ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the state of Soviet-American relations beginning from March 1985 to the end of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. It shows that a slow but steady improvement in superpower relations in 1985 and 1986 which gathered pace in 1987 and 1988, and was marked by substantial progress, the high point coming with the signing of the intermediate range nuclear forces treaty at Washington Summit. On March 11 1985 a meeting of the Communist party of the Soviet Union Central Committee appointed Mikhail Gorbachev as its new General Secretary following the death of Konstantin Chernenko. Despite the initial positive exchanges between Gorbachev and Reagan, Soviet-American relations under the new Soviet leader got off to a rather shaky start. From December 8-10 1987 Reagan and Gorbachev held their third summit meeting, this time in Washington. The Soviet leader made a brief statement in which he said that the purpose of his visit was to sign a treaty eliminating intermediate and short-range missiles.
