How Smoking Ruined the Soviet Union

August 9, 2026

Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union: Operation Barbarossa (1/2) | DW Documentary

Jun 19, 2026 | On 22 June 1941, the German Wehrmacht launched a war of aggression against the Soviet Union. Under the code name ‘Operation Barbarossa’, the campaign aimed to bring the vast country in the east to its knees. Millions of people died as a result.

At the beginning of the Second World War, the Nazi regime celebrated a series of military successes: boosted by rapid victories in Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and France, the Wehrmacht prepared a secret manoeuvre in the east, firmly convinced that troops would be back home after a few months. But the period of unimaginable violence unleashed by Hitler would claim millions of lives.

Without declaring war and with more than three million soldiers battle-ready, the Wehrmacht attacked on a broad front between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea. In the first hours of the meticulously prepared military invasion, the Luftwaffe rained bombs on Soviet bases near the border, catching the Soviets completely off-guard.

The force of the attack was seen as a continuation of the German troops’ successful ‘Blitzkrieg’ campaigns. In his instructions to the Chief of Operations in the Armed Forces High Command, written in March 1941, Hitler had already stated: ‘This upcoming campaign is more than just a battle of arms, it’s also a clash between two worldviews. The Jewish-Bolshevik intelligentsia, as the previous oppressor of the people, must be eliminated.’

Another aim: the economic exploitation of conquered territories. Many of those involved and affected by this tragedy - Germans and Soviets, soldiers and civilians alike - recorded their harrowing experiences in amateur films, letters and diaries. These vivid descriptions of the German war of aggression in the East are a far cry from official war reporting and state propaganda. These accounts, by men and women fighting for survival, document the horror on both sides of the conflict.

How Soviet Leaders Really Lived Behind Closed Doors

Mar 5, 2026 | In public, Soviet leaders preached equality, worker solidarity, and the evils of bourgeois excess. Behind closed doors, they lived like tsars. While ordinary citizens waited in lines for bread and lived in cramped communal apartments, the Politburo elite enjoyed sprawling dachas with private chefs, luxury cars with dedicated lanes on Moscow roads, exclusive stores stocked with Western goods unavailable to anyone else, and medical care in elite hospitals that rivalled anything in the West. The gap between communist ideology and leadership privilege was staggering.

This video explores how Soviet leaders actually lived. We examine the perks of power: the dacha system where top officials had multiple country estates with servants, hunting grounds, and private beaches; the ZIL lanes reserved exclusively for leadership motorcades that allowed them to bypass Moscow traffic while everyone else sat gridlocked; and the "closed stores" like GUM's fourth floor where only the nomenklatura could shop for imported champagne, caviar, French cognac, and Western electronics.

We explore the medical privileges: the Fourth Directorate health system that provided Politburo members with their own hospitals, German pharmaceuticals, and doctors who faced severe consequences if their elite patients didn't recover. We look at the travel privileges—private jets, luxury Black Sea resorts closed to ordinary citizens, and hunting lodges in restricted forest preserves. We examine how their children attended special schools, got admitted to top universities regardless of merit, and were shielded from military service.

We also explore specific leaders' excesses: Brezhnev's obsession with Western luxury cars gifted by foreign leaders, his collection of over 50 vehicles while most Soviets waited years for a basic Lada. Stalin's paranoid network of dachas and bunkers. Khrushchev's surprising modesty compared to his peers. The hypocrisy that even ordinary Soviets recognized—the Party elite living like aristocrats while preaching classless society.

This is about power, hypocrisy, and the privilege hidden behind the Iron Curtain.

Forbidden or Free in Socialism? | History of Homosexuality and LGBT in the Soviet Union

Dec 7, 2024 | Welcome to the Soviet Journey. In this video, I have shared with you the history of homosexuality in the Soviet Union and information about LGBT in a documentary style. You will be interested in the historical review of homosexuality in the USSR, which we divided into periods, and the LGBT movement topics. Enjoy watching!

USSR | Joseph Stalin | Svetlana Alliluyeva Interview | 1980's

Oct 31, 2015 | A fascinating insight into Russian Leader Joseph Stalin's early life through the eyes of his youngest child Svetlana Alliluyeva.

