Happy Anniversary of the German Unity Day, 3rd October 1990-2012, to all German people! As one of the eye-witnesses during the transition period in East-Germany, in 1989-90, I admire how Germans deal with the past and privatization of state companies. On behalf of all Cambodians, I would like to say thank you for your contribution to bring Cambodia back to the “road of democracy, rule of (good) law, human rights, market economy etc…..”. However, there are still a lot of things to do…here in our country.

In front of the Berliner Wall, in 1985

The change in Germany, which led to the fall of the famous Berliner Wall (built in 1961) in November 1989, was started in the Nikolai Church, in the city center of Leipzig. The famous Montag Demo (Monday demonstration) brought down the East German’s regime. The slogan of the demonstration was: “Wir sind das Volk” (we are the people). The demonstration started in Leipzig, but later it sprung up in other major cities as well. It created huge pressure for the rulers. The leaders of the former Socialist Unity Party (SED), the East German communist party, were divided on how to deal with the increasing demonstrations. It was also 40^th anniversary of the foundation of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Mr. Gorbachov, former Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was present in East Berlin and urged the SED leaders to embrace change and open the way to reform. He said one famous phrase: “…who come too late, those will be punished…” (Wer zu spaet kommt, den bestraft das Leben). Hungary was also opening its border to Austria, which gave opportunity for East Germans to flee the country in to West Germany. Some East Germans stormed the Embassy of the Federal Republic Germany in Prague and requested asylum.

East Berlin in 1985

At one evening, armed polices, soldiers were sent to the streets in Leipzig to prepare possible crackdown on demonstrators. As students, we were told to leave class earlier and to head back to the students’ hostel, at about 3pm. We were expecting the worst, since the communist leaders could follow the violent and brutal crackdown, in China, in June 1989. Thousands of peaceful demonstrators, mostly students were killed in Tienanmen Square in Beijing. But, after internal fighting and secret negotiations, the demonstration went smoothly and no killing occurred. New leaders replaced the old leaders and promised reform and opened the Berlin Wall, after 28 years, for the first time. East Germans were FREE then. The real unity came but one year later, after the division for more than 40 years.

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Washington, DC, August 13th, 2011 – Today the National Security Archive is publishing the first installment of the diary of one of the key behind-the-scenes figures of the Gorbachev era – Anatoly Sergeevich Chernyaev. This document is being published in English here for the first time.

It is hard to overestimate the uniqueness and importance of this diary for our understanding of the end of the Cold War – and specifically for the peaceful withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan and Eastern Europe, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The document allows the reader a rare opportunity to become a fly on the wall during the heady discussions of early perestroika, and to witness such fascinating phenomena as how the dying ideology of Soviet-style communism held sway over the hearts and minds of Soviet society.

In 2004, Anatoly Chernyaev donated the originals of his diaries from 1972 to 1991 to the National Security Archive in order to ensure full and permanent public access to his notes – beyond the reach of the political uncertainties of contemporary Russia. The Archive is planning to publish the complete English translation of the diaries in regular installments.

This first installment covers the year 1985, which saw the election of Mikhail Gorbachev to the post of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the beginning of the changes that were evident first in the “style,” and then in the practice of Soviet domestic and foreign policy. The diary gives a detailed account of Gorbachev’s election and of the political struggle associated with it. The author is observing the changes in 1985 from his position as a senior analyst in the International Department of the Central Committee (CC), where Chernyaev was in charge of relations with West European Communist parties.

The author documents all the major developments of 1985 – beginning from the first revelations about the sad state of the Soviet economy and the extent of such societal problems as alcoholism, to anguished discussions about the war in Afghanistan, to the first summit with President Ronald Reagan in Geneva. Throughout the year, the most noticeable change is the process of radical “cleansing” of the party – the great turnover of personnel designed to replace the old dogmatic Brezhnevite elite. The diary sheds light on how, gradually but persistently, Gorbachev built his reform coalition, making such fateful decisions as appointing Eduard Shevardnadze to the post of Foreign Minister, and bringing Boris Yeltsin to Moscow.

