Former President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Moscow, Russia, on Sept. 16, 1990. (Wojtek Laski/Getty Images) With strength came support.

On a November day in 1985, the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev tried to sum up his first summit with then-President Ronald Reagan in Geneva. Both men had been cautious during the talks to tamp ...

The Reagan defense buildup checkmated the Soviet Union’s military buildup of the 1970s. His emphasis on creating strong alliances, especially with the British Prime Minister and the Pope. helped ...

Gorbachev was selected as Soviet leader to revive a moribund communist system that was under intense economic, military, and political pressure from the Reagan administration and some of its key ...

Mikhail Gorbachev stepped onto a Washington street and began shaking hands to cheers and applause in 1990 — a bit of unaccustomed political showmanship worthy of his friend Ronald Reagan.

President Ronald Reagan, left, and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev talk during a meeting outside the villa Fleur d'Eau at Versoix, near Geneva, Switzerland, Nov. 19, 1985. Bob Daugherty/AP hide ...

When word came last week that Mikhail Gorbachev, the first and last President of the Soviet Union, had died, it was front-page news in the West and a matter of studied indifference in official Moscow.