insurgent Contras battled the left-leaning govern-
ment of Daniel Ortega.
To some degree these efforts backfired. The
fundamentalist Islamic Taliban replaced the Soviet-
backed government in Afghanistan, which would
lead to a brutally repressive regime that later caused
problems for Washington. In Nicaragua, the back-
ing of the Contras involved illegal activity that
erupted into the Iran-Contra scandal of 1986.
At one point Reagan even joked about his hostil-
ity toward the Soviets. While preparing for his weekly
radio address to the nation on August 4, 1984, in-
stead of the usual “one, two, three” testing to check
the line, the former actor made the statement:
My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today
that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia
forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.The joke, intended to be made in private, leaked,
causing an international scandal.
Reagan supported a plan to establish a space- and
surface-based antiballistic missile system called the
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or the “Star Wars”
program. Although this controversial program was
never adopted, the U.S. government did fund mas-
sive new weapons systems. Reagan pushed for the de-
ployment of Pershing and cruise missiles in Western
Europe, for increased allocations in European allies’
military budgets, and for their adopting his anti-
Soviet policies—with mixed results. Reagan also ob-
jected to European Community (EC) contracts with
the Soviet Union for building natural gas pipelines.
For a while in 1982, Washington banned the use of
U.S. technology in such projects, lifting the ban later
that year when an agreement with the EC on trade
policies was reached.
The United States also resumed grain sales to the
Soviet Union and initiated Strategic Arms Reduc-
tion Treaty talks (START), first presented by Reagan
in Geneva on June 29, 1982. These disarmament ne-
gotiations continued off and on. Washington pushed
for the so-called zero option, which linked the re-
moval of Pershing missiles from Europe to the Sovi-
ets’ reduction of intermediate-range nuclear forces
(INFs) and mobile missile launchers from the East.
Andropov and Chernenko As the decade pro-
ceeded, the Soviet Union underwent major changes.
On November 10, 1982, Brezhnev died after suffer-
ing a long illness. A struggle for leadership between
Soviet liberals and old-guard bureaucrats continued
while two more elder statesmen, Yuri Andropov and
Konstantin Chernenko, successively assumed the
Soviet leadership role.
Andropov tried to reestablish the era of détente,
but Reagan was adamant against any easing of ten-
sions. After receiving a letter from a New England
child, Samantha Smith, asking why he was opposed
to peace, Andropov responded by saying that he and
the Soviet people were in fact eager for peace be-
tween the two countries and invited the girl and her
family to the Soviet Union for a visit. He tried to di-
vide Western Europe from the United States, with
the particular goal of preventing U.S. Pershing mis-
siles on the Continent. However, during his tenure,
on September 1, 1983, Soviet warplanes shot down a
Korean Air Lines commercial aircraft, flight KAL
007, while it was flying near the border between So-
viet and Korean airspace; 269 civilian passengers
and crew members died. Moscow maintained that
the aircraft had entered Soviet airspace. The Soviets
believed that the plane was on a spying mission, in a
deliberate attempt on the part of the United States
to provoke the Soviets. Andropov died in 1984 after
only sixteen months in office. Chernenko succeeded
him but died the following year.Gorbachev In the subsequent power struggle, the
reformer Mikhail Gorbachev succeeded to the So-
viet leadership position. A year later, in April of
1986, the Soviet Union suffered a catastrophe when
the nuclear plant at Chernobyl in the Ukraine suf-
fered a meltdown, causing explosions and sending
radioactive contamination as far as Belorus. After
the Soviets briefly denied the accident, Gorbachev
realized that he had to appeal to the West for help.
Afterward, Gorbachev introduced the reform poli-
cies glasnost (openness) and perestroika (economic
reconstruction). Unlike liberalization attempts in
previous Soviet periods, Gorbachev’s policies were
genuine and effective. Eventually, even democratic
elections took place in the Soviet Union. Further-
more, Gorbachev began a real policy of cooperation
with the West. Gorbachev became a folk hero around
the world, a phenomenon called “Gorbymania.”
Even Reagan came to appreciate his efforts, and in a
series of summit meetings in Geneva (1985), Reykja-
vik (1986), Washington, D.C. (1987), and Moscow
(1988) the two leaders put forward meaningful pro-
grams, although disagreements still existed. In 1987,892 Soviet Union and North America The Eighties in America