Since coming to power in 1985, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has worked to reduce cold war tensions. On receiving the Nobel Peace Prize on October 15, 1990, Gorbachev has promised to devote more time and resources to his local reform initiatives while making extraordinary efforts to reach foreign policy agreements with non-Communist nations.
Hittori lists four summits with US President Ronald Reagan as some of his achievements, including a meeting in 1987 where a deal was made to destroy medium-range missiles of the US and the Soviet Union in Europe.
In addition, he started to pull out Soviet soldiers from Afghanistan in 1988 and put diplomatic pressure on Cuba and Vietnam to pull out of Angola and Cambodia, respectively. In a meeting with President George H. W. Bush in 1989, Gorbachev declared the end of the Cold War.
By choosing to stay out of the political unrest that engulfed the “affiliated” eastern European countries in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Gorbachev also gained the respect of many in the West.
Gorbachev kept Soviet intervention under control when the iron curtain nations of Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, and others started to transition to more liberal, democratic political systems, but this policy did not apply to the Soviet republics; similar attempts by Lithuania and other republics were met with strict warnings and force to keep the Soviet socialist republics united.
Having won the Nobel Peace Prize, Mikhail Gorbachev. What is its role in ending the Cold War?
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