Gorbachev and the Unraveling

CHAPTER 11 · 1985–1989 · The Cold War, 1945–1991

Mikhail Gorbachev inherits, in March 1985, a superpower in slow-motion failure: growth near zero, a defense burden triple America’s share of a far smaller economy, life expectancy falling, a Politburo whose last three leaders died in office within thirty months. His program — perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) — aims to save socialism, not bury it. Then Chernobyl explodes in April 1986, and the cover-up’s collapse radicalizes glasnost into something no Soviet leader had permitted: actual truth, compounding. Abroad, Gorbachev moves faster than the West can process: at Reykjavík

The turn: Berlin, 9 November 1989, 18:53.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.