Short History Of... - The Soviet Union, Part 2 of 2

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

Despite its troubled infancy and the hardship faced during World War 2, in the second half of the 20th century the USSR became one of the world’s two superpowers. How did it manage this turn-around? What did its rise mean for its people and the rest of the world? And how did the young nation that shaped so much of the 20th century’s geopolitics eventually come crashing down? This is the second in a special 2 part Short History of… the Soviet Union. Written by Dan Smith. With thanks to historian and author Professor Sheila Fitzpatrick of the Australian Catholic University and the University of Sydney. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's Wednesday the 21st of August 1968. A dry, bright morning in Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia. A student stretches and yawns in his bed. He worked late on an essay last night and has slept like a log. Opening the curtains, he's surprised to see a crowd filling the wide boulevard below his window. The people are hurrying towards Wenceslas Square, the city's imposing historical center. He opens the window to ask what's happening. A woman looks up and replies simply, they've come. It's hard to tell if she's excited or just frightened. The student turns on his radio and a voice confirms his suspicions. radio, and a voice confirms his suspicions. Just before midnight, Czechoslovakia was invaded.

An army of several hundred thousand from the Soviet Union and her Eastern Bloc allies is making its way to Prague. The Czechoslovakian army has been told to offer no resistance, and citizens told to remain calm. As a fixture of the Eastern Bloc, Czechoslovakia has long followed the rules laid down by Moscow. But in January, Alexander Dubček became its de facto leader, and he has other ideas. He wants reforms, freedom of speech and the press, freedom to travel abroad, curbs on the secret police. Though what he calls socialism with a human face is popular, it has made the Soviet leader very nervous indeed. The student hurriedly dresses and heads out to join the action.

Waves of patriotic songs sweep through the crowd that's gathering more people with every block it passes. Here, Soviet tanks already line the square, with others trundling into position. He passes one of them so close that it streaks his shirt sleeves with grease and grime. Every square inch in between the tanks is filled with civilians, massed defiantly around the invaders. Some protesters daub anti-Soviet slogans, some set fires, others climb onto the tanks themselves, despite the soldiers sitting in their hatches, fearsome-looking guns slung across their shoulders.

Beneath the commotion, there is a nervous tension all around, but hope, too. Though nobody expected the invasion right here, right now, it was only a matter of time before something gave. Now the moment has arrived, there is almost a sense of relief. Protest songs ring through the assembled thousands, but then the mood changes. A rumor carries from person to person that Dubček has been arrested. And then more news, this time even worse. Outside the city's radio building, protesters has been arrested. And then more news, this time even worse. Outside the city's radio building, protesters have been shot.

Suddenly, a tank hatch opens just a few feet away. The student blinks in disbelief when a rifle rises into view. He instinctively ducks and flings his arms around his head as a volley of gunfire explodes into the sky. For now, it is just warning fire. But for how long? As the crowd presses back, terrified,

the student is sure that the tanks won't leave until they have reasserted their dominance. The protests in Czechoslovakia are crushed after a week or so. The reforms of the so-called Prague Spring overturned. Normal Soviet service is resumed. But dissent is growing, and within a couple of decades, the world's first communist nation will face a battle for its own existence. Created in 1922, the USSR endured a troubled infancy, suffering terrible hardships under Joseph Stalin's brutal leadership, and then fending off German invasion in World War II. But in the post-war New World Order,

the USSR became, alongside the US, one of the world's two superpowers. How did it manage to turn this around? What did its rise mean, not just for the people of the Soviet Union itself, but for the millions living in Eastern Europe and beyond? And how did the young nation, that shaped so much of the 20th century's geopolitics

eventually come crashing down? I'm John Hopkins, and this is the second in a special two-part short history of the Soviet Union. On the 4th of February 1945, with the Second World War drawing to a close, a conference opens in the coastal resort city of Yalta in the Crimea. Its three most important delegates are Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Surrounded by advisers and officials, the big three of global politics meet for several days. advisors and officials, the big three of global politics, meet for several days. Churchill and Roosevelt attend in smart suits, Stalin in military uniform. Their job? Nothing less than agreeing the shape of the post-war world to create a lasting peace. They jointly promise that the people of Europe will be able to create democratic institutions of their own choice. They also decide that Germany will be divided into four zones, one administered by each delegate's nation, and the fourth by France.

