Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet condoned kidnapping and murder of the leftist population under an American-backed regime. Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and United States President Ronald Reagan signing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987 (Picture: Alamy).In addition to the 15 member states of the USSR, there were seven Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe where populations were repressed and subjugated by communist rule. In late 1991 the Soviet Union finally collapsed and 15 new independent nations were born from its territory, Russia soon elected a leader democratically to office, and the Cold War was over. The rise of democratic governments in East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia were quickly followed by the reunification of Germany under NATO with Soviet approval. His efforts to change the system this way also came as communist regimes in the Eastern European bloc began to collapse. What followed was the last period of real tension between the two superpowers, expressing itself during the 1980s through a massive arms buildup and a competition for influence in the Third World.īut the rivalry began to break down in the later years of the decade as under Mikhail Gorbachev the Soviets began weakening the country's more totalitarian aspects. These agreements saw the two superpowers set limits on their anti-ballistic missiles and on their strategic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons. The 1970s saw another temporary bout of easing tensions as demonstrated by the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) that led to the SALT I and II agreements of 19.
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