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1980 U.S. Boycott the summer olympics
The US boycotted the Moscow Olympics to protest the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. So did several other countries. In retaliation, the USSR and some of their allies boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics, which were held in Los Angeles. -
Strategic Defense Initiative
U.S. weapons research program begun in 1983 to explore technologies, including ground- and space-based lasers, for destroying attacking missiles and warheads. -
Caribbean Basin Initiative
It 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. -
Mikhail Gorbachev becomes General Secretary of the Communist party
When Mikhail S. Gorbachev (1931-) became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1985, he launched his nation on a dramatic new course. His dual program of “perestroika” (“restructuring”) and “glasnost” (“openness”) introduced profound changes in economic practice, internal affairs and international relations. Within five years, Gorbachev’s revolutionary program swept communist governments throughout Eastern Europe from power and brought an end to the Cold War (1945 -
Iran-Contra Affair
During the Reagan administration, senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, the subject of an arms embargo. Some U.S. officials also hoped that the arms sales would secure the release of several hostages and allow U.S. intelligence agencies to fund the Nicaraguan Contras. -
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) ratified
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987 (INF) was the first Nuclear Weapons agreement requiring the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) to reduce, rather than merely limit, their arsenals of nuclear weapons. Signed by President ronald reagan, of the United States, and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, of the U.S.S.R., on December 8, 1987, the INF Treaty eliminated all land-based nuclear missiles with ranges of between 300 and 3,400 miles. -
Berlin Wall Collapses
. At the end of World War II, the victorious Allies divided Berlin, the German capital, into four sectors. The eastern, or Russian, sector became the capital of communist East Germany. The French, British, and American sectors continued as a prosperous Western “island” city surrounded by East Germany. From then until 1961, many East Germans, sometimes two thousand a day, fled to West Berlin, often with nothing more than the clothes they had on their backs. -
First Mcdonalds opens in Moscow
For the average Russian customer, however, visiting the restaurant was less a political statement than an opportunity to enjoy a small pleasure in a country still reeling from disastrous economic problems and internal political turmoil. -
Germany is reunified
On 3rd October 1990, East and West Germany are reunited, ending 45 years of Cold War division. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Germany was divided between the four major Allied powers; the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain and France. -
Boris Yelsin elected President of Russia
President of the Russian republic who criticized the slow pace of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. In 1991, he successfully led the opposition to an attempted coup by communist hard-liners and became the most powerful person in the former Soviet Union. As president, Yeltsin led the Russian republic in its difficult and often chaotic struggle to move away from centralized economic planning, but he was plagued by poor health, conservative opposition, and a lagging economy. -
Warsaw Pact Dissolved
The Soviet Union - at the time the world's leading communist power and one of two superpowers (the other being the U.S.A.) - was evolving from a communist state to a more "westernized" capitalist economy. Because of the negotiations between Mikhail Gorbachev - the last Soviet leader - and President Ronald Reagan, the president of the U.S.A. in the 80's, the Soviet Union dismembered its communist statehood. The Warsaw Pact, an alliance between Eastern European socialist republics, dissolve -
End of the Soviet Union
Mikhail Gorbachev signed papers that dissolved the USSR and people were trying to get out because they were tired of not getting basic needs, and a few more factors made the Soviet Union fall
