The Soviet Union was near being bankrupted trying to compete with the U. S.

One crazy little Polack, Lech Valenza stood his ground. His voice of freedom shook the whole East Block so hard, and for so long it crumbled from the earthquake it created!

I think it was a heat wave and it just got to darn hot to call the cold war. Plus everybody went to the beach cause there was nothing to be miserable about anymore.

USSR was bankrupt, mired in a war in Afghanistan for years, having proxy wars in Southern Africa (Angola), and had suppressed it's satellites for decades. Gorbachev tried to free up the Communist system with policies that allowed openness and criticism hoping it would help him retool the Communist Party. People took the freedom and ran (ex. tearing down Berlin Wall). This split the Soviets (some wanted to liberalize, others wanted to hold onto the empire) and eventually Gorbachev became an impotent leader. The USSR collapsed and Russia + 15 border countries emerged. By 1991 the US was a superpower & Gorbachev had allowed the Soviet system to collapse. The Cold War ends, US wins.

Ronald Reagan refused to back down from the USSR. When the soviets were installing an SS20 missile every week in europe, RR responded in kind and installed pershings and cruises, against much opposition. Soviet apparichniks could no longer count on USA leadership to fear them. Ronald Reagan resolved to make nuclear weapons obsolete by developing defensive systems at any cost. USSR was secretly a 3rd world poor country that could not afford to compete with that, forcing reforms, which sharted an interlinking chain of events.

Ronald Reagan upped the ante so high the Soviets could not play. They folded. Game over.

It never ended and never will. Every country in the world has always been engaged in a Machiavellian information war of PR, secrets, and the power between the lines that really makes the world go round. The Cold War was just the most publicized, public chapter of this never ending struggle.

Are you asking us to do your homework for you? Wasn't this covered in class???? Would it be nasty of me to hope that you failed your finals because you hadn't paid attention in class?

The Soviet economy collapsed.

Sorry, this is as simple as I can get because it is not a simple answer. Stalin started the Cold War by invading Poland and reneging on his promise to allow free elections there. This was followed by Soviet occupation of much of the rest of Eastern Europe as well as aiding communist expansion in Asia. Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War by following through on his promise to stand up to and outspend the Soviets in the Arms Race. The Soviets realized Reagan said what he meant and meant what he said. When he proposed to build SDI or Missile Defense, the press and others may have laughed, but the Soviets saw in Reagan a track-record of following through on his commitments, so they raised the white flag. The Cold War began in a series of events from the conferences of the Big Three in 1943-45 to the complex events of the postwar years. Both sides contributed to it. The previous post that "Stalin began the Cold War by invading Poland" is wrong, and is unclear anyway because the Soviets invaded Poland twice and the poster does not specify which invasion. In any case, the Cold War began because the U.S. would not allow the Soviets a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and because the Soviets took a series of aggressive actions to expand their areas of control or influence all over the World. The Cold War ended not because of Reagan's actions: his increased armament only antagonized the USSR and intensified the Cold War. The Cold War ended only because a reformist faction of the Communist Party came to power in the USSR, with Andropov, and then again with Gorbachev, because the old-guard, and just plain old, Soviet leaders kept dying. Gorbachev was from a younger generation and had a much more critical attitude toward the USSR and was much more open minded, educated, intelligent, and worldly than any previous leader, and more than Reagan as well. There was however, one other group responsible for the end of the Cold War: the peoples of Eastern Europe and the USSR, who organized and protested at great personal risk. Their protests, and Gorbachev's acceptance of their role, brought the end of the Cold War, not U.S. arms deployments, which only delayed the whole process. _________________________________

Someone turned on the heat.

The Collapse of the Soviet Union. (1991) Which was due to Perestroika and mutiny in ex-Warsaw Pact countries (mainly Poland) that was allegedly supported by USA secret agencies and the Polish pope. . People ruling all important countries realized it wasn't affordable to continue it.

As nutmegcollector stated, the Soviets could not match the spending of the United States and bankrupted themselves because of it. RIP Fred Weasley.

Global Warming