ilitary build-up that had forced the Soviet Union to offer concessions on strategic arms control and put an end to their expansionist ideals. Through Reagan's policies, the Soviet Union could no longer cope and eventually buckled under the pressure. Finally, there are historians who argue that one cannot accredit the ending of the Cold War to the virtues and deficiencies of two individuals – Reagan and Gorbachev (Smith, 150.) One needs to look at more long-term causes, like how Reagan's strategy was merely a continuation of the containment strategy, which had been stressed by George Kennan, an American diplomat in Russia, in 1947. This policy had been used by a variety of Presidents over the years, ranging from Truman to Kennedy. This essay will look at these different viewpoints in an attempt to see if Gorbachev was the main cause of the collapse, or if other perspectives hold more weight.
             Gorbachev came to power in 1985 as the fourth Soviet leader in only short amount of time. Brezhnev had died in November 1982, Yuri Andropov in February 1984, and Konstantin Chernenko in March 1985 (Ball, 211.) During this turbulent period of ever changing leaders, the U.S. under leadership of President Reagan had been dominating the Cold War battlefield. Gorbachev inherited a miserable state of affairs, typified by a declining economy, a large technology gap with the West and Japan, an increasingly demoralized population, and a hostile and counterproductive foreign policy. Gorbachev, younger and more rational than his predecessors (perhaps with the exception of Nikita Khrushchev,) realized that something drastic had to be done in order to save the Soviet Union. Perestroika was created to build up the economy and modernize the Soviet Union to the same level as the West and Japan. Gorbachev understood that this required an end to the Cold War, so that fewer funds could be used for military spending, and so that the Soviet Union could...