How the West Won (Cont’d) (review of Victory, by Peter Schweizer)

THE end of the Cold War, the great international event of our time, is fresh enough in the collective memory that inside accounts of how it happened still fascinate. When the end came, it came so suddenly that many developments still cry out for explanation. The political debate at home continues to rage, with liberals still insisting that Mikhail Gorbachev did it all by himself, parthenogenically, as it were. (An elegant recent book on the Cold War by Guardian correspondent Martin Walker takes a slightly different tack, giving Ronald Reagan a little of the credit—but for being a closet dove beneath what Mr. Walker dismisses as ineffectual anti-Communist blather.) It is fortunate, then, that the contemporary record continues to be expanded with fresh eyewitness information.

Victory: The Reagan Administration’s Secret Strategy That Caused the Collapse of the Soviet Union, by Peter Schweizer (Atlantic Monthly Press, 300 pp., $22)

PW

About the Author

Peter W. Rodman

THE end of the Cold War, the great international event of our time, is fresh enough in the collective memory that inside accounts of how it happened still fascinate. When the end came, it came so suddenly that many developments still cry out for explanation. The political debate at home continues to rage, with liberals still insisting that Mikhail Gorbachev did it all by himself, parthenogenically, as it were. (An elegant recent book on the Cold War by Guardian correspondent Martin Walker takes a slightly different tack, giving Ronald Reagan a little of the credit—but for being a closet dove beneath what Mr. Walker dismisses as ineffectual anti-Communist blather.) It is fortunate, then, that the contemporary record continues to be expanded with fresh eyewitness information.

Victory: The Reagan Administration’s Secret Strategy That Caused the Collapse of the Soviet Union, by Peter Schweizer (Atlantic Monthly Press, 300 pp., $22)