Latest / Stuff You Should Know / The Fall of the USSR, Pt I

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The Fall of the USSR, Pt I · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're just a few
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Cold War kids working out our ongoing fascination with the
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Soviet Union.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: That's right, this is a man. It's been a long
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: time since we've done a two parter. I was trying
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: to remember the last time we did this.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Probably ADHD.
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe I'm I'm weirdly excited by a two parter
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: for some reason.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a little weird.
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: It feels like less work, even though it's not.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: It's fun also to tackle something and like really understand
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: it even further.
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: You know, No, I totally agree. Like smashing this into
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: a single forty five minute episode would have short shrifted it.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: I think you know what we did. We scored it
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: with a sickle and then smashed it down the middle
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: with the hammer.
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: Wow, look at you.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we are talking about the Union of Soviet
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: Socialist Republics, the USSR for some reason, the CCCP in Russia,
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Soviet Russia. I mean, how many times are we gonna
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: do Yakov Smirnoff in this episode?
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna try not to do it once.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well you do a better Yakov Smirtoff than me,
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: so I hope you will.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: Although Brentson the very nicest time of the year.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: They so. Yeah. And in the I think the basically
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety to the very beginning of nineteen ninety two,
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: this superpower, one of two superpowers in the world. The
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: way that the world was aligned was based on these
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: two superpowers. One of them just fell over and was
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: gone in the blink of an eye, like and really quickly. Yeah,
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, like just breathtaking lee fast it went way,
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: and not just the country, this superpower, but also the
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Soviet Communism itself. It was just gone, Chuck.
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: Just yeah, gone gone, and the end of an ideal,
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: the end of a Cold war like it was. You know,
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: I can't think of anything that was bigger since the
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: end of World War two geopolitically, like this had to
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: be the biggest thing.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: I think, absolutely for sure. The best part about it though,
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: at least as far as the world was concerned. It
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: didn't take a nuclear World War three to make to
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: bring the Cold War and the bipolar I guess orientation
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: of the world to an end.
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it was a top down thing, like, it
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: wasn't an uprising, although as we'll see, like on the
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: Eastern Bloc, there were definitely some uprisings and things that
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: happened as a result, But the whole thing started as
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: a top down thing. Yeah, because of one because of
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: Michelle Gorbachev to Gorbachef always said Gorbachev.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: It was I always heard both throughout our youth.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: All right, great, so I'll just say both.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: Gorby.
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. It was because of a series of
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: decisions that he made to to not fully westernize the
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: Soviet Union, but to loosen the rain some, to get
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: a little capitalism in there, to get a little more transparency,
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: relaxed the reins on the you know, the hard fist
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: of the Soviet regime, to kind of just have a newer,
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: sort of softer Soviet Union moving forward. And boy, he
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: I don't know if he didn't fully think it through
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: or if it was just the domino effect was so fast.
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: I'm sure he was probably like wow, like I didn't
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: think this was going to happen.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, He's just standing there like looking guilty while the
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: whole room is just fallen down around him because he
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: touched something he wasn't supposed to kind.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: Of, yeah, for sure. But it all sort of started
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: with these two major reforms that he set out to establish,
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: which was in Russian it would be paristroika and glasnot,
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: but to us that would be restructuring and transparency. And
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: I guess we should talk about the restructuring.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: First, Yeah, parastroika. One more thing I do want to
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: say about Gorby though, before we move on, is I
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: didn't see anything anywhere that suggested that this was secretly purposeful.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: I think you're absolutely right. I think he was completely
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: taken off guard by the consequences of these pretty legitimate
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: and good ideas at the time, because Gorbachev inherited a
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: USSR that was in deep stagnation by the mid nineteen eighties, right, Yeah,
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: it was a planned economy and it had been moving
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: along in that direction for decades, but by this time,
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: by the eighties, it was just it was not in
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: good shape. And so, like you said, to kind of
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: like jump start the socialist economy, not replace it, but
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: jump started. He was willing to implement some Western style
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: free market ideas.
