MAPS OF HISTORY · COLD WAR · BATTLES AND EVENTS · Dissolution of the Soviet UnionCold War · TURNING POINT · 1991
Dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991)
On the Cold War map as “The flag comes down”
25 Dec 1991 — Gorbachev resigns from a country that no longer exists. At 7:32 p.m., the red banner is lowered over the Kremlin. A flag, rather than a treaty, marks the end of the Cold War.
When 25 Dec 1991 Type Turning point Chapter End of the Cold War (chapter 12 of Cold War)Atlas The Cold War, 1945–1991 TURNING POINT · THE COLD WAR, 1945–1991 These maps are reconstructed from published sources · North Atlantic Treaty: Algerian departments cease to apply from 3 July 1962 · Cliopatria v0.2.1 historical polities · Decolonization of Asia and Africa, 1945–1960 · NATO membership chronology · Natural Earth v5.1.2 country geography · The collapse of the Soviet Union · South Yemen: independence and alignment chronology · South Yemen: Soviet relationship, 1971 intelligence estimate
Source details NATO, treaty footnote 2. Historical treaty facts cited; no artwork or prose reproduced Cliopatria contributors / Seshat Global History Databank. CC BY 4.0 · Selected dated records; documented component selection, unions and shared-edge extraction. US Department of State, Office of the Historian. US government publication NATO. Historical facts cited; no artwork or prose reproduced Natural Earth contributors. Public domain · Full source components and holes retained; documented historical unions and repairs. US Department of State, Office of the Historian. US government publication US Department of State. US government historical publication US Department of State, FRUS 1969–1976, volume XXIV, document 182. US government historical publication This political-alignment geography uses national and administrative extents; it does not map every military front. Modern-reference perimeters are explicitly recorded where no more suitable reviewed historical geometry was adopted. All source parts and holes are retained.
The Soviet, Yugoslav, Czechoslovak, Sudanese and other historical unions remove later internal borders. Occupation and armistice lines retain their separate meanings.
Dated assignments correct omissions across the legacy views: independent Algeria is non-aligned after July 1962; Greece and Turkey join NATO in 1952, and Spain in 1982. South Yemen is separate from North Yemen, with British administration before late 1967 and the Soviet-aligned Marxist government after 1969.
The narrative date for the chapter is 1991.98; the displayed source state is the named e91 timeline reference. Each layer records its date-specific source intervals and nearest-date choices.
proxy: Natural Earth v5.1.2 contemporary reference · reconstruction: 1945–1991 · reconstruction: Late 1991 · vector: 1958–1959 · vector: 1969–1975 · vector: 1987–2005
Layer records and reconstruction methods
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