The demise of the Soviet Union

During the Vietnam War, North Vietnamese VietCong guerrillas built a vast network of tunnels in the south of the country as part of the insurgency against the South Vietnamese government and their American allies. The tunnel network was a key base and shelter for the North Vietna ...  Show more

In 1994, documents from a Nazi study of the Bayeux Tapestry were rediscovered after more than 50 years. Former curator of the tapestry, Sylvette Lemagnen, tells Helen Ledwick how the missing archive was found and returned to Bayeux, revealing new details about a wartime investiga ...  Show more

In August 1991 there was an attempted coup in the Soviet Union as communist hard-liners sought to re-establish the dominance of Soviet rule in Russia and its satellite states. The coup attempt collapsed after three days and it eventually led to the collapse of communism. Mikhail ...  Show more

📖 [Episode Transcripts in link below] ⬇️ Today, we embark on a journey into the history of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991—a dissolution marking the end of the Cold War era and giving rise to geopolitical shifts as well as the emergence of new nations. https://patreon.c ...  Show more

Few leaders have had as profound an effect on their time as Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, who died this week at 91.

It was not Mr. Gorbachev’s intention to liquidate the Soviet empire when he came to power in 1985. But after little more than ...

Under Gorbachev's leadership the once sprawling empire that was the Soviet Union collapses. Is this his true legacy? Or was it all inevitable? And with present day Russia looking to the past for glory, what lessons can we learn from history's last Soviet leader? Stay connected wi ...  Show more