American History Hit - Did the Cold War Ever End?

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

Would the Cold War have happened if the nuclear bomb was never created? How did Gorbachev, Reagan and Thatcher reduce tensions between the East and West? And, according to one of the Russian authorities' most wanted journalists, how are echoes of the Cold War felt today?'Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War' is a new, 9-part Netflix documentary which answers these questions and more. In this episode of American History Hit, Don speaks to the series' director and two contributors to get some insight.First, he speaks to Brian Knappenberger, the documentary filmmaker behind this series, Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror and others.Then, he is joined by Archie Brown, Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford and author of 'The Human Factor. Gorbachev, Reagan, and Thatcher, and the End of the Cold War'.Finally, he speaks with Andrei Soldatov, Russian investigative journalist and co-founder and editor of Agentura.ru, a watchdog of the activities of the Russian secret service.Produced and edited by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/ You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. Hello there, it's Don Wildman. Welcome to American History Hit.

Today's episode is a departure for us, something unique. Three different interviews compiled all about a new Netflix documentary entitled, Turning Point, The Bomb and the Cold War. It's a nine-part series, looking back on massive history. And while working on it, it triggered a Cold War memory of my own, something I thought might be a good way to kick things off today. It's a story takes place back in December 1983. I was a college student studying in London,

and I was graciously invited to visit Moscow for the Christmas season. My high school friend's father was at the time the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, under President Ronald Reagan. Of course I'd go, once a lifetime opportunity in all. Only problem was the political moment we were in. Reagan had recently deployed ground-launched cruise missiles onto English soil against vehement protests from the Soviets and many worried Britons. Nonetheless, I somehow secured my visa and flew to Moscow, damn the torpedoes, or in this case, nuclear warheads.

I would be staying with my friend and his family at Spasso House, the U.S. Ambassador's residence located not too far from the Kremlin, where upon arrival I was greeted by my friend's mom, the ambassador's wife, who, after routine pleasantries, dropped her voice to a low whisper. Now, we want to be careful what we say in the house, she explained to me, pointing up to the ventilation. great in the ceiling, were always being listened to, and the Russian house staff, they're all KGB. And with that, she dispatched me to my quarters. My Christmas holiday had begun. This was an immersion for me in dizzying diplomatic circles my social skills were ill-equipped for, but after a couple of days, I decided to extend my visit a few days longer. Not good news for the ambassador's deputy. It was near impossible to get you here, he said to me. away from the family handing me my airline ticket which he'd been holding.

Whatever you do, do not lose this. I won't be able to get you another. And here. He gave me a small spiral-bound map book printed by the CIA, city maps of Moscow at the time being inexplicably classified. Take the subway downtown to the British Airways office. They know you're coming. I headed off alone into the Winchery Moscow streets. A few blocks away was small, and I found my way to the famous Moscow subway escalators, abysmally deep leading down into the tunnels below. I stepped aboard, opening the mapbook to check my directions. But in the same moment of splaying the book open in my palm, the ticket which I'd carefully stuck into the book, slid out and feather floated down toward the step I stood upon.

I didn't react much at the moment. The escalator was so steep and there were people around me. I waited to see where the ticket was settled. But to my utter shock and horror, it didn't settle. It somehow aerodynamically went sideways and headed straight for the crack at the end of the step, and disappeared. That's when I reacted, collapsing to my knees and grabbing for any edge of the paper with my fingernails. No use, the ticket was gone, down into the works of the escalator system. As I began to panic, I heard a soothing woman's voice from behind me say,

Is anything wrong? I stood up, turning, surprised to hear English being spoken, and then to see a very striking woman there dressed in an elegant blue woolen coat and a black sable hat. I relayed to this woman by desperate circumstance. It just disappeared right here, my airline ticket. I stammered, miming the wings of an airplane. Let me see if I can help, she replied calmly. We arrived at the bottom of the escalator

where an old Babushka woman sat inside a plexiglass booth monitoring the system. The blue-coated woman poked her head inside the booth, spoke briefly to the other, and the two of them walked past me and headed towards the station platform, entering a door at the far end. A minute later, the woman emerged with a man in frumpy overalls holding a tool in his hand,

who disappeared, through another door under the escalator. Several moments later, the escalator crammed with Russians heading for work, stop still without caution or alarm. For a few seconds, it seemed to me the time had frozen. But then the system started right back up again, and the man in overalls emerged with my ticket,

slightly mangled with grease stains, but otherwise intent. He handed it to me, nodded, and silently walked away. I turned to the woman who'd done all this, but she too was gone, back on the platform about to board an arriving train. I rushed over to her to thank her, but she stopped me with her hand. I cannot speak with you, she said brusquely, and boarded the train, the doors closed, and she was off. Eventually, I found my way to the British Airways offices, got my ticket stamped, and made my way back to Spasso House, debating with myself whether or not to admit to what had happened. But when I walked in, lunch was being served in the Salarium,

and the ambassador's wife, sitting among a table of guests, asked how had it all gone for me. I blurted out the whole embarrassing episode, but to my surprise, the table erupted in charmed laughter. Well, my dear, said the ambassador's wife, that was your KGB handler, assigned to keep you out of trouble. And it seems to me she did an excellent job. At the not so tender age of 22 for one week of the Cold War,

I had been the object of Soviet surveillance. But communicating the broader context of such experiences is the work of greater minds than my own. Hi everyone, it's Don Wildman. You're listening to American History Hit. There's a must-watch documentary series streaming on Netflix right now. It's called Turning Point, the bomb and the Cold War, And it covers the whole frightening, sprawling history. From the start to the, well, did it finish?

