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Soviet Union: Rise & Fall of the Communist Empire | Free Documentary History — Transcript

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0:03In 1922, the Soviet Union was formed. A
0:08new nation that would have a profound
0:10impact on the entire globe. It would
0:12emerge from the remnants of the Russian
0:14Empire after a long and bloody civil
0:17war.
0:19Russia in the aftermath of the Bolevik
0:21Revolution was a country in absolute
0:23turmoil. a brutal and bloody clash of
0:27arms trying to wipe out this new regime
0:29before it can take control of the
0:31country.
0:32>> The Boleviks finally succeeded in about
0:341922 and then came the hard work of
0:37trying to create for the first time ever
0:39a new socialist country.
0:41>> From out of nowhere, Vladimir Lenin had
0:44become the leader of the largest nation
0:46on earth and was now imposing his will.
0:50Lenin won the war. Lenin won the
0:52revolution. Lenin's one of those amazing
0:54figures who really are decisive in
0:56history. One's got to understand that
0:58Lenin was an autocratic character who
1:01really didn't [music] want anyone to
1:02succeed him. That's true of most
1:04autocratic characters in history. But
1:06Lenin would have a successor who proved
1:08to be the most ruthless of all figures
1:10[music] when dealing with both his own
1:12people and his foreign enemies.
1:17>> They realized after the revolution that
1:19the Soviet Union was surrounded by
1:21enemies. It didn't have a friend in the
1:22world. They felt that way and they were
1:24probably right. And the only defense was
1:27to build an enormous army with a lot of
1:30tanks and a lot of aircraft and a lot of
1:32ships, which they did.
1:35In the aftermath of World War [music]
1:37II, the Soviet Union emerged as a new
1:40global superpower that matched the once
1:42mighty Russian Empire of old.
1:50All of us who were then young, we were
1:53seeing great achievements by the Soviet
1:55Union. They launched the Sputnik
1:57satellite, fantastic scientific
1:59achievement. They put the first man into
2:01space, Yuri Gagari, fantastic
2:04achievement. And so people were saying
2:07they saw the Soviet Union as a genuine
2:11comparable competitor with the United
2:14States.
2:15Now a century [music] from its
2:17formation, the Soviet Union seems to
2:20define the whole of the 20th century.
2:39[music]
2:56In 1917, the Romanoff dynasty fell
2:59[music] and Vladimir Lenin and the
3:01Boleviks had managed to seize power in
3:03the Russian Revolution.
3:05This new government signed the treaty of
3:08breast leavsk with the central powers,
3:10bringing an end to Russian involvement
3:12in World War I. But despite an end to
3:15[music] the conflict with foreign
3:16governments, the battle for Russia
3:18itself would continue for years.
3:24In the beginning, it seemed fairly
3:26simple. It seemed to be the Red Army,
3:29which was an army of soldiers with
3:31hardly any officers. And the other army
3:33is the White Army, which you could say
3:35was an army of officers with hardly any
3:37soldiers who wanted to put Russia back
3:40to what it had been before the First
3:41World War and possibly continue that war
3:44to to a victory. And then it got
3:46complicated. For really the better part
3:48of 2 three years, this struggle is
3:50taking place for control of this vast
3:53and completely turbulent country. At the
3:56same time, other things are going on.
3:58There is a famine. There's a war going
4:00on between Russia and Poland at the same
4:02time. And there are endless mutinies,
4:04rebellions taking places, notably the
4:06Kronstat mutiny where the sailors of the
4:08of the fleet rebel against the new
4:11Bolevik government. So, not only is the
4:15Bolevik government fighting for its very
4:17survival, but it's fighting against
4:19powerful and desperate forces, all of
4:21whom have one goal, and that is destroy
4:24it.
4:25various national groups formed their own
4:27armies, the Ukrainians, uh the Georgians
4:30and and they all fought. Uh there was an
4:33anarchist army which fought all sides
4:35sometimes allying with one. So basically
4:38red and white with various other
4:41factions and of course from 1919 the
4:44Japanese, the French, the British uh and
4:47the Americans all thought they might
4:49intervene and save something from the
4:51situation. So there were at least five
4:53or six foreign armies also mostly
4:56fighting the boleviksu and trying to
4:58help the whites uh but in the end giving
5:00up because the presence of foreign
5:03soldiers only made the red army
5:04stronger. It increased national feeling
5:06among the peasants and and the workers.
5:09But while Lenin [music] as the overall
5:11leader of the Boleviks and Trosky as the
5:14leader of the Red Army wound up
5:16victorious in the Russian civil war, it
5:18was another figure who truly established
5:21himself during the fighting.
5:25Benyan and Trosky are now firmly in
5:27power. The Chaker is abolished. In its
5:30place comes the OGPU or political
5:33police. And to check on the OGPU, there
5:37is Rob Green, the workers and peasants
5:39inspection group, whose chief is one
5:42Joseph Vizaranovich Jukajilli.
5:46Party name Stallion.
5:50>> Stalin was uh born in Georgia, one of
5:53the the the national areas of of the
5:55Russian Empire. He was uh the son of a
5:59shoemaker. Uh initially he was intended
6:01to go into the the church. uh he
6:03attended a seminary. He joined the
6:06Bolevixs uh at a young age and he became
6:08known for his practical work uh working
6:10on in the underground organizing
6:13uh bank robberies and and political
6:16demonstrations. He was never he spent a
6:19few years abroad but he was he was
6:21mainly an inside guy and in the course
6:23of the civil war he became in charge of
6:26uh all of the Bolshevik cadres the
6:28organization and he developed a a
6:30patronage network in that way. So then
6:33he became obviously one of the potential
6:35successors to Lenin.
6:37>> Everyone underestimated him because he
6:39pretended to be not as clever as he was.
6:41He pretended not to know foreign
6:42languages. He pretended not to have read
6:44anything. So they thought this is a
6:46useful gopher. He'll do as a sort of
6:48chief whip to get others into
6:50organization. And when they founded a
6:53central committee, they thought well
6:54what's the most boring job in a
6:56committee? It's a secretary.
6:58uh but the point is uh that the
7:00secretary if they have enough
7:02personality and power and ruthlessness
7:05is the person who determines what the
7:07agenda is who is going to receive that
7:09agenda who's going to be notified of the
7:12meeting and who is going to be allowed
7:13to speak and who writes the notes and uh
7:17and so on. So as a result of that right
7:20to the end of the Soviet Union the most
7:22powerful person was the first secretary
7:24of the central committee not the
7:26president not the chairman and that was
7:29Stalin's doing
7:32one of Stalin's [music] key tasks in the
7:34bolevik party had been how the issue of
7:36the nationalities [music] that made up
7:38the Russian Empire would be handled by
7:40this new regime.
7:42you know, his interest [music] in the
7:44nationalities and the creation of the
7:45Soviet Union was that Lenin appointed
7:48him in 1911 1912 to be his nationalities
7:51expert and Stalin went to Vienna and
7:54lived there for a few months and wrote
7:56his his his [music] his paper on the
7:58nationalities question which him and
8:00Lenin worked out what to do with the
8:02nationalities. You've got to understand
8:04that the Russian Empire was a multithnic
8:07empire. It contained something like a
8:09hundred tiny ethnic groups but obviously
8:12a handful of big [music] ones. The
8:14biggest them of course was the Russians
8:16themselves, Orthodox Russians, but then
8:18there were um Poles who were Catholic,
8:20Finns who were Protestant, Georgians who
8:22had their own church, Azeris and and
8:25Chetchins who were Muslim. So the big
8:27question um in the Russian Empire was
8:30how do we overthrow the Zar and how do
8:32we make how do we liberate these [music]
8:34peoples? The problem of national
8:36minorities had been a thorny one
8:38throughout Europe. Woodro Wilson decided
8:41the solution was to allow national
8:43groups to self-determine themselves and
8:45create nations if they wanted to. Russia
8:48was a multinational empire. So, so the
8:51problem was how to organize the
8:53different nationalities. Uh, and Lenin
8:55decided that nationalities should have
8:58their own homelands. that the Soviet
9:01Union would be socialist [music] in
9:03content, nationalist in form. And so the
9:06republics were formed along these
9:08national lines.
9:10[music] So he'd retaken and reconquered
9:13Ukraine and Bellarussia. He'd [music]
9:15retaken the Caucuses, including Georgia,
9:17Stalin's homeland, but he'd lost the
9:20Baltics states, which became
9:21independent. [music]
9:22He'd lost Finland, and he'd lost Poland.
9:25So how does he manage the rest of
9:27[music] this empire? And what does he do
9:28with these nationalities? Because the
9:31Bolevixs have supported their right to
9:33freedom and all of them have their own
9:35nationalist movements now and [music]
9:37all of them would, you know, really
9:38would like to be independent. That was
9:40the big question. What do we do? What
9:42kind of new country do we [music] create
9:44to keep these these territories within
9:47our new Soviet Bolevik state and yet
9:50give them freedom? And that's the
9:52million rubble [music] question.
9:55In December of 1922, the solution that
9:58the Bolsheviks enacted was the creation
10:01of a federal system of republics known
10:03[music] as the USSR.
10:07The name comes from the Union of Soviet
10:09Socialist Republics. It was a union of
10:13uh quai independent nominally
10:16independent republics. It was Soviet
10:19because the the political form was
10:21elected councils. The Russian word for
10:23council is Soviet. It was socialist
10:26because the uh the state owned the means
10:28of production.
10:29>> To begin with, they had the Russian
10:31Federal Republic which still exists.
10:33There was a Ukrainian Republic once
10:35they'd entered Ukrainian independence
10:37which lasted until about 1920. And there
10:40was a Caucasian republic which later
10:42split into Georgia, Armenia Azabaijan.
10:45Central Asia was still uh in chaos till
10:491924
10:50and the present stands Kazan,
10:54Tajikistan, Usbekistan, Kyistan, they
10:57didn't really emerge until the middle of
11:00the 1920s when they'd been pacified.
11:04There were great differences between
11:05Lenin and Stalin about this new union of
11:08socialist republics. Lenin saw it as a
11:12decentralized system with each socialist
11:14republic having considerable power over
11:16their own affairs. Stalin saw it very
11:19differently. He wanted it ruled from the
11:21center. He wanted Russia as the dominant
11:24force, Moscow as the center of power and
11:26preferably himself running the whole
11:28thing. It was quite surprising given
11:30that he himself was Georgian.
11:34At the same time [music] as this new
11:35state was being established, its leader
11:38was falling into a terrible state of
11:40health. A series of strokes would render
11:42Lenin unable to speak, and a new leader
11:45would soon be needed. One man had long
11:48been plotting for the position, and he
11:50would eventually become one of the most
11:52powerful and feared figures in the whole
11:54world.
11:57[music]
12:04In January 1924, Vladimir Lenin died.
12:08The battle for succession of leadership
12:10in the Soviet Union was now [music]
12:12truly underway with one man, Stalin,
12:16determined to come out on top.
12:20>> And then on January 21st, 1924, [music]
12:22the moon-faced balding dictator left the
12:25scene as abruptly as he had appeared. He
12:27literally died of overwork. [music]
12:29His funeral was a monstrous affair.
12:31Hundreds of thousands queued up in the
12:33streets in 25° [music] below zero
12:35weather. It seemed that everyone wanted
12:37to pay their last respects.
12:40>> Stalin removed his rivals systematically
12:43with incredible ingenuity and in such a
12:45way they didn't know it was happening.
12:48Lenin's great fear, I think, was that
12:50Stalin would develop a personality cult,
12:52a cult that had already developed around
12:55Lenin himself. And in fact, Salin
12:58exploited this. He built up the cult of
13:00Lenin. When Lenin died, he took charge
13:03of the funeral arrangements. He wanted
13:04to have complete control of what
13:06happened to Lenin's legacy. It was
13:09Stalin who wanted Lenin's body to be
13:11inbalmed, much against the wishes of
13:14Lenin's widow. And once Lenin was dead,
13:17this personality cult was transferred
13:20onto Stalin himself. And this would
13:22become one of the hallmarks of his
13:24entire reign of power in the Soviet
13:26Union.
13:28Stalin was was left as the sort of
13:31leading member of the leadership along
13:34with Trosky and there were other there
13:36were [music] other major figures um
13:38Zenovia and Camf and younger ones like
13:41Bkarin as well and Roff who was who who
13:44were also key figures but the the
13:46leading two contenders were Stalin and
13:48Trosky and even though it's always this
13:51is always presented as [music] one of
13:52the great sort of struggles and it was
13:53an amazing thing that Stalin won this
13:56won this succession struggle actually
13:59he'd really already won it by the time
14:01Lenin died. He was already the leading
14:03figure in the regime and you know
14:06somebody had to do something pretty
14:07radical to stop him. He already
14:09controlled the party machine and the
14:10party controlled the country. So Trosky
14:14was actually his ideal competitor.
14:16Trosky was very arrogant [music] and so
14:19famous and so preeminent and so pleased
14:22with himself that he really believed
14:23that he didn't need to do much [music]
14:24organizing and he would simply be given
14:26the leadership.
14:31The first thing he did was to tell
14:33Trosky he needed a rest and suggested
14:36that Trosky go to the caucuses and
14:39Trosky who although a very powerful
14:42figure could be at times hysterical and
14:45have fainting fits and feel suddenly
14:47psychosmatically ill. Trosky consented
14:50and he went pheasant shooting and the
14:52instructions Stalin sent to the locals
14:55was he is not to meet anybody. He was
14:57not to receive any telegrams or letters.
15:00So, Trosky missed Lenin's funeral. And
15:03you know, people who miss funerals miss
15:05the will reading and miss the
15:07distribution of the spoils.
15:10Stalin's [music] maneuvers during
15:12Lenin's funeral would be the beginning
15:14of the end for Leon Trosky's role in the
15:16newly formed USSR and the beginning of
15:19Stalin's [music] radical plans for the
15:22nation.
15:26Stalin, Zenovv, and Kamev force Trosky
15:30into exile. Then Stalin overrules his
15:32two associates and ends the new economic
15:35policy.
15:37In its place come three successive
15:395-year plans, all designed to emphasize
15:42productive capacity, especially heavy
15:44industry and power output.
15:49[music]
15:52From 1928 to 1941, Russia's industrial
15:55[music] capacity rises nearly 300%.
16:00After the civil war, Lenin had promoted
16:03a policy of compromise, economic
16:05compromise, the new economic policy,
16:07which allowed quite a lot of market
16:09forces to delay communism because the
16:12country was so impoverished. And of
16:13course in the communist party there was
16:15a wide variety of views about which way
16:17they should go whether they should allow
16:19some some [music]
16:20market forces or whether they should
16:21have a strict communism with
16:23collectivization. But at the same time,
16:26uh, another big issue was industry. And
16:30the Zars had begun to industrialize
16:32Russia in the 1890s, but of course that
16:33had all been destroyed in the war. And
16:36so now they looked towards America, the
16:39rising power and they saw this
16:41extraordinary industrial miracle that
16:43was happening in America um with mass
16:46production and they wanted it too.
