At the heart of [Isaiah] Berlin’s thought was the question of individual freedom and how to protect it. For Berlin the greatest threat to individual freedom in the world was the Soviet Union. In October 1956 the Hungarian people had risen up and toppled their Communist government. In response Soviet forces invaded and brutally suppressed the rebellion massacring thousands. The Soviet action shocked the world. Adam Curtis: The Trap III: We Will Force You to be Free, BBC 2007
[Isaiah] Berlin’s warning would become a prophecy. Ironically, this corruption of negative liberty would begin with the resurgence of positive liberty. In the wake of the Soviet disaster, a new and even more extreme version of positive liberty was about to rise up in the Third World. It would be a revolutionary vision of transforming individuals through violence. It would spread and begin to destabilise the balance of power in the world. In response, the followers of negative liberty in the West would decide that they had to confront and roll back this tide. Out of this would emerge a strange mutant idea. You would use violent revolutionary techniques to create a world of negative freedom. ibid.
The [Soviet] system was starting to crack. Russia became a society where everyone knew that what their leaders said is not real. Because they could see with their own eyes the economy was falling apart. But everybody had to play along and pretend that it was real. Because no-one could imagine any alternative. One Soviet writer called it Hypernormalisation. Adam Curtis, Living in an Unreal World, BBC 2016
The Soviet Union became instead a society where no-one believed in anything or had any vision of the future. Adam Curtis, HyperNormalisation, BBC 2016
The plan had run out of control. But rather than reveal this, the technocrats began to pretend that everything was still going according to plan. And what emerged instead was a fake version of society. The Soviet Union became a society where everyone knew that what their leaders said was not real. Because they could see with their own eyes that the economy was falling apart. But everyone had to play along and pretend that it was real. Because no-one could imagine any alternative. One Soviet writer called it HyperNormalisation. You were so much a part of the system that it was impossible to see beyond it. The fakeness was hypernormal. ibid.
The Soviet Union was about to collapse: it was a colossal failure of the whole Western system of Intelligence. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head V: The Lordly Ones ***** BBCiplayer 2021
What it felt like to live through the collapse of communism and democracy. Adam Curtis, Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone I, BBCiplayer 2022
The Kremlin 1985: Awaiting the arrival of the new leader. When Gorbachev came to power he immediately got reports from across the Soviet Union that showed the communist system was near collapse. The giant industries were falling apart. And thousands of the bureaucrats who ran the system could no longer be trusted. ibid.
Gorbachev still believed in communism as the future of the world. But he knew that radical reform was necessary. ibid.
A new alliance between crime and communism began to rise up. ibid.
In April 1986 there were two giant explosions in the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine. Vast amounts of radiation spread across Ukraine and Russia. ibid.
By 1987 it was clear that Perestroika wasn’t working. So much was being stolen from the factories that there were shortages in all the state shops. ibid.
Poland 1987: Demonstration demanding democracy and independence. ibid.
The Soviet army began its retreat from Afghanistan. ibid.
Perestroika had also given power away to the countries that made up the Soviet empire. It opened the way for a return of old nationalisms and demands for independence. ibid.
In Poland and Germany the borders to the west were about to collapse. ibid.
Yeltsin believed the only way to save Russia was to end the communist system completely and replace it with democracy and capitalism. ibid.
The aim of the Soviet system had been to create a rational organised society. Every factory was told what to make by Gosplan in Moscow. It was the centre of The Plan. The plan decided scientifically what everyone in Russia needed .. But now the system was becoming absurd. Adam Curtis, Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone II: No Potatoes in Moscow
The Berlin Wall had collapsed. And the Eastern European countries had broken free of Moscow’s control. But Gorbachev still believed he could rescue communism and hold the Soviet Union together. ibid.
In July 1990 Yeltsin announced that he was leaving the communist party. He would serve instead ‘the will of the people’. ibid.
As the plan collapsed a shadowy new system began to emerge. Cooperatives started to buy oil cheaply from the subsidized state industry. They bribed officials to smuggle it out of Russia. And sold it for a fortune on the world market. Then they used the money to buy personal computers cheaply in America. And sold them for a fortune in Russia. ibid.
Shops in thousands of towns and cities were empty. ibid.
The attempt to reform The Plan with computers was failing. ibid.
