Washington D.C. November 22, 2005 - Twenty years ago this week the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union concluded their Geneva Summit, which became the first step on the road to transforming the entire system of international relations. Unlike the summits of the 1970s, it did not produce any major treaties, and was not seen as a breakthrough at the time, but as President Ronald Reagan himself stated at its conclusion, "The real report card will not come in for months or even years." The movement toward the summit became possible as a result of change in the leadership in the Soviet Union. On March 11, 1985, the Politburo of the USSR Communist Party Central Committee elected Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev as its new General Secretary. This event symbolized the beginning of the internal transformation of the Soviet Union.
Today, twenty years after those seminal events, the National Security Archive is posting a series of newly declassified Soviet and U.S. documents which allow one to appreciate the depth and the speed of change occurring both inside the Soviet Union and in U.S.-Soviet relations in the pivotal year of 1985. Most documents below are being published for the first time.
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