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U.S Boycott of summer Olympics
The 1980 Summer Olympics boycott of the Moscow Olympics was one part of a number of actions initiated by the United States to protest the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. -
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) (“Star Wars”)
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. -
“Caribbean Basin Initiative
The CBI came into effect on January 1, 1984, and aimed to provide several tariff and trade benefits to many Central American and Caribbean countries. -
Mikhail Gorbachev becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
from 1985 to 1991 and president of the Soviet Union in 1990–91. His efforts to democratize his country’s political system and decentralize its economy led to the downfall of communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. In part because he ended the Soviet Union’s postwar domination of eastern Europe, Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1990. -
Iran-Contra Affair
The Iran–Contra affair also referred to as Irangate, Contragate or the Iran–Contra scandal, was a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan Administration -
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) ratified
is a 1987 agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union. Signed in Washington, D.C. by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev on 8 December 1987, it was ratified by the United States Senate on 27 May 1988 and came into force on 1 June of that year. The treaty is formally titled 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. -
Berlin Wall collapses
On August 13, 1961, the Communist government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) began to build a barbed wire and concrete “Antifascistischer Schutzwall,” or “antifascist bulwark,” between East and West Berlin.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. -
1st McDonalds opens in Moscow
The Soviet Union’s first McDonald’s fast food restaurant opens in Moscow. Throngs of people line up to pay the equivalent of several days’ wages for Big Macs, shakes, and french fries. -
Germany is reunified
The German reunification German Deutsche Wiedervereinigung 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 -
Warsaw Pact is dissolved
After 36 years in existence, the Warsaw Pact—the military alliance between the Soviet Union and its eastern European satellites—comes to an end. 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 Yelsin 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
The dissolution of the Soviet Union (Russian: СССР) also signaled the end of the Cold War. The Revolutions of 1989 and the end of the Soviet Union
