1. Collapse of Communism:

1960 - 1970: steady economic growth in USSR ( the Sayan power plant, trans - Siberia highway, beginning of economic expansion in Siberia)

1970 -1980: USSR engaged in expensive operations of supporting marxist governments abroad (Angola, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Nicaragua) and the expansion of the Soviet navy
- under Leonid Brezhnev, USSR spent 25 % of its GNP on the military (intermediate nuclear forces, aircraft, electronics)

1979: KGB commandos and Soviet paratroops descended on Kabul and Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan => international reaction and US embargo on grain sales to USSR

1986: Ronald Regan started a huge program to rebuild the US armed forces (antiballistic missile shield project, new generation of air fighters, deployment of medium range nuclear missiles in Europe)
- replacement of containment with the "Regan doctrine" (support for anti - communist insurgencies)

- CIA furnished Afghan rebels with arms and supported the contras in Nicaragua

1983: US marines and paratroops occupied Grenada and deposed the Marxist - Leninist regime on the island

1980: Polish workers in Gdansk went on strike => Polish intellectuals and the Catholic church supported strikers => the rise of an independent national trade union (Solidarnosc = Solidarity) => Moscow supported general Wojciech Jaruzelski to seize power => 1981: Solidarity outlawed

1980: USSR confronted with major domestic problems
- economic stagnation (due to inefficient central planning)
- intense chemical pollution and radiation
- high levels of alcohol consumption
- decline in life expectancy
- growing Muslim population in central Asia => anti - Russian nationalist unrest

1985: Mikhail Gorbachev elected secretary general of the Communist Party
- adoption of a large scale economic reform - Perestroika => destruction of central planning, loosening of party and KGB control over the press, broadcasting and access to western media (Glasnost)

1986: fire in a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl => wide spread contamination in eastern Europe => ecological catastrophe
-massive anti - communist demonstrations in Moscow (1990)
-USSR agreed to limit its nuclear and conventional forces and withdrew from Afghanistan, Cuba, Angola, Vietnam, and Ethiopia

1989: non - communist won elections in Hungary and Poland; communist regime collapsed in Eastern Germany => opening of the Berlin wall
- communist regime in Romania collapsed in bloodshed
- anti - communist demonstrations in Lithuania, crushed by Soviet troops

1991: failed coup against Gorbachev => Communist Party banned => collapse of the Soviet Union and formation of independent republics (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, etc.)

December 1991: Gorbachev resigned as president of USSR => the end of the Cold War