The old guard had decided it was time to save communism. ibid.
A group of hardliners in the party, the KGB and the army, had mounted a coup. They wanted to stop Gorbachev’s reforms destroying communism. Adam Curtis, Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone III: The Empire Strikes Back
The coup leaders flew to the villa and arrested Gorbachev. They sealed him off from all contact with the outside world. ibid.
Over 100,000 people had come to defend the White House. ibid.
The crowd began to pull the soldiers out of the tanks. ibid.
In the midst of the chaos the oligarch’s power continued to grow. ibid.
Gorbachev returned to Moscow. He went to the Russian parliament to thank them for their support. And to reclaim his power. But Yeltsin turned on him and blamed him for the coup. ibid.
Boris Yeltsin promised he would bring a market economy to Russia. ibid.
Boris Yeltsin decided it was time to finally abolish the Soviet Union. ibid.
Between 1970 and 1989 at the heart of the Cold War the USSR manufactured and deployed over 2,500 Radioisotope Thermal Generators across the Soviet Union. When the USSR collapsed in 1991 all these highly radioactive and dangerous devices were simply abandoned in situ! The Soviet Union’s Deadly Abandoned Nuclear Generators, Andy McLoone reporting, Youtube short 31.12, 2023
It was once the deadliest lake on Earth … a storage place for radioactive waste material … Karachay had spent decades accumulating a level of toxicity unparalleled in history. Lake Karachay: The USSR’s Deadly Nuclear Lake, Youtube short 19.32, 2020
Just one of a litany of disasters produced by the Mayak facility in the mad dash for the Soviet Union to get the bomb. ibid.
29th September 1957: the [Mayak] tank exploded with the force of 70 tons of TNT … The blast was enough to hurl a vast cloud of Cesium 137 and Strontium 90 high into the air: the Kyshtym Disaster … This was during the peak of Soviet secrecy. ibid.
Karachay was just one of dozens of sites across the former USSR in need of immediate cleanup. ibid.
The residents of City 40 are still there. ibid.
The polished granite mausoleum behind them holds the mortal remains of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. In the Soviet era his image was preserved and embalmed with the same reverence as his body. Timewatch: Lenin’s Secret Files, BBC 1997
The full weight of Soviet propaganda was deployed to promote a personality cult around Lenin. ibid.
It was he who insisted the Bolsheviks seize power by armed force. ibid.
The violent mood swings caused by Lenin’s brain condition may have influenced the ruthlessness and cruelty with which the communist regime was established. ibid.
The career of Josef Stalin, the man of steel, is a succession of waves of terror. First, following the death of communist leader Lenin, Stalin rose to power by plotting against and eventually eliminating his political rivals. Second, his ruthlessly imposed policy of collective farms starved ten million to death in the early 1930s. Third, his purges later that decade killed and exiled millions more and tightened his grip on power. Fourth, in World War II he defeated Hitler at the cost of twenty-fix million Soviet lives but afterwards executed many Russian heroes. And in 1953 Stalin was preparing for a final wave of terror when suddenly he died. Timewatch: Who Killed Stalin? BBC 2005
Compiled by the doctors who watched Stalin slowly die, was this incredibly detailed file suppressed because it contains details of Stalin’s illness that those surrounding him needed to keep secret? ibid.
Why did the ultra paranoid leader leave himself vulnerable by telling his bodyguards to go to bed? Why did his most senior ministers deprive Stalin of medical assistance for twelve hours? And why did the official announcement of his death omit crucial medial details? ibid.
The archive now further raises the prospect of murder. ibid.
‘I’ve been greatly impressed by what I see. I believe, sir, that history will record you as a great builder for the benefit of mankind. Messengers from Moscow I: West, US Ambassador to Stalin, Warner Bros film, BBC 1995
During the War Stalin wasn’t just our ally, he was our hero. He was Uncle Joe and he was leading the Russians to victory. ibid.
Within a few years he had become the enemy accused of seeking to bring the whole of Europe under communist domination. ibid.
It was a death sentence for 50,000 Polish communists, just some of the 9,000,000 people Soviet and foreign who disappeared during the Great Terror. ibid.
From the middle of the war onwards, small groups of European communists left Moscow to build up Stalin’s power in their native lands. ibid.
Soviet documents now showed the rapes continued at least until 1947. ibid.