Stephanie Lynn Freeman

The 1980s was a unique decade during which the radical goal of nuclear abolition enjoyed staunch support from both grassroots movements across the globe and the leaders of the two superpowers, US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. This project assesses nuclear abolitionists’ influence on the trajectory of the Cold War's last decade. By examining both grassroots and government nuclear abolitionists’ visions of the end of the Cold War, as well as their influence on US and Soviet arms control and European policies, this project reveals the unappreciated yet important role that nuclear abolitionists played in the Cold War’s endgame. Drawing on multinational and multilingual archival materials, this project reshapes the explanation of why the Cold War ended.