316F Spring 2026 The Cold War Decline and Collapse of the Soviet Union, Brezhnev/Gorbachev, Part II

316F  The Cold War Decline and Collapse of the Soviet Union, Brezhnev/Gorbachev, Part II 
Three sessions
Instructor: Daniel Cain
Wednesdays, 9:40—11:05, Apr. 29—May 13
Part I of the course in fall 2025 term covered the years 1964-1982 when Leonid Brezhnev was leader of the USSR, and Part II will cover those years after Brezhnev, when the USSR was led by Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko, and finally Mikhail Gorbachev—the years 1983 through 1991. Discussion will center on developments within the Soviet Union, as well as Soviet external relations (with its Warsaw Pact allies, those in the worldwide Socialist camp, and the West) that occurred as part of the overall Cold War between the East and West at the time. Discussion will especially focus on activity and events that can be (and have been) interpreted by scholars as fundamental problems with the Soviet system, many of them part of a broad pattern of decline which finally ended with the historic and mostly peaceful collapse of the USSR.
Daniel Cain has Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in History and Political Science from Ohio University. He also did post-graduate study at the Indiana University Russian and East European Institute (REEI) prior to a career of 30+ years as a U.S. federal government intelligence analyst.