GCSE History: Détente and the End of the Cold War 1970–91

The final act of the superpower story — from détente through renewed confrontation to the astonishing collapse of 1989-91 — closes the GCSE Cold War study, and its exam questions hinge on knowing which agreement did what and in which year. This quiz covers the whole arc.

Détente opens the set with its two landmark documents: SALT 1 (1972), tested through what it actually limited — strategic ballistic missile launchers — and the Helsinki Accords (1975), with their twin baskets of territorial integrity and human rights separated from plausible distractors like troop withdrawals that never happened.

The collapse of détente follows through the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and its cascade: the Carter Doctrine, the Olympic boycotts, and the death of SALT 2 ratification. Reagan's Second Cold War is represented by the Strategic Defense Initiative — "Star Wars" — framed correctly as a proposed missile defence system whose real significance lay in the economic and technological pressure it placed on Moscow.

The Gorbachev questions cover the reform programme every paper expects: glasnost and perestroika as the two pillars, the summit diplomacy with Reagan, and the INF Treaty of 1987 — the first agreement to eliminate an entire class of nuclear missiles rather than merely cap numbers, a distinction the quiz tests directly.

The endgame is sequenced precisely: the abandonment of the Brezhnev Doctrine and the popular revolutions of 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, and the dissolution of the USSR marked by Gorbachev's resignation on 25 December 1991. Explanations tie each step to the "why did the Cold War end?" causation question that anchors this section of the exam.

• State what SALT 1 and the Helsinki Accords each agreed
• Explain how the invasion of Afghanistan ended détente
• Describe Reagan's SDI and its pressure on the Soviet Union
• Explain glasnost, perestroika and the significance of the INF Treaty
• Sequence the collapse of 1989-91 from Eastern Europe to the dissolution of the USSR

Covers détente and the end of the Cold War 1970-91 from the superpower relations study taught across GCSE exam boards: SALT 1, Helsinki, Afghanistan, Reagan and Gorbachev, the INF Treaty, and the collapse of 1989-91.