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Yalta Conference where Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin meet to discuss terms of German surrender and the boundries and government in post war Eastern Europe.
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US President Truman's speech to Congress urging the United States of America "To support free peoples wjo are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure."(Truman Doctrine)
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After a joint repudiation of Soviet note the North Atlantic Treaty is signed in Washington by Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States.
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Abortive CIA inspired Bay of Pigs landing by Cuban exiles. Cuban forces defeat the Bay of Pigs invasion.
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By way of reply to accession of Federal Republic of Germany to NATO the USSR concludes the Warsaw Pact with its European satellites - Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania.
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First Soviet artificial satellite Sputnik launched.
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Fidel Castro Ruz becomes premier of Cuba.
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Construction work on the Berlin Wall begins.
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Senator Kenneth Keating claims Soviets are building missiles on Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis starts.
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Communist China explodes its first atomic bomb.
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U.S. President Richard Nixon becomes the first U.S. leader to visit communist China, leading to a thaw in Cold War relations.
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United States and China begin diplomatic relations.
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Mikhail Gorbachev is named general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.
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East Germany begins to take down the Berlin Wall.
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The leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belorussia announce that the Soviet Union has ceased to exist. They declare the creation of Commonwealth of Independent States and invite other former soviet republics to join.