Part 5 Annotated further reading guide

From Confrontation to Communist Collapse, 1981-9

Essential memoirs for these years are:

  • Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (Doubleday, New York, 1996).
  • Ronald Reagan, An American Life (Hutchinson, London, 1991).
  • Eduard Shevardnadze, The Future belongs to Freedom (Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1991).
  • George Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph (Scribners, New York, 1993).
  • Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (HarperCollins, London, 1993).

In general on the Cold War in the 1980s:

  • Olav Njolstad, ed., The Last Decade of the Cold War (Cass, London, 2004).

The period of the so-called ‘Second Cold War’ of 1980–5 is discussed in:

  • Noam Chomsky, Jonathan Steele, and John Gittings, Superpowers in Collision: the New Cold War of the 1980s (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1984).
  • Fred Halliday, The Making of the Second Cold War (Verso, London, 1986).
  • William G. Hyland, Mortal Rivals: Superpower Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Random House, New York, 1987).
  • Strobe Talbott, Deadly Gambits: the Reagan Administration and the Stalemate in Arms control (Pan, London, 1985).

While on the end of the Cold War in 1985–90 see especially:

  • Michael Beschloss and Strobe Talbott, At the Highest Levels: the Inside Story of the End of the Cold War (Little, Brown, Boston, 1993).
  • John L. Gaddis, The United States and the End of the Cold War (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992).
  • M. Hogan, The End of the Cold War: Its Meanings and Implications, (Cambridge, CUP, 1992).
  • Raymond Garthoff, The Great Transition: American–Soviet relations and the End of the Cold War (Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, 1994).
  • Don Oberdorfer, The Turn: How the Cold War came to an End (Jonathan Cape, London, 1992).
  • Peter Schweizer (ed) The Fall of the Berlin Wall : Reassessing the Causes and Consequences of the End of the Cold War (Hoover Institute Press, Stanford, CA, 2000)
  • Saki Dockrill, The End of the Cold War Era (Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2005).
  • Mark Kramer, ‘The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union’ (Part I) Journal of Cold War Studies  5, 1 (2003)
  • Mark Kramer, ‘The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union’ (Part II) Journal of Cold War Studies  6, 4 (2004)
  • Mark Kramer, ‘The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union’ (Part III) Journal of Cold War Studies  7, 1 (2005)
  • Richard Ned Lebow and Richard Herrmann, eds., Ending the Cold War (Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2004).
  • Silvio Pons and Federico Romero, eds., Reinterpreting the End of the Cold War (Cass, London, 2005).

An essential, contemporary work that fuelled ideas of relative US decline was:

  • Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (Fontana, London, 1989).

On the war in Afghanistan:

  • George Arney, Afghanistan (Mandarin, London, 1990).
  • Henry Bradsher, Afghanistan and the Soviet Union (Duke University Press, Durham, 1983).
  • Mark Galeotti, Afghanistan: the Soviet Union’s Last War (Frank Cass, London, 1994).
  • Thomas Hammond, Red Flag over Afghanistan (Westview, Boulder, 1984).
  • Anthony Hyman, Afghanistan under Soviet Domination (Macmillan, London, 1992).
  • Rodric Braithwaite, Afgantsy: the Russians in Afghanistan, 1979-89 (Profile Books, London, 2011).

And its links to the Collapse of the Soviet Union see:

  • A Prakash and R Reuveny ‘The Afghanistan War and the Breakdown of the Soviet Union’. Review of International Studies Vol 25, No 4 (Oct. 1999)
  • Anthony Arnold The Fateful Pebble: Afghanistan’s Role in the Fall of the Soviet Union (1995)

The collapse of communism has generated an enormous literature and remains the centre of intense debate, but on Soviet policy see especially:

  • Mark Galeotti, Gorbachev and his Revolution (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1997).
  • Geoffrey Hosking, The Awakening of the Soviet Union (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1991).
  • Archie Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism (Vintage, London, 2010).
  • Archie Brown, Seven Years that Changed the World (Oxford University Press,   Oxford, 2007)
  • Mark Kramer, ‘The Collapse of the Soviet Union’ (Part I), Journal of Cold War Studies  5, 1 (2003)
  • Mark Kramer, ‘The Collapse of the Soviet Union’ (Part 2), Journal of Cold War Studies 5, 4 (2003)
  • William Watson, The Collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union (Greenwood Press, Westport, 1998).
  • Vladimir Zubok, ‘Gorbachev and the End of the Cold War’, Cold War History, 2 (2002).

