| 1990 | March 11 -- Beginning with Lithuania, over the course of the next two years, ten other republics, once forced to be part of the Soviet empire, declare their independence from the Soviet Union. |
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October 3 -- Germany is reunified and Berlin is restored as the nation’s capital. By year’s end the first all-German election in almost sixty years is held. |
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| 1991 | June 12 -- Boris Yeltsin is elected president of the Russian Federation. |
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December 21 -- The Soviet Union is ended when eleven of its republics sign a protocol forming a new, loose alliance. Four days later Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as president of the Soviet Union. |
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