Overview: With the escalation of nuclear missiles globally, Brezhnev invades Czechoslovakia in 1968, as the proxy East vs West war in Vietnam continues. Following the catastrophic invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, a new era begins with Mikhail Gorbachev, as his bold statements quickly lead to a withdrawal from Afghanistan, and by 1989, the collapse of communism. That same year the symbolic Berlin Wall falls, with the end of the Soviet Union formally declared in August 1991.