The end of the Cold War is commonly marked by the dissolution of which country in 1991?

• A. The Soviet Union
• B. Yugoslavia
• C. East Germany
• D. Czechoslovakia

Answer: (A)

Think about the geopolitical shift at the end of the Cold War: the Soviet Union, the core of the opposing bloc, collapsed due to economic strain, political reforms, and rising nationalist movements within its republics. In 1991, after the August coup failed, the republics moved toward independence, and the Belavezha Accords effectively dissolved the USSR. The formal end came on December 26, 1991, when the Soviet Union ceased to exist and its former republics became independent states, dramatically reshaping world politics and ending the long ideological confrontation. Other events—East Germany’s unification in 1990, the peaceful split of Czechoslovakia in 1993, and Yugoslavia’s protracted breakup in the 1990s—happened at different times and do not mark the end of the Cold War in 1991.