The pages of the diary provide a gallery of living portraits of all the influential figures in the highest echelons of the Soviet elite who in 1985 were engaged in a struggle for political survival under the new leadership. Chernyaev observes his colleagues in the Central Committee trying to reconcile their ingrained ideology with the new “Gorbachev style,” or “Gorbachev thinking.” He himself, as is clear from his notes, remained committed to the Leninist romanticism of communist ideology and argued for going back to Lenin in an effort to purify and reform the Soviet society.

One line of Chernyaev’s narrative follows developments in the influential International Department of the CC CPSU as its staff tried to find answers about the future of the international communist movement as the Soviet Union itself began to change. Gorbachev at that time chose to renounce Moscow’s Big Brother role with regard to socialist countries and non-ruling Communist parties, both in terms of dictating to them but also bankrolling them. Chernyaev presents us with an intimate portrait of one of the most influential figures in the Soviet leadership – the head of the International Department, Boris N. Ponomarev.

The diary gives a detailed account about one of the most important (and long poorly-understood) dynamics of foreign policy making in the Soviet Union – the interaction between the Central Committee and the Foreign Ministry in every step of the preparation of major events and decisions. From its pages, one can see the tremendous role of experts and consultants – the free-thinking intellectuals of the Soviet elite – in forming policy priorities for the leadership. The International Department was a major oasis of enlightened thinking in the Soviet nomenklatura; it provided Gorbachev with people on whom he could rely for new ideas and honest estimates of the situation after coming to power – beginning with Anatoly Chernyaev, whom Gorbachev chose as his foreign policy adviser in March 1986. One can confidently say that every bold foreign policy initiative advanced by Gorbachev in the years 1986-1991 bears Chernyaev’s mark on it. Thus, the diary gives insights into the thought processes of one of most influential new thinkers in Moscow.

Anatoly Sergeevich Chernyaev was born on May 25, 1921 in Moscow. He fought in World War II beginning in 1941. After the war, he returned to his studies at Moscow State University in the Department of History, which he completed in 1948. From 1950-1958, he taught contemporary history at Moscow State University. From 1958-1961, Chernyaev worked in Prague on the editorial board of the theoretical journal Problems of Peace and Socialism, joining the International Department in 1961. In 1986, he became foreign policy adviser to the General Secretary, and later to the first and the last President of the USSR. A prolific writer, Chernyaev has published five monographs in addition to numerous articles in Soviet, Russian, European and U.S. journals.

The National Security Archive takes great pleasure in wishing a happy birthday to Anatoly Sergeevich, who for years has been our partner in the mission to fight government secrecy through glasnost. Anatoly Sergeevich turns 85 today.

The Chernyaev Diary was translated by Anna Melyakova and edited by Svetlana Savranskaya for the National Security Archive.

The question is frequently posed as to what makes a Hitler, Stalin or Mao commit murder on an industrial scale. In the case of Stalin it appears that part of the answer lies in the fact that he was suffering from a brain illness which (in the opinion of his physician) impaired his judgement and led to him losing his sense of right and wrong. Perhaps brain illness did play a role in turning Stalin into a paranoid tyrant. If this is indeed the case then the issue of whether other dictators, for example Hitler could have been afflicted by some kind of brain illness which played a role in causing them to lose their sense of morality raises it’s head. In the case of Hitler we will never know the answer as his body was burned before the allies could examine it (although they did establish that Hitler had died by checking against his dental records).

In the case of all those (dictators or otherwise) who have commited mass murder it is also necessary to look at factors such as their upbringing and the intellectual climate prevailing during their formative years when attempting to ascertain why they acted as they did. For instance when looking at the life of Hitler one can not disregard the fact that anti-semitism was a deep rooted ideology in Germany and that the Nazis where influenced by this long-standing prejudice and, in turn exploited it for their own ends.

Incidentally I’d recommend “Hitler and Stalin, Paralel Lives” by the historian Alan Bullock which offers a fascinating insight into the similarities as regards the paths pursued by the two dictators.

From AP

If you have met me personally, you know that I cannot stand communism, Soviet-style politics, and the like. Everyone who knows me (to some extent) is aware that it makes my blood boil when socialism and communism are praised. Since I was old enough to comprehend basic things, I understood that the Democratic Party was unfriendly to freedom and individuality.

I wrote about the Democratic Party’s embrace of Soviet communism in my article, “Nightmares of My Father: Back to the USSR?”