How did it begin? Why did it begin? In the upcoming interviews here, I direct those questions and many more to three personalities central to the series. The project's director, a professor emeritus from Oxford, and a Russian journalist now living in exile. So let's get started on this whirlwind tour of the Cold War with the man responsible for this documentary series. Director Brian Knappenberger. Brian Knappenberger, nice to meet you. You are the director of this fine docu-series

and founder of Luminant Media, I imagine, right? Yes. Let me just give you some seriously broad questions here. The Cold War would not have existed without nuclear weapons. It's stated right in the first episode or so of your series. I think many people don't realize that. Yeah. When we looked at the Cold War, we really kind of started with that as the center point.

We are a little bit in Oppenheimer territory for a little bit where we look at the beginnings of nuclear weapons, the Trinity Test, and the invention of nuclear weapons at the end of World War II. But really, for us, that's the sort of drop in the pond, and we follow the ripples out from there, because that is the beginning of the Cold War. And the Cold War doesn't exist without nuclear weapons. The invention of nuclear weapons has changed everything, I think, about history and really defined pretty much everything, geopolitically and economically and culturally that came after. There's no end to the built-in drama of this story. Oh, yeah. But one of the pieces of the puzzle that's so fascinating to me is the Potsdam Conference. When Truman knows that this test has succeeded, he's going in with all his cards.

He obviously feels very powerful as a result of this, but little does he know at the same time that Stalin's been getting intel all the while from Los Alamos and even before that. It is such an intriguing part of this. And when you look at history, as you know, from the podcast, These little moments boom so large when you look back. Imagine being there at the Potsdam conference when Putin gets a note that says it worked. And he's talking about the Trinity test, this first ever explosion of an atomic bomb at all of world and human history. And they understand that they have this weapon. And he says, he mentions it to Stalin.

And Stalin kind of nods. And that's about all there is. But yeah, as history moves on, we learned Stalin what had spies in the Manhattan Project and was getting all sorts of information. And that begins to define the events that come after, but also really starts to set the stage for espionage and spying and the building of that kind of infrastructure too. In the first sentence of your response just now, you had an appropriate slip. You call him Putin instead of Truman, but that's part of the... Oh, did I say Putin? Yeah.

But it's okay because it's such an appropriate slip because that's what's really so current about this story is that by telling the past, you're actually very much in the present, which is sad but true. Yeah. So much of what we are seeing with the Stalin, Truman, Churchill years in the first episode resonates through to the current situation that Putin certainly is deeply engaged in. Yeah. That is sort of the premise is that the Cold War doesn't end. But I mean, look, we started out telling us this series, this nine-part series of this epic

slice of history. And we had already started with a particular focus on the proliferation of nuclear weapons. But we had already started this when Putin invaded Ukraine. And we were just glued to the television like everybody was when tanks were rolling into Kiev. And there was an assassination attempt on Zelensky's life. And by the way, Putin was telling a version of the Cold War story himself. He had famously said that the breakup of the Soviet Union, and most people think of as the big end of the Cold War, that the breakup of the Soviet Union, which is celebrated in the West,

he calls it the greatest geopolitical tragedy in history. And his version of Cold War history is occasionally has grains of truth in it, but is often riddled with factual errors and just omissions, lies sometimes. So it became clear that this was going to be the focus of the series, ultimately, that we were going to frame it with those events, because history has this way of roaring back into our lives. For real, I was born in 61. It's just been one roar after another. You know, it's just like constantly. We should just define Cold War versus Hot War. What do we mean by that?

Well, the Cold War is mostly thought of as when with this rapid proliferation of nuclear weapons, the human race created a weapon that can destroy all of life on Earth. And it created all of this power. And there was this buildup on both sides that was based on a very strange theory that if only we could build more and more powerful life-destroying weapons. then we would be safe. That sounds crazy. And it is crazy. It's referred to as mad, mutually insured destruction. But that's what the Cold War started to represent, because if you were to launch a nuclear weapon, that would be something akin to a kind of suicide pact. So the Cold War gets

pushed and those tensions get pushed underground. They become, they flare up in proxy wars across the world. For decades and decades, they flare up in building of a national security state, of course, the CIA and the KGB, this need for intelligence services that never goes away, that just keeps getting kind of more entrenched surveillance, those kinds, and misinformation and disinformation, which in that sense, I don't think there's any argument that the Cold War is still with us. All of those tactics are part of our world now. Yeah, exactly. And the institutions that have been built because of it, NSA being one of them, just these huge intelligence networks that never ended, you know, and only grew came out of the need to protect ourselves from there. I have never

seen, and I've always wondered what the document is that somebody says, hey, you know, there were two huge world wars that almost destroyed the world. Let's not have another one. Here's a new idea. Let's just deter each other from destroying each other instead. Is there that one document where some diplomat suggests it or did it just develop this way? I think it develops this way over time. I mean, when you think about one of the documents that does kick off the war is the George, the Kennan letter, right? And once the United States is coming out of World War II, George Kennan, it writes this letter in which he describes Stalin and he describes the position of the Soviet Union in a way that paints it as something new that's had, a new chapter, which is going to be that we're