Additionally, Stalin is allowed to keep the parts of Poland it annexed in 1939 in return for committing to allowing free elections. It's also agreed that the nations bordering the Soviet Union should be friendly towards it, creating a buffer zone between the continent's capitalist and socialist nations. The groundwork is laid for Moscow to hold the reins of power across Eastern Europe. Even Stalin's presence at the conference, and the fact that Churchill and Roosevelt have agreed to come to him, is telling. Sheila Fitzgerald is a professor at the Australian Catholic University and an associate of the University of Sydney, and author of The Shortest

History of the Soviet Union. Stalin is, during the war, accepted as an equal by Churchill and Roosevelt because of the huge military contribution of the Soviet Union. And that is very, very important to Stalin. And it's very important, I think, to his Soviet audience, because the Soviet Union had been ostracized and boycotted and outcast more or less by everybody after the revolution. And so it's an absolute huge change to have their leader being treated as one of the top three people on the Allied side. And obviously, both Roosevelt and Churchill were very good at handling him. And surprisingly, he was good at handling them. However, it's not long before these cordial relations fray.

Churchill is replaced as Prime Minister, and Roosevelt dies just a couple of months after Yalta. Tensions increase over the division of Germany and Stalin's reluctance to fulfill his promises of democracy. With Stalin's health worsening too, the crucial chemistry between the three leaders fades and tension rises. On the 5th of March 1946, a robed Winston Churchill makes a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, urging the UK and US to stay strong together in the face of the Soviet threat.

He uses a phrase that will go down in history. From Stepin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. All are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence, but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow. The speech defines the beginning of the Cold War, a state of hostility between the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc and the US-led West. Though the period never descends into open warfare, it is characterized by brinkmanship and mistrust. At its heart is an ideological disconnect between the free-market,

liberal democracies of the West and the communist authoritarianism of the Kremlin. The contest is on to be the world's most powerful nation. While the UK is no longer the global powerhouse it once was, the US has emerged from the Second World War wealthy and confident. Moreover, it has the atomic bomb to give it the military edge. As for the Soviet Union, civil and global conflict has left it battered and bruised. Its finances are shot, its infrastructure and institutions are fragile. And though its victory over the German invaders has given it an enormous dose of self-belief,

times are tough. Official Soviet figures put the death toll from the war at 7 million, but the true figure may be four times that. Up to 17 million have been exiled in the East or imprisoned in Germany, and most of the 8 million strong army need demobilizing. To make matters worse, a devastating famine hits in 1946. But still, Stalin is determined that the USSR can top the global hierarchy. The way he sees it, that starts with nullifying the German threat once and for all. He wants greater control over the German capital, Berlin, all four zones of which sit within the Soviet sector of Germany. While Stalin is understandably fearful of a strong Germany,

the Western nations are keen to rebuild the country. Memories are fresh of how reparative payments imposed after the First World War hobbled its economy, leading to a tide of resentment that lifted Hitler to power. U.S.-sponsored aid and the introduction of a new currency, the Deutschmark, further stabilizes the economy in Berlin's Western-controlled sectors. It proves too much for Stalin. On the 24th of June, Moscow blocks the land and canal routes in what becomes known as the Berlin Blockade. Stalin hopes that he can starve some of West Berlin's 2.5 million residents into defecting

to East Berlin. Perhaps the Western powers will leave altogether. But within two days an airlift is in place. American and British aircraft buzz over the city, eventually making a quarter of a million drops of food, fuel, and other essentials. It continues for fifteen months, and at its height there is a flight every thirty seconds. Stalin can do nothing but watch, shoot down a Western jet, and he risks World War III with currently the world's only nuclear power. In May 1949, Stalin withdraws,

but the hostility is not so easily forgotten. The zones of Germany he doesn't control consolidate to create West Germany, which elects a resolutely anti-communist government. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, also forms, a mutual security alliance between the US, Canada, and initially ten Western European nations. More isolated than ever, Stalin looks east for new allies, and soon North Korea and China

join the unofficial fraternity of communist nations. In August 1949, the USSR conducts its first successful test of a nuclear weapon, and Stalin edges towards military parity with the US. Overnight, the world moves into the era of mutually assured destruction. Peace, it is hoped, will be maintained by the threat of complete annihilation. But as the USSR becomes a nuclear superpower, little changes for ordinary people still blighted by hunger and poverty. There's the odd nod towards liberalization, with some orthodox churches reopening, and American studies becoming the

hot subject for university students. But an increasingly insecure Stalin is exhibiting greater xenophobia too. Marriages to foreigners are forbidden in law, but Stalin's greatest contempt is saved for the Jews, the new enemy on which to pin the ills of his nation. He secretly greenlights a program of anti-Semitism, closing down newspapers and theaters. He forces prominent Jews like academics and scientists from their jobs, or charges them with invented counts of treason or sabotage. On one night alone, in August 1952, no fewer than 13 celebrated poets in the Yiddish language are executed. Stalin is fuelled by a mixture of paranoia and warped pragmatism.

