An oral history of the termination of the Cold War

From 1998 to 2003 the Gorbachev Foundation and the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace  (Stanford, USA) carried out a joint project An Oral History of the Termination of the Cold War. On the Russian side the project  was conducted  by Aleksandr Veber, Viktor Kuvaldin, Mikhail Narinsky, Anatoly Chernyaev; in the US the research was carried out by Gordon Hahn and Michael McFaul.

Within the research project 40 interviews were conducted with some of the key figures in the Soviet foreign and domestic policies of the Perestroka era, such as Mikhail Gorbachev, Aleksandr Yakovlev, Vadim Medvedev, Vladimir Kryuchkov, Yegor Ligachev, Yevgeny Primakov, Anatoly Chernyaev, Georgy Arbatov, Oleg Baklanov, Aleksandr Bessmertnykh, generals Valentin Varennikov, Dmitry Yazov, Leonid Shebarshin, admiral Vladimir Chernavin and others.

These first-hand accounts from the former Soviet top government and party officials of the Perestroika era provide a unique opportunity to see the inner mechanisms of decision-making in the Soviet leadership. Representing different, often contradictory or even mutually  incompatible  views, these interviews allow for a better understanding of how controversial was perception of the Perestroika reforms by Soviet political elite in the second half of the 1980s.

Full-text interviews are available in the archives of the Hoover Institution and the Gorbachev Foundation. The interviews also contain some biographical information.