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The Human Factor: Gorbachev, Reagan, and Thatcher, and the End of the Cold War
In this penetrating analysis of the role of political leadership in the Cold War's ending, Archie Brown shows why the popular view that Western economic and military strength left the Soviet Union with no alternative but to admit defeat is wrong. To understand the significance of the parts played by Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in East-West relations in the second half of the 1980s, Brown addresses several specific What were thevalues and assumptions of these leaders, and how did their perceptions evolve? What were the major influences on them? To what extent were they reflecting the views of their own political establishment or challenging them? How important for ending the East-West standoff were their interrelations?Would any of the realistically alternative leaders of their countries at that time have pursued approximately the same policies?The Cold War got colder in the early 1980s and the relationship between the two military superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union, each of whom had the capacity to annihilate the other, was tense. By the end of the decade, East-West relations had been utterly transformed, with most of the dividing lines -including the division of Europe- removed. Engagement between Gorbachev and Reagan was a crucial part of that process of change. More surprising was Thatcher's role. Regarded by Reagan as hisideological and political soulmate, she formed also a strong and supportive relationship with Gorbachev (beginning three months before he came to power). Promoting Gorbachev in Washington as a man to do business with, she became, in the words of her foreign policy adviser Sir Percy Cradock, an agentof influence in both directions.
512 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 1, 2020
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2784 people want to read
About the author
Archie Brown
46 books83 followersArchibald Haworth Brown, commonly known as Archie Brown, is a British political scientist and historian. In 2005, he became an emeritus professor of politics at the University of Oxford and an emeritus fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, where he served as a professor of politics and director of St Antony's Russian and East European Centre. He has written widely on Soviet and Russian politics, on communist politics more generally, on the Cold War, and on political leadership.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
October 19, 2020
Here is another review which few will read... (I give it 3.5 stars, but don't know how to make a half-star!)
List of "likes":
Brown supplies the incredible research that supports various appraisals of what was happening.
The book contains a clear structure: The first half is a chronology of the events leading to the end of the Cold War; the second half contains more appraisal and judgements about how those factors came together and what they meant for the world
I enjoyed the contrasts within the personae of the three prime motivators for change in the world: Reagan, Gorbachev, and Thatcher...They worked similar to any great team: they disagreed but communicated well; they understood each other's tendencies and strengths/weaknesses and those understandings achieved the milestones they sought and won together. (Their eventual camaraderie makes me so envious of the LACK of such partnership in today's American culture and leadership.)
Brown asks pertinent questions at certain moments that help the reader reflect on the importance of a particular event.
Dislike:
The mass of chronology was at times difficult for total focus. So many moments, both large and small, are a testimony to the author's hard work, but made the book (especially the first half) a bit hard to sludge through at times.
My overall impression was one of true admiration for Gorbachev when Brown lists twelve concrete achievements his time as Soviet leader accomplished. Quite the person. Compelling, personable, driven, and balanced.
Thatcher was not the "Iron Lady" for nothing. What a leader. every important change needs a woman's insights.
Reagan had his faults, but events his faults meshed into the teamwork. A great President.
If you enjoy a mass of historical narrative, read it.
List of "likes":
Brown supplies the incredible research that supports various appraisals of what was happening.
The book contains a clear structure: The first half is a chronology of the events leading to the end of the Cold War; the second half contains more appraisal and judgements about how those factors came together and what they meant for the world
I enjoyed the contrasts within the personae of the three prime motivators for change in the world: Reagan, Gorbachev, and Thatcher...They worked similar to any great team: they disagreed but communicated well; they understood each other's tendencies and strengths/weaknesses and those understandings achieved the milestones they sought and won together. (Their eventual camaraderie makes me so envious of the LACK of such partnership in today's American culture and leadership.)
Brown asks pertinent questions at certain moments that help the reader reflect on the importance of a particular event.
Dislike:
The mass of chronology was at times difficult for total focus. So many moments, both large and small, are a testimony to the author's hard work, but made the book (especially the first half) a bit hard to sludge through at times.
My overall impression was one of true admiration for Gorbachev when Brown lists twelve concrete achievements his time as Soviet leader accomplished. Quite the person. Compelling, personable, driven, and balanced.
Thatcher was not the "Iron Lady" for nothing. What a leader. every important change needs a woman's insights.
Reagan had his faults, but events his faults meshed into the teamwork. A great President.
If you enjoy a mass of historical narrative, read it.
June 20, 2020
Great analysis of the end of the cold war. Very engaging. Analysing the events from the perspective of the three main participants worked really well. Contains fairly detailed biographies of the three leaders which sheds a lot of light on their thinking at the time.
December 21, 2022
Consistent with my post-Cold War-related reading binge, I picked up Archie Brown's "The Human Factor" this fall. The events of the late 1980s and early '90s have also been a focus of my podcast, and after Gorbachev's death in late August I interviewed Brown, a preeminent expert on the USSR and Gorbachev's rule, for a podcast episode.
Understanding how and why the Cold War ended -- and why it ended when it did -- might help us understand why the hopes and dreams for democracy and capitalism in Russia were not realized after 1991, why U.S.-Russia relations dangerously deteriorated over the past 30 years, and what might be done to reverse the trend. Although, this seems highly unlikely at the moment as Ukraine is the victim of a Russian war of aggression.
