A new leader
The passing of the previous
soviet leader and his successor led to Mikhail Gorbachev was elected for
general secretary in 1985. Once elected, he introduced Perestroika and glasnost
to the citizens of the Soviet Union. He wanted to show them that freedom would
be better than having a restrictive government. Comments were made about
Gorbachev, acknowledging his uniqueness from previous leaders. But Reagan
however was still doubtful of him.
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Perestroika: the policy of reconstruction of the economy in the Soviet Union.
- Glasnost: policy of he Soviet government to allow open discussion of economic and politic realities. |
teamworkThe following year Reagan and Gorbachev held another summits in Reykjavik, Iceland on October 11, 1986. This time Gorbachev proposed banning all ballistic missiles but was rejected by Reagan when it meant interfering with his creation of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI or "Star Wars"). |
the collapse
Throughout the
rest of the decade, the Eastern bloc began to collapse. After getting a
little taste of freedom from Gorbachev, they wanted more. The Iron Curtain was
unraveling and the Berlin Wall fell. Areas of the former Soviet Union
began to break off into their own independent countries. With the collapse
of the USSR the feeling of nuclear war subsided, thus ending the Cold War.
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