THE END OF COLD WAR

Gorbachev(Perestroika)

The Berlin Wall

Who Was Mikhail Gorbachev?

The last General Secretary of the Soviet UnionMassive economic, social, and political changes

End to the Cold War.

1985 power in the Soviet Union Unexpected revolution

glasnost + perestroika USSR

Glasnost : greater willingness western ideas and goods into the USSR.

Perestroika : initiative limited market incentives to Soviet citizens.

-dissolution of communist power in Eastern Europe +

-collapse of the Soviet Union.

Soviet Bloc in Poland June 1989

-noncommunist government Expecting Soviet tanks to roll into Poland, to prevent them from

taking the power

The berlin wall Tearing down the Berlin Wall with pickaxes

Eastern European communist dictatorships fell one by one. November 9, 1989 visits in West Germany and West Berlin will be

permitted. People begin tearing down the wall which is opened.

Gorbachev pivotal role in the fall of the Berlin Wall

Demands for freedom

-Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania(…) declared independence

-Intended to maintain the territorial integrity of the Soviet Union

1991 giving greater autonomy to the Soviet republics,

COUP Gorbachev under house arrest.

Boris Yeltsin ( leader of the Russian Soviet Republic)demanded the arrest of the hardliners.

The army and the public sided with Yeltsin, and the coup failed.

Gorbachev was freed, he was left with little legitimacy.

December 1991 Ukraine, Byelorussia, Russia declared independence Soviet Union dissovled

Gorbachev was a president without a country.

Americans were pleasantly shocked

Republicans claim credit for winning the Cold War.

Reagan-Bush years economic collapse of the Soviets

Others pointed out that no one really won the Cold War.

USA trillions of dollars arming themselves thousands of American lives lost in Korea

and Vietnam

Since 1945 Americans were born into a Cold War culture

(McCarthyism witch-hunts, backyard bomb shelters, a space race, a missile crisis, détente, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Star Wars defense proposal)

THE WORLD REMAINED UNSAFE

Americans hoping new world order of the 1990s would be marked with the security and prosperity to

which they had become accustomed.

What marked the end of the cold war?

-The destruction of the berlin wall-The liquidation of the Soviet Union