Dreams for a Decade: International Nuclear Abolitionism and the End of the Cold War by Stephanie L. Freeman

Histories of the end of the Cold War have credited a range of actors, from leaders and diplomats to grassroots activists in peace and human-rights movements, some of whom engaged in collaboration across state borders. Stephanie Freeman's Dreams for a Decade is unusual in its focus on both top political figures and transnational movements. She places them all in the category of “nuclear abolitionists” and argues that their commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons helped bring the Cold War and the U.S.-Soviet arms race to an end and contributed to the emergence (at least temporarily) of a reunified, peaceful, and democratic Europe. Freeman excavates an impressive range of English-language primary and secondary sources, from archives of popular movements to declassified records of U.S. National Security Council deliberations. She relies on copies of materials from the National Security Archive (a private repository in Washington, DC) and the Vitalii Kataev...