Stalin is convinced that everybody is plotting against him and he therefore plots against most of his politburo starting with Molotov. Stalin probably was looking to get rid of most of his politburo. This is the same time as the anti-Semitic campaign, which is very much Stalin's initiative, not that of the rest of the Politburo. And I think his plan was to tie them with the Jewish connected, to use that as the way of getting him. In 1953, this program of anti-Semitism reaches its nadir when dozens of mostly Jewish doctors are charged with plotting to assassinate Soviet leaders. But then, suddenly, everything changes again. It's the 28th of February, 1953, a cold, wintry night at Stalin's dacha,

deep in the birch forests at Kunstva on the outskirts of Moscow. Stalin's dacha deep in the birch forests at Kustva on the outskirts of Moscow. Painted the exact green of the forest for camouflage and locked away behind a double perimeter fence, the compound is protected by hundreds of security staff and anti-aircraft guns. Inside, the leader of the USSR sits in the dining room at a table laden with plates of delicious dishes. Stalin is in fine form, a rare event given his ailing health. The wine, a fine Georgian vintage, flows freely among his guests, who include the Deputy Premier Georgi Malenkov, the Chief of the Secret Police Lavrentiy Beria, and the head of the party in Moscow, Nikita Khrushchev. The buzz of chatter dies down as Stalin clears his throat. It's time for business.

He asks questions about the forthcoming trial of the doctors. Have all the confessions been extracted? Beria, king of the interrogation, updates him. Stalin is satisfied. He downs his wine and calls for more. Toasts are made, glasses clinked, the room resounds with a sound of laughter as the leader makes a dirty joke. There is no sign that he is wearying, but he eventually waves a hand, signaling for

his guests to leave. At the sound of chairs scraping, attendants arrive to help them put on their coats. Stalin follows them out to the entrance hall. Their footsteps echo on the bare wooden floors he prefers. After all, rugs and carpets might dampen the sound of any would-be assassins approaching. At the reinforced door, they take leave of each other with strong handshakes and slaps on the back. Then the five guests set out into the bleak night, into their cars and back to Moscow. The door slams shut heavily behind them and Stalin makes his way to his private quarters.

Maybe he has had a glass too many tonight, but he's suddenly not feeling quite himself. A little later, one of his bodyguards emerges from Stalin's room and informs the others that the boss has told them all to go to bed. It's all most irregular. What nobody knows is that Stalin has just days to live. He doesn't rise the next morning nor ring for his staff. Eventually, a light goes on at six in the evening. Then, nothing more. It is not until after ten o'clock that anyone dares check on him. He's discovered lying on the floor in a pool of urine. Though Beria and Malenkov are summoned, no one calls a doctor until the next morning.

By now, Stalin is unresponsive, having suffered a huge stroke. By now, Stalin is unresponsive, having suffered a huge stroke. Three days later, on the 5th of March, he vomits blood and his stomach starts hemorrhaging. At 9.50 that night, he is declared dead. His death is immediately met with suspicion. Did he really ask for his guards to leave on the night of the dinner? Could he have been poisoned? Why were the doctors kept from him for so long?

Every time I think about that death, I think how fantastically convenient it was for all the rest of the Politburo. But at the same time, it seems to me that if they had in fact knocked him off, probably some hint of that would have emerged, and it simply hasn't. So I assume that they just got lucky. In public, news of his death is met with deep grief. At his funeral in Moscow, a stampede kills at least a hundred people. In private, though, many feel a heady mix of joy and hope. In Malenkov's eulogy, he barely mentions Stalin at all, speaking instead of peace and international cooperation. The next steps are crucial.

Initially, there is another collective leadership. All these old-timers and what do they do? They introduce immediately radical reform across the board. It's quite extraordinary, including in foreign policy, except that it didn't work because nobody picked it up. But amnesty for large numbers of people in Gulag, the immediate end of the anti-Semitic campaign, at least formally, changes the removal of some of the really onerous burdens on the peasantry, a policy for consumer goods, even a cultural liberalization. And on top of that, the name of Stalin disappears from the press

within a few months of his death. The race for succession is on. For many, the hard man Beria is the obvious replacement, but in June 1953, Khrushchev orchestrates his surprise arrest on treason and other charges. Tried in a closed court, he's convicted and, in December 1953, executed. By now, Khrushchev is first secretary of the Communist Party. He spends the next few years arm-wrestling his major rivals into submission, with Malenkov chief among them. In May 1955, the USSR signs up to the Warsaw Pact, a treaty of cooperation mirroring NATO. A year later, in the Great Hall of the Kremlin, Khrushchev delivers what becomes known as the secret speech, because of the absence of foreign delegates and journalists.

