* The implosion of the USSR:In the context of glasnost ("restructuring") and perestroika ("publicity of ideas and debates") and an attempt to democratize the Soviet Union, its implosion done in five main steps:
o From March 1989, the Baltic republics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) proclaimed their sovereignty. Moscow reacts by sending troops, but must withdraw them under international pressure because the Soviet Union is no longer a fear;
o On June 12, 1990, the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, which elected Boris Yeltsin to its presidency, although Gorbachev had done everything to avoid this election, in turn proclaimed its sovereignty (June 8, 1991);
o On August 18, 1991, the Red Army, which includes many Communists, attempts a putsch against Gorbachev who is sequestered for a few days in his dacha in Crimea. Yeltsin, MP for Sverdlovsk, succeeded in restoring the situation. The other republics left the Soviet Union from August to December 1991);
o On December 8, 1991, by the Minsk agreements in Belarus, noting that "the USSR no longer exists", 10 former Soviet socialist republics founded the CIS (Community of Independent States), which was confirmed in Alma-Ata ( Kazakhstan) a few days later (December 21, 1991);
o On December 25, 1991, President of a state that no longer exists, Gorbachev is forced to resign.
* The completion of the Cold War:In August 1990, Bush Sr., the new President of the United States, announced the end of the East/West confrontation, that is to say the Cold War and the bipolarization of the world. The United States won it without direct military confrontation. In 1991, the two main international organizations of the communist countries, COMECON, which provided economic support, and the Warsaw Pact, which provided military support, dissolved in turn.
Conclusion
The Cold War - or "Third World War" - was a "total" international conflict, that is to say having required a significant mobilization of resources until the disintegration and then the destruction of the adversary (1991) . In his State of the Union address on January 28, 1992, Bush Sr. said, “Thank God the United States won the Cold War; a world once divided into two armed camps now recognizes the superiority of a single power:the United States; this observation inspires no fear because the world has confidence in our nation and it is right. »