By the 1970s , both sides had become interested in making allowances in order to create a more stable and predictable international system , ushering in a period of détente that saw the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the US opening relations with the PRC as a strategic counterweight to the USSR . Détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet – Afghan War in 1979 . The early 1980s were another period of elevated tension , with the Soviet downing of KAL Flight 007 and the " Able Archer " NATO military exercises , both in 1983 . The United States increased diplomatic , military , and economic pressures on the Soviet Union , at a time when the communist state was already suffering from economic stagnation . On 12 June 1982 , a million protesters gathered in Central Park , New York to call for an end to the Cold War arms race and nuclear weapons in particular . In the mid-1980s , the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the liberalizing reforms of '' perestroika '' ( " reorganization " , 1987 ) and '' glasnost '' ( " openness " , c. 1985 ) and ended Soviet involvement in Afghanistan . Pressures for national sovereignty grew stronger in Eastern Europe , especially Poland . Gorbachev meanwhile refused to use Soviet troops to bolster the faltering Warsaw Pact regimes as had occurred in the past . The result in 1989 was a wave of revolutions that peacefully ( with the exception of the Romanian Revolution ) overthrew all of the communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe . The Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself lost control and was banned following an abortive coup attempt in August 1991 . This in turn led to the formal dissolution of the USSR in December 1991 and the collapse of communist regimes in other countries such as Mongolia , Cambodia , and South Yemen . The United States remained as the world 's only superpower
KAL Flight 007
Korean Air Lines Flight 007
Cold War