History Sphere Podcast
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History is more than just the story of our past. It is the explanation of our present. Driven by a passion for history, the History Sphere Podcast tells stories that matter in the full, colorful context that makes them important.
53 Episodes
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In August 1991, the brewing political crisis in the USSR brought on by the constitutional reforms of Perestroika came to a head, as members of the security, military, and Communist Party establishment launched an attempt to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev and roll back the reforms.
The events of 1921 and 1956 that lie at the foundation of modern Georgian nationalism resurfaced amidst the reforms of Perestroika in the 1980's. In 1989, the rising tide of nationalism would collide with tragedy to propel Georgia inexorably toward independence from the USSR.
The Caucasus is a region that, though it is not of Russia, is deeply central to the Russian identity. This beautiful and diverse part of the world has also played a central role in the political and military history of the Russian Empire, the USSR, and modern Russia.
Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev were both men of remarkable talent and drive. Yet, their inability to work together toward a common goal led to an intense rivalry that weakened, rather than strengthened the efficacy of Perestroika, and helped to hasten the final demise of the USSR.
Boris Yeltsin, though he was once overwhelmingly popular, is today remembered by most Russians as the corrupt leader responsible for Russia's degradation in the 1990's. His real legacy is actually significantly more complicated. Without Yeltsin, the Soviet Union would not have collapsed the way it did, and modern Russia would look very different.
Throughout the late 1980's and early 1990's, Glasnost awakened an irrepressible movement for independence in the Baltic States. In March 1990, Lithuania became the first Soviet Republic to formally declare independence from the USSR, precipitating a crisis.
The Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were the smallest republics of the USSR, yet the international politics concerning them are among the most far-reaching consequences of the USSR's disintegration. An understanding of their history is therefore crucial understanding the decline and fall of the Soviet Union.
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 capped of a year of tumultuous change across Eastern Europe. Its brutal conclusion marked the end of the Communist Era in Eastern Europe.
Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution is often overshadowed by the dramatic fall of the Berlin Wall, which took place only a few days earlier. However, it was a deeply fascinating chapter, and an important domino in the fall of Eastern Bloc Communism.
On November 9, 1989, a series of blunders by the East German Communist regime set in motion a chain reaction of events that led to the fall of the most infamous symbol of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall.
In the late summer and fall of 1989, upon receiving news of the reforms there, huge numbers of East Germans made their way to Hungary hoping to escape across the border to Austria and on to West Germany. The ensuing refugee crisis initiated a series of events that forced the Communist regime in East Germany into a struggle for its very survival.
The partition of Germany was never meant to be permanent, but materialized by accident as a practical solution to the unbridgeable divide between the Soviets and their erstwhile Western allies on what to do with their defeated German enemies in the wake of the Second World War. This divide placed Germany on the front line of the Cold War for more than four decades.
After 1956, the Communist leaders of Hungary elected to rule with a softer touch than was employed elsewhere in the Eastern Bloc. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Hungary became just the second domino to fall in the series of revolutions that spread across Eastern and Central Europe in 1989.
In the summer of 1980, the workers at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland went on strike to demand the reinstatement of a fired coworker and the recognition of their independent trade union. They were soon joined by workers around the country. What began as a relatively moderate labor movement soon transformed into a social and political revolution that would unravel Communism in Poland.
In addition to the widespread loss of faith in the Soviet system by ordinary citizens as a result of the Chernobyl disaster, by 1987, the Soviet Union also faced a deepening economic crisis. The reforms of Perestroika were an attempt to remake this failing system and save the USSR.
The initial response of the Soviet government to the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl was the perfect storm of incompetence, callousness, and shameless lies. This bungled exposed the flaws in the Soviet system its own people and to the wider world.
In the early morning hours of April 26, 1986, reactor number 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station suffered a catastrophic failure when the poor decisions of the plant's electrical engineers combined with a critical design flaw in the reactor. The result was the worst nuclear accident in history.
In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev did not yet have the political capital or the right people in place to enact his bold domestic reforms. However, in the realm of foreign policy, he was able to make a splash more quickly.
Mikhail Gorbachev was a natural leader and a skilled administrator, but little about his early life led people to believe that he would usher in an era of revolutionary change when he became General Secretary in March 1985.
The period between the death of Leonid Brezhnev in 1982 and the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 is often glossed over in histories of the Soviet Union. Yet, much of what happened in this time period provides vital context for the turmoil that would rock the USSR in the coming decade.
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