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The Cold War begins.
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Winston Churchill delivered the famous Iron Curtain speech.
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President Truman officially declared an end to hostilities by Presidential Proclamation on December 31, 1946
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Soviet Union stops all shipments to Berlin from West Germany and cut off electricity to the three Western sectors of Berlin, leaving about 2.5 million people without future supplies and without power.
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Great Britain and the United States supplied up to 13,000 tons of food, fuel, and other items to West Berlin. A total of 200,000 flights were made and a total of 1.5 million tons in supplies were delivered. The blockade ended on May 12, 1949.
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Soviet explodes their first atomic bomb.
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A treaty between Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union, which was signed in Poland in 1955
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Russia beat the United States in the space race when they launched the first orbiting satellite Sputnik I
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Soviet Union reveals that U.S. spy plane was shot down over Soviet territory.
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The open border between the Soviet sector and the Western controlled sectors in Berlin allowed hundreds of thousands of East Europeans to escape Soviet rule and persercution. it served as a political embarrassment for the Soviet Union. The decision was made by the East German government to close the Berlin border. The next day East German troops erected barbed wire barricades and roadblocks.
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Construction of Berlin Wall begins.
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Soviet Union began to send weapons and military personnel to Cuba. 1200 Russian troops were stationed in Cuba as well as concave metal structures supported by tubing that appeared to be the future site of a "rocket installation".
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Mikhail Gorbachev ascends to power in Soviet Union
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Gorbachev ends economic aid to Soviet satellites
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Reagan and Gorbachev resolve to remove all intermediate nuclear missiles from Europe
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Reagan and Gorbachev agree to remove all medium and short-range nuclear missiles by signing treaty
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Soviet troops withdraw from Afghanistan
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Berlin wall falls.
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Communist governments fall in Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Rumania; Soviet empire ends.
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Boris Yeltsin elected to presidency of Russia.
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Germany is reunited
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Warsaw pact dissolves.
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End of the Soviet Union. The Cold War ends.
