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YALTA CONFERENCE 1945
FEB 4-11 : WW2 meeting between government of US, UK, and SOVIET UNION. Represented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Premier Joseph Stalin, respectively, for the purpose of discussing Europe's post-war reorganization. The conference convened in the Livadia Palace near Yalta in Crimea
MAY: World War II ends in Europe.
AUG: U.S. drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.
Potsdam Conference - Truman - Stalin and British divide up Europe -
SEIZE POLAND 1947
JAN : Communists seize power in Poland.
MARCH: Truman Doctrine announced.
With the Truman Doctrine, President Harry S. Truman established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. -
NATO IS ESTABLISHED
APRIL: North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) established.
NATO is a security alliance of 28 countries from North America and Europe
AUG: Soviet Union explodes its first atomic bomb.
OCT: Communists win Chinese Civil War. -
IRANIAN GOVERNMENT IS OVERTHROWN
AUG: U.S. sponsored coup overthrows Iranian government. -
SEATO IS ESTABLISHED
SEPT : Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) formed.
The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was an international organization for collective defense in Southeast Asia created by the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, or Manila Pact, signed in September 1954 in Manila, Philippines. -
GUATEMALAN GOVERNMENT IS OVERTHROWN
JUNE: U.S. sponsored coup overthrows Guatemalan government. -
WARSAW PACT FORMED
MAY: Warsaw Pact formed.
The Warsaw Pact (formally, the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation, and Mutual Assistance, sometimes, informally WarPac, akin in format to NATO) was a collective defense treaty among eight communist states of Central and Eastern Europe in existence during the Cold War. -
SOVIETS LAUNCH SATELLITE SPUTNIK 1
OCT: Soviets launch first man‑made satellite.
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was a 58 cm diameter polished metal sphere, with four external radio antennas to broadcast radio pulses. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957 -
FIDEL CASTRO INSTILLS COMMUNIST GOVERNMENT
FEB : Fidel Castro becomes premier of Cuba, installs Communist government.
Castro established the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere after leading an overthrow of the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959 -
BERLIN WALL
AUG: East Germany builds Berlin Wall.
West Berlin was a geographical loophole through which thousands of East Germans fled to the democratic West. In response, the Communist East German authorities built a wall that totally encircled West Berlin. It was thrown up overnight, on 13 August 1961. -
CUBAN MISSLE CRISIS
OCT: Cuban Missile Crisis.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores. -
CHINA EXPLODES ATOMIC BOMB
OCT: China explodes its first atomic bomb.
The People’s Republic of China joins the rank of nations with atomic bomb capability, after a successful nuclear test on this day in 1964. China is the fifth member of this exclusive club, joining the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France. -
CHILEAN GOVERNMENT IS OVERTHROWN
SEPT: U.S. supported coup overthrows Chilean government.
Chilean coup d'état was a watershed event in both the Cold War and the history of Chile. Following an extended period of social and political unrest between the conservative-dominated Congress of Chile and the socialist President Salvador Allende, as well as economic warfare ordered by U.S. President Richard Nixon,Allende was overthrown by the armed forces and national police -
COMMUNISM IN ANGOLA
FEB: Soviet and Cuban forces help install Communist government in Angola.
The People's Republic of Angola was a self-declared socialist state that was established in 1975 after it was granted independence from Portugal, akin to the situation in Mozambique -
LEADER OF SOVIET UNION
MAR: Mikhail Gorbachev becomes leader of the Soviet Union, the following year he declares glasnost and perestroika.
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 -
DECLARING NON-COMMUNIST GOV
SEPT: Solidarity forms the first post-war non-Communist government in Poland
OCT: Hungary declares a non-Communist government.
In December, 1988, Gorbachev announced in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly that by 1991 he intended to pull Soviet tanks and troops out of East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. For Hungarians this was encouraging news, and the Hungarians demonstrated for the freedom to create a political party, or parties, independent of Hungary's Communist Party. -
BERLIN WALL IS DESTROYED
NOV: East Germany allows unrestricted migration to West Germany.
DEC: Berlin Wall is demolished
East Germany's Communist rulers gave permission for gates along the Wall to be opened as a result of days of mass protest. -
SOVIET UNION IS ABOLISHED
DEC: The Soviet Union is abolished. Boris Yeltsin becomes President of Russia.
USSR began to crumble as liberal reforms proved difficult to handle and capitalist changes to the centralized economy were badly transitioned and caused major problems. After a series of revolutions in Soviet Bloc states, and a failed coup by conservative elements opposed to the ongoing reforms, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991