moving on from these old conflicts, but the new conflict is very much a battle for dominion of the world between the East and the West and that there were going to be two new superpowers. He, in a lot of ways, defines not what you mentioned, the kind of mutually assured destruction and deterrence, but he does start to define in people's minds what the Cold War would become. And that leads to essentially the building of the National Security State. In 1947, we start to, you know, the United States didn't have, for instance, a peacetime intelligence service before World War II. Didn't have an army, for that matter. It didn't really have a standing army. either. So suddenly you have this mindset that shifts pretty dramatically and really begins to build

in a very, it's very robust way. It just starts to just create this state. And then of course, Eisenhower comes in and that proliferation of nuclear weapons increases dramatically. And they move on from the kind of weapons that Oppenheimer was creating into hydrogen bombs and thermonuclear devices. And it's often run in. And NATO has started around that same time. And then there's the response in the creation of the Warsaw Pact. So you have NATO already kind of facing off against the Warsaw Pact, and that's more or less the Cold War. Daniel Ellsberg gives us some insight into the thinking a little along the lines of what you're talking about. But it's a foregone conclusion that we just have to build more weapons that can kill people.

There is a point, and you get that with him that's, yeah. Well, as Eisenhower warns at his exit, you know, the military industrial complex has taken over. you know, is sort of leading this now, and that's an extraordinarily dangerous situation in terms of the fate of the war. I just, you know, growing up in the era that I've grown up in, you look back. And I remember my father said to me, Don, you know, he's a kid. I remember Don, every 25 years is going to be a war. You know, he said cynically, having been a veteran in World War II. And I sort of took that into life and gone, oh, that's terrible.

But I see how that kind of works if you look backwards. But suddenly that changes in an enormous way in terms of the superpowers facing off. after World War II. Now it's all, as you say, proxy wars and stuff like that. And part of that situation is we've now gone 80 years without the two major powers frontlining each other. And that's chalk that up to nuclear weapons for worse, of course, but it has at least held them off from destroying each other. It's a weird situation. That is absolutely true. You don't often think of it that way, but the invention of nuclear weapons changed everything, right? And you're right, it did bringing to a close the kind of massive, large-scale wars that basically had defined the human

race up until that point. But that tension didn't go away. It was kind of forced underground and popped up in all these other interesting ways. So yeah, the Cold War plays out in these brutal, often very deadly kind of proxy wars around the world, propping up of dictatorships, disinformation and misinformation. It's a battle of thought and allegiances. And it becomes the surveillance state, the intelligence services, the desire for information. information becomes much more important and the desire to influence people, to change the way that they're. So all these tools become a part of it and just kind of snap into life in a global way because of the use of nuclear weapons. But the big wars are not happening in the same way.

It's one of these, you know, you can't write it. It's like an incredible story, including the collapse of the Soviet Union and just these mega events in world history. And then the recovery and the emergence of a sort of villain character of Vladimir Putin. I mean, it's like the biggest story ever told politically. How did you approach this whole project of telling the story differently than it ever been done before? Well, I think one of the things that we did that hasn't been done. I mean, we approached it. We just tried to talk to as many people as possible around the world that were in the middle of Cold War history

and from big decision makers like Robert Gates and Kandleuze Rice to the survivors of Perishima, that sort of thing. But I think what we do that has never been done is that we really don't stop with the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is largely thought of as the end of the Cold War. Of course, there's the famous book. This is the Francis Fukuyama book, The End of History. This obviously was not the end of history. History marches on. George H.W. Bush in his State of the Union speech talks very triumphantly.

The Cold War is over and we won. But the decisions that were made after that made a big deal, or a very big deal. They lay the groundwork for the collapse of the now Russian economy. They bring large-scale disillusionment with democracy throughout Russia, and they lay the groundwork for Putin. And Putin has been clear from the minute he stepped onto the world stage about his intentions. We haven't always listened to him, but his vision has been pretty clear, particularly around Ukraine.

You do touch on the tracking of nuclear materials as being a sort of side issue of all of this, but it's a massive one. And how has that improved or do you find it in better shape than I hope, you know, in terms of a system that's taking care of business or are we, should we not be sleeping at night? I think we should not be sleeping at night. But just jump to the conclusion. There's two things. So, well, what interview that I did with Andy Weber? Andy Weber is an official who went in to try to look for nuclear weapons in that very precarious time after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Yeah. After the Soviet Union collapsed, suddenly one entity, the Soviet Union became. four entities with nuclear weapons, and it was very unclear where these were going and where this nuclear material was. Suddenly, it was very chaotic. He went in, and he says, his taxi driver says, do you want to see some nuclear material? And he goes. And so he tells us the story of trying to track this stuff down.

That's scary. But at the really scary thing, I mean, I don't know if it's the really scary thing, but we're at a period of time in which most of the treaties, the great accomplishments, really, of the Cold War were nuclear weapons treaties. Most of those treaties have lapsed or about to lapse. So we are looking at a period of time. I mean, if you're talking about not sleeping, most of the diplomacy and the cool-headedness that led to those accomplishments, that diplomacy's gone and that those accomplishments,

those treaties are gone. So we're at a period of time which, for the first time in 50 years, we may be at a place where there's nothing governing this. That's the really astonishing thing about the Cold War. And it's captured so well by your series is that all that. all the while we live these normal lives, oh, my Lord, destruction is right around the corner at any given moment. Yeah.

