A Cold War Movie That Gives Too Much Credit to Ronald Reagan

Americans do not know enough about the Cold War, and much of what they think they know is wrong. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Republicans took a victory lap, rightly noting that the Soviet collapse was unimaginable when President Ronald Reagan first took office. Liberal critics, however, argued—also rightly—that the Soviet Union was a decaying, economically crippled giant by the time Reagan was inaugurated. In the years since, explanations of the ending of that great conflict…