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According to the scholar Marcel H. Van Herpen, the end of the Soviet Union marked the end of the last European empire, and some authors called it the death of Russian colonialism and imperialism. [181] As the Soviet Union began to collapse, social disintegration and political instability fueled a surge in ethnic conflict. [182]
The time period of around 1985–1991 marked the final period of the Cold War.It was characterized by systemic reform within the Soviet Union, the easing of geopolitical tensions between the Soviet-led bloc and the United States-led bloc, the collapse of the Soviet Union's influence in Eastern Europe, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The Khrushchev Thaw (Russian: хрущёвская о́ттепель, romanized: khrushchovskaya ottepel, IPA: [xrʊˈɕːɵfskəjə ˈotʲːɪpʲɪlʲ] or simply ottepel) [1] is the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s when repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were relaxed due to Nikita Khrushchev's policies of de-Stalinization [2] and peaceful coexistence with other nations.
The Cold War was a period of global geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc (Combloc), the Socialist Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc, was an unofficial coalition of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that were aligned with the Soviet Union and existed during the Cold War (1947–1991).
In the 1950s, Soviet dissidents started leaking criticism to the West by sending documents and statements to foreign diplomatic missions in Moscow. [13] In the 1960s, Soviet dissidents frequently declared that the rights the government of the Soviet Union denied them were universal rights, possessed by everyone regardless of race, religion and nationality. [14]
The Cold War is considered to have "officially" ended on 3 December 1989 during the Malta Summit between the Soviet and American leaders. [19] However, many historians argue that the dissolution of the Soviet Union on 26 December 1991 was the end of the Cold War. [20]
In the aftermath of the Stalin era, Khrushchev defined Soviet foreign policy during the Cold War. The biggest change to foreign policy dealt with "uncommitted nations". There were two types of neutrality according to the Soviets, those by ideology and those by circumstance. [24]