Those in power know that better than we do, I'm sure. And it's an astonishing theme of our lives that's really, really kind of shocking. And those of us of a certain age have had our entire existence. Those who have been born into it, same. They just aren't as old. But it's really a fact of human life now that we can end, you know, in a minute from now, which I don't even know if we can process that. Exactly.

I totally agree. I mean, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, I think we started to kind of forget about it. And we started to think that maybe this was solved. And we've gotten to a place of complacency where we just don't think it's a threat, but it is absolutely still a threat. Obviously, the United States has a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons still, although those numbers have come down. Russia has nuclear weapons. China is building nuclear weapons at a really rapid pace. And there are more countries in the world now that have nuclear weapons.

And as I mentioned, we're at a place where the big treaties that govern these things that have been around that we've taken for granted for 50 years, those treaties are mostly gone. So we're in a very precarious position where the human race has created life-ending, life-destroying weapons. And we don't really think about it or really understand that. I hope that's one of the things people take away from the series. I mean, I really do hope that's something that sticks with people when they watch this. For those who are going to watch this, I mean, you're covering the entire. entirety of the Cold War, basically from the beginning, from the invention of the atomic bomb, but all the way through to today. That's what's extraordinary about it, really, nine parts.

Yeah, that's what we're focused on. We don't really stop at the collapse of the Soviet Union. We just kind of keep looking at how these events keep playing out. And I do really very much believe that every headline you look at, every tension that exists in the world, has some element that is a result of the Cold War. I mean, the Cold War has defined our life. It touched every corner of the planet and touched every human life. And it is what set the stage for our world now. Exactly. It really is.

And the framework within which world history is told, geopolitical history is told, by framing it in the Cold War, is so useful and so kind of, ah, settling, I understand. Yeah. Because that gives you reference points to everyone at Putin's threats. Every time he talks about it, boom, it's on the front page. Why? Because that's been the story of life. And we'll live with us in the back.

of our minds the whole time. So to have the greater story in mind as you hear these ongoing threats and reminders of the arsenals at work here is really, really important. Thank you so much for making this and for talking to us. I'm excited to watch the rest of the episodes and I encourage everyone to do so as well. I really appreciate it. Next, let's narrow in on how a war conducted in smoke mirrors, proxies, and economic penalties could have come to an end, how the heads of prospective states helped it along. I'm speaking now with political scientist Archie Brown, Professor Emeritus of Politics at the University of Oxford, an author of a long list of books, including The Human Factor, Reagan, Gorbachev and Thatcher at the end of the Cold War, published in 2021. Greetings, Professor. Thank you so much for joining us. Pleasure. Your book cover suggests it's right in the title. The ending of the Cold War had much to do with the unlikely triangle of its three main players. Reagan and Gorbachev, of course, but unexpectedly, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who played an outside role in the problem.

It is surprising that Margaret Thatcher should appear in the title of such a book. But she had an exceptionally warm relationship with Ronald Reagan. Reagan thought that she and Thatcher were soulmates, and indeed they were. I mean, they saw eye to eye on the economy, and they saw eye to I mean, fervid, anti-communists, anti-Soviet. And so it was quite ironic that they played such an important part in bringing the Cold War to a peaceful resolution. She had a lot to do with warming Reagan up.

to Gorbachev, didn't she? Yes. I mean, the even more surprising thing was that she formed a warm relationship with the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Yacal Gnabanovichov. She was helped by the fact that she met him before he became a Soviet leader, and they formed a pretty good relationship from the start.

And so she was very important for Gorbachev, not least because of her friendship with Reagan. And so she was, there's a kind of triangle there, and she was a pretty crucial player in the middle. What were the issues that Thatcher was concerned about at this point? Obviously, self-interest in terms of her country, but how did she see this playing out? Initially, Margaret Thatcher was very skeptical that there could be any change for the better, the Soviet Union. But in 1983, she became worried, as indeed Ronald Reagan did, about the Cold War getting colder.

You know, there was even some suspicion in Moscow that the United States might be thinking about a strike on the Soviet Union. There was a lot of alarm there. And some of the information came from Alec Gordievsky, Soviet spy, who was actually working for the British, and the British formed the Reagan administration about this. So both Reagan and Thatcher in the late 1983 period came to the view that something should be done to at least enter dialogue with the Soviet Union. So Thatcher became a supporter of dialogue, especially after a seminar in which I took part of the British government in 1983. and then more especially still after she met Garberjof for the first time, December 1984, three months before he became Soviet leader.