16:49But while the Soviet Union wanted to
16:51emulate the industrialization witnessed
16:54in countries like the United States of
16:56America, it remained very wary of its
16:59precarious place in international
17:01affairs.
17:04Well, the BIC party which became the
17:06Communist Party was was split in its
17:08foreign policy. Th those on the left
17:11believed that a revolution in one
17:12country could not survive only by
17:14itself. So they they believe that only a
17:16world revolution could bring real
17:18socialism. So they they believe that
17:20Britain, Germany, France, United States
17:23also needed to become socialist in order
17:25to make the revolution succeed. Uh and
17:28so part of the part policy was to uh
17:31organize and support [music] foreign
17:33communist parties to undermine
17:34governments and to carry out this
17:36revolution. But at the same time, the
17:39Soviet Union needed to survive in the
17:40world that existed. So they were also
17:43engaging in diplomatic relations with
17:45these powers, trying to arrange uh trade
17:48deals so that they could borrow
17:49technology in order to develop their own
17:51economy. So there was this two-pronged
17:53policy. On the one hand, they were
17:55[music] being nice to to capitalist
17:57countries. On the other hand, they were
17:59trying to undermine them with their
18:01local communist parties.
18:05The foreign policy, you know, changed
18:07and he was extremely um flexible [music]
18:09with the foreign policy. the essential
18:11thing was just to strengthen the Soviet
18:13Union wherever possible by any means
18:15possible and [music] in that sense you
18:17know he was actually quite he was he was
18:19very radical internally he was
18:21incredibly murderous internally but out
18:24outside in foreign policy he was you
18:26know very much a traditional statesman
18:29making alliances you know winning
18:31friends trying to win territory in order
18:34to make the USSR great
18:37>> the early years of the Soviet Union Both
18:40Lenin and Stalin after him really craved
18:43foreign recognition. They wanted this
18:46new uh revolutionary state to be
18:48recognized by countries across the
18:50world. One of the first nations to enter
18:52into negotiations was Great Britain. And
18:55you get the Anglo-Sietviet trade
18:57agreement. And then you get diplomatic
18:59recognition happen soon after
19:00afterwards. And eventually America
19:03itself in the early 1930s will recognize
19:06this new state and send an ambassador to
19:08Moscow. And soon after that, the Soviet
19:11Union is recognized by the League of
19:13Nations in 1934. This is a key moment
19:16for the Soviet Union. At last, it's been
19:18recognized as an official country on the
19:21world stage.
19:24While the USSR would eventually be
19:26officially recognized on the world
19:28stage, it continued to have extremely
19:30tense relationships with foreign powers.
19:34But one of the USSR's surprising
19:36opportunities for industrial development
19:38in this time was with the country it had
19:40been in direct conflict with just a few
19:42years prior during World War I, Germany.
19:49Germany after the first world war was a
19:52pariah state. It wasn't allowed to have
19:54an army, wasn't allowed to have tanks or
19:56airplanes. So it came to agreement with
19:58another pariah state, the Soviet Union,
20:00and they developed submarines, tanks,
20:03and aircraft in uh various sites on the
20:07vulga.
20:10>> Well, this was the first socialist
20:11country in the world. So it was a a
20:14tremendous experiment in transforming an
20:17economic system, modernize the country
20:19to build hydroelectric dams to build the
20:21economy. The Soviet economic elite
20:24decided that centralized economic
20:27planning would be the most efficient way
20:28to mobilize resources. So targets were
20:31set for every sector of the economy by
20:33the center. Uh and orders were given to
20:35all parts of the economy to fulfill
20:38their parts of the plan. So initially
20:41they recognized they needed to build
20:43infrastructure and heavy industries,
20:45transportation, uh energy sector and
20:48machine manufacturing
20:50uh in order to provide the capacity to
20:52then develop the economy further into uh
20:55consumer goods uh and and a broad-based
20:58economy. But everything was mobilized uh
21:00toward this this the plan.
21:04And so Stalin in the end embraced the
21:08extreme leftist [music] view of
21:09communism which was collectivize,
21:12eliminate all property, but also to make
21:15this into a great power and to promote
21:18industrialization.
21:20And the best way to do that was [music]
21:21to collectivize the fields and the farms
21:25and then sell the grain abroad and buy
21:27technology to industrialize the country.
21:30And that was the policy he decided on.
21:32So it was an a radical policy and by 19
21:36about 1928 he he decided that that was
21:38the only way to go to make the Soviet
21:41Union a great power and to and to and to
21:43ensure the survival of the USSR and that
21:46was what he decided to do [music] and he
21:49would do it at any cost.
21:53The economic policy enacted by Joseph
21:56Stalin in the late 1920s would lead to a
21:59widescale famine across the whole of the
22:02USSR.
22:07He did it by first of all introducing a
22:11policy of collective farms. They had
22:14been tried briefly in the 1920s and
22:16found that peasants didn't want to h
22:18have their horses owned collectively and
22:21rebelled against it and that was quickly
22:22abandoned. And then he tried again in
22:251929. And this time it was organized
22:28with the help of the Red Army. And it is
22:30said for the first time in Russian
22:33history, peasants ate all the meat they
22:35wanted to because rather than hand over
22:37their pigs and sheep and cows, they just
22:40had an enormous feast and ate as much as
22:42they could. One of both Lenin's policies
22:46and Stalin's policies was the
22:48destruction of the wealthy farming
22:51class. The yman farmers if you like.
22:53These are farmers who had quite a lot of
22:55land and produced a lot of produce which
22:57they would then sell on. This was deemed
22:59unacceptable to the Bolevik regime and
23:02they were to be liquidated and other
23:04farmers, the smaller peasant farmers
23:06were to be gathered into collective
23:07farms and produce grain and supplies for
23:10the benefit of the state. This was an
23:13absolute disaster because on the one
23:15hand, Stalin had wiped out the one class
23:18of farmers that produced a surplus and
23:20there was no longer any incentive for
23:22the rest of the peasant farmers to
23:23produce any food that was going to be
23:25taken from them anyway. What happens
23:27next is the great famine of the early
23:301930s.
23:32The regime would not listen to signals
23:34from below. They wouldn't listen to the
23:36fact that there was no seed to plant and
23:38they insisted on high quotas anyway. Uh
23:41and this led to an even worse harvest
23:43the next year with loss of life uh and
23:47devastation mostly in Ukraine because
23:49this was the the main grain growing
23:51area. [music] Uh but it would also
23:53affected parts of southern Siberia and
23:56uh eastern Russia as well. So historians
24:00who have looked very closely at this
24:01don't believe this was a deliberate
24:03attack on Ukrainian nationalism or
24:06Ukrainian independence. [music]
24:07It was just a terribly tragic
24:10manifestation of of the of mistakes made
24:13in economic planning and an
24:15unwillingness to collect unbiased
24:18information, but rather trying to uh
24:21believe the most rosy predictions and
24:23reports rather than the actual reports.
24:28Records weren't kept properly, but we
24:30know how many people died simply because
24:32of the census report that in 1937
24:36there are about 12 million people
24:38missing from the population.
24:40Well, they shot the people who took the
24:42census and they had a new census which
24:45was faked. And the problem with this
24:47famine was that there was a depression
24:49going on all over Europe and so on and
24:52there wasn't much demand for buying
24:54grain from the Soviet Union. So the
24:56price wasn't good. They had to sell more
24:57and more in order to finance their
24:59industrialization.
25:01So that famine killed an enormous number
25:04of people between 10 million and perhaps
25:0615 million because it happened not only
25:08to Ukrainians, it happened to Russian
25:10farmers. Uh the there was a sort of
25:13insanity about it. U [music]
25:15the agricultural policy and the workers
25:18I think got party workers got quite
25:20cynical. They realized their job was to
25:22destroy. [music] So vineyards were torn
25:24up and uh farms destroyed uh animals
25:29destroyed. The grain wasn't even stored
25:31properly. It rotted in great railway
25:33sidings.
25:34So it was a form of madness. But it did
25:37solve one problem. It got rid of the
25:39peasantry as as a force. They were those
25:42who survived were cowed.
25:45But it was not just the peasantry that
25:47was terrorized. the very [music]
25:49leadership of the government and the
25:50original Bolevik revolutionaries would
25:53also be targeted.
25:56He would take his old Bolevik comrades,
25:58many of whom had helped him maneuver him
26:01into the position of absolute power, and
26:03he would proceed to liquidate them in
26:06these show trials that took place in
26:08Moscow. Men like Kamv, like Zenovv, were
26:11put on trial on trumpedup charges and
26:14there was never any doubt that they were
26:16going to be found guilty. And he really
26:18went through many of his old Bolevik
26:21comrades. They were put on trial. They
26:23were found guilty and they were
26:25executed. It was absolutely brutal.
26:28>> These are also the years of the great
26:30executions called Yhov Sha in honor of
26:33Stalin's executioner Nihov.
26:36How many people are permanently removed
26:38from circulation? No one knows. In some
26:40[music] provinces, as much as 4% of the
26:42population vanishes.
26:46Kaminev and Zenovv who helped Stalin
26:49seize power are quickly disposed of. To
26:52have been a friend of either one of them
26:53is now a crime. For this and related
26:56activities, well over half of the top
26:58communist leadership and thousands of
27:00lesser officials vanish as do most of
27:03the army officers.
27:05>> Well, the show trials were u
27:07masterpieces of propaganda. Uh they were
27:10meant to be public displays of crime and
27:13punishment and they were carefully
27:14rehearsed. They were carefully prepared.
27:16Those that were sentenced in these
27:18trials, their confessions were scripted.
27:21Hundreds of people were invited to
27:22witness them. They were covered by the
27:24media. And they were an attempt to prove
27:27to the people at large that there were
27:29enemies uh in the country and and that
27:31Stalin was doing a good job of finding
27:33them and rooting them out. It was also a
27:36demonstration to foreign governments
27:38that the Soviet Union was was intent on
27:40on preserving its integrity. And Stalin
27:44was helped by his chief of police at the
27:46time who was a decadent poet and who had
27:50a lot to do with the theater. And if you
27:53know the Stannislavski method of acting
27:55which still survives today, the
27:57Stannislavski method of acting is very
27:59destructive for the actor because it
28:00tells the actor you've got to be whoever
28:03you are. And prisoners when arrested and
28:06interrogated were trained just as
28:09Stanniski trained actors. They were
28:11their trial was rehearsed. So when they
28:13appeared in court, they would say, "Yes,
28:15I'm terribly guilty. I've been a
28:17Japanese spy all my life." And they
28:19would then, of course, make mistakes
28:21saying they'd met somebody in a hotel
28:22which hadn't existed for 40 years. A lot
28:25of foreigners were convinced, quite
28:26influential foreigners, historians like
28:29Christopher Hill, Bernard Shaw, people
28:31who you thought had more brains, were
28:33convinced, oh, if he says he's guilty,
28:34he must be guilty.
28:36>> A very few of yov's victims are given
28:38trials. Some of the trials are
28:40remarkable. For example, several
28:42defendants are convicted of conspiring
28:44with Trosky in 1936 [music] in the Hotel
28:47Bristol in Copenhagen.
28:49In actual fact, in [music] 1936, the
28:52hotel was no longer in business.
28:57Next case, in 1938, Yhjov himself is
29:00purged together with many purged judges,
29:03labor camp operators, and the like.
29:08His basic plan was, you know, when he
29:11looked at when he looked at the Soviet
29:13Union, he saw there was disloyalty in
29:14the party. A lot of people wanted to get
29:16rid of him. A lot of people weren't
29:18happy with his collectivization policy
29:20and the suffering of the peasants. You
29:22know, there was disloyalty in his own
29:23family. And you know, also the party
29:26bosses had become like little princes
29:28running their own territories. So he
29:31decided the way to deal with this was by
29:33bloodshed, by terror quite deliberately.
29:35and he launched a great terror in in
29:38193536
29:40in which over a million people basically
29:42innocent were executed.
29:45This is also a time when there's a great
29:47expansion of the goolags. These are
29:49these uh prison camps often in far dis
29:52far-flung places in in uh Siberia, miles
29:56from anywhere where political prisoners,
29:58troublemakers, or anyone deemed to be
30:01hostile to the regime would be sent off
30:03there, often walking there under
30:05unspeakable conditions and they'd be
30:07simply locked away and they'd have to
30:09work. They were forced labor camps. They
30:11were fed uh very little food. They were
30:13held in the most primitive conditions.
30:16uh you know in the depths of winter in
30:17Siberia it was freezing cold and
30:20millions maybe one and a half million
30:22two million people died in these camps
30:25but it meant that by the end of the
30:271930s Stalin was absolute master of the
30:31Soviet Union he had simply wiped out
30:34anyone who could challenge his
30:35leadership some 2,000 delegates who are
30:38at the 1934
30:40uh Communist Party Congress twothirds of
30:43them will would have lost their lives by
30:45the end of the great terror. So the
30:47leadership was disproportionately
30:48targeted. But there were many other
30:50victims as well. Other whole groups of
30:53victims were members of national
30:54minorities who could be suspected of
30:58disloyalty in in case a war came. So
31:01there was a German minority. Uh in
31:03Russia that had been there for 200
31:05years, it was feared they would be
31:06disloyal. So they were rounded up and
31:09executed. uh Poles living on the
31:11borderlands between the Soviet Union and
31:13Poland. It was feared that they would
31:15turn on the Soviet Union in case of a
31:18war. So they were also targeted [music]
31:20uh and victimized not for anything they
31:22did but just for the the language that
31:25they spoke basically.
31:27>> So it was a completely cynical thing. It
31:29went on for about 18 months and then
31:33there were several incidents which even
31:35Stalin realized made it impossible to go
31:38on. For instance, there was a low
31:39temperature laboratory in Moscow and
31:41they'd arrested so many of the
31:43scientists that it was about to explode
31:45and destroy a large amount of the new
31:47Russian uh underground that was being
31:50built. And so uh they decided to reverse
31:53things. The little chief of police
31:56Nikolai had become a drunk completely
31:58drunk and stopping to turn up for work
32:01and Stalin decided to get rid of him. So
32:04the great terror came to a fairly sudden
32:06end towards the end of 1938
32:08and 1939 became a sort of almost
32:11paradise year in which you could write
32:14what you like, you could walk the
32:15streets, you could say what you like and
32:17nobody seemed to be bothered. It didn't
32:19last long but it was an extraordinary
32:21period 1939 if you look at the books
32:23that were published then and you can see
32:25Stalin started relaxing after the great
32:27terror. He was in some ways morally
32:29exhausted. It may be that he realized
32:31that uh it couldn't go on, that he'd be
32:33left with no population to rule.
32:37>> By the late 1930s, the changing nature
32:40of Europe refocused Stalin and the
32:42USSR's attention on global rather than
32:45internal affairs.
