CHAPTER 27

End of the Cold War and Nationalist Movements

IN THIS CHAPTER

Summary: By the late 1980s, economic setbacks in the Soviet Union were producing social unrest.
Worldwide Nationalist movements were weakening the hold of Communist regimes upon their
people. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 precipitated the end of other Communist governments,
culminating in the overthrow of Communist governments in the Soviet Union. As former Soviet
republics declared their independence, democratic movements continued throughout the world,
especially in Latin America and Africa. The end of communism in the Soviet Union saw the
emergence of a single superpower—the United States.

Key Terms

al-Qaeda
cartels
International Monetary Fund
Persian Gulf War
World Bank*

Breakup of the Soviet Union

While Gorbachev was instituting reforms to save the Soviet Empire, the small nations of Eastern
Europe were steadily moving toward independence. In 1988, Poland inaugurated a non-Communist
government. In 1989, the people of Berlin dismantled the Berlin Wall; by the end of 1990, the two
Germanys were reunited. Czechoslovakia ended its Communist government in 1989; it later
peacefully separated into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The end of communism did not come without discord. A key example was Yugoslavia, where bitter
conflict broke out in Bosnia among Muslims, Serbs, and Croats in the early 1990s. Fighting continued