You played a part in this process, didn't you? You met with Margaret Thatcher with other academics or other experts, I suppose? Yes. Margaret Thatcher didn't trust the British Foreign Office, and they were in favor of more diplomatic relations and more talking to their Soviet counterparts, but she had a deep distrust of them. And when she held an old day seminar with a group of academics of whom I was one,

and we took the view that the more dialogue the better at all levels from dissidents up to general secretary. And I also spoke about Gorbachev as a likely future Soviet leader and a reform-minded person, a most open-minded member of a Soviet polybure. She took this on board. And it led indirectly to the invitation to Garberchov to come to London before he was Soviet-minded. So many of us over the years have chalked up the Soviet collapse to the West's ability to outspend the Russians in an arms race they couldn't afford. You take exception to that notion, am I right? I do. The fact is that the United States had a monopoly of nuclear weapons and a

vast military superiority over the Soviet Union in the second half of the 1940s. And that was the very time when Soviet communism expanded into central and eastern Europe. And in the 1950s and 1960s, the United States still had a military superiority over the Soviet Union, and yet, you know, the Cold War didn't end there. Soviet Union never thought of running up the white flag. The Cold War continued very cold and did. It was from the early 1970s that there was a rough military parity between the West and the East, the United States Soviet Union. And that still continued when Garbachev became Soviet leader in 1985. So what had changed? What had changed? What had changed was a different kind of Soviet leader. Reagan made two important speeches in 1983,

in March of that year when he announced the Strategic Defense Initiative. Another speech described the Soviet Union as an evil empire. Now, Soviet policy didn't change then under Andropov or Chenenka had only changed when a man was a different mindset became Soviet leader, Garbertov. But we also are entering into this era of perestroika, this sort of decentralization of the Soviet economy. That's really what he's trying to usher along and he needs to redirect the society away from this arms race, doesn't he? This is true. Initially, Garberchov was more concerned with economic reform than political reform, but at the same time, he wanted to expand the limits of the possible within the Soviet system, more cultural freedom, a bit more political freedom.

But quite early on, he became more interested in serious political reform than economic reform. that began to take priority over the economy. Some people blame him for that. But by 1988, 89, he had moved from being a reformer of a Soviet Union to being a systemic transformer. The system became different in kind with competitive elections and the leading role of the Communist Party, which was a euphemism for its monopoly of power. That simply went by the wayside. It's still really, I mean, I lived through it as a 30-something-year-old.

guy, and it's still remarkable to me that it happened, that such a dramatic change could take place. Was it such a surprise to folks like you who are more on the inside of this, who understood it better than the rest of us? Well, I was more optimistic about the possibilities of change than many people were, because I knew a bit about Gorbachev and I knew a bit about some of the people around him. But even so, even for me, it went much further than I imagined. I thought it'd be serious to form. But the idea of contested elections and the idea you, you could actually debate whether parts of the Soviet Union would remain in the Soviet Union. But I don't think I'd have to imagine that in 1985.

And certainly the people in the Baltic States in El Square in 1985 didn't think for a moment, but six or seven years later they'd be talking about full independence. That is so reassuring for me to hear because, I mean, we were all just slack-jawed. I mean, not only the wall coming down, of course, weeping at seeing that happen, but then this remarkable shift in what had been such a certainty for all of our years, you know, growing up through the Cold War. It's amazing. Can you really explain what made that man who he was? I think the most important quality was an open mind.

And if you take these three leaders, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Mikhail Gorbachev, I mean, paradoxically, the one with the most open mind was the Soviet Communist Party leader. Because he ceased to be a communist in any meaningful sense in the course of the seven years in which he was a, in the Kremlin. So he was influenced by his conversations with Wester leaders by Thatcher, by George Schult, for example, and by his foreign travel, I'd influence by the changing atmosphere within the Soviet Union. Because once you allow the greater freedom in the Soviet Union, a lot of people who had interesting ideas which they expressed around the kitchen table could now say them on television or in the press. And he was surrounded by a lot of bright people, as well as by some people who hated the direction which he was going

and people who eventually tried to overthrow him. So I think, you know, number one is Gorbachev's open mind. He was a highly intelligent person, I've learned from experience. I always wondered if when Khrushchev came over in the 50s and wanted to go to Disneyland and all that kind of thing, how much did he want the same thing that happened to Gorbachev later on? You know, the stopping on the street corner and shaking Americans' hands and all that, the two seemed to echo each other.

Rischoff, he was a complicated figure, but he was a very ill-educated man. Actually, very intelligent too, but hardly any formal education. Where Scorbachev had been to Mosque University, it was pretty well educated. So there were limits, strict limits to Roussechov's reformism. He was maybe the last true believer in communism among Soviet leaders. After that, he simply wanted to keep the system going and keep going what they had in Eastern Europe. He didn't believe in some future communist society of the kind of Marx and that led. and spoke about it.

Someday I want to understand Leon of Brezhnev. I do not to this day understand that leader. And what a dense figure he was. I mean, he just represented the stolid Soviet Union to the end, didn't he? Well, he was a conservative communist. He wasn't Stalin, but there wasn't mass terror. There was very selective terror. Dissidents were oppressed.