While on the events in Eastern Europe themselves see:

  • Neal Ascherson, The Polish August (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1981).
  • David Mason, Revolution and Transition in East-Central Europe (Westview Press, Boulder, 2nd edn., 1996).
  • Michael Waller, The End of Communist Power Monopoly (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1993).
  • Renée de Nevers, Comrades No More: the seeds of political change in Eastern Europe (MIT Press, Cambridge, 2003).
  • Jacqueline Hayden, The Collapse of Communist Power in Poland (Rouledge, London, 2006).
  • Charles S. Maier, Dissolution: the crisis of communism and the end of East Germany (Princeton University Press, 1997).
  • Marie-Pierre Rey et al, eds., Europe and the End of the Cold War : a reappraisal (Routledge, London, 2008).
  • Elise Sarotte, 1989: the struggle to create post-Cold War Europe (Princeton University Press, 2011).
  • Viktor Sebestyen, Revolution 1989: the fall of the Soviet Empire (Phoenix Books, London, 2010).

The Harvard Journal of Cold War Studies has a number of important archivally based articles on the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe at:

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_cold_war_studies/

Journal of Cold War Studies Vol 5 No 4 (2003):

  • Mark Kramer ‘The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union’ (Part 1)

Journal of Cold War Studies Vol 6 No 4 (2004):

  • Mark Kramer ‘The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union’ (Part 2)

Journal of Cold War Studies Vol 7 No 1 (2005) :

  • Mark Kramer ‘The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union’ (Part 3)
  • Gale Stokes The Walls came Tumbling Down: the Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe (New York, OUP,1993)
  • David S Mason Revolution in East-Central Europe: the Rise and Fall of Communism and the Cold War (Boulder,Co,Westview 1992)
  • Padraic Kenney A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989 (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2002)
  • Mark Kramer ‘Beyond the Brezhnev Doctrine:a New Era in Soviet-East European Relations’ International Security 14,3 (1989)

The Harvard Journal of Cold War Studies also has two special editions with articles specifically on the collapse of the Soviet Union

Journal of Cold War Studies Vol 5 No 1 has the following articles available at:

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_cold_war_studies/toc/cws5.1.html

  • Kramer, Mark The Collapse of the Soviet Union (Part I): Introduction
  • Taylor, Brian D.The Soviet Military and the Disintegration of the USSR
  • Knight, Amy W.The KGB, Perestroika, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union
  • Dunlop, John B. The August 1991 Coup and Its Impact on Soviet Politics
  • Zlotnik, Marc D. Yeltsin and Gorbachev: The Politics of Confrontation

Journal of Cold War Studies Vol 5 No 4 has the following articles available at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_cold_war_studies/toc/cws5.4.html

  • Kramer, Mark. The Collapse of the Soviet Union (Part 2): Introduction
  • Connor, Walter D. Soviet Society, Public Attitudes, and the Perils of Gorbachev's Reforms: The Social Context of the End of the USSR
  • Tuminez, Astrid S Nationalism Ethnic Pressures and the Breakup of the Soviet Union
  • Wallander, Celeste A. Western Policy and the Demise of the Soviet Union

See also:

  • William Watson, The Collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union (Greenwood Press, Westport, 1998).
  • Vladimir Zubok, ‘Gorbachev and the End of the Cold War’, Cold War History, 2 (2002).

On the Iran–Iraq War:

  • John Bulloch and Harvey Morris, The Gulf War: Its Origins, History and Consequences (Methuen, London, 1989).
  • Stephen Pelletiere, The Iran–Iraq War (Praeger, New York, 1992).

For the strides taken in European integration in the 1980s, down to the Maastricht Treaty, see:

  • Alasdair Blair, Dealing with Europe: Britain and the Negotiation of the Maastricht Treaty (Ashgate, Aldershot, 1999).
  • Juliet Lodge (ed.), The European Community and the Challenge of the Future (Pinter, London, 1989).
  • Peter Ludlow, The Making of the European Monetary System (Butterworths, London, 1982).
  • George Ross, Jacques Delors and European Integration (Oxford University Press, New York, 1995).

For discussions of Reagan’s role in ending the Cold War:

  • John P. Diggins, Ronald Reagan (Norton, New York, 2007).
  • Paul Lettow, Ronald Reagan and his Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (random House, New York, 2005).
  • Richard Reeves, President Reagan (Simon and Schuster, New York, 2005).

And on Central America:

  • William LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard: the US in Central America, 1977-92 (University of North Carolina Press, New Haven, 1998).
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