The end of USSR and the “Autumn of nations”

The economic stagnation turned into a collapse during the reign of the successors of Brezhnev - Andropov and Chernenko. It was further deepened by its involvement in numerous armed conflicts in third world countries, which were a substitute for a real confrontation with Western democracies. The largest of these, the 1979 war in Afghanistan, was long and exhausting and turned out to be a nail for the coffin of the Soviet economy. The system was bursting and the attempts made by the party to liberalise it or to reform it only led to the awakening of centrifugal tendencies which, with considerable help from the USA and Western countries, eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

In the meantime, thanks to the abandonment of the Brezhnev doctrine by the USSR, among other things, changes have taken place in Central and Eastern Europe. Between 1989 and>1990, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria regained their sovereignty. After the liquidation of the GDR, Germany was reunited.