Mikhail Gorbichev was the Soviet leader who saw the end of the Cold War through his efforts along with that of the American Presidents Ronald Reagen and George Bush. He took office as Secretary General of the Communist Party in 1985 thus making him the head of the Soviet Union. Within his first year as secretary general, Gorbachev had already started to work on ending the Cold War. In 1986 he started to discontinue economic support from the soviet's satellites which included Cuba. That same year he called for the reform of the soviet system. In October of 1986, Gorbachev met with Reagen in Iceland to discuss and see to the removal of all intermediate range nuclear missiles in Europe. In 1987, Reagen and Gorbachev met in Washington to sign a treaty eliminating all short and medium range nuclear missiles. In December of 1988 Gorbachev renounced the Brezhnev Doctrine, thus giving more freedom to the states of Eastern Europe. A month later he withdrew the soviet military from Afghanistan. By the end of 1988 Gorbachev renouced the use of force in Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Rumania whose communist regimes had fallen, and as a result, recognizing the end of the soviet empire. By 1990 the world began to realize that the Cold War was coming to an end. In May of 1990, Bush and Gorbachev met in Washington and sign more than a dozen treaties for reducing nuclear weapons, a ban on chemical weapons, and agreements normalizing trade. Later that year Gorbachev met with German chancelor Kohl and signed a nonagression pact. The Soviet troops were moved out of Eastern Germany. The lines between Poland and the USSR were perminantly drawn. Finally at the end of 1991, Grobichev turned over power to Boris Yeltsin who was President by means of the first free election in the history of the Soviet Union.