Certain times demand that you put pencil to paper and start taking notes. Otherwise, no one would know — and few might believe — what was really happening. Periods of dramatic political disruption.

U.S. President Bill Clinton sincerely wanted to bring Russia into the NATO fold. European countries, though, were strictly opposed, particularly Germany. Previously classified documents from the 1990s ...

The above photo, made in October 1996, is one of a handful held in the U.S. National Archives capturing the brief thaw in relations between Moscow and Washington that began as the U.S.S.R. neared ...