Brown's emphasis here is the roles played by individual leaders in bringing about a mostly peaceful end to the Cold War, although he does not neglect the contexts in which Reagan, Thatcher, and Gorbachev operated and he avoids "great man" or "strong leader" mythology. Brown combines the imperatives of narrative and analytical history with dashes of anecdote and wit to produce a sturdy, timely ~500-page study of the truly remarkable transformation of the Soviet Union from 1985. This is not an easy book: Brown expects the reader to keep track of enormously complex political and diplomatic developments happening simultaneously and in reaction to one another in Moscow, London, and Washington. He makes full use of the available documentary record from the U.S., U.K., and the former Soviet Union. Indeed, this book could not have been written 20 years ago without access to the government records and personal diaries now at Brown's disposal.
The key player in the dismantling of Soviet Communism and the flowering of the most political and personal freedom in Russian history (albeit curtailed in the Yeltsin/Putin years) was Gorbachev. His achievements (or failures, depending on your perspective) are all the more remarkable considering the history he inherited in 1985. Brown skillfully debunks the Western triumphalist narrative (post-hoc determinism) that gives Reagan and U.S. confrontational policy and rhetoric the credit for pressuring the USSR to surrender.
But Gorbachev did not wish to see the end of a Soviet Union or some kind of union where power would be devolved to the republics. But by the time those centrifugal forces were pulling the union apart, Gorbachev's own powers (and popular standing) had been eroded by the very reforms he had initiated. He was buffeted by hostile forces from both sides: unreconstructed Communists who wanted to hold the union together by use of force, if necessary, and political opportunists led by Yeltsin who sought to break the union apart. Indeed, it was Yeltsin's move to pull Russia out of the union that was the decisive blow after the failed coup of summer 1991, along with the increasingly potent separatist/nationalist movements in the Baltics and Ukraine (also fueled by the failed coup that fatally weakened Gorbachev). In March of 1991 most Ukrainians favored remaining in a federation with Russia; by the end of that year public opinion was strongly on the side of independence.
While the end of Communist domination inside Russia remains a welcome development in human history, one wonders if the past 30 years might have turned out better had the Soviet Union not been broken up into 15 independent countries. A voluntary federation or confederation of autonomous states was Gorbachev's vision, but he was unable to realize it -- and he would be gone from the scene anyway by the end of 1991. In his place Yeltsin was a disaster, leading to Yeltsin's handpicked successor, Putin.
This book was published in 2020, but Brown's conclusion foresaw the catastrophe that began in February 2022: "Mutual trust painstakingly gained, and then lost, is especially difficult to reestablish... A generation after the Cold War ended, relations between Russia and the West are incomparably worse than they were at the end of the 1980s, and we are a far cry from Gorbachev's 'common European home' or Bush's Europe 'whole and free.' Understanding what went right during the years in which Soviet domestic and foreign policy were transformed -- and how and why it went right -- may provide useful insight into what has gone wrong since. It may even suggest ways of halting and reversing the downward spiral towards confrontation and catastrophe."
Understanding how and why the Cold War ended -- and why it ended when it did -- might help us understand why the hopes and dreams for democracy and capitalism in Russia were not realized after 1991, why U.S.-Russia relations dangerously deteriorated over the past 30 years, and what might be done to reverse the trend. Although, this seems highly unlikely at the moment as Ukraine is the victim of a Russian war of aggression.
Brown's emphasis here is the roles played by individual leaders in bringing about a mostly peaceful end to the Cold War, although he does not neglect the contexts in which Reagan, Thatcher, and Gorbachev operated and he avoids "great man" or "strong leader" mythology. Brown combines the imperatives of narrative and analytical history with dashes of anecdote and wit to produce a sturdy, timely ~500-page study of the truly remarkable transformation of the Soviet Union from 1985. This is not an easy book: Brown expects the reader to keep track of enormously complex political and diplomatic developments happening simultaneously and in reaction to one another in Moscow, London, and Washington. He makes full use of the available documentary record from the U.S., U.K., and the former Soviet Union. Indeed, this book could not have been written 20 years ago without access to the government records and personal diaries now at Brown's disposal.
The key player in the dismantling of Soviet Communism and the flowering of the most political and personal freedom in Russian history (albeit curtailed in the Yeltsin/Putin years) was Gorbachev. His achievements (or failures, depending on your perspective) are all the more remarkable considering the history he inherited in 1985. Brown skillfully debunks the Western triumphalist narrative (post-hoc determinism) that gives Reagan and U.S. confrontational policy and rhetoric the credit for pressuring the USSR to surrender.
But Gorbachev did not wish to see the end of a Soviet Union or some kind of union where power would be devolved to the republics. But by the time those centrifugal forces were pulling the union apart, Gorbachev's own powers (and popular standing) had been eroded by the very reforms he had initiated. He was buffeted by hostile forces from both sides: unreconstructed Communists who wanted to hold the union together by use of force, if necessary, and political opportunists led by Yeltsin who sought to break the union apart. Indeed, it was Yeltsin's move to pull Russia out of the union that was the decisive blow after the failed coup of summer 1991, along with the increasingly potent separatist/nationalist movements in the Baltics and Ukraine (also fueled by the failed coup that fatally weakened Gorbachev). In March of 1991 most Ukrainians favored remaining in a federation with Russia; by the end of that year public opinion was strongly on the side of independence.
While the end of Communist domination inside Russia remains a welcome development in human history, one wonders if the past 30 years might have turned out better had the Soviet Union not been broken up into 15 independent countries. A voluntary federation or confederation of autonomous states was Gorbachev's vision, but he was unable to realize it -- and he would be gone from the scene anyway by the end of 1991. In his place Yeltsin was a disaster, leading to Yeltsin's handpicked successor, Putin.
