"The Passing of an Era"

"And yet he also came across as a man of genuinely good will, in a way that didn’t feel like an act—just as it didn't feel like an act when he told New Times editor Yevgenia Albats in 2016 that his creed was, 'No blood,' or that he was ultimately 'a man of freedom': 'Freedom of choice, freedom of religion, freedom of speech; freedom, freedom—let them shoot me but I’m not going to renounce that.' Or when he wrote a warm letter to Bonner on her 85th birthday, expressing the hope that their shared ideals—'a democratic Russia, the rule of law, a more just world'—would someday be realized."

Cathy Young at The Bulwark marks the death of Mikhail Gorbachev.

And in a 2019 Foreign Policy article, Paul Musgrave tells the story of Gorbachev's Pizza Hut commercial.

Tear Down This Myth

"To many American conservatives, the answer to those questions is simple: Reagan stared down the Soviet Union. And the Berlin Wall speech stands as the dramatic symbol of Reagan's challenge and triumph.
"But those who say this ignore the actual history and context of the speech."

James Mann in the Los Angeles Times revisits the subject of Ronald Reagan and the end of the Cold War.