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Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt meet to discuss the terms for the post war world. Stalin agrees to allow free elections in Eastern Europe.
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Allied countries argue over several topics. Seeds of distrust grow between the Soviets and the Americans.
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US gives money to support countries fighting communism. Loans 12.5 billion dollars to nations of Western Europe.
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The United States develops the first ever hydrogen bomb which is 1000 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The felt the need to develop a more powerful weapon after the Soviet Union gained nuclear weapons capability in 1949.
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Soviet Union leader Gorbachev introduces 'glasnost' or openness into the Soviet economy.
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The Cold War comes to an end as the Berlin Wall falls.
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The Soviet Union officially dissolves as a failed coup d'etat against Gorbachev by the old school Communists fails, and the Party leaders are arrested. The Soviet satellite states declare independence and the Russians become democratic.
