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U.S. boycott of 1980 Summer Olympics
The U.S. boycott oif the Olympics was instigated by Jimmy Carter and had failed. The boycott was in response to the recent Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, however the White House knew that a failure to get other nations to similarly boycott could embarrass the U.S. and render its move to sit out the games ineffective. -
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) (“Star Wars”)
This program was initiated under President Ronald Reagan. The purpose of this program was to develop a sophisticated anti-ballistic missile system in order to prevent missile attacks from other countries, specifically from the Soviet Union. -
"Caribbean Basin Initiative"
This is also known as CBI. This was launched in 1983 and expanded in 2000. It 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
He was elected General Secretary in 1985. During that time period of 1985 to 1989 he implemented several economic reforms that he had hoped would improve the stagnating state economy and its working productivity. One of the first major reform under Gorbachev was Alcohol reform whichwas planned to fight the alcoholism in the Soviet Union. -
Iran-Contra Affair
The Iran-Contra Affarir was a clandestine action that was not approved of by the United States Congress. This affaor came from Reagan Administration’s foreign policies toward two seemingly unrelated countries, Nicaragua and Iran. -
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) ratified
The INF Treaty was a major milestone in arms control. The INF required the destruction of both of the nations’ ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with their ranges between 300 and 3,400 miles. -
Berlin Wall collapses
The Berlin wall stood until when the head of the East German Communist Party announced that citizens of the GDR could cross the border whenever they pleased. That night, crowds swarmed around the wall. Some brought hammers and picks and began to chip away at the wall itself while others freely etered Berlin -
1st McDonalds opens in Moscow
McDonald's was granted permisison by Congress to start trade in the Soviet Union, so then the first one in Moscow was officially opened.McDonald's served more than 30,000 people on its opening day. -
Germany is reunified
45 years after East and West Germany had split apart, it is reunified! Less than a year after the destruction of the Berlin Wall East and West Germany umited on "Unity Day". -
Warsaw Pact is dissolved
On this date, foreign and defense ministers of the countries of the Warsaw Treaty Organization met to shut down the pact. The pact had shut down because it was serving as a prop for the unpopular Communist regimes of Eastern Europe, and enjoying little to no popular support in the countries, also, the treaties became increasingly obsolete once non-Communists came to power -
Boris Yelstin elected President of Russia
Yeltsin eventually came to believe in both democratic and free market reforms, and played an instrumental role in the collapse of the Soviet Union even though he was a Communist much of his life. He won 2 presidential elections, the first of which occurred while Russia was still a Soviet republic. -
end of the Soviet Union
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. The Soviet Union had fallen, majorly due to the large number of reforms the president Mikhail Gorbachev had implemented during his six years as the leader of the USSR.