People have told me I am crazy for making such an assumption. Why don’t you try having family killed, sent to GULAGs, and starved by Russian communists? Before you think highly of Russian communism, please talk to me, my parents, and those who understand how communists operate. You will be enlightened.

Nevertheless, it is a relief to see other immigrants from the former USSR exposing the Democratic Party.

Fox Nation gives a preview of the article here:

Many Russian immigrants to the “red borough” of Staten Island are flocking to the Republican Party, saying that the national Democrats’ “socialistic” policies remind them too much of the top-down oligarchy they fled in their native land.

With many of the borough’s Russian arrivees already owning businesses and active in civic organizations, their muscle could help the Island GOP solidify electoral gains made this year, when the party took back congressional and Assembly seats.

CARTAGENA DE INDIES, Colombia — In May 2003 a leak from the Bush Treasury Department indicated that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) was about to add to its extensive narcotics traffickers list. This time it would add someone in Colombia.

OFAC would be using one of the enlightened Republican Congress’s new drug war laws, the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act. I was pretty sure who the new addition would be. The word “kingpin” was a dead giveaway.

It had to be the guy who had attained high office; whose brother had organized 20 or more death squads and maintained a couple of them out at the family hacienda; whose cousin in the Colombian Congress was the mouthpiece for those death squads as well as a close friend and promoter of various well known narcotraficantes, including the legendary Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria; someone whose own father was wanted by the Colombian police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for cocaine trafficking when he was killed in an abortive kidnap plot; and who himself was removed from his position as mayor of Medellín for having well-known ties to drug runners.

Who else could it be, but master criminal and El Presidente himself, Álvaro Uribe Vélez?

Imagine my surprise when it was announced the next day, that it was not Uribe after all, but the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP: Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo) and 15 of their known or suspected leaders, even though I already knew they had to be a bad bunch of hombres. Five years before, in 1997, they were named a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. Department of State.

It couldn’t have been easy to make it to the top of two government lists at the same time (the terrorist list and the narcotraficantes list) and be the defining designees of a whole new hyphenated word, “Narco-terrorist”! That should keep them from gaining credibility with anyone with media access in the U.S.! I started wondering who these FARC guys were. Somebody needed to check them out, find out where they came from, and why.

See also:

New Year Greetings from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC)

The roots of FARC-EP

The current civil war in Colombia has been characterized by gross human rights violations, increasing dramatically over the past two decades. International human rights organizations have repeatedly singled out right-wing paramilitary groups (paracos) as being the principal perpetrators of human rights abuses.

The paracos are intertwined with the Colombian Armed Forces as they wage war against, not only the guerrillas, but anyone suspected of being a guerrilla sympathizer: union members, peasant organizers, human rights workers, and religious activists. Some paracos leaders have extended the parameters of the war against the guerrillas and their suspected fellow travelers to include drug addicts, alcoholics, prostitutes, petty criminals, and the homeless, in an attempt to “cleanse” Colombian society. Social cleansing is different from ethnic cleansing only in the presumed reasoning, it has the same results.

Over the years, several Colombian presidents have attempted to address the social, political, and economic injustices that are the principal causes of the conflict. However, these efforts have been repeatedly thwarted by the U.S. and its war on drugs, and by the Colombian political, economic, military elite, who are desperately trying to preserve a “democracy” that has disenfranchised much of the population.

News accounts often label the conflict a “35-year-old civil war,” counting its origin from the official formation of several guerrilla groups in mid-1960. However, the roots of Colombia’s largest guerrilla group, the FARC, date back to peasant armed self-defense movements formed between 1948 and 1958.

The National Front

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Colombia’s Liberal and Conservative parties, whose influence reached from Bogotá to virtually every village in settled regions of the country, dominated politics. Ideological differences between these elites reverberated throughout society, often resulting in outbreaks of violence that repeatedly pitted loyal Liberal and Conservative factions, both peasant and elite, against each other.

In the late 1940s, dissident Liberal Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala emerged from the Liberal and communist-led agrarian and labor reform movements as the leading presidential candidate. On April 9, 1948, Gaitán was assassinated on a Bogotá street. The killing triggered a popular uprising by the Liberal lower classes that resulted in massive destruction and looting in the capital. This uprising, known as the Bogotazo, was the opening act of a 10 year period in Colombian history recalled as La Violencia.