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, he was a very progressive guy for
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: Soviet Russia. You know. So it was a late eighties
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: where he launched this, Like we mentioned the first thing,
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: the restructuring or the Peristroika, and that was to sort
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: of that was sort of the economical political side of things,
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: to kind of loosen the grips a little bit, because
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: he was like the reality of what our ideals are
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: and what's really going on, Like there's a big gap there.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: So he thought, maybe if we have this program of
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: like political renewal and maybe some ethics and morals being
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: introduced in a like systematically, then maybe we can prove
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: what's going on here. And that was what Peristroika was
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: supposed to be about.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and gloucestons both of them together. But so that
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: planned economy, chuck, here's what Gorby inherited. So you have
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: the ruble, which was the official currency of the USSR.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: It was not accepted or recognized outside of the USSR
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: or outside of the Eastern Bloc, i should say, outside
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: the Iron Curtain.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, big problem.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: It is a big problem. Number two, the Soviet government
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: was responsible for deciding how much of what any given
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: thing was made in any given year. Right, it wasn't
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: based on supply and demand. It was based on a
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: planned economy. They also set prices for those things. So
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: if you put all those things together, the Soviet economy
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: had no way of signaling who needed what, where and when,
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: and so there were shortages everywhere. There's lots of waste,
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: and there were very few businesses. All the businesses in
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: this planned economy were owned by the state. There were
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: very few of those businesses that didn't need to also
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: be propped up artificially because they were just losing money
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: left and right.
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So, I mean, like you said that what he
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: inherited was in bad shape already. One of the reasons,
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: and you know, I remember this is something we had
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: heard a lot like growing up as gen xers, was
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: that the Soviets are trying to keep pace in the
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: Cold War, in the space race and everything else, and
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: they can't keep up that spending like we could there
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: in the West. And that was true. All that government
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: spending put a real dent in their their financial outlook.
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: The war and invasion of Afghanistan over a ten year
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: period from seventy nine to eighty nine was very costly. Yeah,
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: and then Chernobyl, I mean, we'll talk a little bit
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: about just the cost of like the I guess ethical
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: cost of the cover up and what that did to
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: dent their image like within the you know, Russia in
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: the Soviet Union. But it literally cost a lot of money,
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: like at least eighteen billion dollars, like nineteen eighty six
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: dollars to clean it up, to contain it. And that
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: was on top of everything else, like the straw that
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: broke the camel's back.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a big deal for them, for sure.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: Did you ever see that Chernobyl miniseriies with Jared I
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: can't remember his last Jared Harris. Yeah, one of the
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: finest actors of all time.
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: I think, Yeah, you bet your butt I did. It
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: was outstanding, outstanding.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: I wish all miniseries were that good.
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was one of the best ones i'd seen.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, agreed. So again, Perishtroika is Gorby coming along and
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: being like, Okay, we're in big trouble. We need some
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: money fast, and we need to just make some adjustments.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: So some of those adjustments were basically this was huge,
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: Like these were incredibly radical with the backdrop of the
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: of the Soviet economy, right, one was allowing companies from
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: outside the US to start up businesses in the USSR,
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: and they would be joint ventures, co owned by the
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: company and by the Soviet Union. Right yeah, So now
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden, you have new expertise, new ideas,
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: new innovations, high quality products coming in and a bunch
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: of money outside investment coming into the USSR. That's a
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: pretty good idea, right.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that was a good idea. As part of that,
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: he said, maybe we should also get like the locals involved,
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: so hand over some of the ownerships of some of
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: these state run enterprises that we've had, which is basically
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: all business from the government only owned by the government,
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: to a locally elected workers collective or a series of them.
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: And so that meant that you could have private business
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: in the Soviet Union for the first time. And then
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: the other one was, you know, you mentioned that they
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: they had like quotas for companies, they didn't look at
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: at market corrections like supply and demand to indicate how
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: they should run stuff. They said, all right, maybe we
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: should allow businesses to, like, you know, instead of having
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: shortfalls of stuff that we really need, maybe they should
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: fulfill beyond the quotas for a change. And you know,
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: you got to make the amount set by the quota,
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: but beyond that you could continue making that stuff that
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: there's demand for it for sure.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: Okay, so these are very radical ideas. But had he
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: just gone with Peristroika, my money is on Perestroika alone
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: would not have torn down the USSR. I think it
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: was a combination, and probably more than anything, it was
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: really Glasnost that did it. The problems with Peristroika were
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: immediately apparent. There were by investing more power into the
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: the the republics that all made up the Soviet Union. Yeah,
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: they started to withhold tax payments that were supposed to
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: go to the central government. Right, they were kind of
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: a little bit emboldened. I guess by that little extra
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: power they were given. Yeah, for sure, some of the
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: ministers who would run these places for the government were
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: now running them kind of like as private citizens, and
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: they started looting industry however they could. It just immediately started.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: And then the old quota system was what they had
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: in place of supplying demand. But no one under the
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: Soviet regime had any idea what other stuff you could
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: use for supplying demand. Plus the ruble was still artificially controlled,
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: so they didn't have any market signals. Nobody knew what
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: the heck was going on at this point.
