Dissolution of the Soviet Union
Fifteen independent states emerge from the Union
In December 1991 the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed the Belovezha Accords, and on 25 December Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president. Fifteen independent states emerged in place of the USSR, and the Cold War came to an end.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 11 years earlier
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 17 years later
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 2 years earlier
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 2 years earlier
- 1990 German reunification — 1 year earlier
- 1991–2001 Yugoslav Wars — same year
- 1992 Maastricht Treaty — 1 year later
Middle East
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 12 years earlier
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 11 years earlier
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 1 year earlier
Africa
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 24 years earlier
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 24 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 17 years earlier
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 8 years earlier
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 3 years later
Asia
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 16 years earlier
- 1989 Tiananmen Square protests — 2 years earlier
- 1991 Eruption of Mount Pinatubo — same year
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — 13 years later
- 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami — 20 years later
Americas
- 1969 Moon landing — 22 years earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 21 years earlier
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 8 years earlier
- 1990 Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope — 1 year earlier
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 10 years later
Oceania
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 1 year later
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 73)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 61)
- Mother Teresa (aged 81)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 80)
- Richard Nixon (aged 78)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 72)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 67)
- Fidel Castro (aged 65)
- Elizabeth II (aged 65)
- Gabriel García Márquez (aged 64)