Number 9, exercise 35B.0:08
Listen to the text the Cold War and Beyond and prepare an artistic reading following the pattern given in the recording the Cold War and beyond.0:14
In March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.0:28
He inherited a vast country comprising 15 republics, the economy of which was close to collapse and where corruption flourished.0:36
The country badly needed reform, although few could foresee its effects.0:45
Gorbachev approached the problems of this country by introducing two new policies, glasnost openness and perestroika restructuring.0:51
His aims were to identify those areas that needed reform and encourage popular debate about how best to deal with them.1:02
At first, such policies were welcomed, but as the shortcomings of the system were revealed, people soon became discontented.1:11
The problems turned out to be so deep rooted that that only radical reforms could solve them.1:20
The initial optimism, however, did have an effect on relations between the Soviet Union and the west.1:27
As early as November 1985, Gorbachev met US President Ronald Reagan in Geneva for the first Superpower Summit since 1979.1:33
The summit showed that a new atmosphere of cooperation between the two countries was emerging.1:45
A second summit at Reykjavik in Iceland in 1986, at which Gorbachev offered dramatic cuts to nuclear weapons, was not very successful.1:51
Although the proposals were not ignored, in December 1987, Reagan and Gorbachev signed the infrastructure, signifying a new warmth of feeling between the superpowers.2:01
To many people, it meant that the Cold War was beginning to come to an end.2:18
This was supported by changes in Soviet foreign policy.2:23
In 1988, Soviet troops were removed from Afghanistan after nine years of bitter fighting.2:27
By the late 1980s, the influence of Gorbachev's reforms had begun to be felt in the commonest countries of Eastern Europe.2:35
These countries got much greater autonomy.2:43
The effects were dramatic.2:46
Almost immediately, as travel restrictions eased, people tried to leave countries such as East Germany for the West.2:48
By November 1989, the decision to open the border between east and West Germany had been made.2:56
On 9 November, people from the two sides helped to destroy the Berlin Wall for long a symbol of the divide.3:04
Soon after that, radical political changes were made in a number of East European countries.3:13
Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia.3:19
In the new atmosphere of reform, the two Germanies reunited.3:24
The Cold War came to an official end in November 1990, when 34 countries representing the old east west divide signed the Charter of Paris for a new European.3:29
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