connect the dot

Event

End of the Cold War

The winding down of the US–Soviet rivalry, from the revolutions of 1989 to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

8 links, 5 backed by primary records

Play the story Explore connections

Dates
1989–1991
Over time
  1. Span 1989–1991
  2. part of Cold War 1989–1991
How each side tells it

According to Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

  • caused by Strategic Defense Initiative DisputedPavel Podvig (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 30 April 2013) argues from Soviet archival documents that SDI did not push the Soviet Union toward economic collapse; Serhii Plokhy calls the key American role in the Soviet demise a myth.

According to Mikhail Gorbachev

According to United States government

According to Fidel Castro

Side by side, with proof ›

The Cold War wound down between the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Who and what ended it is contested: the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library credits the Strategic Defense Initiative, while other accounts point to Soviet reform, Soviet economics or the republics’ own choices.

According to the United States government, the United States won it.

Connections 8

part of

includes

caused by

benefited

harmed

  • Soviet Union According to Fidel Castro Scholarship & press 7

    Castro names the socialist camp alongside the USSR. Interview recorded for CNN's Cold War series in March 1998, translated from Spanish.

Timeline 2 dates
  1. 1989–1991 End of the Cold War
  2. 1989–1991 End of the Cold War part of Cold War
Proof 7 sources
  1. U.S.-Soviet Relations, 1981-1991 (Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations), U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. Primary record
    During these years the specter of a nuclear war between the superpowers receded as the Cold War ended swiftly, nearly entirely peacefully, and on U.S. terms.
  2. Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, 1989 (Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations), U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. Primary record
    But just as the Wall had come to represent the division of Europe, its fall came to represent the end of the Cold War.
  3. Star Wars and SDI: Defending America and the Galaxy (exhibit), Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Primary record
    With SDI, President Reagan was able to unleash America’s entrepreneurial spirit. The project ultimately helped end the Cold War.
  4. Mikhail Gorbachev – Nobel Lecture, The Nobel Foundation (NobelPrize.org), 5 Jun 1991. Primary record Archived copy
    After all, mankind has already benefited greatly in recent years, and this has created a certain positive momentum. The Cold War is over. The risk of a global nuclear war has practically disappeared.
  5. ‘Meeting Gorbachev’ Review: Sitting Down With the Last Soviet Leader, The New York Times, 2 May 2019. Scholarship & press Archived copy
    “Americans thought they’d won the Cold War, and this went to their heads,” he says. “What victory? It was our joint victory. We all won.”
  6. Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union, January 28, 1992, The American Presidency Project, UC Santa Barbara, 28 Jan 1992. Primary record
    But the biggest thing that has happened in the world in my life, in our lives, is this: By the grace of God, America won the cold war.
  7. CNN Cold War - Interviews: Fidel Castro (Episode 24), CNN, 1999. Scholarship & press Archived copy
    At the end of the Cold War, one superpower ceased to exist, and only one superpower remained, which had absolute hegemony. The bipolar world was transformed into a unipolar world, leaving the United States with enormous power.
    And I don't know whether anyone can doubt that the socialist camp and the USSR lost the Cold War.
Page history 1 change
  1. connect-the-dot: sourced knowledge graph engine, site and contentAlibeka7fa236

Edit this page: content/entities/event/en/end-of-the-cold-war.md