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was all brand new, like and
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: we'll talk about this later, but you know, you can't
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: just flick a switch overnight and say, all of a sudden,
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: we're a more free market economy and let's just see
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: how that works, because it had been so long, right
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: and so you know, entwined in the government's iron fist.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: It was just a mess. And so the economy started
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: just going bananas in all sorts of weird ways, and
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: the government tried to rein that in by spending a
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: lot to try and outmaneuver all the weird things that
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: were happening, and it was just a big mess kind
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: of right off the bat.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: Yes, so it was a mess, but the Soviet Union's
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: economy was already a mess, and I don't think just
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: Peristroika would have done what happened. It took glass Nos
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: in my opinion, to bring down the Soviet Union? Should
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: we keep going? Are you kidding me?
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: With a cliffhanger like that?
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: Okay?
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: Oh man, I was like, we're taking a message break,
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: and you're.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: Like, hey man, you convinced me immediately.
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great cliffhanger. We're going to come back
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: and explain what Glassnos was right after this, all right,
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: Josh T's Glasnost, and that was the second part of
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: the one two punch to try and introduce a new
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: style of government in the Soviet Union. And this, you know,
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: calls for this kind of started coming after the Chernobyl
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: cover up in eighty six, and the whole idea behind
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: Glasnost was more transparency. Like I said, that's what the
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: word means, so relax some of this you know, very
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: notorious state censorship of everything. And so once that was done,
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: all these social ills that plagued the Soviet Union started
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: to be exposed a little bit in the media, so
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: you know, like mass famine, the gulags, you know, Soviet
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: history basically kind of being realized for the first time
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: and displayed for people to make their own like judgments on.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: It was a good idea, but again, once those fladgates
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: were open, it was turned out to not be a
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: very good idea.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: Yes, so I believe Gorbachev was a true believer in
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: the idea that the Soviet Union needed greater freedom of
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: speech and greater freedom of the press. I think you
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: truly believed that this was also calculated politically as well.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: And his position was, Okay, if I can have an
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: open conversation with the Soviet people about the need for
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: reforms and all the stuff we need to implement because
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: of these problems we have, they're going to support my
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: policies and plans and me And by doing that I
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: will be I will pull the levers of power away
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: from the conservatives who have managed to hang on to
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: power and keep things as they were, stagnated in trouble
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: by that censorship, by the silence, silencing of critics, by
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: intimidation and actual violence. If I get people talking openly
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: about the problems, then we can have real change. So
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: it was politically calculated, even though he did almost certainly
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: actually believe that it needed to happen too.
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. But the thing is, like what you
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: were saying was the conservatives had managed to hang on
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: to that power by keeping things as they were, which
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: wasn't great, but it was stable in a way like
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: it wasn't It wasn't chaos, it was highly controlled, and
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: that's the way they liked it. So to disrupt that
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: system was. You know, it's a pretty bold move. He himself.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: He was part of the what was known as the Nomenclatura,
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: which was the sort of the upper echelon of Soviet society.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: It's like the elite bureaucrats, and they had perks that
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: other people didn't have. Obviously. They had like you know, estates,
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: and they had nicer cars and things like that. And
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: that was not a part of the Communist experiment, the
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: communist idea or this idea of social equality. And I
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: think he had spent so much time in his career
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: in the nomenclature that he really was out of touch
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: with what was going on for the average sort of
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: day to day life of the average Soviet.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so he knew enough to know that they were
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: suffering and weren't fully aware of why, but he had
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: no idea of just how much they're suffering. Was promoting
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: a desire for real, real change, Yeah, not even like
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: small incremental change or even semi big change like he
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: was proposing, but sweeping change essentially, And that's what he
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: found out once he opened up Glass nost And it
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: wasn't immediately adopted. I think the press actually kind of
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: hung back for a little while at first, like is
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: this trap are you trying to Are we going to
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: be arrested? And he was like yeah, I think he
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: said at some point like there's no subject that's off
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: the table. Everything is open for discussion, And very quickly
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: the press started to do with their posted to do.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: They began reporting on the ills of Soviet society.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was crazy thing to do, looking back, yes,
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: they you know, because all of a sudden, the media
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: is writing about food shortages and writing about the rampant
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: alcoholism and the pollution and the mortality rates. We'll get
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: to some stats later on, but the second tier sort