In it, he dismantles Stalin's legacy. He criticizes collectivization, the conduct of the war, the use of terror as a tool of oppression, even implying Stalin's involvement in murdering an opponent decades earlier. even implying Stalin's involvement in murdering an opponent decades earlier. Some delegates applaud, others are incredulous. It is reported that some even suffer heart attacks as the truth of Stalin's rule is finally brought into the light. Khrushchev's risky strategy pays off. Having outflanked his party rivals, he stands alone at the head of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev's risky strategy pays off. Having outflanked his party rivals, he stands alone at the head of the Soviet Union, but

hopes he might represent a softer USSR soon fade. In October, in Budapest, Hungary's capital, students opposed to the hardline Soviet-backed government broadcast a list of demands for change. Outside the radio building, the secret police open fire on protesters. Overwhelmed by revolutionary zeal, the next day the government appoints a new prime minister, Imre Nagy. He announces sweeping democratic reforms, disbands the secret police, and withdraws Hungary from the Warsaw Pact. But Khrushchev wastes no time reminding this errant upstart who's boss. In the early hours of the 4th of November, Soviet tanks roll through the streets of Budapest.

By the day's end, Nagy is out of power, seeking refuge at the Yugoslav embassy and destined for arrest, imprisonment and eventual execution. The uprising is quashed after just 12 days, leaving 2,500 Hungarians dead. 200,000 more are now refugees. So much, the West thinks, for Khrushchev's new beginnings. There was uncertainty in the Politburo about how to handle Hungary, but in the end they decide that they've got to crack down. And so that is all bad news for Eastern Europe for the next decades. Domestically though, Khrushchev fares better.

The Soviet economy is growing at a rate far higher than the US, and literacy has skyrocketed from about 50% in the 1920s to near 100% now. Life expectancy has increased by nearly 30 years over the same time frame. Even certain consumer goods, TVs, fridges, washing machines, are becoming commonplace. Building in cities proliferates, with prefabricated blocks of flats providing new homes for a hundred million people. A highly educated, white-collar middle class expands, civil society develops, and the cultural landscape thaws. Anti-establishment thinkers and writers come to the fore, like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose writings exposing life in the Gulag would have been unimaginable under Stalin. The USSR is redefining its place in the world, and in no field does it make greater headway than space exploration.

It's the 12th of April 1961, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in southern Kazakhstan. A little after 9 a.m. Four years since the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth. The sky is blue, the weather calm. On the launch pad is Vostok 1, a single-pilot spacecraft. It's tiny, just under 15 foot in length. The spherical module that contains the pilot, the cosmonaut in Russian parlance, is only 8 feet in diameter. Strapped inside is a handsome young man in an orange spacesuit.

His white helmet is emblazoned in red with a Russian acronym for the Soviet Union. Yuri Gagarin is about to be propelled into the history books. He's been up since half past five, being fitted into a suit and making sure everything is ready. Now there is nothing left to do but wait patiently and listen to some music as engineers manually screw the hatch down. Through his headset, Gagarin hears the echoing voice of Vostok's chief designer, Sergei Korelov, over in the control center. He sounds nervous as he makes last-minute checks. By contrast, Gagarin's heart beats just 64 times per minute. He is almost serene. It's one of the reasons why he's been chosen for the mission. At seven minutes past nine, Korolev is back on the radio, talking the cosmonaut through the final stages to ignition.

As he announces liftoff and wishes Gagarin a good flight, his voice competes against the colossal roar of the engines. Off we go, exclaims Gagarin. Over the next 90 minutes, he undertakes the first manned spaceflight in history, keeping in conversation with the control team back down on Earth even as their signal becomes crackly and indistinct. I can see the Earth, he says a few minutes in. The visibility is good. I almost see everything. A few minutes later, against huge G-forces and with the sound of his own blood pumping around his body, he has crossed the Pacific and is over South America.

Another few minutes more, and he loses radio contact altogether. At 10.25 a.m. Vostok is at the required altitude for re-entry. The engine fires into life somewhere over Angola. When he is seven kilometers above the earth, Gagarin activates his ejector seat as planned and then deploys his parachute. He lands a little outside the Russian city of Engels on the Volga river. Two schoolgirls watch fearfully as he approaches them. Don't be afraid, he says, I am a Soviet like you who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow.

And with that, Gagarin enters Soviet folklore and global history, the first human in space. Less than a month later, the Americans send their own man, Alan Shepard, into the heavens. But the Soviets have got there first, perhaps the crowning achievement of their history. Space is the great one, isn't it? That's the area of very public competition where the Soviets do really well.

