History of the United States II / Unit 16 USH2 2306 review, 2 to 3 minutes
Why the Cold War Ended
The idea
Why the Cold War ended is contested, and the sources support more than one answer. The first reading credits American pressure: Reagan's military build-up, the Strategic Defense Initiative and his refusal to accept the Soviet Union as permanent, from the evil empire of nineteen eighty-three to the demand at the Berlin Wall in nineteen eighty-seven. The Yawp says Gorbachev reached out to negotiate an end to an arms race that was bankrupting the Soviet Union. The second reading credits Gorbachev's choices: glasnost and perestroika, the end of the party's monopoly, competitive elections, and his decision to let the Eastern Bloc go.
In practice
A build-up and a summit, a speech at a wall and a treaty signed in the East Room.
Where people slip
The third reading looks inside the Soviet Union, and the Yawp puts the weight there: the most significant causes of collapse lay within the Soviet empire itself, a stagnant economy, a costly and disastrous war in Afghanistan, dissident factions in Eastern Europe and internal dissent. The anchor's own sequence, build-up and then engagement after nineteen eighty-four, supports more than one reading, and the Yawp credits Reagan with combining anti-Communist rhetoric with a willingness to negotiate. Two misreadings sit on either side. The first says Reagan won the Cold War single-handedly by spending the Soviets into collapse; the Yawp's emphasis on internal causes, and the trust built at the summits, contradict it. The second says American policy played no part; the arms race the Yawp says was bankrupting the Soviet Union, and Gorbachev's outreach to end it, contradict that. The course's position: American pressure, Soviet failure and Gorbachev's choices all mattered, and the sources weigh the internal causes most.
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