The Cold War: Thaw

A New Generation of Soviet Leadership.

The early 1980s were characterized by rapid changes in the leadership of the Soviet Union. Leonid Brezhnev, who had led the Soviet Union since 1964, died in 1982 and was succeeded by Yuri Andropov, a former head of the KGB. Andropov died in 1984 and was succeeded by Konstantin Chernenko. These leaders had their political roots in the Stalin era and the Cold War period that followed World War II. When Chernenko died in 1985, he was succeeded by Mikhail Gorbachev, who at fifty-four years of age was part of a new generation of Soviet leaders whose political experiences were forged during the leadership of the reform-minded Nikita Khrushchev. Gorbachev and many of his generation of leaders were better educated, more widely traveled, and more cosmopolitan than their predecessors.

Soviet Reforms.

Gorbachev unleashed revolutionary reforms in Soviet politics and economics. He...

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