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During the 1980s, millions of ordinary individuals around the world
mobilized in support of nuclear disarmament. Although U.S.
President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail
Gorbachev were not part of these grassroots movements, they too
wanted to eliminate nuclear weapons. Nuclear abolitionism was a
diverse and global phenomenon. In Dreams for a Decade, Stephanie L.
Freeman draws on newly declassified material from multiple
continents to examine nuclear abolitionists’ influence on the
trajectory of the Cold War’s last decade. Freeman reveals that
nuclear abolitionism played a significant yet unappreciated role in
ending the Cold War. Grassroots and government nuclear
abolitionists shifted U.S. and Soviet nuclear arms control
paradigms from arms limitation to arms reduction. This paved the
way for the reversal of the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race, which
began with the landmark 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces
Treaty. European peace activists also influenced Gorbachev’s
“common European home” initiative and support for freedom of
choice in Europe, which prevented the Soviet leader from
intervening to stop the 1989 East European revolutions. These
revolutions ripped the fabric of the Iron Curtain, which had
divided Europe for more than four decades. Despite their inability
to eliminate nuclear weapons, grassroots and government nuclear
abolitionists deserve credit for playing a pivotal role in the Cold
War’s endgame. They also provide a model for enacting dramatic,
positive change in a peaceful manner.
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