Twenty years in the making, this collection presents 122 top-level Soviet, European and American records on the superpowers' role in the annus mirabilis of 1989. Consisting of Politburo minutes; diary entries from Gorbachev's senior aide, Anatoly Chernyaev; meeting notes and private communications of Gorbachev with George H.W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl and Francois Mitterrand; and high-level CIA analyses. Complementing the documents is the inclusion for the first time of the proceedings of an extraordinary face-to-face mutual interrogation (with scholars and documents ) in 1998 of Russian and American senior former officials - Gorbachev advisers Anatoly Chernyaev and Georgy Shakhnazarov, Shevardnadze aide Sergei Tarasenko, U.S. Ambassador Jack Matlock and CIA chief Soviet analyst Douglas MacEachin - aimed at assessing and explaining Moscow and Washington's policies during the miraculous year of 1989.

In November 1983, Soviet nuclear forces went on high alert when intelligence reported alarming activity on US bases. In response, the Soviets planned for a nuclear strike by NATO on Eastern Europe. And then Able Archer 83, a vast NATO war game exercise, ended. What the West didn't know was that the Soviets thought Operation Able Archer 83 was real and were preparing for a surprise missile attack from NATO. This close scrape with Armageddon was unknown until 2015, when the US released an analysis. Able Archer 83 vividly recreates the atmosphere that nearly unleashed nuclear war.