Liberal peasant uprisings occurred throughout the country, pitting rural Liberals and Conservatives against each other. Fearing a peasant-led social rebellion, the elite Liberal leadership supported repression used by the Conservative government to quell the uprisings and preserve the elite oligarchy. But after two high-ranking Liberals were assassinated in 1949, the Liberals boycotted the 1950 presidential election, won uncontested by Conservative Laureano Eleuterio Gómez Castro.

Although rebellion had been effectively quelled in Bogotá, sporadic armed peasant uprisings continued in several rural departments. Gomez, who considered Liberal peasants kin to Communists, responded to these with violent repression. Many Liberal members of the national police force were dismissed and replaced with peasants from the Conservative Boyacá district of Chulavista. The chulavistas became infamous for their brutal tactics in repressing rebellious Liberals and communists.

In the early 1950s, the Gomez regime, supported by the Catholic Church, which had been left out of the various negotiations during the uprisings, and by the U.S., which viewed Communist support for peasants in a Cold War prospective, elevated expression to new heights. Chaotic violence pitted rural Liberals and Conservatives against each other, and resulted in battles between the oligarchy and land-starved peasants. Many large landowners abandoned their properties, fleeing to the relative safety of the cities.

In 1953, Gomez was overthrown by a military coup that brought General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla to power. Rojas Pinilla immediately dispatched the military to reclaim the property of the large landowners still in the cities. In response, armed peasant groups called for agrarian reform.

In June, 1953, in an attempt to end the violence, Rojas Pinilla issued an amnesty to all the armed peasants and responded to their call for agrarian reform by creating the Office of Rehabilitation and Relief. In reality, this office did little to address the agrarian problem, yet the Liberal and Conservative elite felt that Rojas Pinilla was using it to build popular support for himself. To quell their suspicions, in June 1954 Rojas Pinilla extended the amnesty to right wing thugs imprisoned for acts of terror on behalf of the ruling Conservative elite and the Gomez regime.

Many of the Gomezistas released from jail immediately began killing peasants, forcing those that had accepted amnesty to again take up arms. Rojas Pinilla responded in 1955 by launching a major military offensive against the rearmed peasants that became known as La Guerra Villarica. It was in the department of Tolima during this offensive that the armed self-defense movements that would later evolve into the FARC came into existence. The Conservative and Liberal elite blamed the renewal of La Violencia on Rojas Pinilla, and in 1957 organized a general strike and street protests in the capital that forced him to resign.

Following the ouster of Rojas Pinilla, the Conservative and Liberal elite agreed on a power-sharing agreement, the National Front. Beginning in 1958, the parties alternated four-year terms in the presidency (no need to rig elections), and distributed all public positions evenly between the two parties. The formation of the National Front brought an end to the 19th century aspect of La Violencia: conflict between factions of the ruling class. However, the new government still had to contend with armed peasants, whose demand for land reform was being denied.

A FARC is born

According to a 2000 book by Alfredo Molano, Violence and Land Colonization, Violence in Colombia: The Contemporary Crisis in Historical Perspective, many peasants, mostly Liberals and Communists, survived the military offensives of the 1950s by undertaking long marches, under the protection of armed self-defense groups, to the mostly uninhabited eastern departments of Meta and Caquetá.

They cleared and worked new lands in areas they declared “independent republics,” in an attempt to regain subsistence land and free themselves from a national government they distrusted due to “personal experience with social and economic partisanship and… the double value system upheld by the ruling classes.”

However, the colonists soon discovered they had not found the autonomy they so desperately sought. Large landowners, intent on increasing their own holdings, soon began laying claim to the newly cleared lands. Furthermore, the government had no intention of leaving the colonists alone.

“In defining these republics as gangs of communist bandits, the government had an excuse to launch military attacks against them, condemn them politically, and blockade them economically… The only possible outcome was war. One by one the republics fell to the army, and once they were under government control the land became concentrated in the hands of the large landowners,” Molano wrote.

