The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism

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IT MAY SEEM ODD TO TITLE A BOOK ON RONALD REAGAN AND the Cold War, The Crusader. Some might think the choice sensational, chosen to overdramatize what Reagan believed, or even sarcastic. Yet, the label reflects Reagan’s mindset and actions, and what the Soviets believed and said about him throughout the 1980s.

The title is instructive: In researching this book, I spent many days reading through Soviet media archives from the 1960s through the 1990s—articles from Pravda, Izvestia, and unmemorable publications. I vetted press releases from TASS, the official Soviet news agency, as well as transcripts of Moscow radio and TV broadcasts. I was surprised to encounter hundreds of examples of Soviet figures referring to Reagan’s intentions vis-à-vis the USSR as a “crusade,” dubbing him the “crusader,” and calling his team “crusaders.” It was not uncommon in Moscow in the 1980s to open the pages of Pravda or Literaturnaya Gazeta and be struck by headlines like “Twentieth Century ‘Crusaders’” or “The Washington Crusaders: The ‘Ideological War’ Declared by Reagan Against Communism and Socialism.”1

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