ABSTRACT
Since the late 1990s, literature on the role of non-governmental organizations in East-West interactions has provided complex pictures of how the West infl uenced the revolutionary movements that transformed the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe at the end of the Cold War. Robert English has explored the transnational fl ow of ideas from West to East that shaped Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and his advisors’ worldviews, to lay the foundation for Soviet “New Thinking” – the revolutionary doctrine that paved the way for perestroika, glastnost, and a new strategic doctrine that allowed greater independence for East European Communists.1 Matthew Evangelista’s work has shed light on how transnational activists and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) impacted Soviet thinking on nuclear and conventional war, ultimately shaping Soviet decisions to disarm unilaterally as well as through negotiations with the United States.2 Most recently, Sarah B. Snyder has illustrated how a transnational network of NGOs and activists, inspired by the Helsinki Final Act, successfully persuaded the Soviet Union to embrace human rights norms, ending an essential point of competition and confrontation between the superpowers.3 Each of these books tells a story, not of one superpower triumphing over another, but of the nuanced ways that independent organizations infl uenced the dynamics between East and West, shaping the United States relationship with the Communist world over the long term.
