Timeline of the Cold War Years: 1945 through 19911992

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Timeline of the Cold War Years 1945 through
1991/1992
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Important YearsNote When you click the Back
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• 1983
• 1984
• 1985
• 1986
• 1987
• 1988
• 1989
• 1990
• 1991
• 1992

• 1945
• 1946
• 1947
• 1948
• 1949
• 1952
• 1953
• 1955
• 1956
• 1957
• 1959
• 1960
• 1961
• 1962
• 1963
• 1964
• 1965

• 1966
• 1967
• 1968
• 1969
• 1970
• 1971
• 1972
• 1973
• 1974
• 1975
• 1976
• 1977
• 1979
• 1980
• 1981
• 1982

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1945
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• Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin meet at Yalta
• End of World War II in Europe
• Signing of the Charter UN in San Francisco
• Stalin, Churchill/Atlee and Truman meet in
  Potsdam
• A-bomb dropped on Japan
• Surrender of Japan

4
1946
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• Churchill's March 5, 1946, Sinews of Peace
  speech using the phase Iron Curtain, including
  We welcome Russia to her rightful place among the
  leading nations of the world. We welcome her flag
  upon the seas. Above all, we welcome constant,
  frequent and growing contacts between the Russian
  people and our own people on both sides of the
  Atlantic. It is my duty however, for I am sure
  you would wish me to state the facts as I see
  them to you, to place before you certain facts
  about the present position in Europe.
• From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the
  Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across
  the Continent. Behind that line lie all the
  capitals of the ancient states of Central and
  Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna,
  Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all
  these famous cities and the populations around
  them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere,
  and all are subject in one form or another, not
  only to Soviet influence but to a very high and,
  in many cases, increasing measure of control from
  Moscow. http//en.wikisource.org/wiki/Iron_Curtain
  _Speech

5
1947
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• Paris peace talks
• Announcement of Truman's doctrine
• Start of the supporting Marshall's plan
• Founding of Informbiro (Information Bureau) in
  Yugoslavia http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informbiro

6
1948
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• June -beginning of the Berlin blockade and the
  forming of the air bridge
• Truman re-elected president

7
1949
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• Founding of the CMEA (Council for Mutual Economic
  Assistance)
• North Atlantic Alliance entered by 11 states.
• May - End of the Berlin blockade
• Forming of West Germany
• First atomic bomb test in the USSR
• Forming of East Germany

8
1952
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• Fortification of the inter-German border
• First British atomic bomb test
• First US hydrogen bomb test
• Eisenhower elected president

9
1953
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• Stalin dies
• Labor workers stand up in East Berlin
• End of the Korean War
• Khrushchev becomes the Chairman of the Communist
  Party

10
1955
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• West Germany enters NATO
• Forming of the Warsaw Pact

11
1956
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• The 20th summit of the CPSU (Communist Party of
  the Soviet Union)
• February 25, Khrushchev's allegations about
  Stalin's reign
• Informbiro dissolved (Yugoslavia)
• Hungarian stand up starts
• British-French offense in Suez
• Soviet army enters Budapest
• Eisenhower re-elected president

12
1957
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• Gromyko named Minister of Foreign Affairs of USSR
  
• USSR announced the launch of Sputnik 1

13
1959
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• Castro becomes prime minister of Cuba
• Khrushchev visits the US

14
1960
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• French atomic bomb test
• US U-2 plane shot down over the USSR
• Four super powers meeting in Paris
• August Soviet technicians called off China
• Kennedy wins presidential election

15
1961
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• The flight of Yuri Gagarin first person in
  space and first person to orbit the earth
  http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin
• Sealing of the East German border in Berlin
• Building of the Berlin Wall

16
1962
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• Cuban Missile Crisis http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
  Cuban_Missile_Crisis

17
1963
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• USA and USSR established a "hotline" connection
• Kennedy visits Berlin
• USA and USSR sign nuclear testing ban treaty
• Kennedy assassinated, becomes US President

18
1964
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• Brezhnev replaces Khrushchev as chairman of CPSU
  http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Brezhnev
• Chinese atomic bomb test
• Johnson wins presidential election

19
1965
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• US support of the South Vietnamese escalates into
  direct conflict with (North Vietnamese/North
  Vietnamese supported) Viet Cong when the Viet
  Cong attacked US airbase at Bien Hoa and the US
  responded in Operation Rolling Thunder