But the system ticked over, and Brezhnev was quite happy with that, as long as he stayed there and the countries of East Central Europe remained under Soviet control. So I know, I don't think he was very interested in Soviet expansion, but he certainly was very interested in hanging on to what they already had. People today are in a state of shock that the East and West are so now diametrically opposed. I mean, there's a Tiffany's in Red Square last I checked, but there's a strong argument to be made that the Cold War really never ended because I suppose it's necessary to many powers that be. Does it, in your opinion, continue on? I think the Cold War did end. I mean, there is a new Cold War as well as a hot war in Ukraine

going on now, and, you know, things have been going from bad to worse for some years now. However, there was definitely an end to the Cold War. George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev gave joint press conferences together to Malta's Summit, 1988, and that was really the end of the Cold War. The end of the Cold War, above all, meant the countries of Central and Eastern Europe becoming independent because the most important manifestation of the Cold War was the Soviet control over Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, all those countries. Gorgov made a speech in the United Nations in December 1988, in which he said the people of every country had a right to decide for themselves what kind

of political and economic system they wished to live in. In 1989, the people of Central and Eastern Europe took about his word and they became non-communist and independent. To my mind that was the end of the Cold War. The Soviet Union ended two years later. The Cold War ended at the end of 1989. And throughout the 1990s, there wasn't a Cold War between the United States and Russia. The distinction between the end of communism and the end of the Cold War, the end of communist rule in the Soviet Union came when people could compete against one another in free elections and members of the government and party competed against each other on completely different platforms.

And books like George Orwell's 1984 were published in 1989 in Moscow. So that was the end of communism. And that of course was connected with the end of the Cold War because Western countries were influenced not only by Gorbachev's concessions on foreign policy, on arms control, but also influenced by the greater freedom within the Soviet Union itself. There had been a lot of talk, a lot of treaties about disarmament, even as far back as Nixon. How much was that on the table as far as the end of the Cold War goes? I mean, why not just get rid of the nuclear weapons at that point?

Reagan and Gorbachev came quite close to getting rid of nuclear weapons in 1986 at Reykjavik. The sticking point was Reagan's attachment to a strategic defense initiative, the idea of being able to shoot down incoming missiles, which, in fact, the Soviet Union would be able to counteract for having a thousand, and thousands, including a lot of damage, and only some could have nuclear warheads. So it was unrealistic. But Reagan stuck to it. And if he hadn't stuck to it, there would have been an anti-nuclear weapons as far as those two superpower leaders were concerned. People like Margaret Thatcher were horrified.

She said the only good thing about the Reykivik summit was that it failed. I want to ask you a personal question. I mean, you've spent a distinguished career pondering those in power. I remember, as I mentioned, you know, watching the Berlin Wall coming down, finally we can live without this horrible pressure. But I was naive. Now we're back to it again. Is it just inevitable in this world, this sort of geopolitical opposition? Do the powers need it to exist? Will there always be a Cold War? I don't think it's inevitable that authoritarian regimes go on forever. But equally, there was nothing inevitable about the Cold War ending when it did. It depended on individuals and circumstances. I firmly believe that any member of Konstantinchenenko's Politburo other than Gorbachev

had become Soviet leader in March, 1985, that there would still be communist countries in Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union would be a communist country. Now it's become authoritarian again, but in a different way. It's not communist, but once again, it's become authoritarian. Where do you see this all going with Ukraine? I find it easier to interpret the past than to predict the future. I like many people, but not ever do realize in it. So, yes, it's very hard to say that it's also, I find it quite hard to believe that

the Soviet Union will lose completely, I'm sorry, Russia. That's one of the problems about being an old Sovietologist. You still slip into calling Russia Soviet Union. But I find it hard to believe that Russia will suffer a total defeat. For Putin, that will be the end of Putin. So there's a danger that he may escalate rather than accept that. But I'm not into making predictions about what's going to happen in that war. The program that we're talking about that you're a part of has the tone that we are in a more dangerous time, perhaps, than we were back then.

I don't know that's the case. Perhaps, you know, having lived through it, I remember the drills, the atomic bomb drills in the basements of the grade schools and all of that sort of thing. So maybe we haven't gotten there, but we certainly are, you know, circling back. And it's a sad fact indeed. Thank you so much, Professor Archie Brown, the author of The Human Factor, Reagan, Corpachev, and Thatcher at the end of the Cold War, as well as the myth of the strong leader, political leadership in the modern age, the rise and fall of communism, and about 20 others. It has been a great honor to meet you, sir. Thank you for your work. Thank you.

For more on the underbelly of the Cold War, notably the Secret Services, with their power and propaganda. I joined Andrei Soldatov, a man with perhaps one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Our next guest is investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov, co-founder and editor of the respected Russian news site, Agentura.ru.org, which subtitles itself The Secret Services Watchdog, which launched in 2000 and has been operating for a quarter century in Moscow and Russia publishing about the functions and mission of the Russian security state. Hello, Andre. Thank you so much for joining us. Where are you speaking from now? Hello, I'm based in London, so I'm speaking from London.

Was I correct in saying that Agenitor is based in Moscow? Well, unfortunately, not anymore. We left Russia in September 2020. So since 2020, we've been operating from London. It is a fascinating website. I'm sorry to say that I'm arriving late to the game here, but having scrolled through so much, I am a typical American saying, wow, It's a fascinating thing to read about, and it gives you so much more perspective on things. I have many questions about your current situation we may or may not get to, but first some history. This is a history show. So forgive the generalities, but can you explain why it seems, at least to us on the outside, looking in,

that Russian Secret Service has always been such a huge presence in that society? Well, there are several reasons for that. The most obvious one is that we have a leader, Vladimir Putin, who is a trained KGB operative. And it's, to be honest, a very first time in our history. We had a guy before him, Yuri Andropov, in 1980s, but he was a political appointee. So he was from the Communist Party, and despite the fact that he, well, ran the KGB for 70 years, if I'm not mistaken, nevertheless, he was a political appointee. Putin is a trained operative, and he trusts people only within these organizations.