This book was published in 2020, but Brown's conclusion foresaw the catastrophe that began in February 2022: "Mutual trust painstakingly gained, and then lost, is especially difficult to reestablish... A generation after the Cold War ended, relations between Russia and the West are incomparably worse than they were at the end of the 1980s, and we are a far cry from Gorbachev's 'common European home' or Bush's Europe 'whole and free.' Understanding what went right during the years in which Soviet domestic and foreign policy were transformed -- and how and why it went right -- may provide useful insight into what has gone wrong since. It may even suggest ways of halting and reversing the downward spiral towards confrontation and catastrophe."
January 10, 2025
Bokashi for idiotic views, surely sponsored by russians. 400 pages of idiocy portraying gorbachev as diligent learner, manager, believer in freedom values. Humiliating remarks on role of John Paul II. Ignorance of sanctions on Soviet union-I wish author spend few years buying groceries in USSR 80's manner before writing his idiocy in ch. 9
Undoubtedly, Archie Brown хуй будет.
Книга має виключно дослідницьку цінність для розуміння того, як на заході дійшли до такого ідіотського сприйняття гомінідів. Все просто-десятиліттями підкупів таких оксфордських проФФесорів, як Archie Brown і затикання рота таким, як Єва Томсон.
Undoubtedly, Archie Brown хуй будет.
Книга має виключно дослідницьку цінність для розуміння того, як на заході дійшли до такого ідіотського сприйняття гомінідів. Все просто-десятиліттями підкупів таких оксфордських проФФесорів, як Archie Brown і затикання рота таким, як Єва Томсон.
June 12, 2023
Human Factor by Archie Brown.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS:
-Print: Available – (Bib info from Amazon website: Hardcover) COPYRIGHT: 4/1/2020; ISBN-13: 978-0190614898; PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press; LENGTH: 512 pgs.
-Digital: (Bib info from Amazon website: Kindle) COPYRIGHT: March 13, 2020; PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press; FILE: 3092 KB; LENGTH: 512 pgs.
*Audio: (Info from Libby) COPYRIGHT: 4-May-2020; PUBLISHER: Books on Tape: Random House Audio; DURATION: approx. 21 hours; Unabridged (LAPL MP3)
Feature Film or tv: No.
SERIES: No.
CHARACTERS: (Not comprehensive)
-Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022; General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; [First and last] President of the Soviet Union)
-Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004; U. S. President [1981-1989])
-Nancy Reagan [née Anne Frances Robbins] (July 6, 1921 – March 6, 2016; U.S. First Lady)
-Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher [née Roberts] (13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013; Prime Minister of the United Kingdom)
-Richard Edward Geoffrey Howe, Baron Howe of Aberavon (20 December 1926 – 9 October 2015; Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom)
-Charles David Powell, Baron Powell of Bayswater (born 6 July 1941; Foreign Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister)Caspar Willard Weinberger (August 18, 1917 – March 28, 2006; U. S. Secretary of Defense)
-Alexander Meigs Haig Jr. (December 2, 1924 – February 20, 2010; U.S. Secretary of State [1982-1989])
-Michael Ray Dibdin Heseltine, Baron Heseltine (born 21 March 1933; Conservative [Tories] Member of Parliament)
-Frederick Edward Robin Butler, Baron Butler of Brockwell (born 3 January 1938; Private Secretary)
-Eduard Ambrosis dze Shevardnadze (25 January 1928 – 7 July 2014; Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs)
-Colin Luther Powell (April 5, 1937 – October 18, 2021 ; General, U. S. Senior Military Assistant)
-George Pratt Shultz (December 13, 1920 – February 6, 2021; U. S. Secretary of State [1982-1989])
-Pavel Palazchenko (born 17 March 1949; Soviet Chief English Interpreter)
-Robert Carl "Bud" McFarlane (July 12, 1937 – May 12, 2022; U. S. National Security Advisor)
-Donald Thomas Regan (December 21, 1918 – June 10, 2003; U. S. Secretary of the Treasury [1981-1985]; White House Chief of Staff [1985 to 1987])
Anatoly Sergeevich Chernyaev (May 26, 1921 – March 12, 2017; Soviet Principal Foreign-policy Advisor)
-Georgy Khosroevich Shakhnazarov (October 4, 1924 – May 15, 2001; Soviet Aide)
-Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov (29 February 1924 – 23 November 2007; KGB First Chief Directorate)
-Alexander Nikolayevich Yakovlev (2 December 1923 – 18 October 2005; Soviet Union Communist Party Politburo and Secretariat Member)
-James Addison Baker III (born April 28, 1930; U. S. White House Chief of Staff [1981-1985, 1992-1993]; U. S. Secretary of the Treasury [1985-1988]; U. S. Secretary of State [1989-1992]
-Marshal Dmitry Timofeyevich Yazov (8 November 1924 – 25 February 2020; Soviet Defense Minister)
-Frank Charles Carlucci III (October 18, 1930 – June 3, 2018; U. S. Secretary of Defense)
-Marshal Sergey Fyodorovich Akhromeyev (May 5, 1923 – August 24, 1991; Soviet Chief of the General Staff)
- Felipe González Márquez (born 5 March 1942; Spanish Prime Minister)
-Raisa Maximovna Gorbacheva [née Titarenko ] (5 January 1932 – 20 September 1999; Mikhail’s wife)
-Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski (6 July 1923 – 25 May 2014; Polish President)
-Barbara Jaruzelski (23 January 1931 – 29 May 2017; First Lady of Poland)
-François Marie Adrien Maurice Mitterrand (6 October 1916 – 8 January 1996; French President)
-George Herbert Walker Bush (June 12, 1924 – November 30, 2018; U. S. President [1989-1993])
-Leonid Mitrofanovich Zamyatin (9 March 1922 – 19 June 2019; Soviet Ambassador to the United Kingdom)
-Robert Michael Gates (born September 25, 1943; U. S. CIA Director [1991-1993])
-Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov (15 June 1914 – 9 February 1984; General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union [1982-1984])
-Anatoly Fyodorovich Dobrynin (16 November 1919 – 6 April 2010; Soviet Ambassador to the United States [1962-1986]
-Jack Foust Matlock Jr. (born October 1, 1929; U. S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union)
SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
-Selection: I’d found this author’s book on Communism quite informative, so figured this one would be also. 😊
-About: Political conditions in the 1980’s of: the Soviet Union (Perestroika ("restructuring") and glasnost ("transparency")) the United States, and Great Britain and the power of a confluence of their leaders –the influence of their advisers upon them (and which advisers were favored), and their influences on one another, and on the people they represent. The book discusses the personalities, relations, strengths and weaknesses of British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher; General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev; and United States President, Ronald Reagan. It celebrates their courage in coming together, the faith that allowed them to trust one another, and their tenacity in bringing about the close of the cold war.
