The End of the Cold War

A condensed, point-by-point summary of the module, for reviewing right before a test or exam.

1. The USSR under Brezhnev and the rise of Gorbachev. Two decades of Brezhnev-era stagnation gave way to Gorbachev's election as Soviet leader in March 1985.
2. Perestroika and Glasnost: Gorbachev's twin reforms. Gorbachev paired economic restructuring (Perestroika) with political openness (Glasnost) starting in 1986.
3. The Chernobyl disaster (1986) and its political fallout. The April 1986 Chernobyl disaster exposed Soviet secrecy and accelerated Gorbachev's turn to Glasnost.
4. Reagan, Gorbachev, and the end of the arms race. Superpower summits from 1985 to 1988 produced the INF Treaty and wound down the arms race.
5. Solidarity, Hungary, and the opening cracks in the Eastern Bloc. Poland's Solidarity movement and Hungary's 1989 border opening cracked open the Eastern Bloc.
6. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the revolutions of 1989. A bureaucratic error opened the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, unleashing Eastern Europe's revolutions.
7. German reunification and the Baltic independence movement. Germany reunified in October 1990 as the Baltic republics pressed for independence from the USSR.
8. The August 1991 coup and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. A failed hardline coup in August 1991 triggered the Soviet Union's collapse by December of that year.