What was life like for ordinary Russian citizens in the 1930s? How did they feel about socialism and the acts committed in its name? This book provides English-speaking readers with the responses of those who experienced firsthand the events of the middle-Stalinist period. The book contains 157 documents -- mostly from Soviet citizens, but also reports compiled by the secret police and Communist Party functionaries from recently opened Soviet archives.
Drawing on deep archival research and recently declassified papers, Wilson argues that adaptation, improvisation, and engagement with adversaries by Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, George Shultz, George H. W. Bush, and a host of other actors ended the specter of a nuclear holocaust. Includes the construction of a new configuration of power after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
