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Summit in Geneva, Switzerland
The Geneva Summit of 1955 was a Cold War-era meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. It was held on July 18, 1955 and was a meeting of "The Big Four": President Dwight D. Eisenhower of the United States, Prime Minister Anthony Eden of Britain, Premier Nikolai A. Bulganin of the Soviet Union, and Prime Minister Edgar Faure of France. he purpose was to bring together world leaders to begin discussions on peace. -
Richard Nixon & Policy of Détente
Détente (a French word meaning release from tension) is the name given to a period of improved relations between the United States and the Soviet Union that began tentatively in 1971 and took decisive form when President Richard M. Nixon visited the secretary-general of the Soviet Communist party, Leonid I. Brezhnev, in Moscow, May 1972. -
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
At the end of December 1979, the Soviet Union sent thousands of troops into Afghanistan and immediately assumed complete military and political control of Kabul and large portions of the country. This event began a brutal, decade-long attempt by Moscow to subdue the Afghan civil war and maintain a friendly and socialist government on its border. -
Solidarity Movement in Poland (Lech Walesa)
Solidarity, a Polish non-governmental trade union, begins on 14 August 1980, at the Lenin Shipyards (now Gdańsk Shipyards) at its founding by Lech Wałęsa and others. In the early 1980s, it became the first independent labor union in a Soviet-bloc country. Solidarity gave rise to a broad, non-violent, anti-communist social movement that, at its height, claimed some 9.4 million members.
Quote:
"The fall of the Berlin Wall makes for some nice pictures. But it all started in the shipyards"
-Walesa -
Ronald Reagan addresses the National Associtation of Evangelicals
On March 8, 1983, President Reagan delivered an address to a meeting of the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida. It referred to communism as "the focus of evil in the modern world," and quickly became known as his "Evil Empire Speech."
Quote:
The American experiment in democracy rests on this insight. Its discovery was the great triumph of our Founding Fathers, voiced by William Penn when he said: “If we will not be governed by God, we must be governed by tyrants.”
-Reagan -
Strategic Defense Initiative
The Strategic Defense Initiative, 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.
Quote:
"I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace"
-Reagan -
Gorbachev, Perestroika, Glasnost
To reform the distraught Soviet Union, the democratization of the Communist Party was promoted through Party Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev‘s policies of “perestroika” and “glasnost.” -
Reykjavik Summit, Iceland
The Reykjavík Summit was a summit meeting between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, held in Höfði in Reykjavík, the capital city of Iceland, on October 11–12, 1986. The talks collapsed at the last minute, but the progress that had been achieved eventually resulted in the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union. -
Reagan Speech at Brandenberg Gate, West Berlin
US President Ronald Reagan, commemorating the 750th anniversary of Berlin, addressd the people of West Berlin at the base of the Brandenburg Gate, near the Berlin wall. "Tear down this wall!'" was the famous command from Reagan to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to destroy the Berlin Wall. Quote:
"While we pursue these arms reductions, I pledge to you that we will maintain the capacity to deter Soviet aggression at any level at which it might occur."
-Reagan -
Reagan and Gorbachev sign INF Treaty
The INF Treaty eliminated all nuclear-armed ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (about 300 to 3400 miles) and their infrastructure. The INF Treaty was signed by President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev at a Washington Summit on December 8, 1987. -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
The world was taken by surprise when, during the night of November 9, 1989, crowds of Germans began dismantling the Berlin Wall—a barrier that for almost 30 years had symbolized the Cold War division of Europe. By October 1990, Germany was reunified, triggering the swift collapse of the other East European regimes. -
Fall of Soviet Union
On Christmas Day 1991, the Soviet flag flew over the Kremlin in Moscow for the last time. The once-mighty Soviet Union fell, largely due to the great number of radical reforms that Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev had implemented during his six years as the leader of the USSR.