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: of position of women in Russian and Soviet society, state crimes,
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: A lot of that was like under Stalin's rule obviously,
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: but you know, that stuff was still going on, and
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: so all of these sort of you know, true believers,
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: and as you'll see, like especially in Mother Russia, the
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: Eastern Bloc sort of had other ideas, but especially in
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: Mother Russia, like this is something they really believed in
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: and they had never received this information. So it was
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: easy if you were, you know, in the United States
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: or in the West, to be like they have no
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: idea what's going on in their own country because everything
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: is being censored. But they really didn't. And you know,
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: it's if you're living in a smaller town or a
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: village and you're looking around, you might see some ills,
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: but if you're reading about how everything is great, then
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: it's gonna you know, slant your opinion of it all.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and even more than that, as we'll talk about
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: it in a little while, a lot of Soviets identities
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: were rooted in the Soviet experiment that now had been
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: exposed as being based on torture and executions and the
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: starvation of millions and millions of peasants. You know, like, yeah,
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: that it shook them to their core. It wasn't just
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: like a loss of faith in their government. It was
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: a loss of faith in their own themselves, I guess
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: in some cases.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And you know, like I mentioned, especially
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: in Russia because that was sort of the center of
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: the Soviet Union. But once this happened in these formally
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: independent satellite states, like you said earlier, I think he
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: really underestimated how ready they all were to really break
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: free and sort of rise up. And you know, there
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: were some deep seated like ancient hostilities and rivalries among
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: some of these Soviet states that were forced to be
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: together because they were part of the Soviet Union. And
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: you know, a good example you found was the ethnic
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: Albanians and the Serbs. They had hated each other since
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: the fourteenth century, since the Battle of the Field of Blackbirds,
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: but as a part of the Soviet Union, they were,
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: you know, supposed to be fellow countrymen. So as soon
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: as they got the chance to hate each other again,
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: they did, And that's why there was so much fighting
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: in the Balkans, like for basically all throughout the nineties
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: once this happened, Yeah.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Because the Soviets no longer forced them together and they
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: were like, okay, it's on, let's start committing atrocities, and
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: they all did. The other thing that really kind of
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: happened with class nos was the like the exposure of
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: Western media, Western pop culture, Like this was not something
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: that people had in the in the USSR had like
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: really been exposed to at this point. Did you ever
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: see that documentary where somebody was smuggling like Chuck Norris
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: movies into I think Bulgaria or something like that, and
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: they credited like these bootleg American movies is essentially like
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: creating like unrest among the youth and leading eventually to revolution.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: No, because they were like, Wow, there's a guy like
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: Chuck Norris in the world that we don't know about.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, essentially Chuck Norris Rambo. Like they went crazy for it.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: And they also now saw the Western view of their
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: country and their culture, and they were like, wow, this's
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: maybe you are pretty backwards. We don't have anybody like that.
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, you know, and I'm not saying this
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: in jest because you know how much I love Billy Joel,
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: but that I think it was a couple of concerts
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: he did in the Soviet Union. Yeah, that was a
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: really really big deal, Like no Western artists had ever
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: performed there, And yeah, I think that made a big difference,
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: you know, as far as opening people's eyes to to
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: Western culture.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think Metallica did too.
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: Oh did they later obviously, yeah, a little.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: Later, but you know, it might have been before the
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: fall of the Soviet Union, but probably right around the
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: time ALF. I mean, once they found out that ALF
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: was on TV, They're like, it's it is over for
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: Communist Russia.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: Well, the big thing that really allowed the satellite states
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: outside of Russia itself to really, I guess I feel
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: like they had a real chance at uprising was when
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: Gorbachev renounced the Brezhnev doctrine, which was the doctrine that said, Hey,
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: we're going to defend everybody here, We're going to defend
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: socialism with this massive army. We're all together, The Soviet
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: Bloc is is one, and we will all defend each other,
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: sort of like a NATO thing m And in its place,
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: Gorbachev was like, you know, you guys, pursue your own
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: reforms and you know, govern government with the support of
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: the people, like all these satellite states. And again just
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: the pedal to the metal that happened after that, and
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: once they knew that they didn't have Moscow's military support,
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: like removing that show of force that was kind of
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: holding everything together. So once that went away, it just
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: started to grumble.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, now I think you've created a really good cliffhanger. No,
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: so what do you say, should we take our second
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: break here?