The author is a historian with an intricate knowledge of American and European citizens and leaders—their philosophies and policies—past and present, who aims to set records straight as to the effects of the “Human Factor” that shape the world.
-Liked: Learning more about the people, the actions, and the times. The impression this book creates that Mikhail Gorbachev was a diamond in a coal mine. The book highlights the wonder of the reduced enmity of the parties given the Communist mindset to adhere to traditional values, Reagan’s mindset to invest in Star Wars capabilities, and that of Margaret Thatcher, discouraging an East/West German union, lest (once again) Germany become a large and mighty threat.
Also of note, if I understood what I was listening to and didn’t mistakenly miss an attribution to someone else, there were occasions when the word, “I” was used that lead me to believe this author was present as an academician during a few meetings. It lends to my sense that this author is a good source of information and assessments.
-Disliked: Wondering if I was ever going to finish the book; realizing that I have to make time for more reading on this topic.
Overall: I feel better educated.
AUTHOR:
Archie Brown:
(From FiveBooks.com):
“Archie Brown is Emeritus Professor of Politics at Oxford University and Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1991 and has been an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2003. His latest book is The Human Factor: Gorbachev, Reagan, and Thatcher, and the End of the Cold War (Oxford University Press, 2020). Brown’s previous books include The Myth of the Strong Leader: Political Leadership in the Modern Age, chosen by Bill Gates as one of the best five books he read in 2016; The Rise and Fall of Communism which won the W.J.M. Mackenzie Prize of the Political Studies Association of the UK for best politics book of the year and also the Alec Nove Prize; and The Gorbachev Factor, an earlier winner of both the Mackenzie and Nove prizes..”
NARRATOR(S):
James Langton
(From Goodreads, who apparently got it from Dreamscape):
James Langton trained as an actor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. An AudioFile Earphones Award winner, he has performed many voice-overs and narrated numerous audiobooks, including the international bestseller The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud by Julia Navarro. He is also a professional musician who led the internationally renowned Pasadena Roof Orchestra from 1996 to 2002. James was born in York, England, and is now based in New York City.
(source: Dreamscape)
GENRE:
Nonfiction; Biography; Politics; History; Autobiography
SUBJECTS:
World Politics; Arms; Communism; Politicians; Leaders; Foreign Relations; History; Cold War; Eastern Bloc; Margaret Thatcher; Mikhail Gorbachev; Ronald Reagan; Personalities
DEDICATION: Not found.
EXCERPT:
From: "Thatcher’s ‘Most Fascinating and Most Important Foreign Visit’"
Margaret Thatcher spent five days in the USSR, arriving on Saturday 28 March to a welcoming ceremony in the Kremlin and ending on 1 April when she flew to Tbilisi in the morning, spent the day in Soviet Georgia, and left on a direct flight to London late that night. The prime minister’s visit was extensively covered by state television. Her biggest impact on Soviet citizens was in a lengthy and uncensored TV interview in which, it was generally agreed, she got much the better of her three Soviet interviewers. While she and Gorbachev argued fiercely at times, each came away with enhanced respect for the other. Thatcher’s arguments made Gorbachev better aware than he already was of how the Soviet Union was perceived in Britain and in Western Europe. He appreciated the extent to which the prime minister had so comprehensively informed herself about recent Soviet developments and policy pronouncements. Although ideologically Thatcher was close to Reagan and very different in her outlook from Gorbachev, they had some attributes in common. Each liked to talk at length (while being capable also of listening attentively and absorbing information). They combined an attachment to a number of firmly held principles with mastery of detail, and took pleasure from vigorous debate. In those various respects, Thatcher and Gorbachev were more akin to each other than either of them was to Reagan.*
The prime minister’s speech at a Kremlin banquet on 30 March was a mixture of the conciliatory and the outspoken. Arms control agreements, she said, depended less on the skill of negotiators than on how governments and peoples in East and West viewed each other, what they believed about the other’s intentions and their readiness to honour commitments, and on ‘how they judge each other’s long-term objectives in the wider world’. She said that the extent to which the Soviet government met the commitments it had ‘freely undertaken in the Helsinki Final Act’ would determine the confidence placed in them by other countries, as would their readiness to withdraw their armies from Afghanistan. She attempted to portray SDI in a less threatening light by emphasizing the commitment (made at Camp David) that ‘any deployment would be a matter for genuine negotiation’.42 In her Kremlin speech, Thatcher made her usual defence of nuclear weapons, saying that the knowledge of how to make them could not be erased and that conventional weapons ‘have never been enough to deter war’. She concluded with a flourish: ‘There is a famous passage in Shakespeare which speaks of a tide in the affairs of men which when taken at the flood leads on to fortune; perhaps Mr General Secretary, you have already caught that tide, you have certainly embarked upon a great endeavour and we most earnestly wish you and your people well. Your success would bring in other tides on other shores far beyond your own.’ 44
[Caption after a photo in the digital version:] Figure 8 Margaret Thatcher, who made a big impression during her 1987 visit to the Soviet Union, being greeted warmly in Soviet Georgia. Behind her and a Georgian official are (L to R) Charles Powell (private secretary to the prime minister), Anatoly Kovalev (Soviet First Deputy Foreign Minister), British Ambassador to the USSR Sir Bryan Cartledge, and interpreter Richard Pollock (behind Thatcher, face partly obscured).
