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Mikhail Gorbachev becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Mikhail Gorbachev was the first president of the Soviet Union, serving from 1990 to 1991. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for contributing to the break-up of the USSR. -
U.S. boycott of 1980 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.[1] The Soviet Union and other countries would later support the 1984 Summer Olympics boycott -
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) ratified
The U.S. approach to the negotiations, developed through extensive consultations within NATO, required that any agreement must: (1) provide for equality both in limits and rights between the United States and the Soviet Union; (2) be strictly bilateral and thus exclude British and French systems; (3) limit systems on a global basis; (4) not adversely affect NATOs conventional defense capability; and (5) be effectively verifiable. Agreement to begin formal talks was reached on September 23, 1981 -
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) (“Star Wars”)
The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was proposed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983,[1] to use ground-based and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons (Intercontinental ballistic missiles and Submarine-launched ballistic missiles). -
“Caribbean Basin Initiative”
The Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) was a unilateral and temporary United States program initiated by the 1983 Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act (CBERA). 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 -
Iran-Contra Affair
In 1985 while Iran and Iraq were at war, Iran made a secret to buy weapons from the United States. McFarlane thought Reagan's approval,even though he wasnt against selling arms to Iran. McFarlane explained that the sale of arms would not only improve U.S. relations with Iran, but might in turn lead to improved relations with Lebanon, increasing U.S. influence in the troubled Middle East. -
Berlin Wall collapses
On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. -
1st McDonalds opens in Moscow
The Soviet Union’s first McDonald’s fast food restaurant opens in Moscow. A lot of people had lined up to pay the equivalent of several days’ wages for Big Macs, shakes, and french fries. -
Germany is reunified
The German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany to form the reunited nation of Germany. -
Boris Yeltsin elected President of Russia
Boris Yeltsin 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. Yeltsin won two presidential elections, the first of which occurred while Russia was still a Soviet republic. -
End of the Soviet Union
The Soviet state, marked throughout its brief but tumultuous history by great achievement and terrible suffering, died today after a long and painful decline. The Soviet State had finally come to an end. -
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 Warsaw Pact, so named because the treaty was signed in Warsaw, included the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria as members.