So he brought to power lots of his, say, colleagues, former or acting officers. And he believes that in a country, which is famous for its corruption, he might trust only these people. And it said like that for more than 20 years. The history of Secret Service, both in Russia and the United States, I mean all over the West as well, is a developing one over the 20th century. How much of what we deal with today or what you are reporting on in Russia, is a direct result of the Cold War and the advent of all the security apparatus that had to happen because of that?

Well, the Cold War has a huge impact on what we have now. For many reasons, one of them is that if you look at the Soviet Union at the Cold War, it scored some successes in Africa and some other countries, but economically and military, it was not extremely successful. The one area where Russian spies and Russian state was really successful was Spionage, especially in the United States.

So if you ask an ordinary Russian, why do you think during the Cold War the Soviet Union was a real superpower which competed successfully with the United States? Many people might say, well, it's because of spies. We had really good spies. They knew how to do their job. And that is why it is so important for us. The other problem is that it's not only about espionage, it's also about counter espionage. And the Soviet state and Soviet and Russian leaders now, they have this strange, old idea that the Russian state might be very powerful, but it's also very fragile. The reason for that are two historical traumas, the revolution of 1917 and the collapse of the Soviet Union. In both cases, the Russian state collapsed for some mysterious reasons, and they are mysterious for many people inside of the Russian security services.

That's why they believe that the West is always trying to destroy the Russian state. The Russian state is fragile, and therefore, they drop to protect political stability in the country is so important. It is all about stability. That is the fascinating psychological aspect of this conversation. throughout this entire show that we've been doing, the notion that you can be in a state that is fragile shifts the conversation, the whole discussion so radically one way or the other. And as you say, Russia, you know, within the foreseeable or at least rememberable history for Americans, has gone through that trauma twice. And that leads generations to consider the options. How do we

live in a more stable situation? And the security apparatus in Russia, and certainly in the United States, well, FBI, CIA, all that, gives that sense that there's something to lean on. And so many Russians, I suppose, these days are leaning hard on that, right? Yes, unfortunately, especially because of the war, because what Putin is really good at, he is really good at playing with the narrative. And at the beginning of the invasion, it was all about Ukraine, understandably, because it was the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But after the first humiliating defeats around Kiev and some other places, Putin changed that. So it's not anymore the war with Ukraine. It is the war with the West. And if you portray the war as the war of one country, Russia, against the whole of West,

you feel, well, if not proud, but at least you feel that your country is still, well, standing and still in the fight, which gives you some source of being proud of your country. And of course, part of it is the idea that the West has been always for centuries plotting against you. We have this interesting thing. The way we are taught history in our schools. And I was taught in Soviet school, of course, but it's the same thing now. We've been taught that the Russian Empire was the only empire in the world, which was built by peaceful means.

Everybody wanted to join in. and the only wars we ever had were the war on defensive. We were attacked by Mongols, by the Germans, by the French, by whatever. And now we are again under the attack. So this creates a very strange but very powerful idea that we live in a besieged fortress. Exactly. I found myself in cocktail parties talking about my reading about the Kremlin and so forth. And the relationship with Ukraine is particularly complex. The truth of it is complex, let alone what has been done propaganda-wise.

It's a fascinating thing. Russia has this many hundreds years of history to deal with. That can also be warped and shaped differently, as you say. What is the present function, as you see it, of this security service in general? Is it more targeted inwardly or outwardly at this point? Well, I think what we need to understand that, Conceptional level, the idea of intelligence agency in a country like Russia and in the West are fundamentally different. And I had these conversations with many historians of intelligence services in the UK and in the US.

In the West, it's mostly about collecting intelligence, protecting the political regime. And when you think of your job as primarily protecting the leader of your country, it changed your perspective. on everything. So you think, okay, I work for a foreign intelligence agency. But nevertheless, my first thing is to identify threats to my country. And these days, it's about political emigres because we've got so many people who left the country just like me. And of course, the Kremlin is getting quite paranoid about people like me and especially political activists. And it's also about the situation inside the country, of course, because they're immediately make this historical comparison with the First World War, because back then, there was a war

and there was a political crisis, and it resulted in a revolution. That's a very simplistic approach, but nevertheless, that's what they believe in. And now they think, again, we have this big war, and we probably have a political crisis. And when you think of the picture in this way, all things suddenly become justifiable. You might kill your political opponents because it's a small. thing in comparison with millions of people who might suffer. You might attack your emigres. You might attack your artists, journalists. Everything is just a firewall because you're trying to protect political stability in your country. So where does this all land us in what has

become this new Cold War? Do you have strong instincts in this department? Or are you, like the rest of us, just playing a waiting game, seeing how this all plays out? Well, my thing is, I'm a journalist. I've been trying to stay in touch with people in the security services. And for some strange reason, they still talk to me. I partly blame psychology, because sometimes when you feel uncertain about your own future, and of course it goes for many people in Russia, including people in security services, they want to talk to someone they trust. And I've been in this game since 2000, as you said. So I have people who trust me. And they talk to me.

It's quite interesting how their attitude to many things changes. For instance, they became very religious. For instance, these days you communicate via social media and social messengers. I got so many pictures of icons from these people. They asked some calls to pray for Russian soldiers and all that. So all of a sudden, the church and religion became really important for them. I think it betrays a sense of uncertainty. They do not think they are losing the war, but they think they end some sort of dead end.