Earlier that day Thatcher and Gorbachev had met for discussion which overran because each got so involved in the arguments, and the prime minister returned somewhat late to the British Embassy for a lunch at which she hosted Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner and other former dissidents whose rights to criticize were on the verge of being accorded official Soviet recognition. Thatcher urged them to continue to support Gorbachev when the going got tough, saying that ‘the costs of reforms would be apparent long before the benefits’.45 While still suspicious of Soviet foreign policy, she identified with Gorbachev as a ‘fellow reformer’. In the view of her foreign policy adviser Cradock, from the time of this Moscow visit onwards, Thatcher became ‘dangerously attached to Gorbachev in his domestic role’, so much so that ‘the Soviet leader, at least in his internal capacity, was becoming something of an icon’.46
This would not have been immediately obvious to Gorbachev when Thatcher engaged him in hammer-and-tongs argument during their morning meeting. They swapped horror stories of the crimes of the other side and argued about the dangers posed by their opponents’ weaponry. When Thatcher said that Western Europe was not a very large territory and that the Soviet intermediate and medium-range missiles posed a huge danger to it, Gorbachev responded that NATO had 1,100 planes and 300 rockets, to which Thatcher said that missiles and planes should not be compared, and that for Europe the issue of shorter-range battlefield missiles was also of great importance. Gorbachev replied: ‘But we are ready to resolve that question’, at which point Thatcher switched to the attack on chemical weapons before moving on to make a qualified defence of SDI. She emphasized the vulnerability of Europe in comparison with the United States which was an ocean away, bringing up the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Gorbachev, in retaliation, mentioned the Falkland Islands, Chad, and Nicaragua, and got a predictably dusty response on the Falklands. They were, said Thatcher, British lands with a British population. ‘They were occupied, and we threw out the occupiers.’47
For Anatoly Chernyaev, Gorbachev’s close adviser and his notetaker, this was the ‘most interesting’ of all the many meetings Gorbachev held with foreign politicians and public figures in the course of 1987.48 The two leaders argued about capitalism, socialism, Communism, and colonialism and at one point, said Chernyaev, ‘began going around in circles’. When Gorbachev accused the prime minister of being such an ardent supporter of nuclear weapons that she was prepared to accept the risk of war, she ‘became so excited’, said Chernyaev, ‘that the conversation got completely out of hand. They started to interrupt each other, repeat themselves, assure each other of their best intentions.’ Although their arguments were ‘particularly heated’, this ‘strangely enough’, added Chernyaev, ‘only strengthened their mutual sympathy’.49
RATING:
4 stars
STARTED READING – FINISHED READING
5/01/23 to 6/08/23
BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS:
-Print: Available – (Bib info from Amazon website: Hardcover) COPYRIGHT: 4/1/2020; ISBN-13: 978-0190614898; PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press; LENGTH: 512 pgs.
-Digital: (Bib info from Amazon website: Kindle) COPYRIGHT: March 13, 2020; PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press; FILE: 3092 KB; LENGTH: 512 pgs.
*Audio: (Info from Libby) COPYRIGHT: 4-May-2020; PUBLISHER: Books on Tape: Random House Audio; DURATION: approx. 21 hours; Unabridged (LAPL MP3)
Feature Film or tv: No.
SERIES: No.
