of popular political organizations to support his perestroika agenda. The so-called popular fronts in support of perestroika are formed from 1987 onwards. And this is really important because Gorbachev faces serious political opposition to his reform agenda within the Communist Party.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:04:11]]
<nowiki>[1:04:11]</nowiki>

Hard liners, conservatives, and [[wikt:reactionary|reactionaries]] within the -- conserva -- within the Communist Party -- I almost called it the conservative party -- and there would be a certain logic to that linguistic slip -- oppose Gorbachev's reform effort.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:04:25]]
<nowiki>[1:04:25]</nowiki>

They oppose Gorbachev's effort to change the system. By encouraging the formation of grassroots political organizations, the so-called popular fronts, Gorbachev is trying to invoke mass politics, the people as a counterweight to the party.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:04:41]]
<nowiki>[1:04:41]</nowiki>

In the context of the Soviet state this is a very bold unprecedented move. Besides expanding the scope of political freedom, Gorbachev also expands the domain of intellectual freedom. Literary and cultural outlets are given new freedom to publish materials previously considered heretical. Khrushchev in 1962 had permitted the publication of {{WPExtract|Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn|Solzhenitsyn}}'s {{WPExtract|One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich|''Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich''}}

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:05:08]]
<nowiki>[1:05:08]</nowiki>

Well, in 1988 Mikhail Gorbachev goes one better and allows the state publishing house {{WPExtract|Novy Mir|''Novy Mir''}} to publish Solzhenitsyn's {{WPExtract|The Gulag Archipelago|''Gulag Archipelago''}}. -- a far more damning indictment of the Soviet gulag system than {{WPExtract|One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich|''A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich''}} had been.<ref>The Wikipedia article on {{WPExtract|The Gulag Archipelago|''The Gulag Archipelago''}} states, "Following its publication, the book initially circulated in {{WPExtract|Samizdat|''samizdat''}} underground publication in the Soviet Union until its appearance in the literary journal {{WPExtract|Novy Mir|''Novy Mir''}} in 1989, in which a third of the work was published in three issues."</ref>

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:05:26]]
<nowiki>[1:05:26]</nowiki>

So the scope of individual freedom expands dramatically from 1987 onwards. Gorbachev also implements serious structural political reforms. Here the 1988 party conference of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the 19th Party Conference, is a very important turning point.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:05:45]]
<nowiki>[1:05:45]</nowiki>

At this party conference Gorbachev somehow gets the Communist Party to endorse a far reaching reform agenda. The Communist Party endorses Gorbachev's demand for a program of accelerated democratization. It endorses Gorbachev's commitment to create an elected parliament -- a parliament that will be popularly elected by the people -- the Chamber of Soviet Deputies.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:06:10]]
<nowiki>[1:06:10]</nowiki>

The party conference also creates a Soviet Presidency as a new institution within the Soviet state. This Presidency will not be directly elected. It is to be indirectly elected by the parliament. And this may have been one of the biggest tactical miscalculations that Mikhail Gorbachev made.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:06:29]]
<nowiki>[1:06:29]</nowiki>

Had Gorbachev introduced a directly elected Presidency in 1988 and then stood for election as President of the Soviet Union in 1989 it is highly likely that he would have won. But he's concerned about the prospects of his own election; he's concerned about pushing reform too hard, and he instead opts to have the presidency indirectly elected by the members of the parliament.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:06:57]]
<nowiki>[1:06:57]</nowiki>

Gorbachev will be elected in 1990 to be the President of the Soviet Union. So he assumes the new office himself. Had he been directly elected by the people rather than indirectly elected by the parliament he would have enjoyed sort of greater democratic legitimacy as leader of the Soviet Union and this would have had some implications for the sort of final politics of the Soviet Union's collapse which we'll come to in due course.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:07:23]]
<nowiki>[1:07:23]</nowiki>

But even with the sort of direct, with the indirectly elected presidency, the introduction of these structural political reforms represents a major turning point in the history of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev is in effect building state institutions as a counterweight to the party.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:07:42]]
<nowiki>[1:07:42]</nowiki>

