Reagan and the Soviet Union Myth

This being the Ronald Reagan centennial, Reagan mythology is rampant. Conservatives point to his strident anticommunism exhibited in speeches like his 1983 "Evil Empire" declaration, his huge increases in defense spending and his Strategic Defense Initiative, often called Star Wars by detractors, as the decisive factors in bleeding the Soviet Union dry and fomenting its collapse.

But were they? The dismantling of the U.S.S.R. is so much more complex than simply the result of Reagan's unrelenting communism bashing and military provocations.

The Soviet system had plenty of cause to implode. It had been deteriorating since the 1970s. Severe shortages of basic consumer goods were rampant irrespective of the arms race. There was unrest and occasionally open hostilities in the Eastern Bloc and the "Stans." The Afghanistan war was going badly. The Chernobyl disaster loomed over the country. The Soviet's third world adventurism mostly had been compromised.

True, Reagan was among the first who believed the Soviets could be defeated not simply "contained" which had been the prevailing policy since the war. But his administration never implemented any specific strategy to accelerate it. Even the CIA didn't see the breakup coming so just how much credit should the administration get for surreptitiously fermenting it?

If anything Reagan's rhetoric and actions during his first term served to strengthen the hand of Politburo hardliners not undermine them. Reagan had been in office for over four years, before Soviet General Secretary and President Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985, during which time nothing of significance in the way of Soviet disintegration, or even unilateral concessions, took place.

So how much was Reagan and how much was Gorbachev?

Where Reagan does deserve credit is for his pragmatism and genuineness. Despite his conviction communism was evil, he was determined to prevent nuclear catastrophe and found in Gorbachev a reliable partner with whom to ease tensions and reduce nuclear arsenals, often to the displeasure of their respective right-wings.

Gorbachev concluded Reagan could be trusted, allowing him the confidence to pursue Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring) within his borders. Once begun, these changes spun out of control and the rest is history.

Ironically Reagan's contribution to the downfall of the Soviet Union was a result not of his initial threats and provocations that his neoconservative acolytes inevitably praise but of old fashioned diplomacy and negotiations they so disparage.

Reagan was in the right place at the right time and stumbled into the right outcome - his bluster, with a different Russian partner, just as easily could have led to nuclear conflagration as détente. He played an important role but it diminishes the complexity of history and peoples' tenacity for freedom to make it into a one-man show.