Ronald Reagan was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989). A Republican and former actor and governor of California, he energized the conservative movement in the United States from 1964. His basic foreign policy was to equal and surpass the Soviet Union in military strength, and put it on the road to what he called "the ash heap of history". By 1985, he began to co-operate closely with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev–they even became friends–and negotiated large-scale disarmament projects. The Cold War was fading away and suddenly ended as Soviets lost control of Eastern Europe almost overnight in October 1989, nine months after Reagan was replaced in the White House by his vice president George H. W. Bush, who was following Reagan's policies. The Soviet Union itself was disso