Yeah. And also they have some apocalyptic view of the future. Actually, lots of people, unfortunately, believe that the big war with the West is inevitable. Is this a generational problem in your mind? I mean, here we are about to have an election in the United States with, you know, 80-year-old men. This generation is passing. And so as a new one takes over, do you think the tenor of this Cold War changes as well? No, actually the opposite.

The problem is that people who are now in their 50s and 60s, they witnessed some big changes of the 1990s. So they had this experience. It may be very traumatic, but at the same time, if you went through it, you have some idea about political change. that it's not an inevitable disaster. You remember other presidents, for instance. For people in the 40s and 30s, they have been living and working under just one guy, Vladimir Putin.

And it completely changed their mentality. They believe, first of all, that no political change is possible. If you get a political change, it's a real disaster for the country by default. And also they are sort of brainwashed by this propaganda. That the Cold War was a top moment for the country. And what I understood recently and got from my conversations,

actually a lot of people in the 30s and 40s believe that it's their chance to finally win the war with the West. They believe their fight is the third round of this fight. So the first one was just after the revolution in the 19th. 20s and 30s and they believe they won it. And judges the history of Espionage with the stealing of the atomic bomb from the States, with the Cambridge Five, yes, it looks like a victory. The second round was, of course, the Cold War and they lost it. So now they have this third round and they have a chance to win. Oh, that's troubling. You are on the outside now, as you say,

reporting from London. How dangerous is it for you to do so? I mean, are there many like you? who are continuing the struggle? Well, so Putin made some preparations for the war a year before 2022. Exactly the year before 2022, he changed the system for independent journalists. And that caused a huge exodus of Russian journalists. Now, most of the Russian journalists who are independent and critical of the Kremlin, they are outside of the country. So that happened before the war started.

This is why I have so many colleagues in Vilnius, in Riga, in Germany, in the Czech Republic, in Central Asia, because they left the country. This is the only way for them to operate. And that includes me. As for me, I am on the wanted list of the Russian authorities. I've been put on this list in 2022, which means that if I ever get back to the country, I'm, facing up to 10 years in prison. Also, I'm a designated foreign agent, which means that if someone would love to cite me or quote me or interview me in Russia, they would need to add a special description to my name, but I'm a foreign agent. I don't know what, what, and that is the special

thing which is the main idea is to trust your reputation as an independent journalist. So, that's how things stand. Yeah. But I would say that the biggest problem and the biggest threat, of course, is I think the political activists are now in danger. And it is, yeah, for them it's really difficult. I've spent some time in Moscow and I was impressed by how open the society seemed, you know, especially I was there in 2008 and so forth.

But do the people on the... Things changed. Okay. Are the people on the street comfortable talking about things? Are people at parties, you know, no. Okay. It doesn't look good. No, it's all changed.

To be honest, I remember a conversation with a really good friend of mine, a correspondent for the New York Times, who had a previous experience of serving in China. And he told me, look, in Russia, you still have some freedom. You might openly talk about Putin when you are having your coffee outside. In China, it's just impossible. Well, unfortunately, that changed. So these days, people are getting used to speak in undertone. They hide iPhones because they do not want other people to see what we are checking.

Because we have several cases when people will report it for being checking the Ukrainian websites. And you need to be extremely cautious about what you are doing online. So you cannot even like something which is remotely might be considered as support for Ukraine. So, yeah, the atmosphere dramatically changed. Does this strike you as just generally strange at this midlife point? Russians are so smart. The culture is so sophisticated. The literature is so amazing.

Does it give you a moment every once in a while of saying, how the hell did this happen? Because it's a very odd thing. Here in this country, in the United States, we take it for granted that all this weight of our culture pushes against repression, I would think the same of Russia, but it seems the opposite. Well, I ask this question myself every day, to be honest. And my next book project is about exactly that, about a group of friends that we were really

close with who became different. But it goes for so many people on so many levels. This level of aggression we never seen before. And unfortunately, the most difficult moment for people with the experience of the 1990s like me is that I believe that Stalin's crimes were condemned by universally, by the whole society. So that thing would never get back. And we see now that not only Stalin's methods are getting back, for instance, the very first time we have political activists accused of high treason. Before the war, it never happened. Putin, of course, attacked his political enemies and

killed them, but he never accused them of high treason. Now we have Vladimir Karamazza, a Russian journalist and Russian politician in jail convicted of high treason, just because he spoke openly in the United States about the war crimes committed by the Russian army. So yes, it's very depressing, to be honest. I had an experience in that time frame shooting a television show, and I was staying oddly. My wife and I were staying above the McDonald's, the famous McDonald's that opened in Moscow back in the day. And as we were watching out the window one day, a political rally was happening across the street in the square. And what were they carrying in 2008 but signs of Joseph Stalin? You know, it was a whole bunch of people that were, you know, looking backward for

the strength that they were currently feeling robbed of. It was a, it seems to be an eternal dilemma. Thank you so much for joining us, for your courage in upholding this, this effort. of yours. We are relying on you in so many ways. Thank you so much, Andre. Thank you, Don. Thanks for listening to American History It. Turning Point, the bomb and the Cold War is out on Netflix now. And if you want more from us, don't forget to like and follow American History It wherever you get your podcasts.