The End of the Cold War

Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) in an attempt to reform the Soviet Union.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 is widely regarded as the symbolic end of the Cold War.

Ronald Reagan was the U.S. president during the final years of the Cold War and played a key role in negotiations with the Soviet Union.

Détente was a policy aimed at reducing nuclear weapons and tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty was signed in 1987 between the U.S. and the Soviet Union to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

The Solidarity movement in Poland, led by Lech Wałęsa, played a significant role in the decline of communist rule in Eastern Europe.

The Warsaw Pact was the Soviet bloc's military alliance formed in response to NATO.

Harry S. Truman implemented the policy of containment to prevent the spread of communism.

The Truman Doctrine was a U.S. foreign policy strategy of providing economic and military aid to countries threatened by communism.

The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 brought the U.S. and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war.

Project Apollo was the U.S. space program that successfully put a man on the moon in 1969.

Leonid Brezhnev was known for his hardline stance during the Cold War and his crackdown on dissent.

Richard Nixon pursued a policy of détente with the Soviet Union in the 1970s.

The Velvet Revolution in 1989 marked the end of communist rule in Czechoslovakia.

Containment was the U.S. foreign policy strategy of providing military and economic aid to countries resisting communist expansion.