Alexander Yakovlev wants to go even further than this. He wants the Communist Party to divide itself in two, so as to introduce a competitive political system, to the Soviet Union's politics. Yakovlev argues that Gorbachev should break away from the Communist Party and establish a new social democratic party which Gorbachev would head leaving the old [[wikt:reactionary|reactionaries]] to be a {{WPExtract|Rump party|rump Communist party}}.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:08:06]]
<nowiki>[1:08:06]</nowiki>

Gorbachev says it's not quite ready for that. It's not quite time to divide the Communist Party in two. But...the opportunities for political pluralism are increasing very rapidly.

== The International Aspects of Soviet Reforms ==

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:08:18]]
<nowiki>[1:08:18]</nowiki>

What are the international aspects of Gorbachev's reform agenda? How does Gorbachev's reform agenda at home alter the place of the Soviet Union in the world? This is our sort of last theme.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:08:30]]
<nowiki>[1:08:30]</nowiki>

Gorbachev, we should note, believes that reform at home will require change in the international relations of the Soviet Union. This is a very deep conviction for Gorbachev. That there is a fundamental relationship between reform at home and change in the world.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:08:47]]
<nowiki>[1:08:47]</nowiki>

Gorbachev believes first off that the Cold War is unsustainable. He believes that the costs of waging the Cold War are weighing down the Soviet Union -- that the extensive commitment of resources -- the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction is a drag on the Soviet economy. He believes that the Afghan War has become an unsustainable cancer and that it is time to end the Afghan War which Gorbachev does in 1988.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:09:13]]
<nowiki>[1:09:13]</nowiki>

But ending the Afghan War is not enough. Gorbachev wants to redivert all of the resources that are being committed to the nuclear arms race to civilian production. And he understands that in order to do that he will have to end the Cold War -- that he will have to strike up some new relationship with the United States that will enable the Soviet Union to dismantle its military-industrial complex and to instead divert those resources to the purposes of civilian economic production.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:09:40]]
<nowiki>[1:09:40]</nowiki>

Gorbachev also believes that economic reform will at some fundamental level depend upon at the opening of the Soviet economy to the world. He believes that the Soviet Union will require participation in international trade relationships to stimulate technology led growth.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:09:58]]
<nowiki>[1:09:58]</nowiki>

He believes that the United -- that the Soviet Union -- should recommit itself to Europe. In the context of European integration, which is far advanced by the 1980s, Gorbachev wants to reinsert the Soviet Union within a larger sort of European economic and political system -- for the Soviet Union to take its place in what he calls a common European home.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:10:18]]
<nowiki>[1:10:18]</nowiki>

So Gorbachev proposes to transcend the division between East and West with the purpose of reintegrating the Soviet Union to the world. And he does this not only because he wants to secure peace but also because he believes that the Soviet economy cannot be reformed in isolation -- that real reform will depend upon the discipline of international competition, upon the stimulative effects that trade has on economic innovation.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:10:42]]
<nowiki>[1:10:42]</nowiki>

So this will require transforming the Cold War world. It will require a new kind of relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union -- the Cold War's two principle adversaries.

=== Meetings Between Reagan and Gorbachev ===

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:10:55]]
<nowiki>[1:10:55]</nowiki>

Reagan and Gorbachev strike up a warm relationship from the very beginning. They meet for the first time in a summit meeting at Geneva in 1985. This meeting is not particularly consequential in terms of its tangible achievements. It doesn't achieve much by way of specific agreement. But what it does achieve is a warm rapport between the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:11:24]]
<nowiki>[1:11:24]</nowiki>

Reagan sees Gorbachev right away as a man with whom he can deal -- like Thatcher. Reagan believes that Gorbachev is a different kind of Soviet leader. In fact Reagan is so convinced that Gorbachev is different that Reagan even concludes that Gorbachev might be secretly a Christian.(laughter from the class)

