Theme 7: Personal Leadership Mattered

Stalin, Mao, Truman, Kennedy, Khrushchev, Nixon, Brezhnev, Reagan, Gorbachev. Cold War history is unusually full of individual leaders whose decisions changed history. Gorbachev in particular shows that one leader's choices can end an apparently entrenched system. Maria should be able to evaluate when leaders mattered and when broader forces drove events.