Introduction

Hi, My name is Andrew Preston.

I teach history at the University of Cambridge,

and I'm here to talk about the escalation and the

surprising end of the Cold War in the 19 eighties.

So the Cold War was really I like to think of it as a play in four acts.

We have the opening act,

which was the origin of the Cold War from roughly 1947 to the early 19 sixties,

when the superpower is kind of set the rules of the

Cold War of how they'd operate during the Cold War.

That, of course, came with a lot of tension and a lot of trial and error.

But by the early 19 sixties they kind of found a way

in which they would wage the Cold War without destroying the planet.

And that led to the second act of the Cold War play, and that that will call detente,

a period of a relaxation of tensions between the United States and the USSR and

also the diversification of the Cold War to what we call the Global South.

As Africa and parts of Asia were de colonising,

becoming independent actors in their own right and not necessarily wanting to

follow the dictates of the United States and the Soviet Union.

That period of detente came to an end in the late 19 seventies,

which is where this lecture picks up and what I'm going to be talking about.

Today is the last two acts

that come in really quick succession.

So if the first act in the Cold War play was

from roughly 1947 to 1963 that's just over 15 years.

The second act of detente

where the super powers managed the Cold War.

Maybe not peacefully,

but they managed their competition without endangering the survival

of the planet lasted from roughly 1963 to 1979.

Let's say that's another period of approximately 15 years.

The last two acts that close out the Cold War play

happened from 1979 to 1989.

They each last about five years, and they each have a rapid intensification,

first of hostilities and then of detente.

There wasn't just managing the Cold War to prevent it from destroying the planet,

but a kind of relaxation of hostilities that

bordered on genuine warmth and maybe actual friendship.

And so those last two acts of the Cold War play and in the

very surprising termination of the Cold War surprising and that it

was peaceful and that the world wasn't blown up with,

um, thermonuclear weapons.

And that's what I'm going to explore today.

Along the way,

I'm going to be looking at major figures such as Ronald

Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev and also some other players as well,

uh, including some pressures from the bottom up in American political culture.

And also I'll be looking at the pressures on the Soviet economy.

And ultimately I'm going to ask,

Why did the Cold War escalates so rapidly so that

we have what historians call a second Cold War?

That's the third act of the Cold War. Play, if you will.

The second Cold War lasts roughly from 1979 to 1984 1985

then we have the rapid end or draw down of Cold War tensions from 1985 to 1989.

And that is the last act of the Cold War play that thankfully ends peacefully