Margaret Thatcher in the Soviet Union - Rare and Unseen Footage (1987)

Jan 20, 2024 | Between 28 March and 1 April 1987, ITN filmed British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as she made her historic first trip to the Soviet Union at the invitation of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. The five-day schedule included a visit to an enormous tenement complex and supermarket in Moscow’s Krylatskoye District, a performance of Swan Lake at the capital’s prestigious Bolshoi Theatre, and a state banquet. Chief on the agenda, however, were negotiations on the reduction of American and Soviet nuclear arsenals.

WIKIPEDIA: Raisa Gorbacheva »

Konstantin of ‘Inside Russia’: Gorbachev RIP: “The Best Leader Russia Has Known”

Michail Gorbatchev died at old age of 92.

Why I Left Russia and Can't Go Back

Jul 10, 2022 As Putin's brutal invasion of Ukraine continues, we look at the opportunities Russia failed to take after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This is a meditation on the collapse of the USSR, why Russia failed to take the opportunity that followed, and where this leaves the world here and now.

The End of a Superpower - The Collapse of the Soviet Union | DW Documentary

Mar 3, 2022 • Russian President Vladimir Putin described the collapse of the Soviet Union as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century." This documentary from 2021 shows the path Russian foreign policy has followed under Putin.

On December 25, 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. Along with it came hope for the end of the Cold War, for independence and freedom for the former Soviet republics. But for many it also brought poverty and war. What remains of the dreams of that time? The documentary includes contemporary witnesses and politicians of the decisive years and shows what has become of the legacy of a world power.

[This documentary was originally released in 2021. In February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine.]

When Five Cambridge University Students Became Soviet Spies | Secrets Of War | Timeline

Oct 25, 2020 • They were five disillusioned young men studying at Cambridge University in the 1930's when they were secretly recruited by Soviet agents. They went on to become the most successful spies of the 20th century, penetrating both American and British governments at the highest levels.

History Hit.

Gorbachev and the Opportunity for Peace Wasted | DW Documentary

Mikhail Gorbachev wrote world history with his politics: from the 1985 elections to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. [Online until: 02.11.2018]

This documentary looks at one of the most gripping chapters in contemporary history from the election of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War four years later. It features exclusive interviews with the former Soviet leader and leading politicians and statesmen active on the international stage at the time. Mikhail Gorbachev was elected Secretary-General of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985. His policies of "glasnost" - "openness" - and "perestroika" - "restructuring" - ultimately ended in the collapse of Moscow’s empire and changed the course of world history. But in the end, his legacy is still at best an ambiguous one. This documentary examines one of the most exciting chapters in contemporary history since the Second World War and talks to former French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine and German politician Horst Teltschik, both of whom played important roles in German reunification. Gorbachev's former national security adviser Alexander Likhotal and others also chart the way nuclear weapons have continued to spread throughout the multipolar world that grew out of the end of the Cold War. Could this new arms race bring us to the brink of nuclear war again? The film draws on the wisdom and experience of men who ushered in the end of the Cold War to ask how real peace can be achieved.

Right-Wing Eastern European States Honor Nazi-Collaborating Fascists as 'Heroes'

Far-right governments in Eastern Europe are rehabilitating past Nazi collaborators as national heroes, rewriting the history of the Holocaust to turn the Soviet Union into the villain. Historian Dovid Katz explains how the fascist-apologist "double genocide" myth is spreading.

Moscow's Empire - Rise and Fall | DW Documentary

The Soviet Union began to crumble post 1970 - and fell apart completely after 1991. The former Soviet countries were left bankrupt and traumatized and facing what would be an anarchic decade.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, former Soviet nations had to deal with a chaotic period marked by military conflicts and the search for new national identities and a new self-awareness. The four-part documentary ‘Moscow’s Empire’ looks for answers to these developments, and provides a variety of perspectives on life in the former Soviet block countries - from the people who have experienced events first hand and, in some cases, shaped them.

People’s Century: 1917 Red Flag

This episode is about the events in Russia and Soviet Union in the time frame of post World War 1 and pre World War 2

Prostitutes, Hidden Hotel Camera's: Familiar Putin Tools | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC

Rachel Maddow tells viewers about a past example of prostitutes and hidden hotel cameras being used in a case of political hardball in Russia in which Vladimir Putin had a hand.

Moscow: Nostalgia for Communism 25 Years On | DW News

It has been 25 years since Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as the last leader of the Soviet Union. Today, the Communist Party is in the opposition, and many communists express nostalgia for the old days. But do they really want to go back to the USSR?

How CIA Used Copies of Doctor Zhivago in Battle to Win Cold War

THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: After nearly six decades of secrecy, newly declassified documents reveal the CIA's clandestine programme to bring the great Russian novel to readers behind the Iron Curtain

t had all the hallmarks of a classic Cold War spy caper, and it began in January 1958 when British intelligence’s Moscow station delivered two rolls of microfilm into the hands of the CIA’s Langley headquarters.

