Proceedings of The 7th World Conference on Social Sciences
Year: 2024
DOI:
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The Endgame of the Cold War: The Speeches by Reagan, Bush, Gorbachev, and Yeltsin 1987-1991
Dr. Sean Brennan
ABSTRACT:
The historical impact of the late 1980s to the early 1990s in Eurasia was nothing short of revolutionary, whose effects are still being felt up to the modern day. The end of communist rule in the Eastern bloc, the reunification of Germany, the foundation of the European Union, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, acted as a geopolitical earthquake that completely upended the post-1945 global order. This essay will examine four pivotal speeches by two American Presidents and two Russian leaders as they attempted to drive, or at least control, the tumultuous events which characterized this era. The first is Reagan’s challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, followed by the much more cautious words four years later from his successor Bush urging restraint on the Ukrainian population from exiting the USSR. It will conclude with an examination of Boris Yeltsin’s defiant words to the leaders of the coup in August 1991 to restore the old Soviet order, and then move to Gorbachev’s resignation speech four months later declaring the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
keywords: cold war, Reagan, Bush, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Berlin, Ukraine, rhetoric, diplomacy