This interview was filmed for the Thames TV production - 'Stalin' Recorded in 1989/1990

This interview cannot be embedded on external websites. It can be viewed only on YouTube itself. Click here to watch it.
Related interview here.

1969: Stalin's Daughter on Defecting from the Soviet Union | Classic Interviews | BBC Archive

Nov 21, 2025 | This programme contains discussion of suicide.

Robin Day talks to Svetlana Allileyua, the daughter of the former General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Josef Stalin.

Sveltana caused a political sensation when, in 1967, she defected to the United States during a trip to India to scatter the ashes of her Indian lover.

She discusses the reasons for her defection, her life in the Soviet Union, her relationship with her father - whom she refers to as "a moral and spiritual monster" - and the two books that she has published: Twenty Letters to a Friend - memoirs written in 1962 while Svetlana was still in the Soviet Union - and Only One Year - written after her defection.

This interview, from Day Time: Svetlana Stalin was originally broadcast over two evenings. Part One was originally broadcast on BBC One, 5 October, 1969. Part Two was originally broadcast on BBC One, 12 October, 1969.

1917: How the Russian Revolution Led to Soviet Repression

Sep 28, 2025 | In February 1917, workers and women marched for bread, peace, and equality. By October, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, had seized power — claiming to represent the people, but lacking broad support.

With fear of the Tsar’s return and clever propaganda, Lenin and his followers consolidated control. The dream of democracy was crushed almost overnight. What followed was a century of authoritarian rule, the rise of the Soviet Union, and a global Cold War.

Featuring insights from historian Sarah Badcock (University of Nottingham), journalist Ricardo Marquina, and DW historian Jaime González Arguedas, this report uncovers the real story behind 1917. Was it a revolution for the people — or a takeover in disguise?

SCRIPT
Laura Iglesias San Martín
Jaime González Arguedas

HOST
David Levitz

EDITING
Juan Álvarez Pérez

‘My Parents Got Me Out of Soviet Russia at the Right Time. Should My Family Now Leave the US?’

THE GUARDIAN: When he left the Soviet Union for a new life in America, the novelist never imagined he would live under another authoritarian regime. Then Trump got back into power ... Is it time to move again?

Oh, to have been born in a small, stylish country with good food and favourable sea breezes. No empire, no holy faith, no condescension, no fatal ideologies. The fish is grilled, the extended family roll in on their scooters, the wine looks amber in its glass as the socially democratic sun begins its plunge into the sparkling waters below.

This was not my fortune. I was born to one dying superpower and am now living in another. I was born to an ideology pasted all over enormous granite buildings in enormous Slavic letters and now live in one where the same happens in bold caps on what was once Twitter and what purports to be Truth (Pravda?) Social. America, Russia. Russia, America. Together they were kind enough to give me the material from which I made a decent living as a writer, but they took away any sense of normality, any faith that societies can provide lives without bold-faced slogans, bald-faced lies, leaders with steely set jaws, and crusades against phantom menaces, whether Venezuelan or Ukrainian. » | Gary Shteyngart | Saturday, July 19, 2025

Elvira Bary: What the Wild 1990s Taught Me about Love and Glamour in Soviet Russia

Nov 16, 2024 | Have you ever fallen for the perfect illusion of someone? See how it happened to me!

Who hasn't fallen for the perfect illusion of someone? This is the story of how I fell in love with the editor of Men's Health, only to find out years later that the real genius behind my favorite articles wasn't who I thought.

It's a tale of youthful romance, shattered illusions, and an unexpected mentor who changed my life.

Russian Vodka: Drinking Culture in the Soviet Union

Nov 14, 2024 | Why have so many men in Soviet Russia turned to alcohol?

In this video, IElvira Bary explores why so many men in the USSR turned to alcohol. Growing up in the Soviet Union, she saw how the Communist regime suppressed the traits that give men in the Hunter personality archetype a sense of accomplishment, turning drinking into both a distorted escape and a form of quiet (or sometimes not-so-quiet) personal rebellion.

Let's dive into Soviet history, human psychology, and a bit of personal storytelling to find the answer.

The Untold Story of Russian Women in the Soviet Union

Jan 12, 2025 | Explore the Complex, Surprising, and often Contradictory Lives of Women in Soviet Russia

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.

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.