AP®︎ World History: Topic 8.8 Flashcards

The 1989 collapse of Eastern European communist regimes and the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union ended the U.S.-Soviet bipolar order

State ownership and central planning that increasingly produced inefficiency, shortages, weak innovation, and low productivity

The 1970s–1980s slowdown marked by weak growth, low productivity, technological lag, and persistent consumer shortages

U.S. president who increased defense spending, pursued technological superiority, and announced the Strategic Defense Initiative

Reagan’s 1983 proposal for advanced systems to intercept nuclear missiles, increasing pressure on the strained Soviet economy

The USSR’s unsuccessful 1979–1989 intervention in Afghanistan, which drained resources, caused casualties, and damaged Soviet legitimacy

Afghan guerrilla resistance fighters who opposed Soviet forces with aid from the United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and others

Soviet leader from 1985 whose reforms and refusal to preserve communist rule by force unintentionally accelerated the Soviet collapse

Gorbachev’s economic and administrative “restructuring,” which loosened central planning but failed to end shortages or stagnation

Gorbachev’s policy of “openness” that reduced censorship and enabled criticism, political organizing, and nationalist demands

The 1987 Reagan-Gorbachev agreement eliminating U.S. and Soviet ground-launched missiles with ranges of 500–5,500 kilometers

The 1991 U.S.-Soviet treaty requiring major reductions in long-range strategic nuclear forces

Gorbachev’s refusal to use large-scale Soviet force to preserve Eastern European communist governments, allowing opposition movements to succeed

The Soviet Union and the communist states of Eastern and Central Europe aligned with and heavily influenced by it

Satellite states were formally independent Eastern European countries under Soviet influence; Soviet republics were constituent units of the USSR.

Poland’s independent trade union and opposition movement, founded in 1980, whose 1989 electoral victory produced an Eastern Bloc noncommunist government

Polish labor leader who led Solidarity’s challenge to communist rule and helped bring peaceful political change in 1989

The November 9, 1989 opening of the Berlin Wall, symbolizing the collapse of Europe’s Cold War division

The October 3, 1990 reunification of East and West Germany after the Soviet Union stopped enforcing Germany’s postwar division

The largely nonviolent mass movement that overthrew Czechoslovakia’s communist government in November–December 1989

Movements in Soviet republics that turned political and economic grievances into demands for sovereignty and independence from Moscow

President of the Russian Soviet republic who resisted the 1991 coup, weakened Gorbachev, and became the Russian Federation’s first president

A failed hardline communist attempt to detain Gorbachev, halt reforms, and preserve the USSR that instead accelerated its collapse

The December 1991 breakup of the USSR into independent states after Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus declared it had ceased to exist

The fall of communist governments across Eastern Europe in 1989 after the Soviet Union declined to intervene militarily