It wasn't just a matter of Pushov and the leaders congratulating themselves on space successes, but of a population that followed this with absolute passion. Now, other cultural competition, the famous one of the violinists, you know, the Soviets attempting to dazzle the rest of the world with their violinists and ballet dancers. The way the Soviets would speak of themselves at this point was, in addition to having done extremely well in space, of being a tremendously cultured country. The cultural momentum isn't enough to stem the stream of East German defections to the West, though. In 1961, the East German government requests to erect the Berlin Wall. Reluctantly, Khrushchev agrees, but the relationship takes an even steeper downturn the following year. On the 14th of October 1962, Major Richard Heiser is flying his American U-2

spy plane high above Cuba. Something catches his eye, so he photographs it. Back at base, analysis of the images confirms his and America's worst fears. A Soviet medium-range ballistic missile is being assembled, ready for installation on Cuba just 90 miles from US territory. For three years, power there has been held by communist insurgent Fidel Castro, with its economy and military supported by Moscow. Washington has been nervous of its neighbor, but this latest development forces President John F. Kennedy's hand. He orders a naval blockade of Cuba. Khrushchev, though, won't compromise. The Americans have

weapons pointed at Russia in Europe and Turkey, so isn't he just playing by their rules? Now the world holds its breath as the two nuclear superpowers play a game of chicken. After more than a week, Soviet ships maneuver as if to breach the blockade. Three days later, an American reconnaissance plane is shot down and its pilot killed. With neither side wanting war, diplomatic channels are kept open. Khrushchev offers to stand down his missiles if the White House promises to pull its own out of Turkey and promises not to repeat the Bay of Pigs incident in which it invaded Cuba.

Kennedy agrees, and Armageddon is averted. But it's the death knell for Khrushchev's reign. Well, Khrushchev had been trying quite hard to improve relations with the West. He was, however, a quite impulsive person and sometimes a bit of a gambler. The whole Cuban Missile Crisis involved rash actions on his part although of course he and Kennedy finally managed to avert that disaster but that is basically the end for Khrushchev in domestic terms because although he had established himself as number one in the Politburo

there was a Politburo and that Politburo still matters and they got rid of him. And the basic thing they were saying is, this man is out of control, and look at the trouble he nearly got us into. In October 1964, Khrushchev is deposed. The top spot now goes to Leonid Brezhnev. A veteran of the Second World War, he has worked his way through the party ranks

and has a reputation of being a safe pair of hands and a team player. Welcome traits to many after Khrushchev's rollercoaster ride. Although his time in office is littered with dramatic episodes like the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, materially, these are better years in the Soviet Union. Cars, televisions, even American staples like Pepsi are part of everyday life for many in Brezhnev's USSR. Rents are reasonable and food affordable. Militarily, the nation is on a virtually equal footing with the US, and the price of oil has soared, filling the Kremlin's coffers. By Soviet standards, life is almost dull.

I think there's no doubt they never had it so good as in the early Brezhnev years. Now, that doesn't mean it was wonderful, but you think what went before, just the very fact that there's an absence of war, famine, upheaval, and there is improved living standards, there is a reasonable distribution of opportunities. You've got an adequate welfare system and you've got a good education system. So you get a larger educated middle class, but are there the jobs and are there the cultural opportunities that that kind of person is going to want so there was a sense of particularly in the elite and younger generations a sense that life is too constrained

that things are boring that this is a geriatric regime the oil boom papers over the cracks but there's a distinct absence of a grand plan to take the next step economically. Most industries lack innovation and efficiency, despite exceptions like the defense and space sectors. There are signs that the rise in consumerism is not fueling greater personal satisfaction, but actually fostering disappointment. The black market is bigger than ever, and corruption is endemic, as citizens crave the

hit of more of everything. A marked rise in alcoholism is great enough to dent the national life expectancy. Relations with the U.S. remain poor, with the geopolitical rivalry still playing out in space. The US achieves a notable triumph by putting the first man on the moon in 1969, but the enmity is felt in every sphere. In 1972, the planet is enraptured when the American Bobby Fischer takes on the Soviet Boris Spassky for the chess world title. This is the Cold War played out on a checkered board. It is a time of spy scandals and dissidents too. Alexander Solzhenitsyn has his citizenship revoked and becomes a touchstone for resistance abroad. Even Stalin's daughter, Svetlana, defects to the USA. In 1978, there is outrage when the dissident writer Georgi Markov is murdered in London by KGB-affiliated agents,

reportedly using a poisoned umbrella tip. It is not all bad news, though. The old Second World War allies mutually recognize East and West German sovereignty, and there is progress on arms limitation treaties. But with unrest from Cuba to Vietnam, Brezhnev is eager to be on a war footing if necessary, so he expands the Red Army to nearly six million troops, the largest force in the world. He looks to new regions where the USSR might extend its influence, in Africa, the Middle East, and Central America. In 1978, he sends troops to Afghanistan to prop up its communist regime against Mujahideen Islamic rebels.

