End of the Cold War 1989 1991
Warm UP: Write a paragraph describing how the competition between the Soviet and U.S. hockey teams at the 1980 Olympic Games in Lake Placid New York were an extension of the greater Cold War between these two superpowers. Miracle on Ice (1:35)
End of the Cold War Throughout the 1980s, the Soviet Union fought an increasingly frustrating war in Afghanistan. At the same time, the Soviet economy faced the continuously escalating costs of the arms race. Dissent at home grew while the stagnant economy faltered under the combined burden. Attempted reforms at home left the Soviet Union unwilling to rebuff challenges to its control in Eastern Europe. National Museum of American History
During 1989 and 1990, the Berlin Wall came down, borders opened, and free elections ousted Communist regimes everywhere in eastern Europe. In late 1991 the Soviet Union itself dissolved into its component republics. With stunning speed, the Iron Curtain was lifted and the Cold War came to an end. National Museum of American History
1989: The Year That Changed the World Even in retrospect it is hard to grasp how much and how quickly the world changed in 1989. In a mere twelve months, the face of Cold War Europe changed forever.
The USSR withdrew its last soldier from Afghanistan. Gorbachev demanded that the retreat be orderly and dignified he didn't want television images reminiscent of the chaotic 1975 US pullout from Vietnam. "We must not appear before the world in our underwear or even without any," he told the Politburo inner circle. "A defeatist position is not possible." The withdrawal was intended as a sign of conciliation toward the West and reassurance to the East Europeans, but it encouraged the national minorities to challenge Soviet power.
The communist party lost its monopoly of power. In the USSR, multi candidate elections were held for the first time. In Poland, Solidarity emerged from underground to win a stunning electoral victory over the communists and form the first coalition government in Eastern Europe since 1948. In Hungary, the communists agreed to multi party elections, which occurred the next year.
Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe. The USSR renounced the "Brezhnev doctrine" and condemned the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. As one historian noted, in Poland communism took ten years, in Hungary ten months, in East Germany ten weeks, and in Czechoslovakia ten days to disappear.
Nationalism trumped communism. Nationalism was in fact the gravedigger of the Soviet system. As the center disintegrated and Gorbachev opened up the political process with glasnost (openness), the old communist "barons" in the republics saw the handwriting on the wall and became nationalists; they "first of all attacked the USSR government... and subsequently destroyed the USSR."
The Soviets pondered the fate of their revolution. A protest banner summed up the Soviet experiment: "72 Years on a Road to Nowhere." The system's failure was evident. Then perestroika (restructuring) turned into katastroika, a neologism that was heard more and more on Moscow streets as Gorbachev's reform program faltered and then failed.
The Berlin Wall, the paramount symbol of the Cold War and the division of Europe, fell. German unification a year later accelerated the Soviet political and military withdrawal from Europe. When it was over, Russia's borders had been pushed back to those of 1653, undoing more than 300 years of Tsarist and Soviet advance toward the West.
Gorbachev introduced glasnost (openness) to create popular support for his reforms. By doing so, however, he opened a Pandora's box of revelations about the Gulag, the Great Terror, genocidal famines, mass deportations, and killing fields that had turned the USSR into one large charnel house in Stalin's time. By allowing the truth to emerge, it destroyed the foundation of lies on which the communist system was built.
1980 US Hockey Team Story (7:02 14:28) 1980 US Hockey Team Story (10:55) "greatest sporting event and upset of all time"