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, let's do it.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: Okay, we're going to do that, guys.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: Chuck just agree, Okay, Chuck.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: So where we last left off was when Gorbachef abandoned
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: the Brezhnev doctrine that said we're going to show up
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: with our military if there's any unrest in any of
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: the satellite states or republics. And without that show of force,
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: that was probably, like you said before the break, the
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: thing that really kind of gave rise or gave support
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: to these nationalist movements. And each time one of the
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: like the satellite states. So we're focusing now on satellite states.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: We should differentiate. So there were fifteen republics in the USSR.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: It included like Latvia, Estonia, Turkmenistan, a bunch of others,
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: and then there were satellite states. There were ostensibly independent
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: countries like Czechoslovakia, Hungary, poll In, Albania, few others. Those
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: are considered satellite states. And you put all of them together.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: So you have the USSR with the fifteen republics and
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: the satellite states. Now you have the Eastern Bloc and
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: all that's behind what they called the Iron Curtain. That
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: whole portion of the world was turned in on itself,
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: had turned its back on the rest of the world,
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: and was focused on its own socialists experiment. Aside from
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: helping out other countries that wanted to try their own
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: socialists experiments, which is why there was secret fighting in
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: like Nicaragua and why Cuba had missiles, nuclear missiles aimed
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: at the United States. For the most part, though, the
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: Eastern Bloc paid attention to itself and kept the rest
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: of the world.
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: Out, that's right, and kept them in. But once there
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: was freedom of movement and travel from behind the Iron Curtain,
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: this was like a really really key to the weakening
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: of the Union. And they were like, you know what's
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: really nice is is Budapest And that's just you know,
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: a handful of hours by train into Austria. So all
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: of a sudden you had tens of thousands of East
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: Germans defecting. Most people wanted to stay in like in
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: their houses, so like people want to live where they
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: have their have lived their whole lives, right, So it
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: wasn't like everybody left like citizens of other Soviet republics.
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: East Germans, most of them wanted to stay in their homes,
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: but they wanted things to be different. So as soon
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: as sort of the door was open politically, and all
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: of a sudden you could vote for different candidates, like
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: those candidates completely swept every election that happened.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Poland was the first one. It's also probably the
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: best example of them all because being in the Eastern Bloc,
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: there was one party. When you went to vote, you
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: voted for one party, and that was the Communist Party
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: of the Soviet Union. Even if you had an independent country,
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: the Communists had your country, your government on lockdown, right.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: And at one point, as part of like this series
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: of decisions that just took this rolling snowball and just
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: turned it into an avalanche, was Gorbachev saying, no longer
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: are alternative party's outlawed. We can have other parties. And
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: that first started in Poland with the Solidarity Party, which
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: had been a trade union for a decade or so
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: and had turned into a populist, anti authoritarian party. And
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: now that it was possible for Solidarity to run against
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: the Communists, like you said, the board was just totally
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: swept by then.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: Wasn't that like Villenza? Yeah? I remember, I mean all
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: this stuff was on the news, but I was in
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: late high school into early college, and that wasn't you know,
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: I wasn't paying attention like I do. You know, as
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: you get older, I think the same as most people.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: You didn't have a Solidarity Party T shirt in the
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: It looked like a Smirnoff label.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: But I remember, you know, all of this stuff was
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: in the background, always on the news. But yeah, once
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: the Solidarity Party had a chance to run, it was
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: it was a sort of partially free election because what
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: they did was they said, all right, you can have
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: a new party, but it's not just for one hundred
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: percent of the available seats. The solid Solidarity Party can
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: have thirty five, like up to thirty five percent of
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: the seats in there, you know, the Polish equivalent of
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: the House of Representatives or the House of Commons. The
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: other sixty five percent were still reserved for the Communist Party,
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: so they would still hold on to power. And then
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: they outside a newly created Senate, so one hundred newly
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: created Senate seats, and Solidarity won ninety nine out of
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: the hundred Senate seats. The one independent that won later
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: switched to Solidarity, and they completely obviously filled the thirty
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: five percent allotment that they were well allotted in the House,
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: and the Communists were so unpopular they didn't even get
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: all the votes they needed to fill the other.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: Six Yeah, Yeah, so Solidarity showed the rest of the
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: world like, like we have been under the communist thumb,
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: the Soviet thumb. We don't want that. Not only do
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: we want to be independent, we don't want to be
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: communists anymore. Yeah, and they weren't after that. I mean,
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: once Solidarity came into power, Poland very quickly was like,
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: we're not associated with them anymore. Everybody, come on over
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: to Poland. We have amazing sausages and all sorts of
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: other good things that you'll find out when you get here.