The peasants, forced deeper into the jungle, realized their only chance of achieving social justice lay in their ability to wage war against the government on a national level. As a result, the armed self-defense movements dispersed units to various regions of the country to fight the army on several fronts simultaneously under a central command structure. On July 20, 1964, the various fronts of the armed self-defense movements issued their agrarian reform program. Two years later, they officially became known as the FARC.

Guerrilla groups begat guerrilla groups

In 1960, an independent political party, National Popular Alliance (ANAPO – Alianza Nacional Popular), formed by supporters of Rojas Pinilla was contending in congressional elections. ANAPO’s popularity increased steadily throughout the 1960′s as it appealed to many who had been left out of the National Front alliance. Rojas Pinilla ran as ANAPO’s candidate in the 1970 presidential election and, after holding an early lead, was narrowly defeated by National Front candidate Misael Pastrana Borrero. Many ANAPO supporters accused the government of manipulating the vote count, and in response to perceived electoral fraud; socialist members of ANAPO formed the M-19 (19th of April Movement) guerrilla movement in 1972.

M-19 gained notoriety through a series of daring urban raids that included the occupation of the Dominican Embassy in Bogotá in 1980 and an ill-fated takeover of the Palace of Justice in 1985. The latter resulted in the deaths of more than 100 people, including 11 Supreme Court judges, in a two-day battle in which the army leveled the massive courthouse. In 1989, M-19 guerrillas decided to lay down their weapons in return for a full government pardon. The ex-guerrillas formed a political party, the Democratic Alliance M-19, to participate in the upcoming elections; however, right-wing death squads soon assassinated many of the party’s leaders, including presidential candidate and former M-19 commander Carlos Pizarro.

M-19 had been formed as a response to the National Front, which successfully reserved positions of power for members of the Conservative and Liberal elite. This “limited democracy” spawned other guerrilla movements in the 1960’s. Other factors also came into play.

The Cuban Revolution influenced many radicals in Latin America, as it did in the U.S., convincing them that Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s foco theory of armed insurrection was the revolutionary road to follow. The Colombian Communist Party’s support of resolutions passed by the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, calling for a peaceful road to revolution, led many young Colombians to split from the Party in order to follow the Cuban model.

The Popular Liberation Army (EPL – Ejército Popular de Liberacion) was thus formed in the department of Antioquia in the mid-1960’s. Following the Soviet-Chinese split, the EPL espoused the Maoist theory of a “prolonged popular war.” But after 1980 it began to distance itself from the goal of prolonged war and in August 1990 many members laid down their arms in order to participate in the political process, while a small dissident faction continued to fight in northern Colombia.

In 1964, university students who had recently returned from Cuba formed Colombia’s second-largest guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN – Ejército de Liberación Nacional), in the department of Santander. The ELN adhered strictly to Che’s principles of rural guerrilla warfare and, in contrast to the M-19 and EPL, has so far refused to lay down its arms and participate in the political process. Sociologist Eduardo Pizarro says that, “In recent years the ELN has focused its activities almost exclusively on efforts to disrupt and destroy the oil industry, attacking with great success the pipelines of the north.”

In fact, between 1986 and 1997 the ELN was responsible for 636 pipeline bombings that resulted in $1.5 billion in lost revenue for the state-owned oil company, the oddly named Ecopetrol. For many years, the FARC and EPL denounced the ELN for pursuing a strategy of economic sabotage that has failed to increase its popular support. However, by the end of the 1990s, the FARC was also targeting pipelines used by multinational corporations to transport oil from remote drilling fields to coastal ports.

The FARC is the only Colombian guerrilla group with peasant roots that pre-date both the National Front and the Cuban Revolution. In contrast, the ELN, EPL and M-19 were all movements led by urban intellectuals, typical of many Latin American guerrilla groups that evolved in the 1960s, Cuban-inspired armed reactions to domestic political, social and economic situation.

FARCing cocaine…

The 1974 presidential election brought an end to the National Front alliance as Liberal and Conservative candidates again ran against each other. Sixteen years of National Front rule had reduced the number of killings — in contrast with the 200,000 Colombians who died during La Violencia — but had failed to address the agrarian issue and a dramatic increase in poverty.

