[inaudible conversations] my name is Mark Harrison and its my pleasure to introduce Robert Service to you. Robert is going to tell us about his new book, the end of the cold war. The book will be published by Public Affairs and by great britain. He is among the worlds historians and rush and author of viagra please of lenin and trotsky. He discovered america in the year 2004. Ever since then he has been delving in the records held by the Hoover Institution. All of their research that Robert Service has done is done in the archives. He took part in the annual Hoover Institution totalitarian regimes directed by hoover fellow gregory. The scholarly audience presentations on the keynote events of the workshop program. Robert service will now address us on the end of the cold war. [applause] thank you very much mark for that very generous introduction. What i want to talk about today is the subject of my new book, which is about a war that never became a war. Its about the cold war rather t