A comprehensive biography of the final leader of the Soviet Union chronicles Gorbachev's rise from peasant to politician and describes how his liberal policies ended the Cold War and unintentionally provoked the breakup of the USSR. "When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, the USSR. was one of the world's two superpowers. By 1989, his liberal policies of perestroika and glasnost had permanently transformed Soviet Communism....

When Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev sat down in Reykjavik in 1986, George Shultz, the American secretary of state at the time, said that it was "the poker game with the highest stakes ever played." It was the last time the world had a chance to do away entirely with nuclear weapons. This is the behind-the-scenes story of this remarkable summit conference in the remote Icelandic capital. An Impossible Dream is the first exploration of recently-available...

The implosion of the Soviet Union was the culmination of a gripping game played out between two men who intensely disliked each other and had different concepts for the future. Mikhail Gorbachev, a sophisticated and urbane reformer, sought to modernize and preserve the USSR; Boris Yeltsin, a coarse and a hard drinking "bulldozer," wished to destroy the union and create a capitalist Russia. The defeat of the August 1991 coup attempt, carried out by...

With conflicts again dividing Russia and the United States, the need for balanced, accessible scholarship that benefits from new materials and critical perspectives is imperative. In seven lucid, groundbreaking essays, Stephen F. Cohen questions many conventional assumptions about the course of Soviet history, the fall of communism, and the effect of Russia's policies at home and abroad. Written for specialists and general readers, Cohen's essays...

Describes the life and rise to power of the Soviet leader who has brought about the present openness of the Soviet Union to the West.

Discusses the life of Mikhail Gorbachev from his formative years to the present, and examines the reforms he has introduced to the Soviet Union.