Masterpieces of History
The Peaceful End of the Cold War in Europe, 1989
Edited by
Svetlana Savranskaya, Director of
Russia/Eurasia Programs at the National Security Archive
Thomas Blanton, Executive Director
of the National Security Archive
Vladislav Zubok, Professor of History
at Temple University.
With a foreword by Anatoly S. Chernyaev and
Jack F. Matlock, Jr.
Twenty years in the making, this collection presents
122 top-level Soviet, European and American records
on the superpowers’ role in the annus mirabilis
of 1989. Consisting of Politburo minutes; diary entries
from Gorbachev’s senior aide, Anatoly Chernyaev;
meeting notes and private communications of Gorbachev
with George H.W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl
and François Mitterrand; and high-level CIA analyses,
this volume offers a rare insider’s look at the
historic, world-transforming events that culminated
in the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the
end of the Cold War. Most of these records have never
been published before.
Complementing the documents is the inclusion for the
first time of the proceedings of an extraordinary face-to-face
mutual interrogation (with scholars and documents )
in 1998 of Russian and American senior former officials—Gorbachev
advisers Anatoly Chernyaev and Georgy Shakhnazarov,
Shevardnadze aide Sergei Tarasenko, U.S. Ambassador
Jack Matlock and CIA chief Soviet analyst Douglas MacEachin—aimed
at assessing and explaining Moscow and Washington’s
policies during the miraculous year of 1989.
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements
Foreword by Anatoly S. Chernyaev
Foreword by Jack F. Matlock, Jr.
Acronyms
Chronology of Events
"The Logic of 1989: The Soviet Peaceful Withdrawal
from Eastern Europe,” by Svetlana Savranskaya
"U.S. Policy and the Revolutions of 1989,”
by Thomas Blanton
Dialogue: The Musgrove Conference, May 1-3, 1998
122 previously classified documents from Soviet, European
and American archives
Main Actors
Selected Bibliography
Index
"When, where, why did the Cold War end? How did
it manage to end peacefully? The answers are in this
wonderful collection of crucial historical documents,
penetrating essays by experts, plus the record of a
revealing symposium including former Soviet and American
officials. An invaluable source book on the end of the
20th century.”
William C. Taubman,
Amherst College, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Khrushchev:
The Man and His Era
"Evocative, illuminating, insightful: This volume
is a brilliant collection of documents, conver-sations,
and essays. It is absolutely indispensable for understanding
the end of the Cold War.”
Melvyn Leffler, University of Virginia,
G.L. Beer Prize-winning author of For the Soul of
Mankind
"The National Security Archive … deserves
the highest praise for its dedication to work and truth,
and for overcoming numerous obstacles created by bureaucrats
and other excessively cowardly and greedy custodians
of the truth about the past.” (From the Foreword)
Anatoly S. Chernyaev, adviser
to Mikhail Gorbachev, author of My Six Years with
Gorbachev
"The conference held at … Musgrove [included
in this volume] … illuminated one of the most
important periods in 20th century history … The
National Security Archive [has] rendered a service to
historians and the public as a whole.” (From
the Foreword)
Jack F. Matlock Jr., Former
U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union and to Czechoslovakia,
author of Autopsy on an Empire
2010
774 pages
ISBN 978-963-9776-77-7cloth $75.00 / €55.00 / £50.00
This is the sixth volume in the series National
Security Archive Cold War Readers, editor: Malcolm Byrne
ISSN 1587-2416
The series, edited by Malcolm Byrne, explores key
episodes in the Cold War based on the latest archival
documentation from the former Soviet bloc and newly
declassified Western sources. Edited and introduced
by scholars affiliated with the National Security Archive’s
“Openness in Russia and Eastern Europe Project,”
the series represents a truly multinational approach
to Cold War history. Funding for the Openness Project
has been provided by the Open Society Institute, the
John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the
Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the German Marshall
Fund of the United States. The series has been produced
in cooperation with the Cold War International History
Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars in Washington, D.C.
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