20
1966
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• France quits NATO command

21
1967
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• USA, USSR and UK sign aerial nuclear test ban
  treaty
• 6 day war (1967 Arab-Israeli War)

22
1968
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• Viet Cong starts Tet offensive (3-day Viet
  Cong-South Vietnamese conflict
• USA, USSR and UK sign nuclear arms proliferation
  treaty
• Warsaw pact armies enter CSSR
• Nixon elected for president

23
1969
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• French weapons sales to Israel banned
• Four-party conference about Vietnam in Paris
• Nixon enters White House
• Soviet-Jordan treaty about technical and
  economical cooperation
• Gromyko accuses USA of violating Laos' inner
  affairs
• Nationalist offensive in South Vietnam
• Nixon starts his journey across Western Europe
• USSR proposes a new definition of armed
  aggression in the UN
• Soviet-Chinese conflict (Chinese assault on the
  Ussuri river)
• Member states of the Warsaw pact proposed a
  conference about European security
• Heavy US bombardment in Cambodia
• Pakistani president M.Ajub Khan resigns after
  civil disorders. The government was appointed by
  Jahra Khan.
• Lin Piao successes Mao Tse-tung
• The Soviets re-established conference with China
  from 1964
• Referendum held in France, de Gaulle steps down
• Soviet-French agreement about economical and
  trade cooperation for years 1970-74

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1969 continued
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• Soviet-British long-term business agreement for
  years 1969-75
• International meeting of 75 communist and
  workmen's parties in Moscow
• Soviet government accepted the temporary
  government of South Vietnam
• G.Pompidou elected new French president
• First secret meeting of H.Kissinger and Xuan Thuy
  of North Vietnam
• Government overthrown in Lybia, lead taken by
  colonel Qaddafi
• North Vietnamese president Ho Chi Min dies
• USSR ministers' chairman A.Kosygin in Beijing
• USSR proposes a meeting about strengthening
  international security at the UN General Assembly
  
• Moratorium in the US - demonstration against
  Vietnam War
• China and USSR start negotiations in Beijing
• W. Brandt becomes West German chancellor
• Conference between ministers of foreign affairs
  about preparations of the European conference in
  Paris
• November 15, 1969 Largest anti-Viet Nam War
  demonstration in the USA (DC)
• First round of the SALT negotiations between USA
  and USSR in Helsinki
• SALT ratified by both parties Negotiations
  between West Germany and USSR about the act of no
  use of military power. (first round was held on
  30.1-18.2)
• The Nuclear Arms Proliferation Treaty became
  valid. Ratification documents held in Moscow,
  Washington and London.
• Lon Nol's overthrow in Cambodia. Sinahuk creates
  an exile government in Beijing.

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1970
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• Prime minister of East Germany, W.Stroph meets
  Bundeskanzler W.Brandt in Erfurt
• US and Saigon troops intervention in Cambodia
• Soviet declaration of US intervention in Cambodia
  
• Four Ohio University students killed at Kent
  State University during a demonstration against
  the intervention in Cambodia
• USSR and CSSR sign bilateral support treaty
• East German prime minister W.Stoph visits West
  German Kassel.
• USSR agrees to continue support Vietnam
• Návrat brit. konzervatívcov k moci - E.Heath
  becomes prime minister
• W.Brandt signed treaty about cooperation between
  Moscow and West Germany
• Jordanian war
• Egyptian president Gamál Abd an-Násír dies. Anvar
  Sadat named new president
• Soviet protest against US and Turkey violations
  of Soviet airspace.
• People's (communistic) party wins Chilean
  election
• Salvador Allende elected president in Chile
• General Charles de Gaulle dies
• Soviet government opposes Portuguese aggression
  in Guinea
• December Elections in Pakistan - won by Awami
  League, demanding autonomy for East Pakistan
• W.Brandt signs cooperation treaty between Poland
  and West Germany

26
1971
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• US ping-pong team arrives in China
• China entered UNO, Taiwan expelled

27
1972
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• Nixon starts his visit to China
• USA and USSR sign biological weapons ban treaty
• Nixon starts his visit to Moscow
• USA and USSR sign SALT 1
• Nixon re-elected for president
• West and East Germany sign Basic mutual relations
  treaty

