Early 1980s U.S. president Ronald Reagan saw the USSR as an "evil empire." Reagan believed a buildup of the US military capabilities would be the way to deal with the USSR. The Soviets initially thought Reagan was intractable and out to subvert the Soviet system.

Mid and Late 1980s Mikkail Gorbechev came to power in the USSR. Gorbechev changed Soviet assumptions and sought new agreements with the US and Western European nations. He and Reagan held ground breaking summit talks and agreed, among other things, to eliminate many nuclear missiles. Gorbechev reduced Soviet forces in Eastern Europe and pulled Soviet troops out of the Afghanistan War. Communist governments began to fall in Eastern Europe. The wall that divided East and West Germany was removed and Germany was eventually reunited (1990). The ideological differences that had caused the Cold War began to disappear.

1991 The Soviet Union dissolved. Russia and other Soviet Republics were now independent nations.