CHARACTERS: (Not comprehensive)
-Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022; General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; [First and last] President of the Soviet Union)
-Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004; U. S. President [1981-1989])
-Nancy Reagan [née Anne Frances Robbins] (July 6, 1921 – March 6, 2016; U.S. First Lady)
-Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher [née Roberts] (13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013; Prime Minister of the United Kingdom)
-Richard Edward Geoffrey Howe, Baron Howe of Aberavon (20 December 1926 – 9 October 2015; Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom)
-Charles David Powell, Baron Powell of Bayswater (born 6 July 1941; Foreign Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister)Caspar Willard Weinberger (August 18, 1917 – March 28, 2006; U. S. Secretary of Defense)
-Alexander Meigs Haig Jr. (December 2, 1924 – February 20, 2010; U.S. Secretary of State [1982-1989])
-Michael Ray Dibdin Heseltine, Baron Heseltine (born 21 March 1933; Conservative [Tories] Member of Parliament)
-Frederick Edward Robin Butler, Baron Butler of Brockwell (born 3 January 1938; Private Secretary)
-Eduard Ambrosis dze Shevardnadze (25 January 1928 – 7 July 2014; Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs)
-Colin Luther Powell (April 5, 1937 – October 18, 2021 ; General, U. S. Senior Military Assistant)
-George Pratt Shultz (December 13, 1920 – February 6, 2021; U. S. Secretary of State [1982-1989])
-Pavel Palazchenko (born 17 March 1949; Soviet Chief English Interpreter)
-Robert Carl "Bud" McFarlane (July 12, 1937 – May 12, 2022; U. S. National Security Advisor)
-Donald Thomas Regan (December 21, 1918 – June 10, 2003; U. S. Secretary of the Treasury [1981-1985]; White House Chief of Staff [1985 to 1987])
Anatoly Sergeevich Chernyaev (May 26, 1921 – March 12, 2017; Soviet Principal Foreign-policy Advisor)
-Georgy Khosroevich Shakhnazarov (October 4, 1924 – May 15, 2001; Soviet Aide)
-Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov (29 February 1924 – 23 November 2007; KGB First Chief Directorate)
-Alexander Nikolayevich Yakovlev (2 December 1923 – 18 October 2005; Soviet Union Communist Party Politburo and Secretariat Member)
-James Addison Baker III (born April 28, 1930; U. S. White House Chief of Staff [1981-1985, 1992-1993]; U. S. Secretary of the Treasury [1985-1988]; U. S. Secretary of State [1989-1992]
-Marshal Dmitry Timofeyevich Yazov (8 November 1924 – 25 February 2020; Soviet Defense Minister)
-Frank Charles Carlucci III (October 18, 1930 – June 3, 2018; U. S. Secretary of Defense)
-Marshal Sergey Fyodorovich Akhromeyev (May 5, 1923 – August 24, 1991; Soviet Chief of the General Staff)
- Felipe González Márquez (born 5 March 1942; Spanish Prime Minister)
-Raisa Maximovna Gorbacheva [née Titarenko ] (5 January 1932 – 20 September 1999; Mikhail’s wife)
-Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski (6 July 1923 – 25 May 2014; Polish President)
-Barbara Jaruzelski (23 January 1931 – 29 May 2017; First Lady of Poland)
-François Marie Adrien Maurice Mitterrand (6 October 1916 – 8 January 1996; French President)
-George Herbert Walker Bush (June 12, 1924 – November 30, 2018; U. S. President [1989-1993])
-Leonid Mitrofanovich Zamyatin (9 March 1922 – 19 June 2019; Soviet Ambassador to the United Kingdom)
-Robert Michael Gates (born September 25, 1943; U. S. CIA Director [1991-1993])
-Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov (15 June 1914 – 9 February 1984; General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union [1982-1984])
-Anatoly Fyodorovich Dobrynin (16 November 1919 – 6 April 2010; Soviet Ambassador to the United States [1962-1986]
-Jack Foust Matlock Jr. (born October 1, 1929; U. S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union)
SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
-Selection: I’d found this author’s book on Communism quite informative, so figured this one would be also. 😊
-About: Political conditions in the 1980’s of: the Soviet Union (Perestroika ("restructuring") and glasnost ("transparency")) the United States, and Great Britain and the power of a confluence of their leaders –the influence of their advisers upon them (and which advisers were favored), and their influences on one another, and on the people they represent. The book discusses the personalities, relations, strengths and weaknesses of British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher; General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev; and United States President, Ronald Reagan. It celebrates their courage in coming together, the faith that allowed them to trust one another, and their tenacity in bringing about the close of the cold war.
The author is a historian with an intricate knowledge of American and European citizens and leaders—their philosophies and policies—past and present, who aims to set records straight as to the effects of the “Human Factor” that shape the world.
-Liked: Learning more about the people, the actions, and the times. The impression this book creates that Mikhail Gorbachev was a diamond in a coal mine. The book highlights the wonder of the reduced enmity of the parties given the Communist mindset to adhere to traditional values, Reagan’s mindset to invest in Star Wars capabilities, and that of Margaret Thatcher, discouraging an East/West German union, lest (once again) Germany become a large and mighty threat.
Also of note, if I understood what I was listening to and didn’t mistakenly miss an attribution to someone else, there were occasions when the word, “I” was used that lead me to believe this author was present as an academician during a few meetings. It lends to my sense that this author is a good source of information and assessments.
-Disliked: Wondering if I was ever going to finish the book; realizing that I have to make time for more reading on this topic.
Overall: I feel better educated.
AUTHOR:
Archie Brown:
(From FiveBooks.com):
“Archie Brown is Emeritus Professor of Politics at Oxford University and Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1991 and has been an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2003. His latest book is The Human Factor: Gorbachev, Reagan, and Thatcher, and the End of the Cold War (Oxford University Press, 2020). Brown’s previous books include The Myth of the Strong Leader: Political Leadership in the Modern Age, chosen by Bill Gates as one of the best five books he read in 2016; The Rise and Fall of Communism which won the W.J.M. Mackenzie Prize of the Political Studies Association of the UK for best politics book of the year and also the Alec Nove Prize; and The Gorbachev Factor, an earlier winner of both the Mackenzie and Nove prizes..”
NARRATOR(S):
James Langton
(From Goodreads, who apparently got it from Dreamscape):
James Langton trained as an actor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. An AudioFile Earphones Award winner, he has performed many voice-overs and narrated numerous audiobooks, including the international bestseller The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud by Julia Navarro. He is also a professional musician who led the internationally renowned Pasadena Roof Orchestra from 1996 to 2002. James was born in York, England, and is now based in New York City.