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:11:40]]
<nowiki>[1:11:40]</nowiki>

Reagan says after the summit, I honestly think he believes in a higher power. And this is actually really important. Because for Reagan one of the problems with Communism is that Communism recognizes no higher source of authority. For Communism, in Reagan's view, all that matters is the accomplishment of a Communist system.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:12:00]]
<nowiki>[1:12:00]</nowiki>

The idea that human rights, or religious values, or even the rule of law could impede the realization of a Communist society is anathema to Communist ideology, at least in Reagan's understanding of it. So Reagan's notion that Gorbachev believes in a higher power is very important. Because Reagan immediately presumes that Gorbachev might be willing to concede that there are, sort of, metaphysical limits upon what the state can do to its citizens in the name of the Communist ideological project.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:12:30]]
<nowiki>[1:12:30]</nowiki>

The next {{WPExtract|Reykjavík Summit|summit in Reykjavík}} in 1986 pushes the two parties close towards a very dramatic accomplishment. Reagan and Gorbachev, in a sort of fairly open dialog, come very close to agreeing to abolish nuclear arsenals on both side of the Cold War. They countenance a program of total nuclear disarmament.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:12:54]]
<nowiki>[1:12:54]</nowiki>

This is really striking. Never been in the history of the Cold War have two leaders come so close to a discussion of real disarmament. But Gorbachev and Reagan do at Reykjavík. The leaders on both sides go far ahead of where their closest advisors want them to go. But they are willing on both sides to contemplate very bold moves.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:13:15]]
<nowiki>[1:13:15]</nowiki>

SDI ends up being an obstacle. Reagan is very committed to the SDI concept. He's not willing to dismantle it as a quid pro quo for wholesale nuclear disarmament. He does offer to share the SDI system with the Soviet Union so as to give the Soviet Union Star Wars technology. But that's not sufficient to bridge the divide over SDI.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:13:36]]
<nowiki>[1:13:36]</nowiki>

Though the Reykjavík meeting does not achieve the sweeping disarmament deal that both Reagan and Gorbachev hoped that it might it does confirm a close partnership between the two men. This partnership will produce tangible results very quickly.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:13:50]]
<nowiki>[1:13:50]</nowiki>

After the Reykjavík Summit Reagan has, you know, convinces himself that the Soviet Union is changing in very profound ways. And he sets out to encourage change. He dispatches to Moscow his Secretary of State, {{WPExtract|George P. Shultz|George Shultz}}. Shultz is a former economist, before he becomes Secretary of State, and Gorbachev sends him to Moscow to hold informal seminars with Gorbachev on market economics. Reagan figures that Shultz can sort of help Gorbachev to make the transition to a more liberalized, more market oriented, economic system.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:14:22]]
<nowiki>[1:14:22]</nowiki>

Reagan also reaches a new arms control agreement. The {{WPExtract|Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty|INF or Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force Treaty}} of 1987. The INF Treaty does something very sweeping. It commits both sides to remove all intermediate range nuclear weapons from Europe. It doesn't compass the big intercontinental ballistic missiles but it encompasses all intermediate range nuclear forces.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:14:47]]
<nowiki>[1:14:47]</nowiki>

And Reagan agrees to their total abolition in the 1987 treaty. This is a very, very dramatic move. Within the United States Reagan comes in for intense criticism -- particularly from the conservative wing of the Republican party. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger both lambaste Ronald Reagan over the INF Treaty.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:15:06]]
<nowiki>[1:15:06]</nowiki>

They argue that Ronald Reagan is gambling away the farm. They say that INF -- that intermediate range nuclear forces are an important element of the overall sort of deterrent...that the United States maintains. But Reagan isn't concerned. Reagan is more concerned to make progress on ambitious disarmament objectives than he is concerned to maintain the old nuclear deterrent.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:15:32]]
<nowiki>[1:15:32]</nowiki>

This sort of begs the question: why is Reagan so willing to make peace? We've talked about Gorbachev's reform agenda. It's clear enough why Gorbachev sought a new relationship with the West. He believed after all that the accomplishment of domestic reform depended upon the creation of a new relationship with the West and with the United States. But why is Ronald Reagan so willing to reach out to Gorbachev? To make progress towards peace?

