94. The Bloody History of Russia & Ukraine

Despite later mythology, Stalin was effectively a nobody during the Russian Revolution of 1917. Unlike Trotsky and Lenin, he was not on the frontline amongst the revolutionaries. How did he reveal his penchant for violence during the Russian Civil War in the following years? And ...  Show more

How did Stalin become one of the most ruthless dictators in World History? What was his childhood like in Georgia? How did he rise from a poet training to be a priest, to the ruler of the Soviet Union? In Episode 1 of this new series, Anita Anand and William Dalrymple explore the ...  Show more

To mark the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a special edition on episodes from Ukrainian history.

In April 1986 a reactor exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Soviet Ukraine. Sergii Mirnyi monitored radiation levels in the exclusion zone around the plant. How t ...

In this new series, Saul and Patrick explore the current conflict in Ukraine. They begin by looking back to the first days of hostilities in Kyiv with BBC journalist Paul Kenyon, followed by Ukrainian-American journalist Irena Chalupa giving an overview of the historic enmity bet ...  Show more

It's not often we cover current affairs on The Ancients (the clue is in the name), but in light of Putin’s claims that Ukraine was “entirely created by Russia”, we wanted to highlight Ukraine’s extraordinary ancient history. From the Palaeolithic to the Iron Age.

To ...

*Content Warning - This episode contains references to rape and suicide* The Russian Civil War was a brutal episode in the rise of Bolshevik Russia. Taking place between 1917 and 1922 (after the perhaps better known, Russian Revolution) it pitted the Communist Red Army, led by Vl ...  Show more