It stretched from the Pacific ocean to the fringes of Europe. The Soviet empire seemed invincible. But in 1989 the Iron curtain was swept away, and Moscow watched its empire crumble. Thirty years on, Russia is reasserting itself. They are fears of new flashpoints in Europe. The Baltic has become one of the front lines that feels like a new Cold War. Our World: Russia: The Empire Strikes Back I, BBC 2020
By the end of the 19th century the Russian empire spanned one sixth of the surface of the world. Inside the Kremlin you can really feel the imperial ambition which has driven Russia for centuries. ibid.
Mikhail Gorbachev rejects criticism of his leadership. He is fiercely proud of his role in ending the Cold War. ibid.
The Soviet Union had gone. Russia was struggling. The returning soldiers were low priority. ibid.
Desecrating and insulting the memory is mean. Meanness can be deliberate, hypocritical and pretty much intentional as in the situation when declarations commemorating the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War mention all participants in the anti-Hitler coalition except for the Soviet Union. Vladmir Putin, ‘The Real Lessons of the 75th Anniversary of World War II
Meeting Gobachev by a German is burdened by History. The Nazi invasion left Russia a devastated country with some 25 million dead. Mikhail Gorbachev witnessed the war as an adolescent. Meeting Gorbachev, Werner Herzog reporting, Sky Documentaries 2020
He was 87 years now … [born] 1931 as the son of peasants … All of his family has been laid to rest … He lived much of his time with his maternal grandparents who treated him with tenderness. ibid.
‘I entered politics in my final year of school. That’s when I joined the communist party.’ ibid. Gorbachev
‘He proposed, as we all remember, Perestroika and Glasnost. He really believed that he could reform communism.’ ibid. Lech Walesa
‘The proposals to end the Cold War first came from the Soviet Union.’ ibid. Gorbachev
‘I still believe we need to keep moving forward, and rid the world of nuclear weapons – just as Reagan and I proposed.’ ibid.
‘We were able to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons … I believe we can resume our cooperation and nuclear disarmament.’ ibid.
‘Some people were in a rush. They wanted to seize power and they had plans of their own.’ ibid.
In 1989 the Soviet Union pulls out of Afghanistan. Cold War Armageddon s1e8, Discovery 2016
Romania is not the only communist state hearing the revolutionist’s call … In one country after another people take to the streets. ibid.
The trickle of refugees through the fence dividing Hungary from Austria becomes a flow. Most of the refugees are from East Germany. More and more people from eastern block countries travel to freedom in the west. ibid.
Germans from east and west form massive crowds on both sides of the Berlin Wall. ibid.
The communist old guard stages a coup. ibid.
The Soviet Union is gone. ibid.
The Soviet Union went to war, sending tanks and troops thundering into their southern neighbour Afghanistan. Dominic Sandbrook, Strange Days – Cold War Britain III, BBC 2013
I don’t know, but I’m sure that they know what they’re doing. Stalin: Reign of Terror aka Within the Wirlwind 2009 starring Emily Watson & Ulrich Tukur & Ian Hart & Benjamin Sadler & Agata Buzek & Lena Stolze & Monica Dolan & Ben Miller & Jimmy Yuill & Pearce Quigley & Pam Ferris & Lena Stolz & Maria Momona et al, director Marleen Gorris
Why do you allow yourself to be manipulated in this way? Why me? Why me? Why me? I am a teacher. ibid.
The first ten years are the worst. It’s all downhill from there on. ibid.
To those who began the revolution in Russia seventy-five years ago science was a grand liberating force. They believed Karl Marx had discovered the scientific laws of society which they would now use to unlock the gates to a new world where everyone would be equal and free. But within twenty years the revolution was taken over by technocrats who looked down on the crowd below as though they were atoms. They were inspired not by Marx but by the laws of engineering. They believed they could transform the Soviet Union into a giant rational machine which they would run for their political masters. Adam Curtis, Pandora’s Box I: The Engineer’s Plot: A Fable From the Age of Science, BBC 1992
This is a story of science and political power. How the Bolshevik’s vision of using science to change the world was itself transformed. What resulted was as strange experiment far removed from the original aims of the revolution. From the beginning of the revolution, modern technology was central to the Bolshevik’s plans. Above all, the new power of electricity. ibid.
The aim of the Bolsheviks was to transform the people they ruled into what they called ‘scientific beings’, people able to understand and control the machines of the modern world rather than become enslaved to them. ibid.
The people to shape the future Soviet Union was passing to those who could build the new industrial society the Bolsheviks wanted so much. They were known as the bourgeois specialists, engineers from before the revolution who had the skills needed to master the modern technology. ibid.
At the end of 1930 the engineers’ dream suddenly became a nightmare: Stalin ordered two-thousand of them to be arrested, and eight of the most senior were put on a public show-trial. ibid.
‘Bolsheviks must master technology. It is time for the Bolsheviks themselves to become specialists. In the reconstruction period, technology decides everything.’ ibid. Stalin
He [Stalin] ordered engineering schools to be set up across the country to thousands of the young party faithful. ibid.
The model for this new simplified world was American … Gary, Indiana, is almost derelict. But seventy years ago it was a new kind of model city planned in an ordered way around a giant steel mill. To its builders it was a chance to break with the complexities of the past. ibid.
Those who lived in the American City were the new elite: a mixture of old Bolshevik commissars, foreign technicians and an ever increasing number of young red engineers. By the mid-30s the engineers had become the heroes in Soviet society. Praised by Stalin, they flaunted their new status. ibid.
In 1937 Stalin began another series of purges. This time his targets were the tens of thousands of old Bolsheviks. ibid.
It was a vision of a planned Utopia. Everything in the new Russia was to be designed and controlled from the centre of Moscow. ibid.
By the early ’50s vast reconstruction projects had changed the face of Soviet cities. ibid.
‘Under Brezhnev things started to fall apart. Theft and negligence were rife. In the late seventies the Brezhnev era reached new heights of corruption just as we were building more atomic plants than ever. Our efforts to solve this problem internally failed completely so we went public.’ Adam Curtis, Pandora’s Box VI: A is for Atom, nuclear scientist, BBC 1992
The Neo-Conservatives believed that they had the chance to implement their vision of America’s revolutionary destiny … in an epic battle to defeat the Soviet Union. Adam Curtis: The Power of Nightmares I: Baby It’s Cold Outside, BBC 2004
The Neo-Conservatives set out to prove that the Soviet threat was … the majority of terrorism and revolutionary movements around the world were actually part of a secret network coordinated by Moscow. to take ever the world. ibid.
Reagan agreed to give the Neo-Conservatives what they wanted … The country would now fight covert wars to push back the hidden Soviet threat around the world. ibid.
They began to believe their own fiction … who were going to use force to change the world. ibid.
Then in 1987 the New Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev decided he was going to withdraw Russian troops from Afghanistan. Gorbachev was convinced that the whole Soviet system was facing collapse. He was determined to try and save it through political reform and this meant reversing the policies of his predecessors including the occupation of Afghanistan. ibid.
For the Neo-Conservatives the collapse of the Soviet Union was a triumph. And out of that triumph was going to come a central myth that still inspires them today. That through the aggressive use of American power they could transform the world and spread democracy. But in reality their victory was an illusion. They had conquered a phantom enemy … It was a decrepit system decaying from within. ibid.
The Neo-Conservatives distorted and exaggerated the Soviet threat. They created the image of a hidden international web of evil run from Moscow that planned to dominate the world. When in reality the Soviet Union was on its last legs, collapsing from within. Adam Curtis, The Power of Nightmares III: The Shadows in the Cave, BBC 2004