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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

Account for the factors that brought about the end of the Cold War.

  • UPSC 2008
  • Disintegration of the Soviet Union and the Rise of the Unipolar World

The Cold War, the defining bipolar contest of the twentieth century, wound down between 1985 and 1991 through a combination of Soviet structural weakness and a sustained diplomatic thaw that neither side had thought possible a decade earlier.

You are reading the opening of the model answer. The full answer is part of the History Optional PYQ Master Pack.

What the full answer covers

  • The Backdrop: Renewed Confrontation, 1979–85
  • Gorbachev's "New Political Thinking"
  • The Summit Sequence and Personal Diplomacy
  • Arms Control as the Engine of De-escalation
  • The Helsinki Process and Human Rights Diplomacy
  • Eastern Europe's Peaceful Departure from the Bloc
  • …and 2 more sections, with a conclusion

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