The downfall was mostly based on financial problems (mainly caused by the arms race), then there was Chernobyl 1986 which not only cost thousands of lives but also billions and billions of Rubels to clear, and finally, the GDR (the divided Eastern part of Germany behind the Iron Curtain) regime was chased away by its citizens in 1989 and that was the end of it, the USSR went down two years later.
We in West Germany were holding our breath when we saw the GDR people storming the STASI hq in Berlin, it wasn't clear at all that the Russians wouldn't send troops, this was when Gorbatchev had to decide between the inevitable and world war 3. Luckily, he chose the former, and the rest as they say is history.
We went to Berlin to organise illegal techno parties in the fallen rubble of the former USSR. The people had won... ...or so we thought, but that's another story.
Anyway, Reagan started as a diehard cold warrior through and through. Over here, he was declared enemy #1 by the lefties, the big warmonger with his SDI who would bring us total thermo-nuclear annihilation. When Gorbatchev came into office, Reagan seemingly went through a phase of change and started to meet the Russians and Gorbatchev on a regular basis, beginning in the mid-80s. This led to a huge improvement of US-USSR relationship and several important nuclear disarmament contracts. Reagan became a dependable partner whose political instinct of his later presidency helped to pave the way for a more or less peaceful end of the Soviet era, and as someone who was there when it all happened, I'm still thankful for the foresight of people like him and Gorbatchev who were able to read the signs of the times and did what had to be done to bring it to a, uhm, good end.
again for the first time in a while.
