the United States, 1980; Income and wages in the
United States; Reagan, Ronald; Reagan Revolution;
Reaganomics.
Soviet Union and North
America
Definition Relations between the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics and the United States and
Canada
The 1980’s opened with the Soviet Union a bitter enemy of
the United States and Canada. By the end of the decade,
North American leaders had come to an accommodation
with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and the Soviet state
was on the verge of collapse.
The 1980’s witnessed the most dramatic shift in rela-
tions with the Soviet Union since Washington had
recognized Moscow in 1933, perhaps since the Rus-
sian Revolution itself. It started with the 1980 elec-
tion of Ronald Reagan, a bitter foe of the Soviet
Union, to the U.S. presidency and ended with the
collapse of the Soviet state. Since 1917, with the for-
mation of Soviet Russia, relations between the coun-
tries had run the gamut, from military invasion by
American forces in 1918 and 1919 to a firm alliance
against Nazi Germany in World War II. After that
war, however—beginning in the late 1940’s—the
two governments were locked in an adversarial Cold
War.
This relationship, too, fluctuated, from confron-
tational during the the last days of Joseph Stalin
(whose regime ended when he died in 1953) through
the era of peaceful coexistence under Nikita Khru-
shchev (1953-1964) and détente under Leonid
Brezhnev (1964-1982) in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Re-
lations were complicated with the successful commu-
nist revolution in China in 1949. Until 1971, Chinese-
American relations were even worse than those with
the Soviet Union; Washington refused to recognize
the government in Beijing. However, a dramatic
reversal under president Richard M. Nixon and Sec-
retary of State Henry Kissinger led to a new Chinese-
American accord and placed pressure on Moscow,
whose own relations with its Chinese communist
neighbor-ally were worse than either nation’s with the
United States—even exploding into border clashes
in 1969.
The Years of Confrontation A deterioration in U.S.-
Soviet relations occurred near the opening of the
decade when the Soviet Union helped to overthrow
the government in Afghanistan and Soviet troops
entered the Central Asian country in late December,
1979, to prop up a more friendly government. Wash-
ington reacted with condemnation, and President
Jimmy Carter “punished” Moscow by refusing to al-
low American athletes to participate in the Moscow
Olympics of 1980. In 1984, Moscow retaliated by boy-
cotting the Summer Olympics, held in Los Angeles.
Carter also announced an embargo on selling grain
to the Soviets at a time when they desperately needed
it. Canada joined in the Olympic boycott and for a
while withheld grain from Moscow, promising not to
fill the gap caused by Washington’s embargo when it
resumed sales.
Much more serious for the Soviets was the long
war in which they became involved in Afghanistan,
where many casualties sapped Moscow’s resources.
The war in Afghanistan, in fact, was a major cause of
the Soviet Union’s demise. Throughout the decade,
the new U.S. president, Ronald Reagan, supported
the anti-Soviet insurgency against the pro-Soviet
Afghani government and the Red Army fighting in
the country.
In the early years of the 1980’s, Washington
and Moscow confronted each other all over the
world—in Central Asia, East Asia, Latin America,
and Africa. Strategic arms talks begun in the previ-
ous years came to a standstill. Reagan wanted to
build even more weapons, hoping that dragging
the Soviet Union into an arms race would be too
expensive for Moscow and force the Soviets to make
concessions.
At the same time Reagan won the presidency,
Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher became the
prime minister of the United Kingdom. Together,
Reagan and Thatcher put up a solid anticommu-
nist front against Moscow. In addition to opposing
the Soviets in Afghanistan, Reagan led a campaign
against Soviet activity in Poland, where the indepen-
dent union Solidarity was outlawed and where, in
1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski imposed martial
law. Reagan and Thatcher blamed Moscow.
Reagan approached the Soviet Union with stri-
dent confrontation. In a speech delivered on June 8,
1982, he declared the country an “evil empire.” He
funded anti-Soviet movements in developing na-
tions such as Afghanistan and Nicaragua, where theThe Eighties in America Soviet Union and North America 891