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: That's right, But we're please, no jokes. We've heard about
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: all that stuff, but yeah, leave those at home.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: Right. Our submarines do not have screen doors on them.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: That's right. I've never understood that. I've always been to
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: look that up on why that was a thing.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: Oh, because if you like, once its submerged, all the
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: water would come through the screen door.
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: Now I remember jokes about Polish people. I never knew
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: the background to that.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: I think they just got picked one of those things
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: where it's like, so this group has all the jokes
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: against them, so then you start to just think they're
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: all stupid, so that just begets more jokes against them.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: I think it's like.
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: Detroit, Yes, exactly, I'm just kidding, Detroit. We love you.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: So the Berlin Wall comes down, obviously, that was a
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: big deal. Germany was reunified, you know, sort of been
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: a model of the West, and that was just like
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: that was less than a year after the Polish elections
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: of nineteen eighty nine, so like things were really happening
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: at a fast clip. The leader of Bulgaria retired, the
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: Czechoslovak government was replaced. The only place, kind of shockingly
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: that you had a bloody revolution was in Romania and
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: chou Chesq.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, took that happened in a few months in nineteen
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: eighty nine. All of that, all of those satellite states
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: just COMMUNI fell. So, I mean, I can't. I wish
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: i'd been a little older. I remember when the Berlin
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: Wall fell, and I was like, Mom, we gotta go,
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: We gotta get on a bread, we have to get there.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: This is amazing. She wanted to so bad, but she
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: just we didn't.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: You're like, I've always wanted to see East Germany exactly,
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: and this is our only chance.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I wish I had been a little bit
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: older so it could be so I could have paid
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: attention to this, because I can't imagine what it was
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: like paying attention to this over just these few months
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: from the time that Poland's elections were held in June
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: to the end of nineteen eighty nine, like just country
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: after countries, communist regimes fell, and like you said, only
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: Romania's turned bloody, and you can pretty much fully blame
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: the Chesky regime for starting it. They started essentially, Yeah,
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: he was.
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: The remaining dictator there, Nikolai Chochescu and his wife Elena,
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: who was also appointed in a high office by her husband,
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: so they were, you know, they were a power couple,
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: I guess. But they had mass protests breaking out, and
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: Chouceescu went to the military and he said kill them,
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: fire on these unarmed civilians. And he thought that would
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: have been like, all right, we're gonna quash this really quick.
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: But the military was like, bro, that's we're not into that.
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: And so they defected just like a few days after
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: he ordered them to fire upon them. Not only did
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: they not do that, they defected to the protester side,
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: and he and Elena saw their riding on the wall
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: and they're like, we need to get the heck out
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: of here. But the military caught them technically had a
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: military tribunal. It was pretty short form though, and they
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: were found guilty and executed by firing squad.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and strung upside down by their ankles for public viewing.
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, harsh stuff.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: There was a rumor too, do you remember hearing this
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: thatches sort of thatchescus were fed to dogs. Yeah, after
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: they were dead, And that is a rumor. From what
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: I can tell, it did not happen. But the reason
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: that rumor came about is twofold one Chilchsky was very famous,
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: especially in Romania, for having appointed his favorite labrador as
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: a general. Yeah, so there's a dog theme with that.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: And then he was blamed specifically for the terrible problem
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: with feral packs of dogs what used to be family
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: dogs roaming Romania at times, like killing children and stuff.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: Right Like, it was a bad problem, and the reason
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: why it existed was because he had ordered a bunch
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: of villages bulldozed so he could build these new agritechnical centers.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: And then after he bulldozed them, and before he could
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: build the centers, he just kind of lost interest in it,
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: moved on, and so a lot of people lost their homes,
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: so did a lot of dogs. And that's where they
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: got their feral dog problem from. Yeah, and then I
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: remember this. I will never forget it. This wasn't like
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: a jog my memory. I think about this joke every
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: I don't know, a year and a half. I would say,
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: Dennis Miller, Yeah, do you remember that?
