Embassy of the United Kingdom, Reykjavík first British Embassy was Höfði (best known as the location for the 1986 Reykjavík Summit meeting of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev). In the 1950s the Embassy was moved to its current location on Laufásvegur street. In 1968, the British Government bought Laufásvegur 31 and the old farmhouse which was there was donated to the Reykjavik Museum and moved to the heritage site at Árbæjarsafn. When the Embassy was redeveloped in the 1990s, it was decided that the location was too large for Britain's needs and so it looked for another partner to share it with. At the same time
Foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration the Communist Party was forced to surrender its 73-year-old monopoly on state power. Soviet hardliners rebelled and staged a coup against Gorbachev, but it failed. Boris Yeltsin rallied Russians in the street while Gorbachev was held hostage. By December 1991, the union-state had dissolved, breaking the USSR up into fifteen separate independent states. Boris Yeltsin became leader of the new Russia. In her eulogy to Ronald Reagan at his funeral, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whom Reagan worked very closely with during his tenure in office, said, "Others hoped, at best, for an uneasy cohabitation with the Soviet Union;