Description
The last years of the Cold War were overseen by two very different leaders: Ronald Reagan, an ex-Hollywood actor, and Mikhail Gorbachev, a Ukrainian-Russian from a peasant farming background with a law degree from Moscow State University.
In 1980 Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States. Reagan was a committed Republican and anti- communist who, in a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals, referred to the Soviet Union as ‘that evil empire’.
Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the USSR in 1985. Under his leadership the USSR slowly began to reform. Gorbachev was an unexpected new leader and relatively inexperienced. He did not speak kindly of Reagan at first, calling him a ‘caveman’.
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