The End of the Cold War Housekeeping •Paper due tonight. Can turn it in later to me via email •Final: QUESTIONS: • • THE END OF THE COLD WAR •REVIEW: 1979-1985: The End of Détente • The Invasion into Afghanistan • Solidarity • Reagan elected, calls USSR an “evil empire” and pushes • buildup with changed strategy • Gas prices go down • Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) • Computer weapons technology at all levels • The new social contract in Soviet bloc wears thin • Soviet leaders start dying off • Gorbachev Comes To Power •Committed Communist •“Child of the 1960s”/ Knows something has to change •DOMESTIC POLITICs • “Acceleration”= Discipline, anti-alcohol • “Perestroika”= Reform • “Glasnost”—Ability to criticize • Very uneven: Moscow and Leningrad in 1987 • “Demokratizatsiia” • Gorbachev’s Foreign Policy •“The New Thinking” • Abandons the position of strength argument • Calls for mutual interdependence, peace: Europe from Vancouver to Vladivostok • Wants to ”deprive the United States of its image of the USSR as an enemy” • Unilateral concessions for arms control talks • Reykjavik Summit, 1986 • The Zero-Zero Option in Europe in 1987 • The unilateral arms concession in 1988 •Eastern Europe: • Rejects Brezhnev Doctrine in March 1988 in Yugoslavia • In October, 1989: The ”Sinatra Doctrine” •https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ielyVJUgXK8 Reagan’s Role •Defense spending and getting Saudi Arabia to lower oil prices– a little •Strategic Defense Spending—no •Gorbachev was most important •Reagan recognized an opportunity Eastern Europe •Roundtables in Poland, Hungary • Poland: Stalemate between regime and society • Opponents emboldened by Gorbachev, hardliners • weakened • Communists submit to roundtable talks as only way out • Regime offers somewhat free elections • Solidarity win wherever elections provide a choice • Hungary: Communist reformers come to Nagy:power, try to reform • The reburial of Imre Orban emerges • The Roundtable begins in June, completed in fall, 1989 • East Germany: Hungary opens up border with Austria • East Germans travel to Hungary, then Austria, then Germany • Demonstrations grow • Gorbachev makes it clear reforms are necessary • Wall opens up by accident • Czechoslavakia’s Velvet Revolution • Rumania’s violent revolution • Back in the USSR •Gorbachev continues reforms • Weakens role of the party vis-à-vis the state • Allows elections with multiple candidates for Natl. Congress •Soviet institutions weakening • The ritual as glue •Nationalist arguments arise in USSR as well • Baltics, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia • Nagorno-Karabakh • Yeltsin proclaims Russian sovereignty •The Coup Attempt •The Belovezha Accords •Boris Yeltsin comes to power What is the legacy of the cold war?