Perestroika
Gorbachev launches glasnost and sweeping reforms
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In March 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party and launched perestroika and glasnost. The reforms eased censorship and introduced contested elections and market elements, amid a deepening economic crisis.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 5 years earlier
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 23 years later
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 4 years later
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 4 years later
- 1990 German reunification — 5 years later
- 1991–2001 Yugoslav Wars — 6 years later
- 1992 Maastricht Treaty — 7 years later
Middle East
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 6 years earlier
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 5 years earlier
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 5 years later
Africa
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 18 years earlier
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 18 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 11 years earlier
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 2 years earlier
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 9 years later
Asia
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 10 years earlier
- 1984 Bhopal disaster — 1 year earlier
- 1989 Tiananmen Square protests — 4 years later
- 1991 Eruption of Mount Pinatubo — 6 years later
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — 19 years later
Americas
- 1969 Moon landing — 16 years earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 15 years earlier
- 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens — 5 years earlier
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 2 years earlier
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 16 years later
Oceania
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 7 years later
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 67)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 55)
- Jorge Luis Borges (aged 86)
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) (aged 84)
- Mother Teresa (aged 75)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 74)
- Richard Nixon (aged 72)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 66)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 61)
- Fidel Castro (aged 59)