The Cold War Ends

The Cold War, a time of suspicion, spies and super-missiles, began to look less dangerous in the 1970s. The United States and the Soviet Union found they could agree on some things, such as cutting their arms bills, and signed agreements. The pressure on the Soviet leader was intense; his communist empire was cracking apart.

In 1972, the US and USSR signed the first SALT (missile disarmament) agreement. By 1980, the Russians had become involved in a long and costly war in Afghanistan, and their economy was in a bad way. In 1985, a new leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, set about introducing political and economic reforms. He also sought friendship with the West. The US president was Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980 on an anti-Communist stand. He was ready to spend billions of dollars on a defensive missile shield in space. But in 1987, Reagan and his British ally, Margaret Thatcher, signed an important agreement with the USSR to ban medium-range nuclear missiles.

Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union led to demands for free elections in Eastern Europe. By the end of 1989, Communism had collapsed in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania. In 1990, East and West Germany were reunited and free elections were held in Bulgaria. In August 1991, an attempted coup in the Soviet Union led to the downfall of Gorbachev’s government. Boris Yeltsin took over as Russian president until 1999, when he was succeeded by Vladimir Putin. The soviet Union broke up as more former Soviet states became independent from Russia. In some cases, such as Chechnya, claims for independence were violently opposed by the Russian government who sent in the army to put down any rebellion. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cold War came to an end. There was just one superpower left in the world, the United States of America.