(source: Dreamscape)
GENRE:
Nonfiction; Biography; Politics; History; Autobiography
SUBJECTS:
World Politics; Arms; Communism; Politicians; Leaders; Foreign Relations; History; Cold War; Eastern Bloc; Margaret Thatcher; Mikhail Gorbachev; Ronald Reagan; Personalities
DEDICATION: Not found.
EXCERPT:
From: "Thatcher’s ‘Most Fascinating and Most Important Foreign Visit’"
Margaret Thatcher spent five days in the USSR, arriving on Saturday 28 March to a welcoming ceremony in the Kremlin and ending on 1 April when she flew to Tbilisi in the morning, spent the day in Soviet Georgia, and left on a direct flight to London late that night. The prime minister’s visit was extensively covered by state television. Her biggest impact on Soviet citizens was in a lengthy and uncensored TV interview in which, it was generally agreed, she got much the better of her three Soviet interviewers. While she and Gorbachev argued fiercely at times, each came away with enhanced respect for the other. Thatcher’s arguments made Gorbachev better aware than he already was of how the Soviet Union was perceived in Britain and in Western Europe. He appreciated the extent to which the prime minister had so comprehensively informed herself about recent Soviet developments and policy pronouncements. Although ideologically Thatcher was close to Reagan and very different in her outlook from Gorbachev, they had some attributes in common. Each liked to talk at length (while being capable also of listening attentively and absorbing information). They combined an attachment to a number of firmly held principles with mastery of detail, and took pleasure from vigorous debate. In those various respects, Thatcher and Gorbachev were more akin to each other than either of them was to Reagan.*
The prime minister’s speech at a Kremlin banquet on 30 March was a mixture of the conciliatory and the outspoken. Arms control agreements, she said, depended less on the skill of negotiators than on how governments and peoples in East and West viewed each other, what they believed about the other’s intentions and their readiness to honour commitments, and on ‘how they judge each other’s long-term objectives in the wider world’. She said that the extent to which the Soviet government met the commitments it had ‘freely undertaken in the Helsinki Final Act’ would determine the confidence placed in them by other countries, as would their readiness to withdraw their armies from Afghanistan. She attempted to portray SDI in a less threatening light by emphasizing the commitment (made at Camp David) that ‘any deployment would be a matter for genuine negotiation’.42 In her Kremlin speech, Thatcher made her usual defence of nuclear weapons, saying that the knowledge of how to make them could not be erased and that conventional weapons ‘have never been enough to deter war’. She concluded with a flourish: ‘There is a famous passage in Shakespeare which speaks of a tide in the affairs of men which when taken at the flood leads on to fortune; perhaps Mr General Secretary, you have already caught that tide, you have certainly embarked upon a great endeavour and we most earnestly wish you and your people well. Your success would bring in other tides on other shores far beyond your own.’ 44
[Caption after a photo in the digital version:] Figure 8 Margaret Thatcher, who made a big impression during her 1987 visit to the Soviet Union, being greeted warmly in Soviet Georgia. Behind her and a Georgian official are (L to R) Charles Powell (private secretary to the prime minister), Anatoly Kovalev (Soviet First Deputy Foreign Minister), British Ambassador to the USSR Sir Bryan Cartledge, and interpreter Richard Pollock (behind Thatcher, face partly obscured).
Earlier that day Thatcher and Gorbachev had met for discussion which overran because each got so involved in the arguments, and the prime minister returned somewhat late to the British Embassy for a lunch at which she hosted Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner and other former dissidents whose rights to criticize were on the verge of being accorded official Soviet recognition. Thatcher urged them to continue to support Gorbachev when the going got tough, saying that ‘the costs of reforms would be apparent long before the benefits’.45 While still suspicious of Soviet foreign policy, she identified with Gorbachev as a ‘fellow reformer’. In the view of her foreign policy adviser Cradock, from the time of this Moscow visit onwards, Thatcher became ‘dangerously attached to Gorbachev in his domestic role’, so much so that ‘the Soviet leader, at least in his internal capacity, was becoming something of an icon’.46
This would not have been immediately obvious to Gorbachev when Thatcher engaged him in hammer-and-tongs argument during their morning meeting. They swapped horror stories of the crimes of the other side and argued about the dangers posed by their opponents’ weaponry. When Thatcher said that Western Europe was not a very large territory and that the Soviet intermediate and medium-range missiles posed a huge danger to it, Gorbachev responded that NATO had 1,100 planes and 300 rockets, to which Thatcher said that missiles and planes should not be compared, and that for Europe the issue of shorter-range battlefield missiles was also of great importance. Gorbachev replied: ‘But we are ready to resolve that question’, at which point Thatcher switched to the attack on chemical weapons before moving on to make a qualified defence of SDI. She emphasized the vulnerability of Europe in comparison with the United States which was an ocean away, bringing up the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Gorbachev, in retaliation, mentioned the Falkland Islands, Chad, and Nicaragua, and got a predictably dusty response on the Falklands. They were, said Thatcher, British lands with a British population. ‘They were occupied, and we threw out the occupiers.’47
For Anatoly Chernyaev, Gorbachev’s close adviser and his notetaker, this was the ‘most interesting’ of all the many meetings Gorbachev held with foreign politicians and public figures in the course of 1987.48 The two leaders argued about capitalism, socialism, Communism, and colonialism and at one point, said Chernyaev, ‘began going around in circles’. When Gorbachev accused the prime minister of being such an ardent supporter of nuclear weapons that she was prepared to accept the risk of war, she ‘became so excited’, said Chernyaev, ‘that the conversation got completely out of hand. They started to interrupt each other, repeat themselves, assure each other of their best intentions.’ Although their arguments were ‘particularly heated’, this ‘strangely enough’, added Chernyaev, ‘only strengthened their mutual sympathy’.49
RATING:
4 stars
STARTED READING – FINISHED READING
5/01/23 to 6/08/23
September 6, 2020
This book is a balanced look at the relationship between Thatcher, Reagan and Gorbachev which did much to end the Cold War. Thatcher was immensely open to Soviet dialogue and pressed Reagan into it. Reagan ‘s openness to dialogue meant his having to fight hardline Republicans. Reagan looked up to her immensely , and many American statesmen were terrified of her; the warmth was reciprocated though Thatcher had scant regard for Reagan’s intellect.
