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increasingly costly arms race, and a failed war in Afghanistan. A new generation of leadership came to power in 1985 in the person of Gorbachev. He was determined to end the Cold War and to bring economic and political reform to the Soviet Union. He initiated dramatic new agreements with the United States, involving unilateral concessions in the armaments race. He also brought an end to Soviet support of client governments in Eastern Europe and in Cuba. He relaxed the police state repression in the Soviet empire and took steps to introduce a democratic political process.

These initiatives rapidly improved relations with the United States and brought an end to the Cold War. What Gorbachev had not anticipated, however, was that, without the domination of the police and a monopoly of power in the hands of the Communist Party, the Soviet empire would collapse into 16 different national parts. Nationalism, always a potent force in the modern world, brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union by 1991.

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15y ago

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