A dangerous and costly conflict, it becomes the Soviets' answer to America's Vietnam War, one that tangles them up for years. Though the Soviet Union begins the 1980s relatively strong and stable, the death of Brezhnev in 1982 triggers an extraordinarily turbulent few years, even by its own standards. After a few short-lived successes, the Politburo turns to Mikhail Gorbachev to take power as General Secretary of the Communist Party. A lawyer in his fifties, he is in favor of moderate reform and has most recently been in charge of national agriculture. With a balding pate and distinctive birthmark on his forehead, when he dresses in his customary suit and tie, he looks like the local bank manager. It is hoped he might be another safe pair of hands, as Brezhnev had once seemed. Well, he didn't seem so radical when he came in.

He was a Politburo member. He'd run a province effectively. He'd worked in Moscow and in responsible positions. The rest of the Politburo chose him after these series of deaths of old and sick leaders because he was young and because he didn't look like dying and because he seemed energetic, not because they saw him as a radical reformer. And I don't know that he saw himself like that. The West is buoyed by the arrival of this man with whom they feel they can do business. Though Republican President Ronald Reagan recently referred to the Soviet Union as the evil empire, in November 1985 he meets Gorbachev at a summit in Geneva, Switzerland. They discuss at length the world order, international diplomacy,

and the thorny issue of slowing down the arms race. Progress is limited, but there is hope of more to come. Though Gorbachev's first campaign at home, a crackdown on alcohol, is unpopular and ineffective, by 1986 he's getting underway with more fundamental changes. With the Communist Party's propaganda department, he introduces two slogans into the political discourse, glasnost and perestroika. Glasnost translates as openness and transparency. It suggests a desire to do things differently,

and though it's vague, it captures public imagination. I think that was probably on the cards that whoever came in who was young would do this. It's understood that there are cycles in the affairs of men, and sometimes you have cultural liberalization, as you had under Khrushchev, and then it was thought there was a retreat from that under Brezhnev. So the perception is that Gorbachev is going to do a bit of the same thing Khrushchev did. The plan with Perestroika, though, is even less specific. The trouble with Perestroika, it means reconstruction, but that doesn't say what kind of reconstruction. And Gorbachev never said what kind, and it's not clear what kind he had in

mind. He had a sense, and that was fairly widely felt, that the economy needed some structural improvement, but what kind? And basically what he did was to go with the cultural liberalization and say, let's have a discussion about how we should do a radical reconstruction of a form that will become clear as we talk about it. At home, eager readers can now pick up copies of Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, and even George Orwell's 1984, A Hymn Against Totalitarianism. The press is freed from many

of its long-held restrictions. Criticism of the government becomes common in the pages of newspapers, but also in the mouths of citizens. Glasnost in practice. However, oil prices are plummeting again and the economy is heading into the doldrums. But the worst is yet to come. It's 5 am on the 26th of April, 1986. A member of his staff shakes Gorbachev from his sleep. There's a call for him. Over the phone, he is told there's been a large fire in reactor number four at the Chernobyl nuclear power station out in Ukraine.

Information about exactly what has happened is scant, but Gorbachev is reassured by his contacts on the ground that the reactor is intact. He sees no reason to alert any of his contacts on the ground that the reactor is intact. He sees no reason to alert any of his colleagues in the Politburo. It is only many hours later that local officials admit there has been a meltdown. By now, a vast radioactive cloud is spreading its poison through the skies over Europe. Gorbachev is given regular updates as helicopters make pass after pass over the reactor, dropping thousands of tons of sand, clay, lead and boron over the exposed reactor rods.

Others down on the ground attempt to shift contaminated material out of the danger zone, protected by only the most rudimentary safety equipment. The city of Pripyat, with its 50,000 citizens, lies just 3 km from the epicenter. On the night of the 26th of April, a huge convoy of buses arrived from Kiev, charged with evacuating the city. In the afternoon, a message goes out on the radio that all residents should prepare to leave. Assured the move will be temporary, they're reminded to turn off their taps, electricity and gas. But they will never go home.

