Friction with the west continued in the 1980's, especially with the United States and its new president, [[Ronald Reagan]], who saw the Soviet Union for what it was and branded it an "evil empire," partially in response to the Afghanistan occupation. Reagan negotiated with West Germany to provide sites for the basing of Pershing II medium-range ballistic missiles, which was bitterly opposed by Moscow. A short period of confrontation existed between the two superpowers during the period of late-1983 through 1984, beginning with the tragic Soviet attack on a commercial airliner, [[Korean Airlines Flight 007]], over international waters near Sakhalin Island on September 1, 1983, and killing 269 civilians; this was followed by events within a military exersize known as [[Able Archer]], in which a falling satellite was mistaken for an incoming ICBM and almost triggered a major war. Reagan's [[Strategic Defense Initiative]], a space-based missile defense system critics derisively dubbed "Star Wars" as well as his expantion of the United States military, also prompted a new, expensive arms race.
Andropov and his successor, Konstantin Chernenko, kept the communist system under Brezhnev intact, but upon Chernenko's death [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] became party chairman. A reformer, he introduced a series of economic and political reforms known as ''[[glasnost]]'' ("openenssopeness") and ''[[perestroika]]'' ("restructuring"), which began to creak open the doors of the Soviet's closed system. However, the doors were forced open by other countries' demands of the facts concerning the 1986 [[Chernobyl]] nuclear accident which spread radiation as far north as Sweden. A failed attempt to reign in in the three [[Baltic States]] in 1989 led to a domino-effect of Warsaw Pact countries abandoning communism; a coup attempt against Gorbachev in 1991 by hard-liners trying to keep their tattering empire ended within days. The USSR was formally dissolved in 1991 by [[Boris Yeltsin]], freeing many from its [[tyranny]]. The [[successor state|successor states]] to the Soviet Union are the [[Russian Federation]] and the other members of the [[Commonwealth of Independent States]].
==See Also==