NHD Process Paper At the beginning of the school year, in a discussion with the school librarian, she suggested

that I read Tom Clancy, a thriller author who is astonishingly good at writing richlycomplex books about international issues. When it came time to select my NHD topic, I was reading Cardinal of the Kremlin, which is about the U.S. and the Soviet Union both building highly-advanced and secretive weapons systems at the same time; in this book, Tom Clancy discusses the political and economic conditions of the Soviet Union, including the newly-enacted national policy of perestroika. In one of those events in which you are shocked at how two completely different elements of your life suddenly align, I realized that perestroika was the perfect subject for my NHD project this year. It was a dramatic reform that changed the course of history. Thus I arrived upon Mikhail Gorbachevs policy of perestroika as my topic. I give all the credit to Tom Clancy. Though reading Tom Clancy gave excellent background information on the topic, I had to find more appropriate sources. Reading scholarly articles and books on the topic was the first step in fully understanding the depth of the topic. They helped place perestroika in context and presented the factual aspects of the issue. I also conducted interviews with individuals from the Soviet Union who lived during the time period, which offered the personal and emotional elements of perestroika. The most important resource, however, was Mikhail Gorbachevs speeches during his time as leader of the country. Given that he is the one who proposed perestroika, reading his speeches provided an especially interesting and definitely essential facet to my understanding of his policy. One of his most notable speeches was his address to the U.N. in December 1988, in which he discussed the political, social, and economic revolution in his

country he particularly talked about the new freedom of choice that his citizens had because of perestroika, and why this was a universal principle that should never be infringed. Given the bountiful graphics of the time that were available, I decided to do a website I was especially intrigued by its ability to weave images, text, video, and design together in an interface that offered a unique way of experiencing the topic. I organized the webpage by ordering it into three distinct sections: what lead to perestroika, the policy itself, and the impact it had on the future. From there I was able to organize the various aspects of perestroika in an appropriate fashion I selected a minimalist design as to give the most attention to the material and embedded visuals when they were relevant to the text. Perestroika was a spectacular restructuring of Soviet economic and political policy. It introduced democracy to the totalitarian communist state, revolutionizing the way citizens and the government were allowed to act. Its effect on the political infrastructure was dramatic, and it eventually led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. [500 words]