Gorbachev's Gamble: Soviet Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War. Este artículo no está disponible.Gorbachev's Gamble: Soviet Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War

The sudden ending of the Cold War, surely the dominant feature ofthe second half of the 20th century, continues to be one of themost unexpected and perplexing events of our time. Explanationsprovided by the winners and losers in the Cold War differconsiderably and often contradict each other. Even taken togetherthey do not provide a compelling answer to the key question: whydid it happen?

Gorbachev's Gamble offers a new and more convincing answer to thisquestion by providing the missing link between the internal andexternal aspects of Gorbachev's perestroika. Andrei Grachev showsthat the radically transformed Soviet foreign policy during theGorbachev years was an integral part of an ambitious project ofinternal democratic reform and of the historic opening of Sovietsociety to the outside world.

Grachev explains the motives and the intentions of the initiatorsof this project and describes their hopes and their illusions. Herecounts the story of the internal debates and struggles in theKremlin and behind-the-scene decisions that led to the Sovietwithdrawal from Afghanistan, the fall of the Berlin Wall, thebreak-up of the Warsaw Pact and eventually the demise of the SovietUnion itself.

The book is based on exclusive interviews with the leaders of theSoviet Union including Gorbachev, personal notes and diaries oftheir assistants and advisers and transcripts of the discussionsinside the Politburo and Secretariat of the Central Committee.Together they constitute a multi-voice political confession of awhole generation of decision-makers and opinion leaders of theSoviet Union that enables us better to understand the origin andthe breathtaking trajectory of the events that led to the end ofthe Cold War and the unprecedented transformation of world politicsin the late 1980s and early 1990s.