The official death toll directly attributed to the disaster is small, less than a hundred. But the real long-term health consequences, including exposure-related premature deaths, is still debated, as is the environmental cost. The total radiation released is equivalent to 500 Hiroshima's. The financial cost of containing the disaster, including building a concrete sarcophagus around the reactor, runs to billions of dollars. Money the Kremlin can ill afford. It is a devastating blow to the Soviet Union and to Gorbachev personally. Just as he has been extending the hand of

friendship to the West, the Kremlin now appears reckless and secretive. At home, the people lose faith that the authorities are in control. Glasnost feels less like freedom and more like a reason to question everything they've been told for the last 60 years. Gorbachev's domestic reforms deliver limited results, and though a more welcoming attitude towards foreign investment sees McDonald's opening branches in the Soviet Union, burgers and fries aren't enough to shake the feeling for many that life in the USSR is dreary compared to the West. In 1989, events abroad overtake the Kremlin.

In November, in East Germany, the government plans for a gradual, partial reopening of the border to the West amid mass protests for democratic reform. But the announcement is bungled by a relatively minor official who accidentally tells the world that visa restrictions across the Berlin Wall will immediately cease. The wall is pulled down just short of 30 years after it went up, and soon the two Germanys are reunified. It is the latest in a slew of East European regime collapses

and defections from the Warsaw Pact that began with Poland and Hungary earlier in 1989. After Germany, the domino effect reaches Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and beyond. Now, what he did that was totally extraordinary was to let Eastern Europe go without, not only without putting up a fight, but without seeking a quid pro quo from the West. That was an extraordinary thing. So he was not wedded to the notion of the Soviet Union

with, as it were, an East European satellite area. He didn't feel that that was a necessity, but that is a different thing from the question of the Soviet Union itself. I think he assumed that the Soviet Union is a permanent fixture, but its relations with Eastern Europe do not have to be clear domination as had been the case. Gorbachev is increasingly isolated within the soviet union political colleagues and ordinary folk alike struggle to process the dramatic changes overtaking europe changes that only seem to weaken the ussr's position in the world

his own democratic reforms also conspire to work against him. Although the communists still dominate elections, new opposition voices call for greater change and echo the nationalist desires of many of the Soviet republics. Gorbachev finds himself caught between the communist hardliners in his party, who want to rein back his reformist zeal, and those who want change to come faster. Among the latter is the charismatic, if unpredictable, mayor of Moscow, Boris Yeltsin. He leads the Russian branch of the Communist Party into an unprecedented break with the Soviet leadership. Gorbachev and the Soviet hierarchy are now on a collision course with the USSR's largest and most powerful constituent republic,

representing about 75% of Soviet territory and over half the population. Events move quickly in 1990. In March, Gorbachev is elected the Soviet Union's president, the first man to be given that title. It makes him nominally head of state, but in truth he is starting to lose his authority to Y given that title. It makes him nominally head of state, but in truth, he is starting to lose his authority to Yeltsin. Although the Russian Republic remains one of 15 in Gorbachev's overarching Soviet Union, it withholds taxes from the USSR's central government of the Kremlin,

starving it of its primary income stream. The USSR and the Russian Republic have seemed virtually synonymous since 1922. Suddenly, they are jockeying for power. The Russian Republic had never been before a power base in Soviet terms. It's a whole complicated history, but it was Yeltsin's genius actually to see that it could be made one. Yeltsin had pushed successfully for the creation

of a new position of presidency of the Russian Republic. Gorbachev had also become president of the Soviet Union. Yeltsin, however, had been elected, popularly elected to that position. Gorbachev had been appointed by a body that he himself had created, which is a weaker position. had been appointed by a body that he himself had created, which is a weaker position. Conditions in the country continue a rapid downward spiral. Inflation is sky high. There are shortages of all sorts of products.

Crime is on the increase. All the while, many of the constituent republics amplify their demands for independence. In the summer, matters come to a head. In the summer, matters come to a head. It's around midday on the 19th of August 1991, a wet, grey Monday. On a bend of the Moscow River, inside the House of Soviets of Russia, also known as the White House, Boris Yeltsin prowls the corridors. A vast crowd is gathering outside, chanting. Until a few hours ago, he was relaxing at his dacha. But then came the shock news that Soviet

Communist Party hardliners, including the heads of the military and the KGB, had arrested Gorbachev and seized control of the government. seized control of the government. Inside the White House, Yeltsin plots his next move. Determined power should not fall to those most opposed to reform and change. He'd rather support Gorbachev than them. The coup leaders have already made a show of strength, ordering tanks out onto the street, seizing control of communications and imposing a state of emergency. With Yeltsin now the only serious bloc in their way, word is out that they are coming to arrest him too. But the shouting and singing from outside tells him that the hardliners will still have

some opposition. From his upper floor window, he can see the Soviet tanks rumbling through the Muscovite streets towards the White House. But his heart is lightened by the response of the crowd. He watches as a few brave souls lay their bodies down in front of the oncoming vehicles. He thinks of the protests in China's Tiananmen Square just a couple of years ago. Now there is the thrumming of different engines. Except it's not more tanks, but buses and lorries instead. His supporters are moving them into position, forming a barricade to fill the space between the White House and his would-be captors.

