Kecskés D., Gusztáv (ed.): A View from Brussels Secret NATO Reports about the East European Transition, 1988–1991

Részlet az Előszóból: "The relationship between the western alliance system led by the US and the East European socialist bloc dominated by the Soviet Union fundamentally changed in 1988–1991. With the weakening of Moscow and the subsequent, sudden collapse of its empire, the political, cultural, military, and ideological confrontation called the Cold War was replaced within months by a new type of cooperation between the two parts of Europe previously divided by the Iron Curtain. The eight reports from the NATO Archives, formerly classified confidential, that are published in English for the first time in the present volume present the events of these stirring four years from the perspective of western experts meeting together in Brussels: how they perceived and interpreted the events in this transforming region. The term Eastern Europe applied in the title is a political one, and refers to the allies of the Soviet Union, the USSR itself, and Yugoslavia and Albania. In this way we invoke the original term commonly used in these documents (Eastern Europe, in French: Europe orientale) without taking sides in the terminological debate about the proper name for the region."