This chapter traces developments in the energy sector from the systemic crisis under Gorbachev, through Russia’s difficult start after the collapse of the Soviet Union, to the consolidation of Russia under Putin.

This chapter seeks to uncover the origins of New Thinking, with its focus on peaceful coexistence between the East and the West, disarmament, and non-intervention. It argues that while Gorbachev's predecessors sought recognition for the USSR's greatness in the third world, Gorbachev was generally uninterested in maintaining Moscow's reputation as a revolutionary leader. He recognized the Soviet Union's need for reform and aimed to reshape global politics in a way that would allow Moscow to maintain international leadership without overspending on foreign adventures. With the conclusion of the 1987 INF Treaty, Gorbachev demonstrated that disarmament could save money, lessen the dangers of war, and raise Moscow's global standing. However, disentangling from foreign commitments, especially in Afghanistan, proved more complicated. It took a long time to end the conflict in Afghanistan as Gorbachev weighed the moral liability of continued war against considerations of prestige and credibility.

This chapter tells the story of the hope generation’s contribution to Perestroika through the example of Dieter Klein (1931), a progressive political economist of capitalism and science manager at Humboldt University. Welcoming the changes in light of the vision of overcoming Stalinism and inviting the young generation into the reformist movement against the Old Communists that stubbornly occupied the Politburo, the reform of socialism turned into a battle for its very survival. Contributing to the reformist research during Perestroika at first with a political economy of capitalism based on peace rather than class conflict, he was increasingly disconnected from the civil rights movement due to his confidence in inner-party reform. He was in the position of realizing his reformist ideas at the Party Congress in December 1989 when the party transformed from a force with constitutional power into parliamentary opposition in the system of the class enemy.

The epilogue provides an overview of the end of the Cold War. It discusses the Reagan–Gorbachev relationship, their efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons at a remarkable summit in Reykjavik (1986), and the INF Treaty of 1987. The chapter analyzes the reasons for the end of the Cold War and the change in Soviet policy. I argue that although SDI was an important part in Soviet thinking, the key changes effected from 1989 were primarily the result of factors originating in the USSR and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. These were factors largely (but not entirely) independent of the policies pursued by US administrations. They include Gorbachev’s own evolving predilections (reinforced by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster); Soviet high politics; long-term structural problems besetting the Soviet economy; the role of non-state actors; and the courageous efforts of citizens and peace groups across Eastern Europe. The epilogue concludes by highlighting the foreign policy turns of Carter and Reagan, and their significance for the Cold War. I argue that only by examining the full landscape – international and domestic – can we truly understand how US foreign policy is crafted.

Chapter 1 introduces General Solomon Mujuru/Rex Nhongo, pointing out his military and political significance. It maintains that Mujuru’s life history is important to tell, in and of itself, but also that his life history is particularly useful as a prism for telling a broader story about impervious elite politics in Southern Africa’s transnational liberation struggles, Zimbabwe’s ruling ZANU PF party and the country’s post-independence army. The chapter argues that the biographical approach is a useful but much neglected (by political scientists) way of writing politics and it accentuates the utility of oral history. It concludes by arguing that Mujuru’s memory has been expunged or misrepresented in official memorialisations of the liberation war and key post-independence events. Thus, the biography partly serves as a recovery of Solomon’s memory.

The collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was felt across the world. The very idea of the victory over Communism, and of the natural congruence between liberal democracy and the market that Eastern Europe’s transformation embodied, became central to the post–Cold War constitution of the West. Such ideas became embedded in the everyday practice of politics: in the enforcing of new forms of conditionality that stressed democracy, rights, and a smaller state on Africa and in the continued belief in the export of this model – sometimes by force – to the Middle East, Africa, and post-Soviet space. Some Eastern European elites adopted such interpretations and practice as part of the projection of their region’s geopolitical identity. Yet 1989 would be interpreted elsewhere very differently, particularly in those authoritarian socialist states where transformation did not happen: in China, 1989 became a decades-long warning about the excesses of reform and the Western understanding of global transformation rejected. From Cuba to North Korea to Africa, the Eastern European revolutions were rather seen as the revival of a traditional Western imperialism and the reconstitution of a white Global North.