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Mikhail Gorbachev becomes General Secretary of the CommunistParty of the Soviet Union
He was born March 2, 1931, Privolye, Stavropol kray, Russia, U.S.S.R.), Soviet official, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1985 to 1991 and president of the Soviet Union in 1990–91. -
U.S. boycott of 1980 Summer Olympics
In 1980, the United States led a boycott of the Summer Olympic Games in Moscow to protest the late 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In total, 65 nations refused to participate in the games, whereas 80 countries sent athletes to compete. -
“Caribbean Basin Initiative”
The Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI), first proposed in 1982, is a broad United States foreign policy program designed to promote economic development and political stability. The CBI consists of trade, economic assistance, and investment incentive measures to generate economic growth in the region through increased private sector activity. -
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) (“Star Wars”)
The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also known as Star Wars, was a program first initiated on March 23, 1983 under President Ronald Reagan. The intent of this program was to develop a sophisticated anti-ballistic missile system in order to prevent missile attacks from other countries, specifically the Soviet Union. -
Iran-Contra Affair
Battling the Cuban-backed Sandinistas, the Contras were, according to Reagan, "the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers." Under the so-called Reagan Doctrine, the CIA trained and assisted this and other anti-Communist insurgencies worldwide. -
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) ratified
The Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Elimination of Their Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles, commonly referred to as the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) Treaty, requires destruction of the Parties' ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of between 500 and 5,500 kilometers, their launchers and associated support structures and support equipment within three years after the Treaty enters into force -
Berlin Wall collapses
The Berlin Wall stood until November 9, 1989, when the head of the East German Communist Party announced that citizens of the GDR could cross the border whenever they pleased. That night, ecstatic crowds swarmed the wall. -
1st McDonalds opens in Moscow
The appearance of this notorious symbol of capitalism and the enthusiastic reception it received from the Russian people were signs that times were changing in the Soviet Union. At dawn on 31 January 1990 more than 5 thousand people came to be the first at its opening. -
Germany is reunified
The German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic (GDR/East Germany) joined the Federal Republic of Germany(FRG/West Germany) to form the reunited nation of Germany, and when Berlin reunited into a single city, as provided by its then. -
Warsaw Pact is dissolved
The Soviet Union and seven of its European satellites sign a treaty establishing the Warsaw Pact, a mutual defense organization that put the Soviets in command of the armed forces of the member states.The action was yet another sign that the Soviet Union was losing control over its former allies and that the Cold War was falling apart. -
Boris Yelstin elected President of Russia
Boris Yeltsin (1931-2007) served as the president of Russia from 1991 until 1999. Though a Communist Party member for much of his life, he eventually came to believe in both democratic and free market reforms, and played an instrumental role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. -
End of the Soviet Union
In December of 1991, as the world watched in amazement, the Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen separate countries. Its collapse was hailed by the west as a victory for freedom, a triumph of democracy over totalitarianism, and evidence of the superiority of capitalism over socialism.