However the films showed not the blueprints for a new Soviet warplane or ballistic missile, but something potentially even more powerful in the ideological war between East and West: the complete Russian text of Boris Pasternak’s masterpiece, Doctor Zhivago.

In a nine-point memo, marked Secret but recently declassified, British intelligence said it was “in favour of exploiting the book”, warning that Soviet censors were already putting pressure on Pasternak to put out a “revised” version of the novel. » | Peter Foster, Washington | Sunday, April 06, 2014


Lara’s Theme »

Doctor Zhivago: Trailer (1965) »

Marine Le Pen: EU Will Collapse Like the Soviet Union

Marine Le Pen

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Marine Le Pen aims to set up radical, anti-Europe faction in the European parliament with help of Geert Wilders, the Dutch MP

The leader of France’s far-Right party has vowed that the European Union would “collapse like the Soviet Union” as she conspired to form what would be the most radical faction yet seen in the European parliament.

Marine Le Pen, buoyed by a weekend by-election triumph in southern France, criticised the EU as a “global anomaly” and pledged to return the bloc to a “cooperation of sovereign states”.

She said Europe’s population had “no control” over their economy or currency, nor over the movement of people in their territory.

“I believe that the EU is like the Soviet Union now: it is not improvable,” she said. “The EU will collapse like the Soviet Union collapsed.” » | Martin Banks, Henry Samuel and Alex Spillius | Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Adolf Hitler's Dark Charisma

History: Ex-KGB Officer Yuri Bezmenov - Life under Soviet Collectivism

Discovery Channel - End of the USSR
Documentary about collapse of the Soviet Union


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Stalin's Daughter Who Defected to US Dies at 85

THE GUARDIAN: Svetlana Peters, who denounced communism after the cold war, has died after living out her remaining years in seclusion

Josef Stalin's daughter, who denounced communism after defecting during the cold war, has died in the US after living out her remaining years there in seclusion.

Svetlana Peters, whose quest to find her own identity saw the only daughter and last surviving child of the dictator take on three names, had described her father as "a moral and spiritual monster" after the CIA helped her to escape the Soviet Union in 1967 which caused a diplomatic furore.

Born Svetlana Stalina, she adopted her mother's last name, Alliluyeva, following her father's death in 1953. But she ended her life as Lana Peters – the identity she adopted after claiming political asylum in the US.

After living many years in the public eye, she spent her final days in seclusion. She died of colon cancer on 22 November in Richland County, South Carolina, it emerged. She was 85.

Frequently moving countries, sampling religions from Hinduism to Christian science, the four-times married Peters lived a life which could grace the pages of any novel, and saw her tales inside the Soviet Union earn her two best-selling autobiographies. » | Staff and agencies | Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Georgia Passes Law to Destroy Soviet-era Monuments and Street Names

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Georgia will destroy Soviet-era monuments and change any street names which refer to its Communist past, MPs have decided.

The parliamentarians passed a new law on Tuesday, aimed at distancing the country from its former master Russia.

Ties between Russia and Georgia have soured since President Mikheil Saakashvili ousted post-Soviet leader Eduard Shevardnadze in the 2003 "Rose Revolution" and vowed to move the country out of Moscow's sphere of influence.

"Our people have been waiting for this law to be passed for 20 years and I'm proud that it is passed by this parliament," said Gia Tortladze, an opposition lawmaker who proposed the law.

The so-called Freedom Charter will set up a commission led by the Interior Ministry to identify symbols, monuments, inscriptions, street and park names "that may reflect or contain elements of Soviet or fascist ideology" and consider their removal.

The law will also prevent former KGB agents and senior Communist party officials from occupying high-ranking positions in government. » | Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Russia Celebrates Conquest of Space
Russia marked a half century since Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, the greatest victory of Soviet science which expanded human horizons and is still remembered by Russians as their finest hour.



At 0907 Moscow time on April 12, 1961 Gagarin uttered the famous words "Let's Go" as the Vostok rocket, with him squeezed into a tiny capsule at the top, blasted off from the south of the Soviet republic of Kazakhstan.



After a voyage lasting just 108 minutes that granted the 27-year-old carpenter's son historical immortality, Gagarin ejected from his capsule and parachuted down into a field in the Saratov region of central Russia.



From that moment on, his life, and the course of modern space exploration, would never be the same again.



Al Jazeera's Neave Barker reports.

Medvedev Criticises USSR Over Human Rights
THE TELEGRAPH: Dmitry Medvedev has launched a wide-ranging attack on the Soviet Union as a totalitarian state that crushed individual liberties in the most outspoken comments on the USSR by a Russian leader in recent years.

Mr Medvedev's comments, which also included stinging criticism on the historical role of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, will be interpreted by many as an attempt to distance himself from Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, who has adopted a more ambiguous stance on Russia's often tragic history.

In an interview Mr Medvedev declared that nothing could justify Stalin's crimes against his own people.

"Despite the fact that he worked a lot, and despite the fact that under his leadership the country recorded many successes, what was done to his own people cannot be forgiven." >>> Andrew Osborn in Moscow | Friday, May 07, 2010