Ronald Reagan was not a president.
The phrase evil empire was first applied to the Soviet Union in 1983 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan , who took an aggressive , hard-line stance that favored matching and exceeding the Soviet Union 's strategic and global military capabilities , in calling for a rollback strategy that would , in his words , `` write the final pages of the history of the Soviet Union . '' Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty . Signed in Washington , D.C. by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on 8 December 1987 , the treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on 27 May 1988 and came into force on 1 June 1988 . Ronald Reagan . Reagan 's presidency came during the decline of the Soviet Union and just ten months after the end of his term , the Berlin Wall fell , and on December 26 , 1991 , nearly three years after he left office , the Soviet Union collapsed . United States presidential election, 1984 . The contest was between the incumbent President Ronald Reagan from California , the Republican candidate , and former Vice President Walter Mondale from Minnesota , the Democratic candidate .