Popular Culture: 1980-1999

Popular Culture: 1980-1999 — page 5 — Skateboarding was all the rage in the 1990s What was the world like in the 1980s and 1990s The 1980s was a time of strikes and job losses with factories and mines shutting down and an economic recession leading to high

Popular Culture: 1980-1999 — page 6 — unemployment But business was booming in finance with yuppies seeming to get rich quick That was until the stock markets collapsed on Black Monday October 19 1987 in the United States and Black Wednesday September 16 1992 in the United Kingdom 1 Politics Former film star Ronald Reagan became president of the United States in 1980 and governed until 1988 when Vice President George H W Bush won the election In the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher became the first female British prime minister in 1979 and governed until 1990 She earned the nickname Iron Lady from the Soviet press because of her strong anticommunist beliefs 2 Together with Reagan Thatcher ensured the Cold War continued The Cold War started between the Soviet Union and the United States following the end of World War II The war was fought mainly on political and economic fronts not on a battlefield The Cold War began to break down in the late 1980s when Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union Gorbachev introduced reforms into the Soviet Union that eventually led to the collapse of the union in 1991 In 1993 Bill Clinton became president of the United States and oversaw the country’s longest peacetime economic expansion 3 In 1997 Tony Blair became the youngest prime minister of Britain since 1812 4

Popular Culture: 1980-1999 — page 7 — In the early 1980s Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher maintained a strong anticommunist stance against the Soviet Union

Popular Culture: 1980-1999 — page 8 — Fall of the Berlin Wall The building of the Berlin Wall started in August 1961 5 It separated communist East Germany from the democratic West Germany The Berlin Wall came to represent the Cold War’s division of Eastern from Western Europe In October 1989 East Germany’s communist leadership was forced out of power and by November 1989 the East German borders were open and people could travel freely across them This opened up the channels for a spread of culture Western world culture could now influence the previously isolated Eastern European countries First Gulf War 1990 1991 The First Gulf War started after Iraq invaded its neighbor Kuwait Saddam Hussein was the president of Iraq at the time The United States under President George H W Bush and its allies used military force to defeat Hussein 6 Disasters During this period there was a series of natural and man-made disasters which made people think more about the environment For example the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in the Soviet Union in 1986,7 spread radioactive pollution across the Soviet Union and Western Europe

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