The Iron Curtain falls.

For 45 years, troops from the Western allies and the Soviet bloc glared at each other across Central Europe. Both sides were armed to the teeth and both worried about being attacked by the other. This was the Cold War, and the line that divided the two sides was called the Iron Curtain. The Western powers operated under the umbrella of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); fighting forces were stationed in West Germany, Spain, Britain, Turkey, and other countries. The Soviets and its allies were members of the Warsaw Pact; soldiers were based in East Germany, Czechoslovakia Poland, and most of the rest of Central and Eastern Europe. When the Soviet Union started to implode in the late 1980s, its forces began to withdraw from Central Europe. The Warsaw Pact was officially dissolved in July 1991, but the worst indignity for this once powerful military force came exactly six years later. In July 1997, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic were invited to join the ranks of NATO. The former Warsaw Pact members accepted the invitation eagerly, despite the protests of Russia. In the lead up to the NATO expansion, Russia had strongly and consistently opposed it. Eventually, Moscow gave its grudging approval, but the final invitation was greeted by Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov with hostility: "...we still consider expansion the biggest mistake in Europe since the end of World War Two." This says much about the decline of Russia's military; once it could make its enemies tremble, now all it can do is make angry statements.