Constructing and Deconstructing Europe after the Cold War

Please join us for a conversation with Thomas S. Blanton and Svetlana Savranskaya, authors of "The Last Superpower Summits: Conversations That Ended the Cold War." The book publishes for the first time in print every word the American and Soviet leaders – Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, and George H.W. Bush – said to each other in their superpower summits from 1985 to 1991. Blanton is the director since 1992 of the independent non-governmental National Security Archive at George Washington University. Savranskaya is a research fellow at the National Security Archive where she directs its cooperative projects with Russian archives and institutes and edits the Russian and East Bloc Archival Documents Database.

According to Blanton and Savranskaya, the summits fueled a process of learning on both sides. Geneva 1985 and Reykjavik 1986 reduced Moscow’s sense of threat and unleashed Reagan’s inner abolitionist. Malta 1989 and Washington 1990 helped dampen any superpower sparks that might have flown in a time of revolutionary change in Eastern Europe, set off by Gorbachev and by Eastern Europeans (Solidarity, dissidents, reform Communists). The high level and scope of the dialogue between these world leaders was unprecedented, and is likely never to be repeated.

During their presentation, Blanton and Savranskaya will discuss the alternative futures of Europe after the Cold War, NATO expansion, the 'Common European Home' and Soviet European policy, and Havel's dissolution of all the blocs (and how he was dissuaded from pursuing it) among other topics.