Reagan's Unfinished Agenda: Democracy Still Has a Way to Go in Russia

McFaul
Michael A. McFaul - President Ronald Reagan helped to accelerate the collapse of Soviet communism and thereby end the Cold War. But his greatest contribution to the end of communism was not increased American military spending or his Strategic Defense Initiative. Rather, it was Reagan's steadfast commitment to promoting ideas about freedom and democracy that contributed most importantly to the anti-communist revolutions first in Eastern Europe in 1989 and then in the Soviet Union in 1991.