Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:


Insight into their own failures and economic exhaustion played a part.

And other than a economic system that can't work what do you think caused
that economic exhaustion?



This documentary is quite a good summary of the cold war era:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/078062386X/

A CNN production, a rather mainstream non-European source.
Unfortunately VHS and rather expensive.

Regards



If you want to read a good history of the Cold War try "We Now Know:
Rethinking Cold War History" by John Lewis Gaddis. He is a Yale professor
that was originally very much in the "two sides of the story" camp. After
getting access to Kremlin documents after the fall of the USSR he pretty
much, "Oh crap it was all Stalins fault."