ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on concepts discussed in this book. The Cold War ultimately ended with a whimper and not a bang as so many had feared for so long. By the late 1970s, Americans, with the exception of a handful of conservative politicians and a few hawkish public intellectuals, had largely come to the realization that the Soviet Union and the US would not go to war and that America was in no danger of becoming a totalitarian Soviet client-state. The easing of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States began in the early 1970s with a period of detente marked by the signing of arms limitation treaties and a series of cultural exchanges. Belorussian teenage gymnast Olga Korbut, the youngest member of the Soviet women's gymnastics team that won gold at the 1972 Munich Olympics, was depicted as decidedly different from her older, adult teammates.