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1973
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• US Senate stops Cambodia bombing funding
• Vietnamese peace treaty signed in Paris becomes
  valid.
• March 29, 1973 Final US troops withdraw from
  Vietnam
• October - Arab-Israeli October war
• Oil producers in Persian Gulf double the oil
  price

29
1974
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• Nixon resigns, he is replaced by Ford
• Ford and Brezhnev agree about the layout of the
  strategic arms control treaty (SALT 2)

30
1975
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• End of the Vietnamese war
• Joint US Russian Soyuz-Apollo flight
• Helsinki Accord signed goal was to strengthen
  European states rights and boundaries (lessening
  Cold War tensions)
• November - Angolan civil war begins (lasts until
  2002)

31
1976
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• Carter wins election

32
1977
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• October USSR starts SS-20 rocket deployment

33
1978
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• Former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro kidnapped
  and murdered by the Red Brigades as part of its
  "civil war for the construction of a Communist
  state."
• Afghanistan conflict between Communist government
  and anti-Communist Muslim guerrillas begins

34
1979
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• USA and China begin to establish diplomatic
  bonds.
• Carter and Brezhnev sign SALT 2
• Soviet troops enter Afghanistan

35
1980
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• USA stop wheat sales to the USSR
• July US led boycott (supported in part by other
  Western nations and China) of the Moscow Olympic
  Games. The boycott was in protest of Soviet
  invasion of Afghanistan
• Start of the Iran-Iraq war
• Reagan elected president

36
1981
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• Martial law declared in Poland
• USA lays economic sanctions on USSR and Poland

37
1982
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• Brezhnev freezes the deployment of the SS-20
  rockets west of the Ural Mounntains
• Brezhnev dies and is replaced by Andropov

38
1983
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• Reagan declares the Strategic Defense Initiative
  (SDI)
• Martial law canceled in Poland

39
1984
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• NATO and Warsaw Pact arms limitation talks start
• Andropov dies and is replaced by Cherenkov
• August - Most USSR and most East European
  countries boycott Los Angeles Olympic Games
  (citing security reasons or a counter to US
  boycott of 1980 games)

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1985
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• Reagan requests military budget triple to support
  SDI
• Cherenkov dies
• Gorbachev named Chairman of Central Committee of
  the CPSU
• Gorbachev declares definitive stop of missile
  deployment in Europe
• Shevardnadze replaces Gromyko as Minister of
  Foreign Affairs
• First meeting of Gorbachev and Reagan in Geneva

41
1986
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• Gorbachev and Reagan meet in Reykjavik

42
1987
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• Gorbachev outlines several reforms to Soviet
  economy
• Gorbachev and Reagan meet in Washington,
  middle-range missiles ban treaty signed

43
1988
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• Warsaw pact demands a three-step decrease of
  conventional weapon units in Europe
• Iran-Iraq war ends
• George Herbert Walker Bush (Senior) wins election

44
1989
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• Cuban troops start to leave Angola
• Full retreat of Soviet forces from Afghanistan
• Solidarity (anti-Communist) wins semi-free
  elections in Poland
• Hungary allows East Germans to enter Austria
  through their border
• Start of pro-democratic changes in East Germany
• Hungarian socialistic labor party proclaims
  self-dismissal
• East Germany opens West German border
• Bush and Gorbachev meet off the Malta coast
• Noncommunist government seizes power in
  Czechoslovakia
• Ceausescu's government overthrown in Rumania

45
1990
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• Mandela released from prison
• Free elections in East Germany
• Namibia becomes independent
• Iraq invades Kuwait Persian Gulf War begins
• Reunification of Germany
• Force limitation treaty signed by Warsaw pact and
  NATO in Paris on a OECD meeting

46
1991
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• February - Persian Gulf War ends
• June Slovenian and Croatian war starts
• Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA
  dissolved)
• Warsaw Pact (the military alliance between the
  Soviet Union and its eastern European satellites)
  ends, March 31, 1991
• Bush and Gorbachev sign START 1
• Hard-line Communists try to overthrow the
  government in USSR
• Soviet President Gorbachov stops activity of
  Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU)
• USSR dissolution, Commonwealth of Independent
  States created
• Gorbachev resigns his post of President of Soviet
  Union, formal dissolution of USSR
• Yeltsin has the CPSU formally banned within Russia

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1992
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• US President Reagan awards Mikhail Gorbachev,
  USSR, first Ronald Reagan Freedom Award, May 4,
  1992