Timeline of Contemporary period (1945-2020)

The Timeline of Contemporary period comprises the historical period closest to our times. It begins with the end of the Second World War in 1945 and goes up to the present day. But historians have focused mainly on the study of the Cold War years.

The bipolar world of the Cold War

The new system of international relations that emerged from World War II was based on a bipolar world. The United States of America and the Soviet Union were the two powers. They each formed their own system of alliances to ensure hegemony within their respective blocs.

The Western capitalist bloc was led by the United States. The main institutions were:

On the other hand, the Soviet or communist bloc was led by the Soviet Union. The Soviets established their own institutions:

• The Warsaw Pact military alliance.
• The institution of the COMECON in the economic field.

The whole period was marked by uncertainty and fear of a new conflict on a global scale. The military scale and the permanent threat of nuclear war were present throughout this time.

Although the much feared Third World War never took place, the two powers were involved in military conflicts. The wars were peripheral, but they complicated international stability. Decolonization and independence movements were another destabilizing factor. These movements were used as an escape valve for the two superpowers. Through them, they could intervene directly or indirectly without having to openly declare war.

In conclusion, the Cold War ended when the Soviet Union was unable to sustain the huge military expenditures. The economic crisis of the Soviet bloc became more acute in the 1970s and 1980s. The USSR, without money to keep the arms race open with the United States, collapsed. This happened in 1991.

The Timeline of Contemporary Period 1945-2000: Major Events

The Timeline of Contemporary Period presented below points out the most important events of this period.

Main historical facts of the period (1945-2000):

