Gorbachev's legacy

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service.Our guest is Michelle Meinhart, a reader in musicology and cultural history at Trinity Laban Conservatoire in London. We start by hearing about a Mexican song that captivated lov ...  Show more

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. First, the story of the Belgian teenager who exposed a scandal within the country’s Royal Family in 1999. Our guest, Professor Kate Williams takes us through some other royal sc ...  Show more

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, has died aged 91. Gorbachev came to power in 1985 at a time when the Soviet economy was on the brink of collapse. He introduced a radical reform programme called Perestroika. 25 years on from Perestroika, in 2012, Louise Hid ...  Show more

Mikhail Gorbachev - the last leader of the Soviet Union - has died aged 91. On the eve of an important summit on nuclear disarmament between the Soviet Union and America in October 1986, Gorbachev ordered the release of a dissident poet called Irina Ratushinskaya.In 2012, Louise ...  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 ...

In December 1991 the leaders of three Soviet Republics - Russia, Ukraine and Belarus - signed a treaty dissolving the USSR. They did so without asking the other republics, and against the wishes of the USSR's overall President Mikhail Gorbachev. By the end of the year, Gorbachev ...  Show more