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:15:57]]
<nowiki>[1:15:57]</nowiki>

I would suggest that part of the answer has to do with the ideological aspect of Reagan's Cold War world view. Reagan sees the problem in the Cold War as being not the Soviet Union but Communism. The problem is not a great power rival. The problem for the United States is an ideological system -- an ideological system that Reagan in 1983 calls evil.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:16:19]]
<nowiki>[1:16:19]</nowiki>

Well, as the Soviet Union, moves to dismantle this ideological system, the {{WPExtract|Casus belli|''casus belli''}}, the cause of confrontation, in effect disappears. A Cold War ideologue -- Reagan can be a radical peacemaker as the Soviet Union moves to dismantle the ideological system that had in Reagan's view been the cause of the Cold War in the first place. The fact that Reagan is terrified of nuclear weapons only sort of confirms his basic instincts which are to make peace when given the opportunity to do so.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:16:52]]
<nowiki>[1:16:52]</nowiki>

Indeed Reagan proves himself to be a very sensitive and nuanced analyst of the Soviet Union -- much more sensitive to the changes that Gorbachev is implementing than are many of his advisors. Advisors like {{WPExtract|Alexander Haig}}, his first Secretary of State, observers like Richard Nixon, a very astute student of world politics, are suspicious of Gorbachev. They worry that Gorbachev is trying to lull the West into a sense of false security.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:17:18]]
<nowiki>[1:17:18]</nowiki>

But Reagan is not concerned. Reagan is a careful observer of the Soviet Union and he concludes that Gorbachev is for real -- that the reforms that Gorbachev is implementing are for real.

== Reagan's Humor and Domestic Life in the Soviet Union ==

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:17:29]]
<nowiki>[1:17:29]</nowiki>

As an example of sort of Reagan's close engagement with change in the Soviet Union I want to show you a quick video clip in which Reagan reflects upon some of the shortcomings of the Soviet system.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:17:40]]
<nowiki>[1:17:40]</nowiki>

It shows both, you know, I think, Reagan's attentiveness to change in the USSR and Reagan's, you know, sort of willingness to talk about the Soviet Union with a sense of humor.

{{#ev:youtube|https://youtu.be/w7Jy6ZXTKQM||center|||start=823&end=904}}

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:17:49]]
<nowiki>[1:17:49]</nowiki>

''Reagan:...by their people among themselves which reveal they've got a great sense of humor but they've also got a pretty cynical attitude toward their system. And I told this, and Bill<ref>This most likely is referring to Bill Bourke the president and chief executive officer of the Reynolds Metals Company where Reagan gave the speech. The [https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/research/speeches/032888a transcript from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library] mentions that, "In his [Reagan's] opening remarks, he referred to Bill Bourke, president and chief executive officer, and David Reynolds, chairman of the board of directors."</ref> you'll have to hear it again, I told it in the car. I didn't tell this one to Gorbachev. (laughter from the audience in the video).''

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:18:11]]
<nowiki>[1:18:11]</nowiki>

''You know there's a ten year delay in the Soviet Union of delivery of an automobile, and only one out of seven families in the Soviet Union own automobiles. There's a ten year wait and you go through quite a process when you're ready to buy and then you put up the money in advance.''

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:18:30]]
<nowiki>[1:18:30]</nowiki>

''And this happened to a fellow and this is their story that they tell -- this joke. That this man, he laid down his money, and then the fellow he was...that was in charge said to him, "okay, come back in ten years and get your car". And he said, "morning or afternoon?" (laughter from the audience in the video).''

