"Ronald Reagan was widely eulogized for having won the cold war, liberated Eastern Europe and pulled the plug on the Soviet Union. Margaret Thatcher, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, Charles Krauthammer and other notables offered variations of The Economist’s cover headline: ‘The Man Who Beat Communism.’ Actually, Jack F. Matlock Jr. writes in Reagan and Gorbachev, it was ‘not so simple.’ . . . . In both the title of his memoir and the story it tells, he gives co-star billing to Mikhail Gorbachev.

Reagan himself went even farther. Asked at a press conference in Moscow in 1988, his last year in office, about the role he played in the great drama of the late 20th century, he described himself essentially as a supporting actor. ‘Mr. Gorbachev,’ he said, ‘deserves most of the credit, as the leader of this country.’”

Excerpt from Strobe Talbott’s 2004 review of Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended by Jack F. Matlock Jr., the senior coordinator of policy toward the Soviet Union under President Reagan

a) Identify ONE specific example of how historians might argue that the end of the Cold War was attributable to Reagan’s policies and US pressure.
b) Identify ONE specific example of how historians might argue that the end of the Cold War was attributable to Gorbachev’s leadership.
c) Identify ONE reason (other than partisanship), based on the events of the last decade of the Cold War, that historians might still debate the respective influences of Reagan and Gorbachev on the end of the Cold War.