Event	Period	Dates	City	Country
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki	World War II	6 and 9 August 1945	Hiroshima and Nagasaki	Japan
End of World War II	World War II	2 September 1945
The Long Telegram	Cold War	22 February 1946	Washington	United States of America
Churchill’s Fulton Speech	Cold War	5 March 1946	Fulton	United States of America
Italian institutional referendum	Cold War	2 - 3 June 1946	Roma	Italy
President Truman establishes the Truman Doctrine	Cold War	12 March 1947	Washington	United States of America
Independence of India from the British Empir	Decolonization	15 August 1947		India
Zhdanov Doctrine and formation of the Cominform	Cold War	22 September 1947	Moscow	Russia
Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic	Decolonization	30 January 1948	New Delhi	India
Approval of the European Recovery Program (ERP), Marshall Plan	Cold War	3 April 1948	Washington	United States of America
Adoption of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON)	Cold War	5 January 1949	Moscow	Russia
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)	Cold War	4 April 1949	Washington	United States of America
Foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany	Cold War	23 May 1949	Bonn	Germany
Mao Zedong proclaims the creation of the People's Republic of China at the Tian'anmen Gate	Cold War	1 October 1949	Beijing	People's Republic of China (PRC)
Foundation of the German Democratic Republic, GDR	Cold War	7 October 1949	Berlin	Germany
Korean War	Cold War	25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953		Korean Peninsula
Signing of the 1951 Treaty of Paris creating the European Coal and Steel Community	Cold War	18 April 1951	Paris	France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands
The UK explodes a nuclear device	Cold War	1952
Death of Stalin, takes his place Nikita Khrushchev, the new head of the Soviet Union	Cold War	5 March 1953	Moscow	Russia
Cuban Revolution, with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara as protagonists	Cold War	26 July 1953 - 1 January 1959	La Havana	Cuba
Algerian War of Independence	Decolonization	1 November 1954 – 18 March 1962		Algeria
Hallstein Doctrine (GFR)	Cold War	1955 - 1969	Bonn	Germany
Hungarian Revolution of 1956 against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic and its policies imposed from the Soviet Union	Cold War	23 October – 10 November 1956	Budapest	Hungary
Formation of the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance (Warsaw Pact)	Cold War	14 May 1955	Warsaw	Poland
Start of the Vietnam War	Vietnam War / Cold War	1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975		South Vietnam, North Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, South China Sea, Gulf of Thailand
The Soviet Union launches the first artificial satellite, Sputnik	Cold War	4 October 1957	Moscow	Russia
France explodes a nuclear device	Cold War	13 February 1960	Algerian Sahara	France
John F. Kennedy is sworn in as President of the United States.	Cold War	20 January 1961	Washington	United States of America
The Soviet Union launches the first man into space, Yuri Gagarin, aboard the Vostok-1 rocket	Cold War	12 April 1961		Kazakhstan
The Bay of Pigs invasion was a military operation in which paramilitary troops of exiled Cubans and the United States government tried to invade Cuba without success	Cold War	15 – 19 April 1961	Bahía de Cochinos	Cuba
Berlin Wall built	Cold War	13 August 1961	Berlin	Germany
French recognition of Algerian independence	Decolonization	5 July 1962		Algeria
The Cuban missile crisis, a diplomatic conflict between the United States, the Soviet Union and Cuba, generated as a result of the knowledge by the United States of the existence of medium-range nuclear missile bases of the Soviet army in Cuba	Cold War	14 - 28 October 1962		Cuba
Assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy	Cold War	22 November 1963	Dallas	United States of America
Nelson Mandela is imprisoned in South Africa	Apartheid	12 de June 1964 – 11 February 1990	Paarl	South Africa
Khrushchev resigns, Leonid Brezhnev becomes the new Secretary General of the Soviet Union	Cold War	14 October 1964	Moscow	Russia
China tests its first nuclear device	Cold War	16 October 1964		China
Cultural Revolution or Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, a movement started by Mao Zedong, with the stated goal of preserving Chinese communism by eliminating the remnants of capitalist and traditional elements of Chinese society	Cold War	16 May 1966 – 6 October 1976		China
Arrest and assassination of Che Guevara in Bolivia	Cold War	6 October 1967	La Higuera	Bolivia
Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. who was the most visible leader of the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968	Cold War / fight for the civil rights of black people	4 April 1968	Memphis	United States of America
The French May, the student protests, mainly university students, and later trade unions against capitalism, authoritarianism and imperialism	Cold War	May - June 1968	Paris	France
Prague Spring	Cold War	May - 21 August 1968	Praha	Checz Republic
Socialism with a human face	Cold War	April 1968	Praha	Checz Republic
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia	Cold War	20 - 21 August 1968	Praha	Checz Republic
First crewed space flight to reach the Moon. The protagonists were the crew of the Apollo 11 spacecraft (Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin E. Aldrin and Michael Collins)	Cold War / Space race	16 – 24 July 1969		United States of America
The People's Republic of China replaced Taiwan (Republic of China) as China's representative to the United Nations	Cold War	23 November 1971	New York	United States
Bloody Sunday	Northern Ireland Conflict (The Troubles)	30/1/1972	Derry	United Kingdom
US President Nixon Visits Communist China	Cold War	February 21 to 28 1972	Beijing	China
An anti-ballistic missile treaty limiting the use of just two systems by each superpower - SALT I	Cold War	26 May 1972	Moscow	Russia
Coup d'état by Augusto Pinochet against the democratic government of Chile that ends with the life of President Salvador Allende	Cold War	11 September 1973	Santiago de Chile	Chile
Resignation of US President Richard Nixon over the Watergate scandal	Cold War	9 August 1974	Washington	United States
The United States recognizes Communist China as representing China, rather than Taiwan	Cold War	1974	Washington	United States
The Helsinki Final Act, also known as Helsinki Accords signed	Cold War	30 July – 1 August 1975	Helsinki	Finland
Mao Zedong, founder and top leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC), as well as founder and president of the People's Republic of China, dies	Cold War	9 September 1976	Beijing	China
New Soviet Union Constitution. According to it, Brezhnev is elected president	Cold War	7 October 1977	Moscow	Russia
State visit by Deng Xiaoping to the United States	Cold War	January - February 1979	Washington	United States
The SALT II agreement lowered the limits on nuclear weapons	Cold War	18 June 1979	Hofburg Palace, in Vienna	Austria
The Soviet Union starts the war against Afghanistan	Soviet-Afghan war / Cold War	24 December 1979		Afghanistan
Start of the Iran-Iraq War	Iran–Iraq War	22 September 1980		Iraq/Iran
START (strategic arms reduction talks), which succeeded SALT, first announced by US President Ronald Reagan	Cold War	9 May 1982	Geneva	Switzerland
Death of Leonid Brezhnev. Yuri Andropov succeeds him as General Secretary of the CPSU and President of the Soviet Union	Cold War	10 November 1982	Moscow	Russia
US President Ronald Reagan announces his decision to fund an anti-ballistic missile aerospace defensive system called "Star Wars"	Cold War	March 1983	Washington	United States
Death of Yuri Andropov. Konstantin Chernenko is the new President of the Soviet Union	Cold War	9 February 1984	Moscow	Russia
Death of Konstantin Chernenko, Mikhail Gorbachev is the new President of the Soviet Union	Cold War	10 March 1985	Moscow	Russia
Nuclear accident at the Chernobyl Power Plant	Cold War	26 April 1986	Prípiat	Ukraine
US-USSR Agreement to Abolish Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty	Cold War	8 December 1987	White House, Washington	United Stated
The USSR begins withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan	Soviet-Afghan war / Cold War	15 May to 16 August 1988		Afghanistan
End of the Iran-Iraq War	Iran-Iraq War	20 August 1988		Iraq/Iran
Fall of the Berlin Wall. First major milestone of the end of the Cold War and the capitalism-socialism conflict	Cold War	9 November 1989	Berlin	Germany
Velvet Revolution	Cold War	17 - 29 November 1989	Praha	Checz Republic
Romanian Revolution of 1989	Cold War	16 – 27 December 1989	Bucarest	Romania
Nelson Mandela is released from prison, where he spent 27 years without freedom	Apartheid	11 February 1990	Victor Verster Prision at Paarl	South Africa
Dissolution of the Soviet Union	Cold War	11/3/1990 - 25/12/1991	Moscow	Russia
On the basis of the START agreement, the two superpowers agree to reduce, by 1998, the strategic arsenals of 6000 nuclear warheads in each country	Cold War	31 July 1991	Moscow	Russia
Dissolution Warsaw Pact	Cold War	1 July 1991	Moscow	Russia
Nelson Mandela becomes the first black President of the Republic of South Africa		10 May 1994 – 16 June 1999	Cape Town	South Africa