During the National Front years, the percentage of the nation’s work force living in absolute poverty more than doubled, from 25% to 50.7%. Figures were even worse for the rural labor force, where the rate of absolute poverty soared from 25.4% to 67.5%. It is no surprise that when the coca boom began in the late 1970s, the lure of drug profits brought a massive migration of urban jobless and landless peasants to the predominantly FARC-controlled colonized regions.

Initially, the FARC was concerned that the new mass migration would undermine the political and social status quo in areas it controlled. At the same time, its income, from war taxes imposed on the local population in return for maintaining social order, increased dramatically.

New revenue enabled the rebel group to vastly improve its military capabilities, modernizing its weapons and improving the guerrilla fighter’s standard of living. In addition, the FARC was able to offer social and economic services “in the areas of credit, education, health, justice, registry, public works, and ecological and cultural programs.”

During the early years of the coca boom, the guerrillas and the drug lords worked together. Guerrillas controlled many of the coca growing regions while the cartels managed much of the cocaine production and trafficking.

However, this informal alliance collapsed when the leaders of drug cartels in Medellín and Cali began investing their new found wealth in property, primarily large cattle ranches, placing themselves firmly in the ranks of the guerrillas’ traditional enemy. The new narco-landowners soon began organizing their own paramilitary armies in order to fight the guerrillas and those they saw as guerrilla sympathizers.

Until today…

For 50 years the FARC and its predecessors have claimed to be fighting for agrarian reform and social justice for Colombia’s peasant population. The FARC has evolved into a powerful military force of 15,000 to 20,000 fighters who now control approximately 40% of the country. A U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report issued in November 1997 found that “the Colombian Armed Forces could be defeated within five years unless the country’s government regains political legitimacy and its armed forces are drastically restructured.”

U.S. President William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton’s bizarre Drug Czar, Gen. Barry Richard McCaffrey, echoed these findings when he claimed that Colombian democracy is seriously threatened by the growing military strength of the guerrillas.

Such statements lead one to believe that McCaffrey’s concept of “democracy” involves social order being “maintained” under a military state of siege, impunity for paramilitary forces who regularly massacre the civilian population, political candidates in opposition to the Conservative and Liberal elite being routinely assassinated, a judicial system paralyzed by fear, rigged and stolen elections, and thousands of peasants whose only economic means of survival is illicit coca production.

Indeed, if the ruling political, economic and military elite, aided by the paracos, continue to stifle truly democratic reform, the demise of Colombian “democracy” may well be inevitable.

For its part, the U.S. appears intent on “Salvadorizing” the conflict. Colombia, as was the case with El Salvador in the 1980’s, is today the hemisphere’s leading recipient of U.S. military aid. And it appears that Washington, in its attempt to prevent a guerrilla victory, is once again intent on supporting a repressive military closely allied to right-wing death squads. Such a policy will inevitably result in the continued suffering of the Colombian people, who are routinely subject to massacres, torture, disappearance, kidnapping, and forced displacement.

Any possibility of achieving a peaceful resolution to the conflict depends on the government’s ability to dismantle the paramilitary organizations and create a climate conducive to negotiations between the government and the guerrillas. Then, and only then, will it be possible to address the political, social, and economic causes of the conflict. So far the government has made little headway in eliminating the paracos.

The FARC is absolutely necessary to the survival of the large agrarian class of Colombia. Only land reform, justice, and true democracy will make it unnecessary; this is the only route to the elimination of FARC. Pointless and brutal alternatives, which will not result in the elimination of FARC-EP, is the way chosen by Hillary Clinton, Gates and Obama, sending more arms and U.S. troops, paid for with your money, to maintain civil war within Colombia and perhaps spread it to neighboring countries.

Note: Much research for this article came from various reports produced by the North American Conference on Latin America (NACLA); my thanks to them for keeping track of all this stuff over these many years. — md

• For Marion Delgado’s previous reports from Colombia on The Rag Blog, go here.

The Cold War took place between the United States (US) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from the mid 1940’s to the early 1990s.

It was a “cold war” in the sense that there was never any military engagement between the US and the USSR, but during the Cold War both superpowers invested in many different weapons. The Cold War finally started to wind down in the late 1980’s due to Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev’s cooperation. Thus, Mikhail Gorbachev’s ascension to power in the USSR eventually ended the Cold War.

Read the full story on Mikhail Gorbachev’s involvement in ending the Cold War!