The end of the Cold War, including Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika, the New Thinking in foreign policy, the INF Treaty (December 1987), and the changing superpower relationship

A 15-mark "evaluate role" needs a judgement on agency.

Thesis

Gorbachev's role was decisive. The structural pressures (economic stagnation, the Reagan build-up, Afghanistan, the youth and intelligentsia's demands) created the opportunity; Gorbachev's choices turned the opportunity into a peaceful end to the Cold War.

Domestic reform

Gorbachev became General Secretary on 11 March 1985 after the deaths of Brezhnev (1982), Andropov (1984), and Chernenko (1985). Perestroika (restructuring) was launched at the April 1985 Plenum; uskorenie (acceleration) at the 27th Party Congress (February to March 1986); glasnost (openness) accelerated after Chernobyl (26 April 1986). The 19th Party Conference (June to July 1988) approved political reform with multi-candidate elections to a Congress of People's Deputies (March 1989).

New Thinking

Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze (replacing Gromyko, July 1985) and Politburo adviser Aleksandr Yakovlev articulated a foreign policy based on common European home and universal human values rather than class struggle. The withdrawal from Afghanistan (15 February 1989) and the acceptance of the East European revolutions (1989) implemented the doctrine.

The summits

Reagan and Gorbachev met at Geneva (November 1985), Reykjavik (October 1986), Washington (December 1987 with the INF Treaty), and Moscow (May to June 1988). The INF Treaty eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons (846 American and 1,846 Soviet).

Judgement

Gorbachev did not intend to end the Soviet system or the Cold War. He intended to reform both. His refusal to use force in 1989, the renunciation of the Brezhnev Doctrine, and the consent to German unification on Western terms ended the Cold War despite his intent.

A 3-mark "outline" wants the two policies defined and distinguished, with an example each.

Glasnost (openness)

Relaxation of censorship and freer public debate from 1986; example - the disclosures forced by Chernobyl (26 April 1986) and the publication of previously banned works such as Gulag Archipelago (1989).

Perestroika (restructuring)

Reform of the planned economy; example - the Law on Cooperatives (May 1988) legalising small private enterprise.

The key contrast

Glasnost was political and cultural and succeeded in opening debate; perestroika was economic and failed, producing shortages and a ballooning deficit.

Marking criteria

1 mark for defining glasnost with an example; 1 mark for defining perestroika with an example; 1 mark for a clear contrast (political openness vs economic restructuring).

A 4-mark "explain the significance" needs the treaty's content plus its wider effect.

What it did

Signed in Washington on 8 December 1987 by Reagan and Gorbachev, the INF Treaty eliminated all ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles of 500 to 5,500 km range: 846 American and 1,846 Soviet missiles.

Why it mattered

It was the first treaty to abolish an entire class of nuclear weapons (not merely cap growth, as SALT had), and its intrusive on-site verification built unprecedented trust.

The link to the end

It converted the near-miss of Reykjavik (October 1986) into a concrete breakthrough and signalled that the arms race - the central confrontation of the Cold War - was being wound down by agreement.

Marking criteria

1 mark for the date/content; 1 mark for "first to eliminate a class"; 1 mark for verification/trust; 1 mark for linking it to the easing of confrontation.

A 5-mark "explain ... using the source" wants the source decoded, then anchored in own knowledge.

Decode the source

The UN speech of 7 December 1988 announced deep unilateral conventional cuts and, in declaring "freedom of choice" universal, signalled that Moscow would no longer enforce socialism in Eastern Europe - the practical death of the Brezhnev Doctrine.

New Thinking (own knowledge)

Articulated by Gorbachev's 1987 book Perestroika and driven by Foreign Minister Shevardnadze and adviser Yakovlev, novoye myshlenie held that nuclear weapons made class war between systems suicidal and that security had to be mutual ("our common European home").

What it produced

The INF Treaty (December 1987), the Afghan withdrawal (completed 15 February 1989), and the refusal to intervene as Eastern Europe broke away in 1989 (the Sinatra Doctrine, October 1989).

