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TheColdWar era began in 1948,pitting democracy—as embodied by the United States in particular—against the ideals of commu- nism represented by the USSR. For more than 50 years, tensions between the two nations resulted in a nuclear arms race and a space race, involvement in two proxy wars in Korea andVietnam, and the specter of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The state détente between Russian General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and U.S. President Richard Nixon in the 1970s paved the way for improved diplomatic relations, which ultimately took shape in the 1980s between Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan.

Détente in the 1970s.

During the ColdWar, underground bunkers, like this one, were installed in the event of a nuclear attack.

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