32:52The great hope at the outset of the
32:53Bolshik revolution was that this would
32:56spread to other countries notably
32:58Germany which was seen as ripe for a
33:00bulk a similar sort of Bolshick
33:02revolution but it didn't happen and
33:04events uh change rapidly in the 1930s.
33:08Germany becomes the dominant power in
33:11Europe. [music] Hitler is the dominant
33:13personality in Europe and Stalin
33:16recognizes this.
33:18Stalin wanted to safeguard [music] the
33:20Soviet Union as much as possible. He
33:22regarded Hitler as his first enemy, but
33:24he also regarded the Western
33:26democracies, France and Britain [music]
33:28and America as capitalist enemies, who
33:31after all had intervened to try and
33:33destroy the Soviet Union in the in the
33:34civil war. So he was very suspicious of
33:38[music] them, perhaps more suspicious of
33:39them. Um, at least I suppose he thought
33:42that the na Nazism, a fascist movement
33:45opposed to communism, at least came from
33:47revolutionary popular roots and was run
33:50by a leader, a single leader like
33:52himself with whom he could do business.
33:54[music] And so as war became closer and
33:57the pressure rose in Europe, he needed
33:59to make a decision on sides. Stalin's
34:03ultimate decision would be made behind
34:05closed doors when Yokim von Ribbentrop,
34:08the foreign minister of Nazi Germany,
34:10headed to Moscow in August of 1939
34:12[music]
34:13to meet with his Soviet equivalent,
34:15Vashislav Molotov. A pack between the
34:19two nations was being prepared.
34:23In 1939,
34:25Stalin accepted that sooner or later he
34:28was going to have to fight Hitler, but
34:30he did not believe that either it suited
34:32the Soviet Union for it to happen soon,
34:35uh, or that the Soviet Union was ready
34:37to do so. Um, he also saw the
34:40opportunity for territorial booty in
34:42Finland, in Romania, in Poland, which he
34:45was happy to seize. And Stalin convinced
34:48himself that he was offering Hitler such
34:50a good deal with um oil, wheat, and many
34:54other commodities of which Germany was
34:56in desperate need that he was confident
34:59that it was going to be left to him,
35:01Stalin, and the Soviet Union to choose
35:04the moment of which he confronted Hitler
35:06in arms. What he did not recognize was
35:10that his timetable and Hitler's
35:12timetable might not mesh.
35:15In the end, Stalin's predictions about
35:18the timetable of the war in Europe would
35:20prove disastrously wrong.
35:25In August 1939, it was publicly
35:27announced that the Soviet Union and Nazi
35:30Germany had signed a non-aggression
35:32pact. The news would cause shock waves
35:35[music] around the world.
35:39The lights began to burn all night in
35:41Moscow.
35:42British and French military missions
35:44arrived to confer with the Soviet
35:46government. So did German
35:48representatives.
35:50And on August 21st, 1939,
35:53the world was set on its heels by the
35:55announcement of a treaty between the
35:57Russians and the Germans in which they
35:59agreed not to fight each other.
36:02Here were the admitted arch enemies in a
36:05state of apparent friendship. It was too
36:08fantastic to make any sense. It didn't.
36:12When the news of the Molotov ribbon pact
36:16was announced to the world, the world
36:18was absolutely stunned. This had all
36:21taken place in secret. All the
36:23negotiations had taken place behind
36:26closed doors. [music]
36:27No one could quite believe in the west
36:29that Stalin would do a deal with his
36:32archeneemy Hitler. But also inside the
36:35Soviet Union, there was deep and
36:37profound shock that Hitler, who'd been
36:40presented by the regime as the ultimate
36:42monster, suddenly Stalin was sitting
36:45down and doing a deal. Not just a deal,
36:47but signing a non-aggression pact with
36:49him. Well, Stalin and the Soviet leaders
36:51were very much afraid of of Hitler's
36:53intentions starting from when Hitler
36:55came to power in 1933 with an avowed
36:58anti-communist platform. The one of the
37:00first things Hitler did was to outlaw
37:02the German Communist Party uh and
37:04imprison the [music] German Communists.
37:06It was starting in 1936 therefore the
37:09Soviet Union adopted a policy of support
37:12for popular fronts trying to rally all
37:15socialists and all moderates in popular
37:17fronts against fascism. So they were
37:20very much trying to join an
37:21international coalition uh to fight
37:24Nazism and to fight fascism. From 1936
37:27to 1939, uh, Stalin was trying to join
37:30various collective security pacts with
37:33Britain and with [music] France. Uh, but
37:36they were not letting him in. Uh, and
37:39when Stalin was was excluded from the
37:42Munich agreements, he began to feel that
37:44he was going to be excluded from any
37:46protection that collective security
37:48might give the Soviet Union. So then
37:50they started negotiating on the other
37:52side uh, for some sort of pact with with
37:54Hitler that would protect them.
37:58Many communists in Western Europe and in
38:01the United States were deeply bewildered
38:04by u the Molotov ribbon pact. Um this
38:08was something completely unexpected,
38:11something they could not reconcile with
38:13their enormously high ideals. But in the
38:16end they did so. They believed that the
38:18comment and the Kremlin must know what
38:21they were doing and so they went along
38:22with it. But it did so extraordinary
38:25confusion in the minds of Western
38:27communists.
38:28>> So it was a cynical thing to do to to
38:32suddenly announce that the Germans were
38:34your friends and to start imprisoning
38:36people that you denounced Fedler
38:39in their books and articles had
38:41Communist Party dictate. And for two
38:44years of course this was official
38:46policy. We collaborate with Hitler
38:48because at least he's fighting the
38:49capitalist west.
38:53Just over a week after the Molotov
38:55ribbon pack was announced, Nazi Germany
38:58invaded the western half of Poland,
39:01marking the beginning of [music] World
39:02War II. Only a couple of weeks later,
39:05the Soviet Union took over the eastern
39:08half of Poland in exactly the way that
39:10the two nations had secretly agreed.
39:13part of Poland passed over to the Soviet
39:15Union and the three independent Baltic
39:18states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
39:20were also handed over uh to the Soviet
39:23Union which gave them more space between
39:25them uh and the expanding German Reich
39:28which they hoped would help them if and
39:30when an invasion came.
39:32>> He thought, and he did, he thought he'd
39:34get the Baltic states, he'd get half of
39:37Poland. And that half of Poland
39:39irritated him enormously because it was
39:42the half of Poland he had lost in 1920
39:44when he was in charge of the war there
39:46and it had been settled by Polish
39:48officers. Uh so he took great care when
39:51he under the millet monitor of ribbonrop
39:53pack he was entitled to take over that
39:54part of Poland to slaughter 22,000
39:57Polish officers who were taken prisoners
40:00and in fact it made it much easier to
40:03cushion the eventual Nazi Nazi invasion.
40:08>> The invasion of the Soviet Union itself
40:11would occur on the 22nd of June 1941
40:14when operation Barbarasa was launched on
40:17Hitler's [music] orders.
40:20One of the most extraordinary stories of
40:22the Second World War
40:24is that in Germany, Stalin through
40:29communist sympathizers had the most
40:31superb intelligence of any service um
40:35any nation in the Western world. And all
40:39his spies in Germany were telling him
40:41repeatedly that Hitler was going to
40:44attack him. And they told him so with
40:47the utmost authority, with the best
40:49information. And all of this information
40:52was getting through to Moscow. And
40:54Stalin absolutely refused to believe it.
40:57He'd been warned by Churchill himself
40:59had sent intelligence to Stalin saying
41:01that this is going to happen. And most
41:03importantly, he'd been warned by his
41:05spies in Tokyo, notably Richard Sourge,
41:08had told him not only that Hitler was
41:10going to invade, but he'd actually told
41:12him the exact date on which the uh
41:15invasion was going to take place. Stalin
41:17refused to believe this and dismissed
41:20these accounts as fabricated, and it
41:22meant that the Red Army was totally
41:24unprepared.
41:28>> Hitler and Stalin read the same books.
41:31One of them is Clausvitz on war.
41:33Clausvitz fought with Napoleon, realized
41:35Napoleon's mistake was to fight on two
41:38fronts in Spain and in Russia. Well,
41:41Stalin concluded, "If Hitler's read
41:43this, he knows. [music] I've read it. I
41:46know you only fight on one front. Hitler
41:48is busy fighting Britain and France.
41:50When he's finished with them, then we
41:52can have a war, but he's not going to
41:54attack me until he's finished with
41:55them." And on that basis, Stalin made
41:59one of the biggest mistakes he ever
42:01made.
42:03>> When the invasion came on the 22nd of
42:05June, 1941, where the Vermacht rolled
42:08over the Soviet frontier on a massive
42:111,600mile
42:13front, millions of men, tanks, machinery
42:16rolling over. This stunned Stalin.
42:19Stalin had no idea that Hitler was going
42:22to invade his country. It came as a deep
42:24and profound shock.
42:27>> Stalin's behavior immediately in the
42:30aftermath of the invasion of June 1941
42:33was quite extraordinary. He went into
42:35seclusion for days. He many people
42:38afterwards thought believed that his
42:40comrades were going to kill him.
42:41Literally kill him, murder him,
42:43assassinate him, execute him because he
42:47was alone responsible for this
42:49extraordinary crime, this extraordinary
42:52folly of allowing Germany a free pass
42:55almost into the Soviet Union with that
42:58invasion. And so all these frightened
43:02men around him who Stalin was expecting
43:05to kill him uh for the first few days
43:07they too were in chaos. They too were
43:09bewildered. They too couldn't think what
43:11to do. And in the end Stalin rallied.
43:15Stalin came round. Stalin began once
43:18again at first cautiously at first
43:20rather nervously to exercise his
43:23authority.
43:24>> At first Stalin faced astonishing
43:27losses. I think something like 6 million
43:29men were lost in the first in the first
43:32year of warfare. And Hitler raced
43:34towards Moscow, towards Leningrad, into
43:37Ukraine, towards Kharkov, taking
43:39everything before him before the
43:42Russians started to [music] sort of
43:43gather a proper resistance and started
43:45to fight back and stop them, which they
43:48only managed to do in October 1941
43:51outside Moscow. But before then it
43:54looked like everything was collapsing
43:56and Stardin himself said Lenin left us
43:59[music] a state and we've screwed it up.
44:02And for a second he doubted that whether
44:05he could do this and they came and got
44:07him and said his his henchmen came and
44:09got him and said we need you to take
44:10control. And when that happened it was
44:12as if the mistake of of being of of
44:15being surprised by Hitler was forgiven
44:18[music] and he was able to start with a
44:19clean state and he did. But as the
44:22German army moved ever closer towards
44:25Moscow in 1941, it seemed to many that
44:28just two decades after its formation,
44:31the Soviet Union was on the brink of
44:34annihilation.
44:40[music]
44:51On the 22nd of June 1941, [music]
44:54Adolf Hitler launched Operation
44:56Barbarosa,
44:58a gargantuan military invasion of the
45:01Soviet [music] Union.
45:03The Eastern Front of World War II had
45:05been opened, and for a while it [music]
45:07looked as if the Soviet Union might be
45:10doomed.
45:13The first days and weeks and months of
45:16the German invasion of the Soviet Union
45:18were a military catastrophe. But Russia
45:21was so vast and Russia's armies were so
45:25enormous that even though the Germans
45:28keep advancing and advancing that it's
45:32not enough.
45:33>> As time went on, the this Nazi war
45:36machine was stopped. It was stopped in
45:38front of Leningrad. It was stopped in
45:40front of Moscow. And it was absolutely
45:42imperative for the Nazis to capture
45:46Moscow before winter began. And it
45:48looked like they were going to achieve
45:49this. They captured um notably the towns
45:52of uh Viasma and Brians. These are very
45:54close to Moscow. And this happened
45:56shortly before the winter set in and it
45:59looked very likely that they would seize
46:01Moscow as well. But Stalin ordered that
46:03Moscow was to be held at all costs. He
46:06saw that this was the great prize for
46:08Hitler and he was determined to ensure
46:10that Hitler did not capture Moscow. And
46:12so you have this incredible counterfense
46:15of the capital city.
46:18It's hard to think of any single
46:20occasion when another nation has
46:23successfully invaded Russia and and come
46:25to even the Mongols couldn't get any
46:28further than the forests and the bogs.
46:30And Napoleon of course made some
46:32terrible mistakes with the weather
46:34reports. Hitler made the same mistake
46:36and it said Russia is a very easy
46:38country to get into but an impossible
46:40country to get out of. So that was a
46:44part of it. There was just unlimited
46:45manpower. This was the first time they
46:47had a genuine enemy. They'd had false
46:49enemies that Stalin [music] invented.
46:51Now they had a real one. amazing
46:54achievement of the war was in in the
46:56first four months or so of the war to
46:58evacuate heavy industry from Ukraine uh
47:02which was city of Kharkov especially
47:04which was going to be under attack moved
47:06hundreds and hundreds of kilometers to
47:08safe haven behind the eurals and within
47:11a matter of months for example the
47:13Kharkov tractor factory was up and
47:15running producing tanks despite the
47:18disruption
47:18>> how done is is is a miracle heavy
47:21industry just uh dismantled, put on
47:24trains, moved to the Euros, re-erected
47:26and working, and then they produced
47:28tanks that were actually superior to
47:30German tanks. The T72, which I think
47:32still rolls about today, which bounced
47:36shells just bounced off them. The Soviet
47:38Union is not the hollow shell that
47:41Hitler convinced himself that it was
47:43before he launched Operation Barbarasa.
47:46This is a vast, fantastically powerful,
47:50fantastically motivated country and
47:53society which can do things that we have
47:56never dreamed of. And so those German
47:59generals who had not been frightened by
48:01the British or the French or the Poles,
48:04suddenly they feel this sense around the
48:07heart. They feel these Russians, this is
48:11something far more formidable, far more
48:14frightening than anything we've hitherto
48:17had to face. And as those winter battles
48:22began around Moscow in the autumn and
48:25winter in October and November of 1941,
48:29even though Hitler was far from
48:31admitting it, most of the smartest
48:34people in the inner circle of the Third
48:36Reich realized that that terrifying
48:41iron hand of defeat was staring them in
48:44the face.
48:45>> [music]
48:46>> In order to help guarantee eventual
48:48victory, the Soviet Union quickly made a
48:51new alliance with the Western powers
48:53that had once treated it with enormous
48:55suspicion.
48:58An alliance of [music] pragmatism was
49:00formed. Once they met together in in in
49:03August 1942, Churchill went over to see
49:07Stalin and Stalin was actually at the
49:09greatest [music] crisis of the of the
49:10war. looked like he was going to lose
49:12the whole south, the oil field,
49:14Stalingrad [music]
49:15and the Caucuses. Churchill arrived and
49:19they made it they made a sort of deal.