It's time to show his supporters that their faith in him is justified. his supporters that their faith in him is justified. Yeltsin, with his thick mop of silver hair and his grey suit, strides over to a window and stands with his fist clenched in solidarity with those outside. A cheer erupts among the crowd. He turns to his advisors, not a hint of fear in his voice. Let's go, he says. Outside, he walks among the throng, shaking a forest of hands thrust in his direction. Journalists holding notebooks or bulky recording gear jog to keep up, desperate for a word from the leader on what they already know will be a historic day.

Arriving at a tank, he stops and inelegantly scrambles up onto its roof. The crowd applauds and whistles, and, to Yeltsin's relief, no soldier makes any attempt to stop him. In fact, even the crew member who emerges from the tank hatch removes his helmet and reaches up to shake the president's hand. With the white, blue, and red Russian flag fluttering behind him, Yeltsin prepares to address his people. In an unwavering tone, he denounces the coup, demands Gorbachev's freedom, calling for a general strike until these demands are met. The peoples of Russia are becoming masters of their destiny, he says.

The sky resounds with the sound of clapping, cheering, and the chanting of Yeltsin's name. With just words and the support of the people, he has faced down the tanks and guns and mortally undermined the coup. With no will among the troops to turn their weapons on their fellow citizens, it's not long before the tanks retreat. More protesters flood the streets. Within three days, the attempted coup is over. Gorbachev is on borrowed time, however. Within days, he resigns as General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and dismantles its power structures. In effect, the communists are no

longer in control. On the 5th of September, in his role as head of state, Gorbachev establishes a new State Council of the Soviet Union to replace the old system. But it lacks any real authority. The USSR is in its death throes, all but meaningless when disassociated from the party that birthed it. The Baltic republics have already pressed their claims for independence earlier in the year. But now Ukraine, the second largest republic after Russia, does so too, setting off a chain reaction of similar declarations. It is the endgame. On the evening of the 25th of December 1991, Gorbachev appears on television to resign as

President of the Soviet Union. Just after half past seven that evening, having dissolved his office and the Soviet Union itself, he leaves the Kremlin. As he does so, its hammer and sickle flag is lowered and replaced with the tricolor of the independent Russian Republic, with Yeltsin at its helm. Gorbachev had arrived in 1985 intent on rejuvenating the USSR. Instead, he has overseen its demise. In the West, Gorbachev's reputation remains of a really heroic reformer who has done his utmost to remould the Soviet Union to Western ideals. But his domestic legacy is less kind. Now from the Soviet point of view, I think it's really straightforward. He mucked everything up.

He is the man who is responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union. We had a superpower. It stopped being a superpower. It stopped being even a global power of top rank. Economic chaos and misery for many followed, but above all, the country fell apart. It was a big surprise to commentators outside the Soviet Union at the time, and it was a big, big surprise for people in the Soviet Union at the time. and it was a big, big surprise for people in the Soviet Union

at the time. It suddenly ceases to exist. Now that is going to leave problems. In other words, it's very hard to imagine the, let's say, half century after that happening to a country in which the political process doesn't have a recurrent theme of why did we lose our greatness and how can we recover it. After a few years of wild capitalism, rampant criminality and social chaos under Yeltsin, the scene is set in 2000 for former KGB agent Vladimir Putin to emerge, promising to restore order and pride to Russia. But few foresee that he will draw so closely on the Soviet model to build its sense of identity, nor that he will strive to bring former Soviet territory, most notably in Ukraine, under Russian control.

Now, with regard to what his long-term plans were, especially is it possible to put back the Soviet Union, put it back together. At first, I think he didn't think it was possible. Then he got more confident, especially with Crimea, because Crimea, that was a test case and it went without a hitch, no problem. He got away with it. So that, I assume that the message was that having got away with it once, it would be possible to get away with a next step as well, which as we've seen, turned out not to be the case. More than a hundred years after its initial creation, the Soviet Union remains perhaps the greatest political experiment in history. It is a story of what happens when unbending ideology collides with the human appetite for power and the unpredictability of real life.

And though its collapse resulted in independence for an array of new and reborn nations, the echoes of its regime are still felt today as they carve out their places in the new world order. Next time on Short History Of we'll bring you a short history of Angkor. Angkor Wat is one of the most visited temple sites on the planet, suffering from this extensively and falling apart in all parts of the temple. The staircases, the park system, etc. is falling apart through all the tourism today. The very core, central pyramid of the temple was just meant to be visited once a year by the king.

And now we have two million people climbing the staircase per year. So you can imagine the temple is suffering a lot. That's next time.