The Cold War

The rise and fall of communism in the Soviet Union was a key event of the twentieth century. Spanning nine decades from the reign of the tsars through the overthrow of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, it is a tale of oppression, rebellion, terror, and betrayal. It is the chronicle of a dream that failed, of a utopian vision turned to ashes. In The Cold War, the last of a four-book series covering the history of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the period between the end of World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union makes for an exciting and fast-moving narrative. A volatile era, it was marked by a series of confrontations between the United States and the Soviet Union and their various allies and satellites. Its key factors were an escalating arms race, a competition to conquer space, a dangerously belligerent form of diplomacy known as brinksmanship, and a series of small wars sometimes called police actions by the United States, and sometimes excused as defense measures by the Soviets. This book describes the major personalities of those times and how they faced off against each other. Included are Winston Churchill calling Joseph Stalin's bluff with his "Iron Curtain" speech, Nikita Khrushchev vs. President Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis, Leonid Brezhnev and Mao Tse-tung pushing toward the verge of war, President Carter defying Brezhnev by arming the resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, President Reagan crossing swords with Mikhail Gorbachev over arms reduction, and many others. The international leaders are larger than life, and the world is their stage as the first Communist nation in history marches blindly toward its own destruction. Book jacket.