49:21They they became kind of they respected
49:23each other and Churchill told him that
49:26they weren't going to do an invasion
49:28[music] of Europe, an invasion of France
49:30yet, but that they would ultimately but
49:33for the moment they had to build trust
49:35[music] among themselves. And so the
49:38three of them met at Tehran for the
49:40first time in 1943.
49:43There they really began to build a sort
49:44of a sort of rapport between the three
49:46of them, particularly Roosevelt and and
49:49Stalin. And they agreed on enough to
49:53proceed with the war and to win the war.
49:54They decided on conditional surrender
49:56and the future shape of what Europe
49:58would look like. Here, the chief
50:00executives of Britain and the United
50:02States met for the first time with
50:04Marshall Stalin.
50:06They reaffirmed their country's
50:08determination to work together in the
50:10war and in the peace to follow.
50:15The battles that the Soviet Union fought
50:17on the Eastern Front were on an almost
50:20unimaginable scale and would turn the
50:23tide in favor of this new alliance.
50:28These battles inside the Soviet Union
50:30were on a scale that had never been seen
50:33before in the history of warfare. These
50:35huge titanic struggles. The struggle for
50:38Leningrad, the struggle for Stalingrad.
50:40The massive tank battle, the greatest
50:42tank battle in history that took place
50:44at Kursk. The death toll in these
50:47battles were absolutely enormous.
50:49Millions and millions of Soviet soldiers
50:51would lose their lives on these
50:52battlefields.
50:53>> It was a people's war. this the people's
50:56homeland was being invaded and so they
50:58resisted. There were partisan groups
51:00behind Nazi lines. Everybody whether or
51:03not they had been victimized by the
51:04purges or not or liked Stalin or didn't,
51:08they wanted to defend the homeland.
51:10Tremendous numbers of victims. A whole
51:11generation of young men was was lost for
51:14the Soviet Union and and economic
51:16destruction, the the burning of fields
51:18of of of factories, tremendous losses.
51:25In the beginning of 1945, when it was
51:27clear that the allies were going to win
51:30the war, the big three, Stalin,
51:32Churchill, and Roosevelt, met at Yala to
51:35thrash out a new world order. They were
51:38to decide really what was to happen to
51:40the world once Nazi Germany had been
51:43defeated.
51:48The three parties reach a firm accord on
51:50military and political points.
51:53Coordinated plans are made for great new
51:55blows against Germany from all
51:57directions. Reaffirming the resolve of
52:00the United Nations to cooperate fully
52:02after the war, Roosevelt, Churchill, and
52:04Stalin reach agreement on the
52:06foundations [music] of European peace.
52:09Germany shall be disarmed. German
52:11militarism and Nazism will be destroyed.
52:15Just [music] over two months after the
52:17Yaltta conference, Soviet forces reached
52:20Berlin and raised the [music] victory
52:21banner over the Richtag.
52:24Only a few hundred yards away, Adolf
52:27Hitler had committed suicide in the Fura
52:29bunker. The European theater of World
52:32War II had come to a decisive end, but
52:35the battle lines [music] of the Cold War
52:38were already being drawn.
52:44In July 1945, [music]
52:45the Potam Conference began. The leaders
52:49of the victorious Allied countries met
52:51in Germany, which [music] had
52:52unconditionally surrendered just 9 weeks
52:55earlier.
52:57It would be the last time Stalin [music]
52:59ever left the Soviet Union.
53:02Stalin and the Soviet Union emerged from
53:05the war, both weak and very powerful.
53:08weak in the sense that huge sways of the
53:11Soviet Union had been totally destroyed
53:13by the German army, but powerful in the
53:16sense that the Red Army had
53:17steamrollered into Eastern Europe and
53:19that Stalin now controlled many of the
53:22territories he'd always coveted. This
53:24placed him in a very, very powerful
53:27position. Germany itself was to be split
53:30into two separate parts. the Soviets.
53:33Stalin was going to control the east of
53:35Germany and the Western allies, Britain,
53:37France and America were to control the
53:39western sector of Germany. And they were
53:42going to do likewise for Berlin.
53:44>> Good progress at the Berlin conference.
53:47Reparations settled,
53:50boundaries adjusted, [music]
53:52peoples relocated.
53:55New problems will still arise tomorrow.
53:58But today we have an international
54:00organization to work them out so that
54:02problems
54:04do not become [music] conflicts.
54:08The big three changes but [music] the
54:10big three goes on.
54:13A president dies.
54:17Another alley takes his place. A prime
54:20minister leaves the conference to stand
54:21a free election. And by the choice of
54:24his people, a new prime minister [music]
54:26returns to his seat. But the conference
54:30goes on.
54:32The promise made at Tehran and
54:34reaffirmed in Berlin is kept on
54:36schedule.
54:45The battles of World War II still
54:47continued in the Pacific, and the Soviet
54:50Union formally declared war on Japan.
54:53But it would not be long before they
54:54surrendered following the dropping of
54:56the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and
54:59Nagasaki.
55:00The Allies were now fully victorious in
55:03World War II. But things ended very
55:05differently for the big three. Roosevelt
55:08died before the end of the war. Stalin
55:11was now stronger than ever, and
55:13Churchill feared the Soviet Union's
55:15power over Europe.
55:18Churchill came out of the Second World
55:20War a very bitter man because he felt
55:23that the only national leader who'd
55:27emerged from the struggle with exactly
55:29what he wanted was Stalin.
55:31And Stalin had got his prizes in the
55:34Pacific uh with the Sakalene Islands and
55:37u and access to Pacific ports. And of
55:41course he'd seize most of Eastern Europe
55:44and Churchill's frustration and
55:46bitterness. And so he instructed the
55:48British chiefs of staff to draw up a
55:51plan which was cenamed unthinkable
55:55for the recapture of Poland from the Red
55:58Army. by [snorts] 42 American and
56:02British divisions with the aid absurdly
56:05of the rump of the Vermach.
56:08And this document which is still in
56:09Britain's National Archive, an amazing
56:11document. I forget it runs to about 150
56:14pages, detailed description of exactly
56:16how this was to be done. But the chiefs
56:19of staff, they use the word hazardous 23
56:23times to describe it because they said
56:26if the Russians want general war, they
56:29are in a position to have it. They knew
56:32that the Red Army was incomparably
56:34stronger than the Western Allied armies.
56:37And of course, they also knew that the
56:39British and American armies that their
56:41soldiers hadn't the slightest desire to
56:43fight the Russians. They've been told
56:45the Russians were heroes for the last
56:47four years.
56:48So the whole idea was obviously absurd
56:51but the unthinkable plan which is one of
56:53the most riveting postcripts of the
56:55second world war that it was a
56:57reflection of how absolutely appalled
57:01Churchill [music] fault by the spectacle
57:04of the Soviet Union coming out of the
57:06war having seized Eastern Europe.
57:10Stalin was always determined that all
57:12the countries that he occupied with the
57:13Red Army would become somehow become
57:17Soviet um satellite states and he said
57:19you know whatever we discuss with the
57:21westerners the old rule [music] will be
57:23true you know who whoever has their army
57:25there will install their own system and
57:27that's what happened so very quickly he
57:31installed a system through all those
57:32countries you know Poland Hungary
57:34Czechoslovakia Bulgaria Romania and
57:36Yugoslavia first all became people's
57:39democracy ies later he there was a rift
57:42with Tito in in Yugoslavia but basically
57:46he remained in in control of this kind
57:48of huge part of Eastern Europe.
57:52In 1946 Churchill would voice his
57:55concerns publicly with his famous iron
57:59curtain [music] speech.
58:02From Stein in the Baltic to triestque in
58:07the Adriatic, an iron curtain has
58:10descended across the continent.
58:13Behind that line
58:15all the capitals of the ancient states
58:18of central and eastern Europe, Warsaw,
58:22Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest,
58:27Bgrade, Bucharest and Sophia.
58:31All these famous cities and the
58:34populations around them lie in what I
58:38must call the Soviet sphere. One of the
58:41key moments in the post-war period came
58:44in the spring of 1946 when Winston
58:47Churchill, no longer prime minister at
58:49this point, traveled to America and with
58:51uh President Truman, he went to Fulton,
58:54Missouri and made his famous iron
58:56curtain speech. He says from Stetin in
58:59the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic an
59:02iron curtain has descended over Europe.
59:06Now [snorts] remember at this time the
59:08Western Allies wanted to try and retain
59:10their alliance with Stalin. They were
59:12hoping that this military alliance that
59:14had worked so well during the war could
59:16be continued into this post-war period.
59:19But Churchill realizes that everything
59:21has changed, that Stalin is no longer a
59:24reliable ally. And so he makes this
59:26speech. It's an explosive speech. It
59:29sends shock waves around the world
59:31because Truman, Atley, and England,
59:33they're trying to maintain this
59:34alliance. And Churchill has effectively
59:37lobbed a stick of dynamite into this.
59:39Well, Churchill's speech acknowledged
59:41what was already happening that
59:43communist governments were taking over
59:45in in one country after another. There
59:48was a lot of suspicion between the East
59:49and the West. So, the Cold War didn't
59:52begin all at once. It was a series of
59:55maneuvers and then responses. A big
59:58factor in the in the hardening of the
59:59cold war was the Marshall Plan
1:00:01inaugurated by the United States which
1:00:05pledged millions and millions of dollars
1:00:07to rebuild Europe. Uh they offered
1:00:09Marshall Plan aid to the East European
1:00:11countries as a way to entice them to
1:00:14come over to the side of of of the West,
1:00:17but also knowing that that Stalin
1:00:19wouldn't let them accept that. So it was
1:00:23Stalin saw the Marshall Plan as a direct
1:00:25attack on the autonomy of of the Soviet
1:00:28Union and that led to further
1:00:30repercussions. The formation of the
1:00:31North Atlantic Treaty Organization in
1:00:33response then the Warsaw packed alliance
1:00:36in response to that. So there was a
1:00:37gradual closing down of of [music]
1:00:40contacts between East and West and an in
1:00:43gradual increase in fear and suspicion.
1:00:47The Soviet Union would launch the
1:00:48Molotov plan [music] as a response to
1:00:51the Marshall Plan and propaganda films
1:00:53were dispersed in retaliation to the
1:00:56actions of the United States.
1:01:00In Washington, the Marshall Plan is
1:01:02announced. An aid program for the world.
1:01:05No, for America's capitalists.
1:01:09Truman's new budget. 2.5 billion for
1:01:12social welfare. 21 billion for
1:01:15armaments,
1:01:18economic and political enslavement of
1:01:20foreign countries, hunger and
1:01:22unemployment in their own country.
1:01:24That's the real Marshall plant, the
1:01:26stock exchange, the headquarters of the
1:01:29true masters of America. Here sit the
1:01:31Americans who run the opinion factories.
1:01:38Well, the next thing is to decide
1:01:40whether to make war on the allies and
1:01:43they have the atom bomb and he has not.
1:01:47And so the most important thing is to
1:01:50get an atom bomb. Brier supervised the
1:01:52atom project brilliantly, absolutely
1:01:54brilliantly. It's one of the most
1:01:56extraordinary things. He found all the
1:01:59materials in Germany, the bismouth, the
1:02:01uranium that he needed, got it all
1:02:03shipped. He built special cities uh to
1:02:05build it in. And he gave the scientists
1:02:07luxurious villas and there was a little
1:02:09book in which the rewards were listed if
1:02:13the atom bomb worked what they would get
1:02:16a nice car a house country cottage and
1:02:19so on and the punishment they would get
1:02:21if it didn't work shooting. So there was
1:02:23a great reason to get that atomic bomb
1:02:25working and it did. And once he had the
1:02:28atomic bomb
1:02:30then the question was what to do next.
1:02:33And perhaps fortunately for us, the
1:02:35Chinese revolution happened. And for
1:02:37Stalin, it was more important to help
1:02:39that and start the Korean War than to
1:02:43attack the West again. But um certainly
1:02:46in his mind was why stop at Berlin? Why
1:02:49not go to the Atlantic?
1:02:52The battle lines of the cold war that
1:02:54was developing across the globe took
1:02:56another dramatic turn when the
1:02:58communists under Maetung were finally
1:03:01victorious in the Chinese civil war. Now
1:03:05two of the world's great former empires
1:03:07were under communist rule and the first
1:03:10true proxy battle of the Cold War would
1:03:13take place in Korea.
1:03:18There is no margin for error when the
1:03:20chips are down. When the bullets and
1:03:22projectiles that fly overhead are real.
1:03:25A situation soon to come in the summer
1:03:26of 1950.
1:03:33Thousands of miles away on the other
1:03:35side of the Pacific. Trouble was being
1:03:36fermented. North Koreans plotted by the
1:03:39communists were massing strength [music]
1:03:41for a war against the democratic
1:03:43government of Korea. a war which
1:03:45threatened the peace of all nations.
1:03:48>> 1953 would prove a pivotal year. The
1:03:52Korean War [music] would end in a
1:03:54stalemate and Joseph Stalin's rule over
1:03:56the Soviet Union came to a dramatic
1:03:59[music] close.
1:04:03On the 5th of March 1953, the Soviet
1:04:06Union announced that its leader, Joseph
1:04:09Stalin, had died.
1:04:13Stalin is dead.
1:04:17The Kremlin's cold stone walls, the
1:04:19eerie face of Moscow, a howling wind and
1:04:22snow adding to the somber [music]
1:04:23picture is the description accompanying
1:04:25the announcement that the most powerful
1:04:27dictator in history [music] has come to
1:04:29the inevitable end. The scramble for
1:04:32power is the next chapter. There were no
1:04:34immediate indications of who would
1:04:35[music] succeed Stalin. Molotov or
1:04:38Malinkov. Their names fitted into the
1:04:40pattern of the struggle for Stalin's
1:04:42mantle as did the name of Beria. As this
1:04:44news reel went to print, the word had
1:04:46not yet come from Moscow.
1:04:49But Stalin's life was history. Intrigue,
1:04:52ruthless ambition, absolute power.
1:04:55Rather like with Lenin, there was no
1:04:56kind of obvious successor to Stalin. And
1:04:58Stalin, like Lenin, believed he was
1:05:01indispensable and no one could succeed
1:05:03him. And that was to a certain extent
1:05:05true because just as just as there was
1:05:07never another Lenin, there was never
1:05:08another Stalin. But what he left behind
1:05:11were a bunch of terrified apparatics who
1:05:14were used to being under Stalin's thumb.
1:05:17The leading successor, it seemed, was
1:05:19going to be Malenov, who was a rather
1:05:21fat, [music] young, and ruthless
1:05:24apparatic who who'd served Stalin and
1:05:27done some a lot of dirty work. Kushchoff
1:05:29was much more dynamic and no one thought
1:05:31he would succeed Stalin least of all
1:05:33Stalin because he was coarse, [music]
1:05:35semi-iterate, um, a ruffian and badly
1:05:38educated and therefore could never be an
1:05:41ideologist. But it didn't matter because
1:05:45he seized power and he destroyed the the
1:05:48really the most powerful person in the
1:05:49government after Stalin's death who was
1:05:51Levanti Barrier longerving secret police
1:05:54chief and overseer of the nuclear
1:05:57project to get a nuclear bomb which he'd
1:05:59successfully done. So he arrested him,
1:06:03had him shot, had all his people shot
1:06:06and [music] really ended the period of
1:06:08kind of brazen terror in the leadership.