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:18:49]]
<nowiki>[1:18:49]</nowiki>

''And the fellow beyond the counter said, "well, ten years from now what difference does it make?" And he said, "well, the plumber's coming in the morning." (laughter from the audience in the video).''<ref>This was from a speech that Ronald Reagan gave to the Reynolds Metal Company in Richmond, Virginia on March 28, 1988. A [https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/research/speeches/032888a transcript of the speech is available via the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum].</ref>

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:19:02]]
<nowiki>[1:19:02]</nowiki>

So Reagan was attentive to change in the Soviet Union -- interested in the Soviet Union, engaged with the Soviet Union. In 1988 he visits the Soviet Union. He walks the streets of Moscow and meets with ordinary Russians. A reporter asks Reagan, do you still believe that the Soviet Union is an evil empire? And Reagan says no, that was a different time, a different place.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:19:25]]
<nowiki>[1:19:25]</nowiki>

In a sense Reagan's conviction that the Soviet Union is no longer an evil empire marks an ending of the Cold War. It marks Reagan's recognition that the Soviet Union is no longer meaningfully a Communist society, and as such is no longer a threat to the security interests, indeed the preservation of the free world.

== Ending Points of the Cold War ==

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:19:48]]
<nowiki>[1:19:48]</nowiki>

This is one possible ending point for the Cold War -- 1988 -- the Soviet Union is no longer an evil empire. Of course there are other possible ending points too. And we're going to talk about some of these a little bit more on Tuesday, but let's quickly survey the landscape.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:20:03]]
<nowiki>[1:20:03]</nowiki>

In 1989 the Soviet Empire disintegrates. The Soviet Union allows the East European countries to go their way. Gorbachev in December 1988 tells the United Nations that the Soviet Union will no longer use military force to compel the allegiance of its East European satellite states.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:20:22]]
<nowiki>[1:20:22]</nowiki>

A Soviet press secretary says that the Brezhnev Doctrine, a doctrine that proclaimed the right of the Soviet Union to intervene in Eastern Europe has been replaced by the Sinatra Doctrine -- a doctrine that says that the East Europeans can do it their way.<ref>A reference to the {{WPExtract|Frank Sinatra}} song {{WPExtract|My Way}} which has the refrain, "I did it my way" ([https://genius.com/Frank-sinatra-my-way-lyrics lyrics] via {{WPExtract|Genius (website)|Genius.com}}).</ref>

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:20:36]]
<nowiki>[1:20:36]</nowiki>

A series of revolutions quickly ensue in Eastern Europe and these are a subject for Tuesday's lecture. But the disintegration of the Soviet Empire is one possible point of ending for the Cold War itself. Another would be the disillusion of the Soviet Union, which comes only in 1991. An attempted coup against Gorbachev by hard line Communists in 1991, in that August, precipitates the collapse of the Soviet Union itself.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:21:03]]
<nowiki>[1:21:03]</nowiki>

The coup will be defeated but it is defeated only by the rallying of pro-democratic forces under Boris Yeltsin -- the elected President of Russia. The coup ends the Soviet Union as a sort of political entity. The Soviet Union dissolves. Political power reverts to the fifteen republics that constitute the USSR: Russia, the Ukraine, Georgia and so on.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:21:26]]
<nowiki>[1:21:26]</nowiki>

We're going to talk a lot about the process of this next week but I wanted simply to sort of identify the collapse of the USSR as an alternative point of destination for the Cold War.

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:21:37]]
<nowiki>[1:21:37]</nowiki>

Very quickly -- the question of endings has a great bearing on the questions of meanings. When did the Cold War end? Did it end in 1988 with the collapse of the evil empire? Did it end in 1989 with the disillusion of the East European empire? Or did it end it 1991 with the crisis and implosion of the Soviet Union itself?

[[File:{{PAGENAME}}.ogg|500px|start=1:21:56]]
<nowiki>[1:21:56]</nowiki>

How we determine the ending of the Cold War will have a great bearing on how we define the meaning of the Cold War. Was a geopolitical struggle? Was it an ideological struggle? How we answer that question will necessarily shape the question of when the Cold War ended. And we'll talk on Tuesday about what comes next.

== References and Notes ==

<references/>