Thatcher and Gorbachev also shared an awareness of environmental concerns that the Republicans did not. Reagan committed to a satellite defence system which terrified the Russians even though everyone except Reagan knew it was bogus. Thatcher opposed German reunification, against both her allies.
Gorbachev’s reforming vision in Russia gets full credit here- as does his later admission that in the heat of political battle he took his eyes off the issues inherent in transforming a command economy into a market one, and economic chaos ensued which gave his enemies their chance. Gorbachev would try to resolve the Iraq conflict peacefully to the chagrin of Bush. Later , fighting fir his own political survival against Clinton, Bush would downplay Gorbachev and claim to have won the cold war singlehanded. As Gorbachev hit rock bottom, Thatcher, to her credit stood by him while Bush refused to help Russia with a loan or food aid.
America post Reagan in the end could not see what Gorbachev had done - he believed in socialism it reworked it into social democracy - it wasn’t the renunciation Bush would recognise so they thought he’d done nothing. The coup that toppled him was terrifying , but for Russia the worst was to come.
Thatcher and Gorbachev also shared an awareness of environmental concerns that the Republicans did not. Reagan committed to a satellite defence system which terrified the Russians even though everyone except Reagan knew it was bogus. Thatcher opposed German reunification, against both her allies.
Gorbachev’s reforming vision in Russia gets full credit here- as does his later admission that in the heat of political battle he took his eyes off the issues inherent in transforming a command economy into a market one, and economic chaos ensued which gave his enemies their chance. Gorbachev would try to resolve the Iraq conflict peacefully to the chagrin of Bush. Later , fighting fir his own political survival against Clinton, Bush would downplay Gorbachev and claim to have won the cold war singlehanded. As Gorbachev hit rock bottom, Thatcher, to her credit stood by him while Bush refused to help Russia with a loan or food aid.
America post Reagan in the end could not see what Gorbachev had done - he believed in socialism it reworked it into social democracy - it wasn’t the renunciation Bush would recognise so they thought he’d done nothing. The coup that toppled him was terrifying , but for Russia the worst was to come.
October 13, 2021
A lot of blow-by-blow accounts, followed by good summaries and assessments. The conclusion to part two was my favorite part, which talks more about the three human figures and their roles. In short, Gorbachev was the key player of the end of the Cold War, and all subsequent claims by the US that we "won" or defeated the Soviets are insulting to them.
Read
September 2, 2022Could it be that, Yes, I would read, but does it concern any other unfortunate person who has not read this book, so no, this is not really a Review, but a place marker, I am now leasing a concern for what could be an implication to those not factored into, a place by not being deceived by what type of propaganda it is, and a reason not beyond. The time between 1989 and 1999.
November 13, 2023
Aangevat in pre-Oekraïne geeft dit boek een zéér verhelderende weergave van politiek, bedreven door grootmachten.
Het heeft wat langer geduurd om dit boek te lezen. Is de moeite waard om gelezen te worden.
Het heeft wat langer geduurd om dit boek te lezen. Is de moeite waard om gelezen te worden.
March 14, 2021
An enjoyable read that looks at the individuals' role in events that shaped our reality. (I need to read more on this to be able to corroborate points of view though.)
April 18, 2024
miskates were made and are still made. will see how history plays out current war.
October 7, 2025
I didn't find anything new or unique in this book that isn't in other accounts of end of the cold war and I found its tone to be rather odd.
January 1, 2022
Overall, I found The Human Factor to be an incredible read. The detail in this book is amazing. However, I found myself often getting bogged down in the details as some of the chapters were dense with material. There may be a tinge of bias within the writing of Archie Brown as he is the only author that I have seen include Margaret Thatcher in the discussion of the Cold War’s end. This tinge may be from his British roots. Moreover, even with the tinge of bias he remains objective in his treatment of all three leaders. I found that the focus on “The Human Factor” lent itself to a deeper delve into the discussion of the summits and diplomacy which was fascinating. I do not know if I fully agree with some of Brown’s conclusions that were reached in the monograph as he seems to imply that Gorbachev and his reforms were the driving force behind the Cold War’s end in conjunction with the human agency each leader had. My slight disagreement may be my bias as an Americanist. I am inclined in thinking that rather than it being one of the leaders who is largely responsible for the end of the Cold War all three of them worked in tandem to bring the Cold War to an end. Despite my slight disagreement with Brown’s premise there is no denying this work will be an indispensable volume in the historiographies of Cold War history and Diplomatic history.
August 23, 2024
A slightly tedious and tendentious book, arguing for the role of the human factor in the end of the Cold War - but which, by the end of the book, clearly means the role of Gorbachev (not Reagan or Thatcher). Brown is clearly an expert on the period, and well beyond my ability to critique. But overall the argument felt entirely one-sided, as if in trying to counteract one error of exaggeration he commits the opposite error.
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