1:06:11So there was a competition. Rushoff was
1:06:14one of these people who appeared to be a
1:06:16clown. One of the things reasons that
1:06:19Stalin liked him, he he posed no threat.
1:06:21He did as he was told. He was a fellow
1:06:24student of Stalin's wife. He said all
1:06:26the right things. He did all the right
1:06:27things in the war. He was quite
1:06:29effective. He only put one foot wrong.
1:06:32his son was going to be executed for
1:06:34shooting another officer but managed to
1:06:38fly a plane into Germany in time and was
1:06:40captured uh and got back into Russia by
1:06:44by escaping and Krushov went on his
1:06:47knees to Stalin and said spare my son
1:06:49and Stalin refused. I don't think Krus
1:06:52ever forgave Stalin for the shooting of
1:06:55his son and that may be one of the
1:06:57motives for his anti-Stalin speech. It
1:07:00may be personal, but anyway, that 20th
1:07:03party congress, which shook the entire
1:07:05communist world when they admitted that
1:07:07Stalin was a criminal and they
1:07:09themselves had all danced to his tune,
1:07:12that was a very brave thing to do. But
1:07:15it did actually establish Hushov in
1:07:17power because it meant he could get rid
1:07:19of his enemies. He didn't shoot them.
1:07:22Molita was made ambassador to outer
1:07:24Mongolia. Malinkov I think was put in
1:07:27charge of a electric power station in
1:07:29Siberia.
1:07:31Not very nice punishments but better
1:07:32than death I suppose.
1:07:36Nikita Kushchoff's shocking 1956 speech
1:07:39[music] in which he denounced the cult
1:07:40of personality that had formed around
1:07:42Stalin would be a major contributor to
1:07:45the Sino Soviet split.
1:07:48But although relations with the other
1:07:50great communist world power were now
1:07:52soured, Kushchoff would also soon earn
1:07:55major political victories for the Soviet
1:07:58Union.
1:08:01And on October 4th, 1957, a world
1:08:04stirring event took place.
1:08:26A man-made celestial body for the first
1:08:28time in history overcame terrestrial
1:08:31gravity and flew into space.
1:08:35During the early to mid50s, the
1:08:37Americans had been developing their
1:08:38space program and they were they
1:08:41announced that they were soon to launch
1:08:43a satellite into space. This was a huge
1:08:45moment and a huge triumph. But what did
1:08:48the Soviets do? They had been developing
1:08:50their own satellite as well and they got
1:08:52got there first. This was Kruef's great
1:08:55triumph was to launch Sputnik before the
1:08:58Americans. It was a public relations
1:09:00coup.
1:09:02>> The space race was one example of a
1:09:04great Soviet success story. The economy
1:09:07was improving after the war, but it
1:09:09wasn't running on all cylinders at this
1:09:12time. But but the space race began as a
1:09:16quai arms race. uh knowing that the
1:09:18Americans were trying to build rockets,
1:09:21uh the Soviet Union mobilized all of its
1:09:23resources into launching a satellite and
1:09:26then to launching a man into space uh so
1:09:29that they could be the first. So when
1:09:30they're able to mobilize all resources
1:09:32toward this one goal and they had
1:09:34brilliant scientists, they also had
1:09:37scientists who had been Germans who had
1:09:39been gone over to the Soviet Union.
1:09:40[music]
1:09:41They had tremendous brain power and and
1:09:43tremendous technological capability. uh
1:09:45and with all the resources at their
1:09:47disposal, they were able to be the first
1:09:50into space.
1:09:53>> The launch of the Sputnik [music]
1:09:55satellite generated frenzied attention
1:09:57around the world, but at the same time,
1:10:00an arms race was in full effect and acts
1:10:02of espionage were at extraordinary
1:10:04[music] levels on both sides. A crisis
1:10:07point was reached when pilot Francis
1:10:09Gary Powers took off from Peshawar in
1:10:12Pakistan in 1960 and his U2 spy plane
1:10:16was brought down by Soviet air defenses.
1:10:22Secret reconnaissance of Russia by
1:10:24high-flying American new jets ended when
1:10:26[music] one was downed deep in Soviet
1:10:28territory. Its pilot, Francis Powers,
1:10:31was made the subject of a showcase
1:10:33trial.
1:10:34P's family was in the courtroom as
1:10:36Russia began massive exploitation of
1:10:38this propaganda windfall. P's conviction
1:10:41was inevitable and the U2 affair became
1:10:44Kushchoff's pretext to torpedo the Paris
1:10:47summit conference. So in September of
1:10:501959, Kristoff had met Eisenhower at
1:10:54Camp David in America, and the two men
1:10:56had agreed to meet again in Paris in the
1:10:58following spring. And this was duly to
1:11:01go ahead. But something intervenes in
1:11:04the meantime, something that causes a
1:11:06crisis in relations between the Soviet
1:11:08Union and the United States. And this is
1:11:11the shooting down of a U2 spy plane
1:11:14piloted by Gary Powers. Kushchov gave a
1:11:17personal order to his air defenses to
1:11:20shoot down an American U2 spy plane over
1:11:24Soviet airspace.
1:11:27For three or four years, American planes
1:11:30have been intruding over Russian
1:11:31airspace freely,
1:11:34very high altitude, and the Russians had
1:11:36no fighters or missiles that could reach
1:11:39them. By 1960, they did.
1:11:42And he thought, and who can blame him,
1:11:45that for the Americans to spend a supply
1:11:48plane flying over their airspace on May
1:11:51the 1st, Mayday, the most sacred day in
1:11:53the in the Soviet uh Bolevik calendar,
1:11:57uh to fly over his airspace was a
1:12:00deliberate insult. And so gave the order
1:12:02to shoot it down. Chrischaw played his
1:12:04cards very skillfully and ruthlessly
1:12:07that initially he announced the shooting
1:12:10down the plane, but he did not admit
1:12:12that he captured its pilot, Major Gary
1:12:15P. And so the Americans got themselves
1:12:18deeper and deeper into a tissue of lies
1:12:22about this being a weather plane and so
1:12:24on so forth. And only two days later did
1:12:26Kushchov reveal that they had Major Gary
1:12:29P and announced triumphantly to the
1:12:32world and our cameras are better than
1:12:33the American cameras that we found on
1:12:35the U2. So the humiliation was terrific.
1:12:39This throws relations between the two
1:12:41countries into absolute crisis. Kush
1:12:45storms off back to Moscow. He won't have
1:12:47anything more to do with these talks and
1:12:50he cancels the intended visit of
1:12:52Eisenhower to Moscow. Eisenhower is very
1:12:54disappointed. He was really looking
1:12:56forward to going, but this is canled and
1:12:58relations between the two countries
1:13:00descend once more into crisis.
1:13:03The U2 incident was eventually resolved
1:13:06by an exchange of Gary Powers for a
1:13:08Soviet spy named Rudolph Ael, who'd been
1:13:11captured in the United States. The
1:13:13technological war would continue though
1:13:16and the Soviets struck another victory
1:13:18when they launched the first man into
1:13:20space in 1961, Yuri Gagarin.
1:13:25The space race became incredibly public
1:13:28competition between the two superpowers
1:13:30as to who could could display their
1:13:33technology, their sophistication, their
1:13:35ambition in a new realm, space. [music]
1:13:38And that was really what the space race
1:13:40was about and why both both countries
1:13:42put massive amounts into sending people
1:13:45into space and competing in that way.
1:13:47And of course, you know, the Soviet
1:13:48propaganda machine made all the
1:13:50cosmonauts into massive [music] heroes
1:13:52just as the western the American
1:13:54propaganda machine made their astronauts
1:13:57into huge heroes. [music] And I
1:13:59certainly think for a while the public
1:14:01was pretty fascinated probably in both
1:14:03both [music] worlds.
1:14:08Gaggarian was an ace pilot and he was
1:14:11very well trained and he was
1:14:12extraordinary fearless man and he became
1:14:15like a film star idol an international
1:14:18thing. So the gagarian squares not only
1:14:20in Russia but you find them all over
1:14:22Africa it had an enormous effect on on
1:14:24the American psyche of course again a
1:14:27triumph for the Soviet Union. It just
1:14:30demonstrates their capabilities, what
1:14:32they've achieved in this space program.
1:14:34And it's a humiliation for the Americans
1:14:37who publicly congratulate the Soviets,
1:14:41but in private they're seething. What do
1:14:43they do? One of the first things they do
1:14:45is they form NASA. They are determined
1:14:48to regain the upper hand in the space
1:14:50race. The achievement by the USSR of
1:14:53orbiting a man and returning him safely
1:14:56to ground is an outstanding technical
1:14:59accomplishment.
1:15:01We congratulate the Soviet scientists
1:15:05and engineers who made this feat
1:15:06possible.
1:15:08The exploration of our solar system is
1:15:11an ambition which we and all mankind
1:15:15share with the Soviet Union and this is
1:15:18an important step toward that goal. Our
1:15:21own Mercury man in space program is
1:15:25directed toward that same end.
1:15:27>> The end of the 1950s and the beginning
1:15:30of the new decade seemed at first to be
1:15:32an era of unbridled success for the
1:15:35Soviet Union [music] with their dramatic
1:15:37lead in the space race. But huge crises
1:15:40in both Europe and North America were
1:15:42just over the horizon.
1:15:46The early 1960s would prove [music] to
1:15:48be the height of Cold War tensions both
1:15:50in Europe and in the US. A communist
1:15:54revolution had taken [music] place just
1:15:56off America's borders in Cuba and the
1:15:58Bay of Pigs invasion intended to
1:16:01overthrow this new government of Fidel
1:16:03Castro had failed.
1:16:06And in Berlin, where the Allies had
1:16:08converged after their victory in World
1:16:09War II, the Iron Curtain was becoming a
1:16:13literal wall.
1:16:17Kushv exercised absolute control over
1:16:21the eastern block but at the same time
1:16:23he was very susceptible to pressure and
1:16:26one must remember that in the late 1950s
1:16:28and early 1960s first of all China was
1:16:32aant rival for the leadership of the
1:16:37socialist world and more and more
1:16:39especially in the early 1960s the
1:16:41Chinese of mitong were publiced
1:16:44denouncing Kristoff as betraying
1:16:47socialism. So he had that pressure and
1:16:50he also had pressure from example the
1:16:52East German leadership who were
1:16:54constantly urging him to take a much
1:16:56tougher line with the West. One of the
1:16:58key troubles in East Germany in the late
1:17:0050s and the very early 60s was the flood
1:17:04of East Germans who were crossing the
1:17:06border into West Germany. And this had
1:17:08as its nexus was taking place in Berlin
1:17:11where it was relatively easy for East
1:17:13Germans who wanted to move on, who
1:17:15wanted to get on in life to cross the
1:17:17frontier. Kushchoff saw this as a very
1:17:20real problem. You know, several million
1:17:22Germans had poured over into West
1:17:24Germany leaving the East German state.
1:17:26And so what did he do? He sanctioned
1:17:29Walter Ulrich, the leader of East
1:17:31Germany, to build the Berlin Wall. This
1:17:34effectively put a stop to the massive
1:17:37immigration taking place from East
1:17:38Germany into the West. But it also was a
1:17:41PR disaster. It did not look good to
1:17:45have to build a wall to keep your own
1:17:47people in. [bell] The East Germans don't
1:17:50seem to have guards enough to plug every
1:17:51hole. When a soldier's attention is
1:17:53diverted by others, a hole is cut in the
1:17:56barbed wire and Krushchev's face is
1:17:58slapped again.
1:18:15Not long after the Berlin Wall was
1:18:17constructed, another flash point in the
1:18:20Cold War emerged when it was revealed to
1:18:22the world that the Soviet Union had
1:18:24placed nuclear weapons on the territory
1:18:27of newly communist Cuba. The world
1:18:30watched with baited breath as the two
1:18:32superpowers faced off.
1:18:36The Cuban Missile Crisis is is a hugely
1:18:38complicated episode and and historians
1:18:40are still uncovering archives and and
1:18:43and trying to understand what exactly
1:18:45happened. I think Castro played an
1:18:48important role in this or at least Kush
1:18:50blames Castro for goating him into uh
1:18:53sending missiles to protect Cuba against
1:18:56uh another United States invasion. Uh
1:18:59the Soviet Union miscalculated the the
1:19:01United States response to the presence
1:19:03of these missiles. They didn't realize
1:19:05[music] that they had been found out. So
1:19:07there was a real danger during these two
1:19:09weeks in October that the world would go
1:19:12up in a nuclear war because of of of
1:19:14this tension. The greatest crisis
1:19:17between the Soviet Union and the United
1:19:19States and indeed I think one of the
1:19:21great crises of the entire cold war.
1:19:23This was sparked by America placing
1:19:26missiles, its own missiles on Italian
1:19:29and Turkish soil. In retaliation,
1:19:31Kristoff wanted to replace Soviet
1:19:34missiles on Cuban territory very close
1:19:37to the United States. Thus began a
1:19:39standoff. Kennedy said that this was
1:19:41totally unacceptable to have these
1:19:44missiles so close to the United States.
1:19:45Kush said it was totally unacceptable
1:19:47for the Americans to have missiles on
1:19:50Italian and Turkish territory. The world
1:19:52at this point is in deep crisis. We are
1:19:55very very close to a nuclear war being
1:19:58declared and it is only through wiser
1:20:01council wiser heads prevail a deal is
1:20:03done between the two powers that enables
1:20:06them to back down.
1:20:07>> Krischov you know launched the Cuban
1:20:09missile crisis as a way to break the
1:20:11impass that [music] he felt the sort of
1:20:13stagnation that he felt was was taking
1:20:15place in the rivalry between the two
1:20:17superpowers. He thought that if he he
1:20:20needed to do something to to up the ante
1:20:23and he he he'd convinced himself that,
1:20:25you know, taking a risk, a gamble would
1:20:29would turn the whole course of the Cold
1:20:31War. And he'd seen a hint of it when in
1:20:351956 during the Asus crisis, he'd
1:20:39threatened that if Britain, France, and
1:20:41Israel didn't withdraw from Egypt, he
1:20:43would use nuclear weapons. And it's a
1:20:46moment that's often forgotten. and
1:20:48America had forced [music] them to
1:20:50withdraw. So he saw that as evidence
1:20:54that nuclear brinksmanship [music]
1:20:55really worked. And so what better way to
1:20:58break the impass and to overcome
1:21:01American [music] power and wealth than
1:21:03to place weapons right in America's
1:21:06backyard and to defend a new fraternal
1:21:08revolution in Cuba. And so that's why he
1:21:10did it. He was also a member of, you
1:21:13know, one of the World War II generation
1:21:15like all the Soviet [music] leaders. And
1:21:16they were actually very, very afraid of
1:21:18war. They'd seen what war did, even
1:21:20conventional war. And so, you know, he
1:21:24thought he'd win that point.