Marking criteria

1 mark for reading the speech as abandoning the Brezhnev Doctrine; 1 to 2 marks for defining New Thinking with Shevardnadze/Yakovlev; 1 mark for naming concrete outcomes (INF, Afghanistan, 1989); 1 mark for the link to ending confrontation.

A 5-mark "assess the usefulness" rewards perspective plus own knowledge, ending in a judgement.

Perspective

Source B states the Kotkin position (Armageddon Averted, 2001): the collapse was uncoerced and Reagan was peripheral. It is useful for correcting the triumphalist "Reagan won the Cold War" narrative.

Corroboration

It fits much of the record: the USSR was undone by zastoi (stagnation), the 1986 oil-price collapse, and a budget deficit reaching 11 per cent of GDP - not by bankruptcy through the arms race; and Gorbachev's refusal to use force in 1989 was decisive.

Limitation

By stressing Gorbachev's choices it can understate the structural pressures (commodity dependence, ideological exhaustion) that constrained him, and the Reagan build-up that raised the cost of competition - factors Gaddis and Service weigh more heavily.

Judgement

Highly useful for puncturing the triumphalist myth and foregrounding agency, but it must be read alongside the structural account: Gorbachev chose, but stagnation framed the choice.

Marking criteria

1 mark for naming the uncoerced/Kotkin perspective; 1 to 2 marks for own-knowledge corroboration (stagnation, oil, deficit); 1 mark for a limitation; 1 mark for a judgement on usefulness.

This is an extended-response/essay. Markers reward a sustained, evidence-based argument that addresses the comparison directly and weaves in historiography - not a narrative.

Band-6 PLAN

• Thesis. Structural decline created the crisis, but Gorbachev's reforms and his refusal to use force converted a crisis into the peaceful end of the Cold War: agency was decisive within limits set by structure. The opportunity was inherited; the outcome was chosen.
• Argument 1 - Structural decline (the enabling condition). Zastoi cut growth below 2 per cent; oil and gas were 60 per cent of exports and the 1986 oil collapse (to about $10 a barrel) removed the cushion; military spending ran at 15 to 20 per cent of GDP; the Afghan war cost about 15,000 lives. The system was failing before Gorbachev. Evidence: the deficit reached 11 per cent of GDP by 1991.
• Argument 2 - Gorbachev's reforms (the active cause). Perestroika, glasnost and uskorenie (from 1985) and New Thinking abroad changed Soviet conduct: the INF Treaty (December 1987), the UN speech (December 1988), the Afghan withdrawal (February 1989). Crucially, glasnost destroyed the regime's legitimacy while perestroika failed to deliver, deepening the crisis even as it transformed foreign policy.
• Argument 3 - The decisive choice: not using force. The renunciation of the Brezhnev Doctrine (Sinatra Doctrine, October 1989) meant the 1989 revolutions met no tanks, unlike 1956 and 1968. This was a choice, not a structural inevitability - a hardliner could have intervened.
• Historiography. Archie Brown (The Gorbachev Factor, 1996) makes individual agency decisive. Stephen Kotkin (Armageddon Averted, 2001) treats the collapse as uncoerced but stresses structural hollowness over personality. John Lewis Gaddis (The Cold War, 2005) sees Gorbachev as decisive but constrained by Western pressure; Vladislav Zubok (A Failed Empire, 2007) emphasises long-run structural failure.
• Judgement. Weigh Brown's agency against Zubok's structure: decline made an end likely, but Gorbachev's reforms and above all his refusal to use force made it peaceful and made it now. Agency was decisive within structural limits.

