Mental Maps in the Era of Detente and the End of the Cold War 1968-1991

摘要

Later this year the world will, depending on one's personal point of view, either celebrate or commemorate the 25th anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union. It was in 1991 when the communist empire disintegrated into fifteen separate republics, marking the final act of the Cold War. Much has been written about those events spanning the period from 1989, when communist regimes collapsed like a pack of cards in Eastern Europe, to December 1991, when the Soviet flag was finally and unceremoniously hauled down from the prominently lit pole above the Kremlin. Unsurprisingly, some of the published scholarship about that period is eminently forgettable. But much of it is good enough to prove enduring. Anyone who wants to leave his or her mark on this mountain of literature by writing yet another history about the events which led to the end of the Cold War either has to boast of a particular specialisation which sets him or her apart from the rest or adopt a novel analytical approach to that period.