1:21:26>> Call on the chairman of the council
1:21:28minister of the Soviet Union on a point
1:21:30of order.
1:21:42Why then this jerk, this uh
1:21:46stoogge of American imperialism here
1:21:50who is speaking before you, he
1:21:54is touching upon questions which are
1:21:57obviously not procedural ones and the
1:22:00president who is sympathizing with these
1:22:04colonialists and colonial domination
1:22:06obviously is not stopping him. He had a
1:22:09quality of an act. I'm taking off your
1:22:10shoe and banging it. The United Nations
1:22:13does get attention. And uh in the Cuba
1:22:17Cuban missile crisis, I think he won. Uh
1:22:20it was very cunning, very risky, but we
1:22:23were more frightened than they were. Uh
1:22:26I remember as a student at the time and
1:22:28I seriously thought in Cambridge, this
1:22:30might be my last day on Earth with the
1:22:32missile crisis and Kennedy holding out.
1:22:35But in fact uh uh Krushab had a
1:22:37bargaining chip and he was willing to
1:22:40take those armed rockets away if America
1:22:43withdrew its rockets from Turkey that
1:22:46wasn't made public at at the time but uh
1:22:49it's clear there was a bargain and the
1:22:51Soviet Union won it. They they had no
1:22:54atomic weapons near their borders as a
1:22:56result. That was one of Krushchev's
1:22:58great achievements. It was very risky
1:23:00but I don't think anyone in Russia held
1:23:02it against him. And despite all these
1:23:05expensive intelligence services in the
1:23:07west, nobody fully understood that when
1:23:10Kushchev threatened to bury us all, when
1:23:13Kushchev was telling Western ambassadors
1:23:15that he earmarked 20 nuclear weapons for
1:23:18Britain and he was confident that would
1:23:20be enough, that all of this it was
1:23:24boasting of an almost deranged kind. And
1:23:29Kristoff thought he was playing a
1:23:30brilliant hand. And Kristoff thought
1:23:32rightly that he was frightening the
1:23:34West. But what he failed to see was that
1:23:38he very very nearly overdid it because
1:23:41he frightened the West too much.
1:23:45[music]
1:23:48>> The retreat to Moscow. Russian ships
1:23:50steam out from Cuban ports. With their
1:23:52decks loaded with missiles, the Soviets
1:23:54are withdrawing under pressure from the
1:23:55new world. It's one of the last chapters
1:23:58in the offensive threat from Cuba that
1:24:00led the United States to throw a
1:24:01quarantine around that island and forced
1:24:03the Russians to dismantle their
1:24:05medium-range rocket installations. US
1:24:07[music] planes and pick ships have
1:24:08counted 42 rockets on Russianbound
1:24:10ships. But [music] still unresolved is
1:24:13the question of the jet bombers in Cuba.
1:24:15Castro claims they belong to him and
1:24:17that he will not give them up. The US
1:24:20insists the Russians must remove them
1:24:22before [music] the quarantine will be
1:24:23lifted.
1:24:25The headlines in the Soviet newspapers
1:24:27said the Soviet Union has saved the
1:24:29world uh by the deal that it made with
1:24:31the United States. So they took all the
1:24:32credit for easing this tension. Uh and
1:24:35that's what the Soviet readers saw that
1:24:37this was a victory uh for Soviet
1:24:40diplomacy.
1:24:41>> The following is the text of President
1:24:44Kennedy's statement of noon.
1:24:47I welcome Chairman Khrush's
1:24:50statesmanlike decision to stop building
1:24:54bases in Cuba,
1:24:56dismantling offensive weapons,
1:24:59returning them to the Soviet Union under
1:25:02UN verification.
1:25:04This is an important and constructive
1:25:08contribution to peace.
1:25:11>> Both the US President John F. Kennedy
1:25:13and the first secretary of the Soviet
1:25:15[music] Union, Nikita Kushchoff, would
1:25:17not have much longer in office after the
1:25:20deescalation of tensions from the Cuban
1:25:22missile crisis. JFK was infamously
1:25:25assassinated [music] in November 1963
1:25:29and Kushchoff would be maneuvered from
1:25:31power the following year. It was soon to
1:25:34be the era of Leonard Brev in the Soviet
1:25:37Union.
1:25:46>> [music]
1:26:02[music]
1:26:02>> In October 1964,
1:26:05Nikita Kushchoff was about to be removed
1:26:08from power.
1:26:12Whilst on vacation in Pritsunda on the
1:26:14Black Sea, he grew suspicious of
1:26:17activities [music] developing in Moscow
1:26:19and he immediately flew back to the
1:26:22capital city. Upon arrival, he was
1:26:24forced to step down as leader of the
1:26:27Soviet Union.
1:26:34The official Russian announcement said
1:26:36he resigned. [music] The Reds say ill
1:26:37health prompted Kruchev to step down.
1:26:40Observers say that his abortive feud
1:26:42with red China that broke apart the
1:26:44front of monolithic communism was the
1:26:46real reason. A man who clawed and fought
1:26:48his way to the top wooled leaders like
1:26:50Nasser of the neutralist nations.
1:26:52Krischoff probably made his greatest
1:26:54[music] impact on a strangely fascinated
1:26:56world when he came to the United Nations
1:26:59assembly in 1960 and attempted to purge
1:27:01Secretary General Doug Hamasho. He piled
1:27:04shock upon shock when he and the Soviet
1:27:07delegation rudely interrupted speeches
1:27:09by Western delegates.
1:27:15>> The Soviet leadership overthrew Kushov.
1:27:18They called him in and they denounced
1:27:20him and they sacked him from all his
1:27:21positions. And the reason they did it
1:27:24was because of really because of his
1:27:26kind of arrogance, his desperatism, his
1:27:29completely illthoughtout adventure.
1:27:33What sealed Krushchaw's fate was his
1:27:36interference with agriculture and his
1:27:38hairbrain scheme to imitate the
1:27:40Americans by growing lots of maze and in
1:27:44order to do that wrecking existing
1:27:46crops. So there was serious food
1:27:48shortages in the shops and serious
1:27:50discontent that was more important to
1:27:53the party than anything else. There had
1:27:55already been a number of riots by
1:27:57workers who were dissatisfied and that
1:28:00was the decision to get rid of him.
1:28:02forces began to conspire against him.
1:28:05And leading those forces was Leonid
1:28:08Brev, who sees that maybe now is the
1:28:11moment to act, that maybe this is the
1:28:13moment where he can get his hands on the
1:28:16levers of power.
1:28:17>> The crowds that once cheered Kruchev
1:28:19wildly were left in the dark as to just
1:28:21what went on when the central committee
1:28:23met to act on his retirement and to name
1:28:26Leonid Brev as the new leader of the
1:28:28party for an Alexi Kosigan took the job
1:28:31of premier. Reneef has lately been
1:28:33considered Kushchoff's heir apparent,
1:28:35but the question remains as to whether
1:28:37he had anything to do with hurrying his
1:28:39boss's departure.
1:28:41>> Kushchoff is on holiday. He's summoned
1:28:43back to Moscow and the Pulit bureau led
1:28:46by Brev denounce Kushchoff. They
1:28:49criticize him for everything he's done
1:28:51and they say they want him to step down
1:28:53from power. This will not be a coup
1:28:55quite as brutally as Stalin might have
1:28:58done it. He's allowed to resign, but it
1:29:00is the end of Kristoff's reign of power.
1:29:03Now, Leonid Brev is the man at the helm.
1:29:06[clears throat]
1:29:08You know, they voted him out. They
1:29:09didn't execute him. They didn't [music]
1:29:11imprison him. They just retired him. In
1:29:14the meeting, he said, you know, whatever
1:29:16else happens, my one achievement has
1:29:17been that [music] no one's going to be
1:29:18shot now. I'm just going to retire. And
1:29:21so, it happened. And Brev became the
1:29:23next leader. Pres was a a pair of safe
1:29:26hands, a man with a good military
1:29:28record. He just wanted to keep the
1:29:30apparatus going as it had in the past to
1:29:32appoint suitable first secretaries and
1:29:35uh heads of Soviets and so on and who
1:29:39allowed a fair amount of corruption. His
1:29:41own family was horrifically corrupt. His
1:29:44daughter Galina was a a nightmare. But
1:29:47um that corruption was a sort of
1:29:49lubrication for the party and under
1:29:52under BRNF everything had a had a price.
1:29:55>> Brnf is known among western diplomats as
1:29:58the red and the gray flannel suit. A man
1:30:00who is expected to continue peaceful
1:30:02coexistence with the west while trying
1:30:04to heal the breach with China.
1:30:12It had been indicated that Brushf would
1:30:14be Krushchev's successor on his death,
1:30:16but no spectre of death or disgrace
1:30:18marred the scene of Kruev's 70th [music]
1:30:20birthday party last spring. He seemed to
1:30:23have the world, the communist sphere at
1:30:25his feet, and his power over 220 million
1:30:28Soviet citizens seemed impregnable. Now,
1:30:30for better or worse, the Krushchev era
1:30:33has come to a close.
1:30:37Well, Brnef was a generation younger
1:30:39than than Kushchev. Uh, and he had been
1:30:42a real beneficiary of of Soviet higher
1:30:46education of of Soviet social mobility.
1:30:48So, born in a working-class family, he
1:30:51got a degree in in engineering and and
1:30:53became a practicing engineer in the
1:30:561930s, joined joined the Communist
1:30:57Party, served in the military as as a
1:31:00party official. So he had some practical
1:31:02knowledge of the economy and he wasn't
1:31:05ideological the way the early Boleviks
1:31:07had been. Uh the party was was the
1:31:10Soviet Union was the only thing that he
1:31:11knew. So he had worked his way up into
1:31:14the party. Uh you can see his face in
1:31:16the great kitchen debate uh between
1:31:18Khrushchev and Nixon. Brev is standing
1:31:20there just behind Krushche. So he was a
1:31:22a trusty aid at the time and so was one
1:31:25of the the leaders [music] at the time
1:31:27of Krushchev's dismissal along with
1:31:30Alexe Kosigan. The two of them came to
1:31:32power together. BRV soon eclipsed
1:31:34Kosigan, but initially it was a dual
1:31:36leadership
1:31:38>> and he was a bluff, good-natured,
1:31:41pleasure-loving, quite capable,
1:31:44apparachic who'd been chosen by Stalin
1:31:46and promoted who'd played a part in the
1:31:49arrest of Burrier and served Kushchev
1:31:51quite loyally until the end. But it
1:31:54gradually became a stagnant period for
1:31:56the Soviet Union. No reforms were really
1:31:59succeeded and the Soviet Union needed
1:32:01reform. Unlike Kristoff who'd uh
1:32:04attempted to decentralize the economy to
1:32:07give more power to the regions, Brev
1:32:10wanted to do exactly the opposite. He
1:32:12was much more in the mold of Stalin. He
1:32:14wanted to bring everything back to the
1:32:16center to bring power back to Moscow and
1:32:18to bring power back to himself. One can
1:32:21see at this point the Soviet Union is
1:32:23reverting much more to the model that
1:32:25had been created by Joseph Stalin. The
1:32:28reign of Brev is seemed to be one
1:32:30historian has called it uh that he made
1:32:32a little deal uh with the Soviet people
1:32:35that he promised them economic
1:32:36prosperity which included because the
1:32:39the the communist economy was so
1:32:41inefficient. It included increasing
1:32:43tolerance for a shadow economy for some
1:32:46black marketing, some private
1:32:48enterprise. The government turned a
1:32:50blind eye to that in exchange for
1:32:51political loyalty. And most of the
1:32:54people made this bargain and and agreed
1:32:56not to be in opposition to the
1:32:58government.
1:32:59>> What BRV wanted to achieve was a par in
1:33:03terms of weapons between the Soviet
1:33:05Union and America. And he begins
1:33:07injecting vast sums of money into
1:33:10military expenditure. At one point some
1:33:1312% of GDP is being spent on the missile
1:33:16program inside the Soviet Union.
1:33:18Remarkably he does achieve a parity. By
1:33:21the 70s, the Soviet Union has an
1:33:24equivalent number of warheads to the
1:33:26United States.
1:33:28>> The world thinks that it's business as
1:33:30usual and it's just a change of leader.
1:33:32In the eyes of the world, the Cold War
1:33:34continued unchanged. But what we could
1:33:38not see then, but we can see now is that
1:33:41all this time, the enormous strain upon
1:33:45the Soviet economy of maintaining this
1:33:48empire and the stupendous armed forces
1:33:51at colossal cost that all the time the
1:33:54Soviet Union is creaking and cracking
1:33:58under these enormous strains.
1:34:06Since 1954,
1:34:08every American president has offered
1:34:11support to the people of South Vietnam.
1:34:15We have helped to build and we have
1:34:17helped to defend.
1:34:21Thus, over many years, we have made a
1:34:25national pledge to help South Vietnam
1:34:30defend its independence,
1:34:33and I intend to keep that promise.
1:34:38>> In 1965,
1:34:40President Lyndon Baines Johnson followed
1:34:42up on his promise and ordered US troops
1:34:45to intervene directly in Vietnam.
1:34:49One of the great proxy battles of the
1:34:51Cold War had begun.
1:35:00The Vietnam War affected the Soviet
1:35:02Union more in [music] in the sense of
1:35:04the Soviet Union's relations with China
1:35:07than just with the United States. So
1:35:09that the Vietnam War was kind of a
1:35:10triangular communist uh enterprise
1:35:13between China, the North Vietnamese uh
1:35:16and the Soviet Union. [music] The Soviet
1:35:18Union really didn't want the North
1:35:20Vietnamese to invade the South because
1:35:23that was going to destabilize the
1:35:24region, but they felt it was the Chinese
1:35:27who were urging them on. So, initially
1:35:29the Soviet Union was not vocally opposed
1:35:32to the invasion of Vietnam and and and
1:35:34the war in Vietnam, but once it
1:35:36happened, they were certainly willing to
1:35:38use the propaganda points of an
1:35:40imperialist war being waged by the
1:35:42United States in Vietnam
1:35:45>> with the Vietnam War. Um, all he had to
1:35:48do was supply missiles and laugh as the
1:35:51Americans lost it because he knew
1:35:54perfectly well that there was no way in
1:35:55which you could win a war when you're
1:35:57supporting a corrupt regime in the south
1:36:00and you had a dedicated regime in the
1:36:02north which had armaments from Soviet
1:36:05Union armaments from China and didn't
1:36:08care how many people it lost.
1:36:11Vietnam was a strange phenomenon because
1:36:14you know America poured in forces in
1:36:15there and was never actually defeated
1:36:18but it lost the will to win which is
1:36:20always decisive in a war. Partly it was
1:36:23a Vietnamese nationalistic uprising
1:36:26against foreign control that had started
1:36:27against the French and it continued
1:36:29against the Americans [music] and their
1:36:31regime in the south. Partly it was a
1:36:34proxy war between the superpowers.