MODEL PARAGRAPH (Argument 3)

The single most decisive factor was not the depth of Soviet decline but Gorbachev's choice not to defend the empire by force. When Eastern Europe rose in 1989, the Red Army had crushed comparable challenges in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968); the machinery and the precedent for intervention both existed. Instead, the UN speech of December 1988 had renounced the use of force, and in October 1989 spokesman Gennady Gerasimov dubbed the new line the "Sinatra Doctrine" - the satellites could do it "their way." When the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989, Soviet troops stayed in barracks. As Archie Brown argues in The Gorbachev Factor, this was the exercise of individual agency, not the playing-out of an impersonal structural script: a Romanov or a Ligachev might have chosen the tanks. Structural decline made some kind of reckoning likely; Gorbachev's restraint determined that the reckoning was peaceful and that it came in 1989 rather than in some later, bloodier crisis.

Marker's note. A band-6 response keeps "to what extent" in view throughout - ranking reforms and restraint against structural decline rather than narrating Gorbachev's career - anchors every claim in dated evidence, sets at least two historians in genuine tension (Brown's agency vs Zubok's structure), and reaches a graded judgement. Narrating the reforms without weighing agency against structure caps the response in the middle bands.

This is an extended-response/essay. Markers reward a sustained, evidence-based argument that addresses the proposition directly and weaves in historiography - not a narrative.

Band-6 PLAN

• Thesis. The proposition is largely sound but too neat: Gorbachev's foreign policy achieved its declared aims (ending the arms race and the confrontation) while his domestic programme failed economically and fatally undermined the regime - yet the two were linked, because the same opening that won applause abroad destroyed authority at home.
• Argument 1 - Foreign-policy success. The INF Treaty (December 1987) scrapped a whole class of weapons; the UN speech (December 1988) cut forces unilaterally; the Afghan withdrawal (February 1989) ended a losing war; Malta (December 1989) declared the Cold War over. By his own criteria - mutual security, an end to confrontation - this succeeded.
• Argument 2 - Domestic failure. Perestroika produced half-marketisation without market discipline: inflation, shortages and queues, with the deficit reaching 11 per cent of GDP by 1991. The anti-alcohol campaign (1985) lost about 67 billion roubles in revenue. Uskorenie failed to revive growth.
• Argument 3 - The link and the qualification. Glasnost "succeeded" as openness but in doing so delegitimised the regime - the Chernobyl cover-up exposed, Sakharov recalled (December 1986), nationalist mobilisation unleashed (Nagorno-Karabakh 1988, Tbilisi 1989). So the "success/failure" split understates how foreign triumph and domestic collapse were the same process: a system that could no longer compel obedience.
• Historiography. Archie Brown (1996) credits Gorbachev's reforming agency; Vladislav Zubok (A Failed Empire, 2007) stresses that structural rot doomed the domestic project; Robert Service (Gorbachev, 2009) presents a reformer overtaken by forces he had released; Stephen Kotkin (2001) sees the collapse as uncoerced.
• Judgement. The view holds: triumph abroad, failure at home - but the sharper truth is that the domestic failure and the foreign success shared one cause, the deliberate loosening of coercion that Gorbachev could start but not control.

MODEL PARAGRAPH (Argument 2)

At home, Gorbachev's economic reforms failed on their own terms. Perestroika dismantled elements of central planning without building a functioning market: the Law on State Enterprises (1987) granted managers autonomy but not the discipline of competition, so factories raised wages and prices without raising output. The result was inflation, empty shelves and lengthening queues, while the budget deficit climbed towards 11 per cent of GDP by 1991. Even the well-meant anti-alcohol campaign of 1985 backfired, stripping roughly 67 billion roubles of tax revenue from the state it was meant to strengthen. As Vladislav Zubok argues in A Failed Empire, the economic project was undermined less by sabotage than by the structural impossibility of half-reforming a command economy; Robert Service portrays a leader steadily overtaken by the consequences of his own openness. By any economic measure, perestroika left the Soviet Union weaker than it found it.

Marker's note. A band-6 response tests the proposition rather than accepting it - granting the foreign-policy success and domestic failure but complicating the neat split by showing the shared cause - anchors each claim in dated, quantified evidence, and sets historians in tension (Brown's agency vs Zubok's structure). Simply describing the policies without evaluating "succeeded/failed" caps the response in the middle bands.