The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War - Hardcover

Garthoff, Raymond L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0815730608 ISBN 13: 9780815730606

Publisher: Brookings Inst Pr, 1722

Synopsis

Raymond L. Garthoff examines the fateful final decade of U.S.- Soviet relations, from the start of the Reagan administration in 1981 through the end of the Soviet era-- the collapse of the communist bloc, the end of Gorbachev's failed perestroika, and the demise of the Soviet Union itself at the end of 1991. While standing on its own, the book is a sequel to the author's earlier acclaimed, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan, which covers the period 1969-1980.

This volume features a detailed examination of the perspectives and actions of both the United States and the Soviet Union and their interaction, including the interrelationships of domestic factors with foreign and security policies in both countries and the involvement of both powers with other countries around the world, which infringed on their direct relationship. Besides analyzing the turn from confrontation to détente over the years of the Reagan and Bush administrations and Brezhnev through the Gorbachev administration, it reflects on the significance of the great transition from the cold war to a new era. It thus illuminates the very relevant recent history that underlines and informs American-Russian relations and the new situation of a post-Soviet, post-cold war world.

Garthoff has obtained access to many formerly secret Soviet documents on this period in the Russian archives, as well as to a number of official American documents that have only recently been declassified. In addition, he has been able to interview and discuss the issues with many active or former Soviet and American officials.

The author concludes that the key development was the advent of a Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who recognized the need to cast off a failed world view and to end the cold war-- and who successfully moved with the United States, under the Reagan and Bush administrations, and others, to achieve that goal; notwithstanding his failure in the parallel attempt to revitalize and transform the Soviet Union.

Selected by Choice as an Outstanding Book of 1994

About this title

About the Author:

Raymond L. Garthoff is a guest scholar in the Foreign Policy Studies program at the Brookings Institution. He is the former ambassador to Bulgaria, former Deputy Director of the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, former Executive Officer and Senior Advisor to the SALT I delegation and ABM Treaty negotiations (1969-1973). He also served in the Office of National Estimates at the Central Intelligence Agency.

Review:

"Promises to be the authoritative record of U.S.-Soviet relations in the 1980s, and of the convulsions that put an end to the Cold War." — Choice

"Garthoff has done it again, bringing us a worthy sequel to his grand account of the years of Soviet-American détente and confrontation. The Great Transition will serve for a long time to come as a towering, authoritative sourcebook for anyone who would begin to understand the great historical convulsion that put an end to the Cold War." —Michael R. Beschloss, Auhtor of The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960-1963

"This book becomes at once the best single starting point for every one who wants to understand better the extraordinary story of the ending of the Cold War, from 1981 through 1991. Garthoff builds on a life time of experience and study, and also on the running start of his masterwork on the 197s, Détente and Confrontation. A great subject has found the best possible student." —McGeorge Bundy, Former Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, Carnegie Corporation of New York

About this edition

• Publisher: Brookings Inst Pr
• Publication date: 1722
• ISBN 10: 0815730608
• ISBN 13: 9780815730606
• Binding: Hardcover