1:36:36American troops were there. Russian
1:36:38advisers armed the Vietnamese in massive
1:36:41quantities, but the Vietnamese were
1:36:43thought by the Americans to be
1:36:45completely under Soviet control. But in
1:36:47fact, they did. They fought the war they
1:36:48wanted to fight and were quite
1:36:50reculcrant in in taking orders from the
1:36:53Kremlin. But you know, it was it was
1:36:56America's first great humiliation.
1:37:06But just as America was becoming
1:37:08embroiled in Vietnam, the Soviet Union
1:37:10was facing [music] its own battle in
1:37:12Europe. In the 1950s, uprisings had been
1:37:16crushed in Poland and [music] Hungary.
1:37:18But a new crisis was emerging in
1:37:20Czechoslovakia under the rule of
1:37:22Alexander Dubek. The Prague Spring had
1:37:26begun.
1:37:30The Prague Spring was an attempt in
1:37:32Czechoslovakia by Czechoslovak
1:37:35communist leaders to find a different
1:37:37path towards communism. They called it
1:37:40socialism with a human face. Uh and in
1:37:43fact all the East European countries
1:37:44were somewhat different from one another
1:37:46and not all following in lock step to
1:37:48the party line. Uh so certain deviations
1:37:52were allowed but Brev felt that there
1:37:56was a danger to socialism itself by
1:37:58these reforms in Czechoslovakia.
1:38:00Uh and so he invoked what became known
1:38:02as the Brev Doctrine that any threat to
1:38:05socialist power in one socialist country
1:38:07should be combed by all of them. Another
1:38:10version of the Brev Doctrine is what we
1:38:13have we hold. And so rather than let the
1:38:16reformed communists succeed in
1:38:18Czechoslovakia, he created the pretense
1:38:21to send Warsaw pack troops into the
1:38:23country to put down this reform.
1:38:27Russia's purpose in continuing to keep
1:38:30such large, powerful, and mobile forces
1:38:32in Czechoslovakia has been in effect to
1:38:35put a pistol to Mr. Dubek's head. There
1:38:38is plenty of evidence that for his own
1:38:40part, Mr. Dubek intends to go on
1:38:42resisting the pressures and is prepared,
1:38:45if necessary, to get his head shot off.
1:38:48But there is now a question mark over
1:38:49the continuing loyalty of enough members
1:38:52of Czechoslovakia's Communist Party's
1:38:54presidium to give Mr. Dubek the support
1:38:57he needs to say no to the Russians or
1:38:59the demands they will make when the
1:39:01talks begin.
1:39:02>> The Prague Spring, this uprising in
1:39:04Prague against Soviet rule, is a real
1:39:07challenge for Breaf. How on earth is he
1:39:10going to deal with this? His initial
1:39:12response is to try and do a deal with
1:39:14Alexander Dubek, but it quickly becomes
1:39:17apparent that this is impossible. And
1:39:19under pressure from the Pulit bureau, he
1:39:21decides to send in the tanks and send in
1:39:24the troops. And then you have the brutal
1:39:26crushing of this uprising in which
1:39:28thousands of Soviet soldiers will crush
1:39:30and fight against Dubek's civilians.
1:39:35Never again in the Cold War did either
1:39:37the Soviet Union or the United States
1:39:40attempt to interfere in each other's
1:39:43recognized spheres of influence. The
1:39:45Americans who'd already stood by amid
1:39:48terrible bloodbs in the Polish shipyards
1:39:50amid the 1956 Hungarian uprising. 1968
1:39:56when there was the uprising in Prague,
1:39:58the Prague Spring that once again the
1:40:01Americans did nothing and the Russians
1:40:04were left free to crush that. Whereas
1:40:06again, while all that was going on in
1:40:09Vietnam, although of course the Soviet
1:40:11Union provided terrific material aid to
1:40:14Vietnam, at no time did the Soviet Union
1:40:17think of directly intervening in the
1:40:19Vietnam War. So never again was there
1:40:22such a dangerous moment when either side
1:40:25attempted to infringe each other's
1:40:26spheres of influence.
1:40:30The first two and a half decades of the
1:40:32cold war had been filled with
1:40:34revolutionary uprisings and proxy
1:40:36battles all across the globe. But as the
1:40:391970s began a surprising period of dant
1:40:43emerged where more direct relations
1:40:45between the western world and [music]
1:40:47the communist world were established.
1:40:52>> [music]
1:40:53>> In China with Cho and Lie, President
1:40:56Nixon begins a dialogue which marks an
1:40:58historic change in American policy. A
1:41:00political realist, the president knows
1:41:03that communication with China is
1:41:04indispensable to his grand design, the
1:41:07result of a long careful planning of a
1:41:10vision for peace born long ago.
1:41:13[music] The thrust for peace leads to
1:41:15the Soviet Union. The president will not
1:41:18be dissuaded by the days of hard [music]
1:41:20negotiation ahead. The opportunity to
1:41:22reduce world tension is at hand. And he
1:41:25achieves a breakthrough with agreements
1:41:27in environment, space, medicine, and a
1:41:30trade pact creating new jobs for
1:41:32Americans. But most significant of all,
1:41:35a treaty to limit arms.
1:41:43With the significant decrease in
1:41:45tensions in [music] the cold war, Leonid
1:41:47Brev focused on the domestic challenges
1:41:50that faced the Soviet [music] Union. The
1:41:53hallmark, I think, of Brev's uh economic
1:41:56policies were the five-year plans. He
1:41:58liked these 5-year plans. The early '7s
1:42:02saw a big increase in the consumer goods
1:42:04that were being produced by the Soviet
1:42:07Union. Something of an economic miracle
1:42:10took place in these years and uh even
1:42:12the west was surprised at how the Soviet
1:42:14economy was performing but it wouldn't
1:42:17last. The Soviet economy was too reliant
1:42:20on natural resources on oil on gas and
1:42:23the whole thing would begin to stagnate
1:42:25and we're soon going to enter what
1:42:27Gorbachov would later call the era of
1:42:30stagnation.
1:42:32So there was certainly stagnation
1:42:34politically in the Soviet Union under
1:42:37Brev. Uh fewer and fewer freedoms were
1:42:40allowed, writers were censored, people
1:42:42self-censored themselves rather than
1:42:44risk getting into trouble. The economy
1:42:46actually was not so stagnant. It
1:42:48continued to grow. We think of the
1:42:51Russian period as a period where a
1:42:53Soviet consumer public actually came of
1:42:55age. People were aware of of fashion and
1:42:59able to choose what they wanted to buy.
1:43:01But overall there was a sense that it
1:43:03wasn't progressing as fast as it could
1:43:05and this was reinforced by the stability
1:43:08of of the leadership who were getting
1:43:10older and older uh and not really
1:43:12allowing any new blood to come in. So
1:43:15there was a sense uh that the whole
1:43:17thing was was grinding uh to a slow
1:43:19halt.
1:43:20>> There were all sorts of holes in the
1:43:22system that made it possible to live
1:43:24under bridge. So although it was
1:43:26stagnation, the country made no big
1:43:28progress in GDP [music]
1:43:31or in facilities, there were loopholes.
1:43:34And so while the Kremlin looks unchanged
1:43:37and in the eyes of the world, some
1:43:39people thought the Cold War was going to
1:43:40go on indefinitely, some people still
1:43:43thought that the Soviet Union might
1:43:45emerge as the economic victor. So
1:43:48self-confidence in the West was not
1:43:51nearly as high as one might expect. And
1:43:54it is quite extraordinary that with all
1:43:56those expensive intelligence services in
1:43:59Britain, in the United States and
1:44:01everywhere else that the understanding
1:44:04of the fundamental weakness of the
1:44:06Soviet Union which was getting worse and
1:44:08worse all the time and that far from the
1:44:11danger to the west western triumph that
1:44:14the gap between the economic attainments
1:44:17of the west and the Soviet Union is
1:44:20widening relentlessly. Um and yet none
1:44:22of this was understood in the west at
1:44:24the time.
1:44:26>> In 1979, after a long period of dat
1:44:31[music]
1:44:32suddenly rose once again with the Soviet
1:44:34Union's invasion of Afghanistan [music]
1:44:40was very worried that the Soviet Union
1:44:41was losing its influence in the
1:44:43countries on the edge of its borders.
1:44:45And one of these was Afghanistan. The
1:44:48communist government of Afghanistan was
1:44:50under withering attack from the Afghan
1:44:53Majiadine. And so Brej decided to send
1:44:56in Soviet troops and tanks and forces
1:44:59[music]
1:44:59to try and prop up this communist
1:45:01regime.
1:45:07The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
1:45:09was part of the Soviet effort to project
1:45:12itself as an alternative to capitalism
1:45:15uh in the eyes of of the third world. So
1:45:18they were always trying to promote
1:45:20liberation movements, independence
1:45:22movements. 1978 a communist government
1:45:25took power in Afghanistan. There was
1:45:28internal fighting. The first government
1:45:30was overthrown. A second communist
1:45:32government came to power. They appealed
1:45:34to the Soviet Union for help against
1:45:36their enemies. Uh and so the Soviet
1:45:38Union agreed to send in troops to help
1:45:41keep them in power.
1:45:44The plan was really controlled or or
1:45:46proposed by Andropov who was the head of
1:45:48the KGB and was the most clever and
1:45:51interesting person in the leadership and
1:45:54really the most talented. He believed it
1:45:56could be done easily just by chopping
1:46:00off the head of the of the leader who
1:46:03was a communist who had turned against
1:46:06Rejev's uh the Kremlin's own candidate,
1:46:09executed him and taken power. They
1:46:11didn't trust this guy who was called
1:46:14Hafazula Armen. And so they began to
1:46:17fear that Amin would turn against them
1:46:20and actually embrace the Americans or
1:46:22the Chinese. And so, you know, they
1:46:25decided to replace him. And so, in the
1:46:27end, they sent in special forces with an
1:46:29army. What they didn't expect was a
1:46:32massive Islamicist rebellion um that
1:46:35would be backed by the Americans.
1:46:38Many people compare the Soviet
1:46:40engagement in Afghanistan with the
1:46:42United States in Vietnam. They got
1:46:44sucked in without realizing what they
1:46:47were getting into, without an exit
1:46:48strategy. [music]
1:46:50many many young Soviet men died, led
1:46:53rise to a a movement among mothers uh
1:46:56trying to uh stop men from being
1:46:58drafted. Uh so it it it severely
1:47:00weakened the government uh in in the
1:47:03eyes of its own population.
1:47:05>> Afghanistan
1:47:07was one of the decisive strategic
1:47:09mistakes of the last phase of the Soviet
1:47:12Union before its collapse. And it was
1:47:16the same story as with a lot of American
1:47:18wars.
1:47:19that they got nowhere and they were made
1:47:22fools of by their own clients in
1:47:26Afghanistan and their casualties were
1:47:28appalling and the bungling, the military
1:47:30bungling was fantastic.
1:47:33But the United States could afford its
1:47:35mistakes in the Cold War and the Soviet
1:47:37Union couldn't. So that you had this
1:47:39extraordinary situation there as this
1:47:41terrible 10-year war went on and as this
1:47:44drain of casualties which was
1:47:45desperately unpopular at home because
1:47:48people saw these body bags coming home
1:47:50and coming home and as the Americans and
1:47:52the CIA of course who were arming the
1:47:54mujadin the um resistance movement that
1:47:58the price that here was the Soviet Union
1:48:00already creaking and groaning and on the
1:48:03edge of on the edge of an abyss and you
1:48:07can argue that it was Afghanistan that
1:48:08pushed it over the edge.
1:48:10>> That was a major mistake. Russians in
1:48:13the 19th century knew very well,
1:48:16although they took over most of Central
1:48:18Asia and they would have liked to take
1:48:20over British India, that you leave
1:48:22Afghanistan alone.
1:48:24Nobody has ever successfully dealt with
1:48:26af Afghanistan since Alexander the Great
1:48:28invaded it. Everyone has had to retreat.
1:48:31Even the Mongols couldn't stick it. Uh
1:48:34the British army in the 1840s, which
1:48:37just had one blind person staggering
1:48:39out, the rest of the army dead, was an
1:48:41example. And the Russians knew this. And
1:48:44uh yet that was a major mistake to think
1:48:49that they could somehow take it over.
1:48:52>> 3 years into what would be a near
1:48:54decadel long conflict [music] in
1:48:56Afghanistan, the Soviet Union would lose
1:48:59its longtime leader, Leonard Brev.
1:49:03Bref dies and he's succeeded by Yuri
1:49:07Andropov, his former head of the KGB
1:49:10who'd been so ruthless in crushing
1:49:12internal disscent. But Andropov is
1:49:16simply illequipped to deal with the
1:49:19financial crises that are facing the
1:49:21Soviet Union.
1:49:22Brev's successor was Andropov who who he
1:49:26chose himself but he himself was already
1:49:28too ill from kidney failure to really do
1:49:31the reforms that were necessary now to
1:49:34make industry in the economy work to
1:49:37rethink the Soviet communist system and
1:49:40to reinvigorate it and he very quickly
1:49:43deteriorated
1:49:45his successor should have been Gorbachov
1:49:47who was the young and intelligent and
1:49:49upand cominging younger leader and who
1:49:51was a protetéé of Andropov, but instead
1:49:54Chernenko, who once had been an
1:49:56executioner for Stalin and really was a
1:49:59sort of known as the silent one. He'd
1:50:00really never said anything. He was just
1:50:02a sort of non- entity. He too was dying.
1:50:05So he came to leadership for a very
1:50:07short period. Uh and the joke at the
1:50:09time uh because both Brv and and
1:50:11Chernenko were not really mobile. Uh
1:50:15Brev was seen to be immobile and
1:50:17Chernenko seemed to be moving around. So
1:50:19they said the trouble with Brev was he
1:50:21was running on batteries but Chernenko
1:50:22had transistors uh and it could get
1:50:25around. People believed that that
1:50:28Chernenko would be giving broadcasts
1:50:30from his office but it was really a a
1:50:32hospital room made up to look like uh an
1:50:36administrative office.
1:50:38The manner of the collapse of the Soviet
1:50:40Union was extraordinary in that um it's
1:50:44almost as if the physical collapses of
1:50:46successful leaders mirrored the collapse
1:50:48of the whole edifice and all these very
1:50:51old charred discredited men in the
1:50:53Kremlin one by one attempting to seize
1:50:57the reigns of power and then proving
1:50:59completely unable to exercise them and
1:51:01collapsing and being removed to their
1:51:03tombs. Um, and it was symbolic.
