In this episode we look back at the moment it was clear the Cold War was essentially over. The story actually begins in 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev is elevated to power after a succession of elderly, Communist leaders, all of whom went back to the early days of the Soviet Union.
Leonid Brezhnev had been a hard line, old school, Communist leader, that had been in power throughout the Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and early Reagan Years. He had presided over the Soviet Union's military rise as a Super Power but also had seen the nation's economy become weak. He, however, was not, and when he took power as part of a team in the 1960's he had consolidated his position and was clearly the man in charge in the Kremlin for most of his 18 years as General Secretary.
Brezhnev died in November 1982 and would be succeeded by Yuri Andropov , the former head of the KGB, for just over 15 months, before dying at age 69. Andropov would then be succeeded by Constantine Chernenko who would serve for even less time passing away just 13 months after being named General Secretary. It was then that the protege of Andropov would emerge, and at age 53,it was clear Mikhail Gorbachev was not going to die anytime soon.
On the other side of the ball, was Ronald Reagan, a career anticommunist often ridiculed for his unwillingness to work with his Soviet Counterparts. An unfair charge given that all of them had died about once a year since Reagan had been elected. When Reagan and Gorbachev finally met they had an instant chemistry and thus forged a warm relationship that helped turn the corner on what had been an icy , untrusting , mutual existence between the United States and the Soviet Union since the end of the Second World War.
What Reagan and his CIA Advisor William Casey had figured out was that the Soviet Union, while militarily strong, was a dying nation inside its borders and they pushed them to the bargaining table. In Gorbachev, they finally found a Soviet Leader, who was more concerned about the future of his people than the future of it's revolutionary global desires. We will look back in this episode at the relationships that both Reagan and Bush had with Gorbachev, and the circumstances that led to this meeting in Malta on the heels of the fall of the Berlin Wall, when Gorbachev was trying to negotiate a way to save his struggling nation.
This episode was produced over one year ago, and is dedicated in memory to CBS News Correspondent Bill Plante, who died at that time we were producing this episode, and who also produced for CBS News one of the historic reports we used for this podcast.
Ranked 4th as one of the best American History Podcasts of 2024
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