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Bolshevik Revolution
A revolution in Russia in 1917–1918, also called the October Revolution, that overthrew the czar and brought the Bolsheviks, a Communist party led by Lenin, to power. The revolution was encouraged by Russian setbacks in World War I. -
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Stalin in Power
Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) was the dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was transformed from a peasant society into an industrial and military superpower. However, he ruled by terror, and millions of his own citizens died during his brutal reign. -
Death of Lenin
Lenin died. -
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Tehran Conference
The Tehran Conference was a strategy meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill from 28 November to 1 December 1943, after the Anglo-Soviet Invasion of Iran. It was held in the Soviet Union's embassy in Tehran, Iran. -
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US policy of Containment
Containment was a United States policy using numerous strategies to prevent the spread of communism abroad. A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to enlarge its communist sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, and Vietnam. -
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Yalta Conference
The February 1945 Yalta Conference was the second wartime meeting of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. During the conference, the three leaders agreed to demand Germany's unconditional surrender and began plans for a post-war world. -
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Potsdam Conference
The Potsdam Conference, 1945. The Big Three—Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (replaced on July 26 by Prime Minister Clement Attlee), and U.S. President Harry Truman—met in Potsdam, Germany, from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to negotiate terms for the end of World War II. -
End of WW2
The exact date of the war's end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan, which was on 2 September 1945 that officially ended the war in Asia. -
Churchills' Iron Curtain Speech
Winston Churchill had been the Prime Minister of Great Britain during World War II. It was Churchill who coined the term Iron Curtain in a 1946 speech he delivered in Missouri. It refers to the fact that Eastern Europe was more or less controlled by the Soviet Union. -
Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy whose stated purpose was to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. It was announced to Congress by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947, and further developed on July 12, 1948, when he pledged to contain threats to Greece and Turkey. -
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Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $12 billion (nearly $100 billion in 2016 US dollars) in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. -
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Berlin Blockade
The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. -
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 29 North American and European countries. The organization implements the North Atlantic Treaty. -
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Korean War
The Korean War began when the North Korean Communist army crossed the 38th Parallel and invaded non-Communist South Korea. As Kim Il-sung's North Korean army, armed with Soviet tanks, quickly overran South Korea, the United States came to South Korea's aid. -
Death of Stalin
Stalin died. -
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SEATO
The Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation was an international organisation for collective defence in Southeast Asia created by the Southeast Asia Collective Defence Treaty, or Manila Pact, signed in September 1954 in Manila, Philippines. -
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Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact, formally known as the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defence treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland among the Soviet Union and seven Soviet satellite states of Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955, during the Cold War. -
Geneva Summit
The Geneva Summit of 1955 was a Cold War-era meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. Held on July 18, 1955, it was a meeting of "The Big Four": President Dwight D. Eisenhower of the United States, Prime Minister Anthony Eden of Britain, Premier Nikolai A. Bulganin of the Soviet Union, and Prime Minister Edgar Faure of France. -
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Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a long, costly armed conflict that pitted the communist regime of North Vietnam and its southern allies, known as the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. -
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Hungarian Uprising
The Hungarian Uprising of 1956 was a nationwide revolt against the Marxist-Leninist government of the Hungarian People's Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies. -
Launch of Sputnik
History changed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a beach ball (58 cm.or 22.8 inches in diameter), weighed only 83.6 kg. or 183.9 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. -
Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)
Mutual assured destruction or mutually assured destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two or more opposing sides would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender. Established somewhere in the 1960s -
Sino-Soviet split
The Sino-Soviet split (1956–1966) was the breaking of political relations between the People's Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, caused by doctrinal divergences arising from each of the two powers' different interpretation of Marxism–Leninism. -
U-2 Spy plane Incident
On 1 May 1960, a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces while performing photographic aerial reconnaissance deep into Soviet territory. The single-seat aircraft, flown by pilot Francis Gary Powers, was hit by an S-75 Dvina surface-to-air missile and crashed near Sverdlovsk. The incident derailed an important summit meeting between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that was scheduled for later that month. -
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Bay of Pigs
Fifty years ago, shortly before midnight on 16 April 1961, a group of some 1,500 Cuban exiles trained and financed by the CIA launched an ill-fated invasion of Cuba from the sea in the Bay of Pigs. The plan was to overthrow Fidel Castro and his revolution. -
Vienna Summit
The Vienna summit was a summit meeting held on June 4, 1961, in Vienna, Austria, between President John F. Kennedy of the United States and Premier Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union. The leaders of the two superpowers of the Cold War era discussed numerous issues in the relationship between their countries. -
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Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall. During the early years of the Cold War, West Berlin was a geographical loophole through which thousands of East Germans fled to the democratic West. In response, the Communist East German authorities built a wall that totally encircled West Berlin. It was thrown up overnight. -
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Cuban Missile Crisis
It happened when the Soviet Union began building missile sites in Cuba in 1962. Together with the earlier Berlin Blockade, this crisis is seen as one of the most important confrontations of the Cold War. It may have been the moment when the Cold War came closest to a nuclear war. -
Test Ban Treaty
The Partial Test Ban Treaty is the abbreviated name of the 1963 Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water, which prohibited all test detonations of nuclear weapons except for those conducted underground. -
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Prague Spring
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalisation in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II. -
Brezhnev Doctrine
The doctrine expounded by Leonid Brezhnev in November 1968 affirming the right of the Soviet Union to intervene in the affairs of Communist countries to strengthen Communism. -
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Détente
Détente, Period of the easing of Cold War tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union from 1967 to 1979. The era was a time of increased trade and cooperation with the Soviet Union and the signing of the SALT treaties. Relations cooled again with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. -
Nixon visits China
U.S. President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China was an important strategic and diplomatic overture that marked the culmination of the Nixon administration's resumption of harmonious relations between the United States and China. -
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SALT
The first agreements, known as SALT I and SALT II, were signed by the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1972 and 1979, respectively, and were intended to restrain the arms race in strategic (long-range or intercontinental) ballistic missiles armed with nuclear weapons. -
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USSRs' Invasion of Afghanistan
On December 24, 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. They had President Amin put to death and installed their own leader, President Babrak Karmal. Over the next several years the Soviet Army would battle with the Mujahideen. It was a very difficult battle. -
Ronald Reagan announces 'Star Wars' Program
Announcement. On 23 March 1983, Reagan delivered his "Star Wars" speech, stating "I call upon the scientific community who gave us nuclear weapons to turn their great talents to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete." -
Glasnost
In 1985, reform-minded Mikhail Gorbachev came to power as General Secretary of the Soviet Union. He introduced reforms along liberal lines. The two reforms most commonly associated with him are glasnost and perestroika. Glasnost means 'openness' and refers to government transparency and increased freedom of expression. -
Gorbachev becomes General Secretary
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, GCL is a Russian and former Soviet politician. He was the eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union, having been General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991. He was the country's head of state from 1988 until 1991. -
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Perestroika
Perestroika was a political movement for reformation within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the 1980s and 1990s and is widely associated with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his glasnost policy reform. -
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Reykjavik Summit
The Reykjavík Summit was a summit meeting between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, held in Höfði in Reykjavík, on 11–12 October 1986. -
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Washington Summit
The Washington Summit of 1987 was a Cold War-era meeting between United States president Ronald Reagan and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev. -
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Moscow Summit
The Moscow Summit was a summit meeting between U.S. Pres. Ronald Reagan and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev. -
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Strategic Arms Reductions Talks
Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) were arms control negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union that were aimed at reducing those two countries' arsenals of nuclear warheads and of the missiles and bombers capable of delivering such weapons.