1:51:07>> Constantine Chernenko, who is so old, so
1:51:10infirm, and so almost scenile that when
1:51:12he gives a eulogy at Andropov's funeral,
1:51:15he can hardly speak the words. It's
1:51:17clear he's not going to last long. And
1:51:19within another year, he's also dead. And
1:51:22this is the moment of change. This is
1:51:24the moment where a younger man, Mkhel
1:51:27Gorbachof, comes to power on a promise
1:51:30to transform the Soviet Union.
1:51:33Gorbachov was an extraordinary man to
1:51:36have reached the summits of power in the
1:51:38Kremlin. But he was capable of
1:51:41recognizing failure, of recognizing what
1:51:44had gone wrong, of recognizing the need
1:51:46for radical change. Whereas for years,
1:51:49the Soviet Union had been governed by
1:51:51people who were still clinging
1:51:53desperately to the past and struggling
1:51:55at all costs to avoid the humiliation of
1:51:59um public defeat.
1:52:02Gorbachov of course it comes from
1:52:03Russian word gorbate which means bent
1:52:06and the Russian proverb is that the
1:52:08[music] only the grave will straighten
1:52:10the bent. Uh so people laughed when he
1:52:12came in with a name like that. His idea
1:52:15was that as everyone was being dishonest
1:52:17and even he couldn't find out the truth.
1:52:20you had to release the the journalism,
1:52:23let the newspapers expose same things.
1:52:25And he allowed complaints and scandals
1:52:27to be aired in newspapers and then on on
1:52:30on television and so on. So people found
1:52:32out more about what was actually
1:52:34happening in the country and the public
1:52:36came round to his side when it became
1:52:38clear that some sort of campaign was
1:52:40being mounted against uh the corrupt and
1:52:43and the rich.
1:52:45And of course what wrecked it was the
1:52:48Chernobyl accident.
1:52:51On the 26th [music] of April 1986, the
1:52:54Chernobyl nuclear power plant went into
1:52:56meltdown and an enormous cloud of
1:52:59radioactive contamination was released.
1:53:05The Chernobyl happened early on in
1:53:06Gorbachev's period of rule uh and was a
1:53:10key mistake uh in in that period because
1:53:13when it happened they reverted to their
1:53:15old habits of secrecy and and denial
1:53:18which led to much greater loss of life
1:53:22and more damage than otherwise would
1:53:24have been necessary and also created
1:53:26more suspicion toward the Soviet Union
1:53:29among Western Europeans who are who are
1:53:32disposed to be think positively. Uh this
1:53:35was a period of Eurocommunism and of
1:53:37Germany's o politique trying to make
1:53:40make deals with the Soviet Union and
1:53:42this was kind of a throwback uh to the
1:53:44bad old days. So it was a domestic
1:53:47disaster, an international disaster in
1:53:49health terms, but also a very bad signal
1:53:52for what the Soviet Union was becoming.
1:53:55>> The White House says Mr. Reagan's
1:53:56attempts to discuss the situation with
1:53:58Mr. Gorbachoff personally had been
1:54:01ignored by the Kremlin for 4 days.
1:54:03>> Uh, not very much.
1:54:05>> They're usually a little close-m
1:54:10rather hear more from Mr. Gorbachov.
1:54:12>> Yes, I think it would be helpful.
1:54:14>> Gorbachov had spoken of Glasnost. He'd
1:54:17spoken of openness, of a more open
1:54:19media. And the first instinct is to go
1:54:22back to the old Soviet way of doing
1:54:23things, to hide everything, to cover
1:54:25everything up. And this was a disaster
1:54:28because the western media had already
1:54:29picked up from very early on the uh
1:54:31increased levels of radiation. They knew
1:54:33something disastrous had happened at
1:54:36this nuclear reactor. But Gorbachof
1:54:38tries to hide it. And this proved the
1:54:40limits of his policy of Glasnost.
1:54:43Gorbachov in the end used this to his
1:54:46advantage. To him, it was proof that the
1:54:48old system was so dangerous, you could
1:54:50have made half of Russia uninhabitable.
1:54:53If those reactors had melted into the
1:54:56ground, the western Ukraine would be
1:54:59strictly for the animals. It proved to
1:55:02to the Russian public there was no point
1:55:04having the traditional secrecy that you
1:55:07had to have openness. And the very fact
1:55:10that foreigners knew about it and
1:55:11Russians heard about it from foreign
1:55:13broadcasts and then they found out
1:55:17In 1985, the final leader of the Soviet
1:55:20Union came to power, Mikail Gorbachof.
1:55:25The name Gorbachof is really synonymous
1:55:28with peristrika. This was his great
1:55:30idea. He wanted to reform the system. He
1:55:33wanted to bring an element of of the
1:55:34markets into the system. He could see
1:55:36that the Soviet economy was simply not
1:55:39functioning. It was moribband. He was
1:55:41going to revitalize. It was going to be
1:55:42a renaissance to the economy.
1:55:45I think Gorbachov is misunderstood by
1:55:47everyone. Everyone nowadays thinks that
1:55:49he was in the west anyway that he was a
1:55:52sort of anti-communist um liberal
1:55:54democrat rather like one of our leaders.
1:55:56But in fact he was very different. He
1:55:57was a Leninist. He believed in
1:56:00communism. He believed in the Soviet
1:56:01Union and he wanted to reform it to make
1:56:04it to make it stronger to make it work
1:56:06better to make it to make it more
1:56:07[music] formidable. What in fact
1:56:09happened was he had very attractive
1:56:14features in terms of his openness and
1:56:16his his smile and his ability to go on
1:56:19walkabouts and he immediately impressed
1:56:21the western leaders. But in the Soviet
1:56:23Union himself, he really attempted an an
1:56:26insane plethora of reforms that
1:56:29undermined the whole the whole empire.
1:56:32And in some ways his ambitions were
1:56:35hubristic if not arrogant. He thought he
1:56:38could do it. He hadn't really thought
1:56:40through the nature of the Soviet Union
1:56:42and the nature of the Leninist system.
1:56:45He tried to reform the economy, the
1:56:48power politics, and ultimately the the
1:56:51nature of the union itself, in other
1:56:53words, the empire all at the same time.
1:56:56And no one had attempted that before.
1:56:58And with good reason because each of
1:57:00those reforms was an colossal reform
1:57:04that could have destroyed the Soviet
1:57:06Union in it on its own.
1:57:08>> We can all see today um that he was
1:57:11something very remarkable and he broke
1:57:13with the past. But I remember so well
1:57:16when the first reports of Gorbachoff
1:57:18from our correspondents in Moscow and
1:57:20some imaginative correspondents did see
1:57:24that Gorbachov was something quite new
1:57:25and quite special. I met him and he was
1:57:29an extraordinary man and I do hope that
1:57:33history will pay him the tribute that is
1:57:35is due because he was the one who broke
1:57:37the mold. But for us who'd lived almost
1:57:40all our lives in the shadow of the cold
1:57:42war, it was almost impossible to believe
1:57:45that the whole edifice, the whole
1:57:47structure around which we'd lived was
1:57:49suddenly changing and that um the Soviet
1:57:52Union and Russia as we'd known it was
1:57:54suddenly tottering. So we were very slow
1:57:57some of us and governments to realize
1:58:00the nature of the change.
1:58:02>> Gorbachoff wanted an end to the cold
1:58:04war. He wanted an end to the arms race.
1:58:07But this was very difficult when during
1:58:09Reagan's first term as president of the
1:58:11United States. Reagan spoke of the evil
1:58:14empire. He was very antagonistic
1:58:17uh towards the Soviet Union. But this
1:58:19began to change. I think he saw in Mika
1:58:22Gorbachov somebody he could do business
1:58:24with. And they eventually sat down and
1:58:26they began to discuss the reduction in
1:58:29weaponry. And I think really it was the
1:58:31personal relationship between these two
1:58:33men and also with Margaret Thatcher and
1:58:36Gorbachoff that it was a a a coming
1:58:38together of personalities that enabled
1:58:41the cold war and the arms race to come
1:58:43to an end.
1:58:45General Secretary Gorbachoff,
1:58:48if you seek peace, if you seek
1:58:51prosperity for the Soviet Union in
1:58:53Eastern Europe, if you seek
1:58:56liberalization,
1:58:58come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachoff,
1:59:02open this gate.
1:59:12>> [applause]
1:59:17[applause]
1:59:23>> Mr. Gorbachov
1:59:28Mr. Gorbachoff
1:59:30teared down this wall.
1:59:43Not long after Ronald Reagan's famous
1:59:46speech at the Brandenburgg Gate, one of
1:59:48the great symbols of the Cold War, the
1:59:50Berlin Wall, would finally fall.
1:59:58The Berlin Wall had been a success in
2:00:01the sense that it it stopped East
2:00:03Germany becoming depopulated, but it
2:00:06hadn't made it much more prosperous. I
2:00:08mean, it had a limited uh uh prosperity
2:00:11because it produced better goods than
2:00:12any other East European country. But
2:00:14even so, uh the desire to to get across
2:00:17that war was very very great. And in
2:00:20fact, when Gorbachov thought about it,
2:00:21he clearly realized there was no
2:00:22enormous advantage to the Soviet Union
2:00:26in having Germany divided, he perhaps
2:00:28made a mistake. He should have insisted
2:00:30that Germany be permanently neutral,
2:00:33never be allowed to join NATO if it was
2:00:35reunited. That would have reassured a
2:00:38lot of people. But it was a way of
2:00:40making Gorbachov extremely popular in
2:00:43Germany. But of course, he didn't
2:00:45realize that he had to be popular at
2:00:46home in Russia. And um the problem with
2:00:50Gorbachov is always that he's been
2:00:52adored abroad and loathed at home.
2:00:56There were people within the party who
2:00:58opposed his reforms. They opposed it
2:01:01because they they believed in a
2:01:02different kind of communism or they
2:01:04opposed it because they were going to
2:01:05lose their positions of privilege. A lot
2:01:08of backsliding and a lot of opposition.
2:01:10So that's when he decided 1988 to launch
2:01:13democratization, opening up the
2:01:15communist party to elections, hoping
2:01:18that that a re rejuvenated party would
2:01:21decisively defeat the old guard uh and
2:01:24provide support within the party for his
2:01:26policies of reform. And so starting in
2:01:291988 there were elections for party
2:01:32[music] committees uh and people started
2:01:35to join the the party in droves because
2:01:38suddenly the party was becoming very
2:01:39interesting there you know important
2:01:41things were being discussed they were
2:01:42being discussed openly. So there was a
2:01:44real ferment 1988 1989 uh as a result of
2:01:48his democratization. But unfortunately
2:01:51it awakened sentiments in Eastern Europe
2:01:54that suddenly the countries of Eastern
2:01:56Europe East Germany, Poland, Hungary,
2:01:59they sniffed at freedom here and we
2:02:02began to get unrest protests against the
2:02:04Soviet Union. And this began in Poland
2:02:07where we have the first semif-free
2:02:09elections and we have solidarity under
2:02:11the charismatic leadership of Le
2:02:13Falencus mustache storming to victory in
2:02:17the selection. This is a a huge shock
2:02:20for not just for Poland and the Soviet
2:02:22Union, but for the whole of Eastern
2:02:24Europe. Suddenly, a whole new way of
2:02:27doing things becomes apparent. We see
2:02:29the first cracks in the entire Soviet
2:02:32system.
2:02:341989 proved to be the beginning of the
2:02:36end for the Soviet Union. Its forces
2:02:39finally left Afghanistan and political
2:02:42uprisings could [music] not be stopped
2:02:44either among the Warsaw packed countries
2:02:47or within the Soviet Union itself.
2:02:50>> The economy completely failed. [music]
2:02:52Gorbachov and the Communist Party lost
2:02:54all authority and the 15 republics,
2:02:57particularly those that had joined the
2:03:00Soviet Union very late, particularly the
2:03:03Baltic republics, the three Baltics,
2:03:05[music] Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia,
2:03:07pushed for for freedom and for the break
2:03:09up of the Soviet Union. And in in August
2:03:1291, there was an attempted coup by his
2:03:14own effectively by his own government,
2:03:16[music]
2:03:17which from which he was only rescued by
2:03:20Yelten. And that was really the death
2:03:22the death nail of the Soviet Union and
2:03:24of Gorbachov.
2:03:26>> If you go back to it it it its
2:03:27beginnings the hopeful replacement of of
2:03:30of an autocratic zar with a democratic
2:03:33socialist republic and it it failed to
2:03:37do that. Uh the question is did it fail
2:03:40because a socialist economy was
2:03:42inherently incapable of providing
2:03:45prosperity and development for the
2:03:47people or was it badly run? Was it uh
2:03:49did it descend into corruption? It was a
2:03:53strong military force. It it was
2:03:56decisive in defeating Hitler and I think
2:03:59that's today one of the the enduring
2:04:02sources of pride for Russians in the
2:04:04Russian Federation [music] is the
2:04:06victory that they had over Hitler and
2:04:08that became that that happened because
2:04:11of of the strong support of of the
2:04:13people. But it was also known for its
2:04:16repression
2:04:18uh for the numbers of victims, for its
2:04:21inhumity and and the tremendous costs of
2:04:25this this experiment.
2:04:27The final dissolution of the Soviet
2:04:29Union happened in a forest hunting lodge
2:04:33on the Polish border with a lot of vodka
2:04:36consumed that they they recognized it
2:04:39couldn't go on that they might as well
2:04:41split up and try and remain friends and
2:04:43then go back to Moscow and announce that
2:04:46the Soviet Union no longer existed.
2:04:49Gorbachev resigned himself to the fact
2:04:51that the Soviet Union was finished. It
2:04:54was no more. On the 25th of December
2:04:571991, he resigns of so as Soviet
2:05:00president and as commander-in-chief. On
2:05:03the following day, the Supreme Soviet
2:05:05vote the Soviet Union out of existence.
2:05:09It will stagger on for a couple more
2:05:10days, but it comes to an end on the 31st
2:05:13of December 1991.
2:05:16The USSR is no more. It broke apart into
2:05:20its constituent parts. Latia, Lithuania,
2:05:22Estonia had already voted for
2:05:23independence. Georgia became
2:05:25independent. All the 15 Union republics
2:05:28that had been part of the union all went
2:05:30their separate ways [music] as
2:05:32independent republics.
2:05:34The Central Asian republics probably
2:05:36didn't really want to be independent,
2:05:37but but they really had no alternative
2:05:39because there was no Soviet Union.
2:05:41[music] And so all all the parts of the
2:05:45machine, if you like, fell fell to
2:05:47pieces at the same time simultaneously.
2:05:50and Russia emerged as an independent
2:05:53republic [music] as did the other 15
2:05:56republics, the constituent republics of
2:05:58the Soviet Union which Lenin and Stalin
2:06:01had designed never to become
2:06:03independent, [music] never to s sec
2:06:04succeeded. Well, now they all became
2:06:07independent at the same time and the
2:06:09Soviet Union was no more.
2:06:23>> [music]
2:06:26>> Heat.
2:06:30[music]
2:06:31Heat.

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