Alexander Dubcek becomes first secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist party, following pressure for reform from party intellectuals

New Czech leader Alexander Dubcek facilitates the Prague Spring, aiming in his words to provide 'socialism with a human face'

Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia to end the Prague Spring

Reformist Czech leader Alexander Dubcek is arrested and flown to Moscow

Moscow imposes Gustav Husak as first secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, with the brief to reverse Dubcek's reforms

Salvador Allende, heading a Socialist and Marxist coalition, is elected president in Chile

With support from Moscow, Erich Honecker takes Walter Ulbricht's place as leader of East Germany

The first volume of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, an exposé of Stalin's labour camps, is published in Paris

Cuban troops, sent by Castro to Angola, clash with South African forces attempting to combat communism

Communist measures in Afghanistan provoke a Muslim jihad and the murder of more than 100 Russians in Herat

Soviet troops invade Afghanistan to suppress anti-communist anarchy

Electrician Lech Walesa emerges as the leader of a strike in the Gdansk shipyard in Poland

A trade union, Solidarnośc (Solidarity), is formed by strikers in the Gdansk shipyard in Poland

Lech Walesa is elected chairman of the newly formed Polish trade union movement Solidarnośc (Solidarity)

The Kremlin appoints a general, Wojciech Jaruzelski, as prime minister of Poland

Veteran Communist leader Deng Xiaoping secures his position as the real power in China's government

Polish prime minister Wojciech Jaruzelski imposes martial law and suspends Solidarnośc (Solidarity)

The trade union movement Solidarnośc (Solidarity) is declared illegal by the Polish government

After 18 years as General Secretary of the Communist party in the USSR, Leonid Brezhnev dies in office

New Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev brings glasnost ('openness') and perestroika ('reform') to the USSR

The Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev announces that Soviet troops will leave Afghanistan, handing victory to the mujaheddin

Elections in Poland bring Solidarnośc nation-wide success, and the party is soon at the head of a coalition government

Erich Honecker, leader of East Germany since 1971, is forced to resign after massive popular demonstrations

Citizens of East Berlin demolish the Berlin Wall, in what proves a symbolic end to the Cold War

The Communist party relinquishes power without bloodshed in Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution