This chapter describes the immediate aftermath of the Vietnamese invasion. Apart from the ongoing war in Cambodia, the immediate, violent response to the Vietnamese invasion was the February 1979 Sino-Vietnamese war.

The scholarly debate on the causes of the end of the Cold War has placed significant emphasis on the role of communist economic stagnation in bringing about the collapse of communism. This chapter brings a new material factor – communist sovereign debt – to the forefront, and in so doing, it offers a redefinition of the materialist explanation for the end of the Cold War. The global financial history of the end of the Cold War has four important implications. First, it makes the timing of the end of the Cold War far less contingent upon Gorbachev’s rise than previously thought. Second, it allows us to refine the causal connection between Soviet relative decline and the peaceful nature of the end of the Cold War. Third, global financial history transforms our understanding of Western leverage over the events that comprise the end of the Cold War. And fourth, the history of sovereign debt in the Eastern Bloc de-exceptionalizes the revolutions of 1989 in world history and places them within the context of broader global currents that continue to this day.

The epilogue provides an overview of the end of the Cold War. It discusses the Reagan–Gorbachev relationship, their efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons at a remarkable summit in Reykjavik (1986), and the INF Treaty of 1987. The chapter analyzes the reasons for the end of the Cold War and the change in Soviet policy. I argue that although SDI was an important part in Soviet thinking, the key changes effected from 1989 were primarily the result of factors originating in the USSR and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. These were factors largely (but not entirely) independent of the policies pursued by US administrations. They include Gorbachev’s own evolving predilections (reinforced by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster); Soviet high politics; long-term structural problems besetting the Soviet economy; the role of non-state actors; and the courageous efforts of citizens and peace groups across Eastern Europe. The epilogue concludes by highlighting the foreign policy turns of Carter and Reagan, and their significance for the Cold War. I argue that only by examining the full landscape – international and domestic – can we truly understand how US foreign policy is crafted.

Chapter 9 covers 1985, beginning with the election of Mikhail Gorbachev as Soviet leader. It discusses the Soviet “new thinking,” Gorbachev’s desire to implement reform, and his decision to remove Gromyko as foreign minister. For the newly re-elected US president, Gorbachev’s arrival was perfectly timed. Riding a wave of popularity and political strength, Reagan stood by the policy of engagement and moderation. He rejected the advice of hard-liners who persisted in opposing realistic negotiation. Despite his early misgivings, Reagan realized that Gorbachev was a “somewhat different breed” of Soviet leader. The Geneva summit of November 1985 – the first meeting of a US and Soviet leader in six and a half years – marked the end of the Second Cold War. Although no agreement on arms control emerged, the meeting set a new tone for US–Soviet relations. It provided a base for trust between two men with different backgrounds and philosophies. Reagan and Gorbachev viewed the summit as a personal breakthrough. There were many issues to resolve, and Gorbachev’s policies would evolve gradually. But the events of 1985 did much to allay the tension and mutual suspicion between the two nations.

Zhao Ziyang and Li Peng clashed on how to handle the student protests, with Zhao arguing for a more open press and for democratic and legal solutions. Students declared a hunger strike shortly before Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's visit to Beijing. Millions of Beijing residents hit the streets to support the hunger strikers. Deng Xiaoping decided to impose martial law. When Zhao Ziyang refused to implement martial law, Deng decided to replace Zhao as general secretary with Shanghai Party secretary Jiang Zemin.

By the last decade of the GDR, jazz had become a cherished national art form, a process of legitimization thatexplores in detail even as it chronicles the collapse of the East German state as a whole. In the 1980s, prominent GDR jazz musicians toured both the Eastern and Western blocs, turning free jazz that was “made in the GDR” into a desirable export from a progressive socialist country. Socialist leaders sought to showcase that prestige: in 1985 the GDR held its first “national” jazz festival in Weimar, a city that symbolized German humanist and democratic heritage. Despite the popularity of jazz as a “national” art form by this time, including the formation of the first national jazz orchestra, larger political currents would catalyze the collapse of the GDR within a few short years. To conclude this account, this chapter details the fall of the Berlin Wall through the eyes of key members of the jazz scene interviewed for this book. A brief epilogue explores the last chapter in the history of East German jazz, examining the months after the fall of the wall and the dismantling of the social and political apparatus that had nurtured jazz for so many years.