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: I do.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: I was.
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: I thought Dennis Miller was very, very funny when he
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: was the SNL news guy.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, not bad, but he was never funnier than when
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: he was on Monday Night football.
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: Oh god, yeah, what was the chowcheska joke? So?
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, on Weekend Update on Sarah Live, like a couple
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: weeks after the chutchscues were executed and the rumor was
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: that they were fed to the dog, Dennis Miller said
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: that Purina had released a new product, puppy Chuchescu.
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you remember that one.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: What happened next?
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, this is the end of nineteen eighty nine, basically,
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: and the only communist state still left west of the
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: Soviet Union was Albania. And you know, Gorbacheff could have
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: like stepped in. He had a very non interventionalist way
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: about him. I think he knew also that like the
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: genie was out of the bottle and like trying to
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: bottle it back up as impossible and resuming the Cold
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: War again is a bad idea, so he stayed out
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: of it. And you know, it felt, like you said,
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: in just a handful of months, like right before the
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: world's eyes.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: Right, and so far we're talking just satellite states already independent,
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: ostensibly independent nations took their independence back in nineteen eighty nine.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: The USSR is still together, and Gorbatrov is not pushing
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: for it to break up. He's kind of trying to
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: figure out how to balance these reforms he just introduced
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: with keeping the USSR together, and it proves impossible for him.
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, he sees what's happening all around, and
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: you know, he abandoned communism. Basically he voluntarily devolved power,
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: which again, just all these year later, it looks like
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: a crazy thing to do, but just seating all that
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: power when all they had ever known and all the
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: West had ever known was just just how powerful the
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: Soviet Union was and controlling everything, and to just loosen
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: the knot on all of that was just really a
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: pretty wacky, wacky thing. To do.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, especially unilatterally, I don't know quite enough
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: about modern Russian history to know who else, like who
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: his advisors and aids were. Yeah, yeah, So it basically
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: just seems like this is Gorbachev doing it himself. And
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: I'm sure he did have help, but in the end,
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: it was Gorbachev doing this himself, Like this wasn't some
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: coalition with other people, Like he was the head of
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: the Soviet the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the CPSU,
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: the ruling body of the entire Eastern Bloc at one
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: point up until very recently. He used this position as
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: the head of the CPSU to do all the CPSU.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: It was as simple as that. And what's that happened?
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: If you don't have the party who is pushing everybody
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: around and censoring everything, if they don't exist anymore, now,
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: it's a free for all. And that was what he
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: did at the I think the end of nineteen ninety.
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he created a what we would think of as
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: the House of reps in their Congress of People's Deputies
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: that was, you know, mostly kind of fairly elected, at
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: least compared to what it had been. He ended like
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: we said earlier, you know, he opened it up to
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: other political parties, which is just going to completely weaken
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: the grip of communism by virtue of doing that. And
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: then he created an office of president. He appointed himself president,
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: so it's not like he was elected, but this was
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: in March of nineteen ninety and it was a brand
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: new office. And you know that was that was a
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: big deal to have like an eventual elected president.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: It was. And the reason why he did that is
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: because he dissolved the Communist Party, so he couldn't be
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: the head of the USSR because he was the head
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: of the Communist Party if the Communist Party didn't exist anymore.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: So now he's like I call president of the USSR.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: He also introduced elections, so each of the fifteen republics
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: had what's called the Supreme Soviet, which was their own parliament,
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: and he said, hey, guys, why don't you start having
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: free elections with alternative parties legalized, and well, let's see
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: what happens. I'm gorbie, I'm pretty sure that the USSR
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: is going to want to stay together. And I hope
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: you didn't put any money on that, because he would
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: have lost big time.
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, we already covered kind of what
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: Poland kicked off. The Baltics really helped set a tone
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: as well. Pretty much immediately Lithuania said all right, six
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: we're seceding. We're not a part of the USSR anymore.
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: There's a March of nineteen ninety. Very quickly after lot
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: Via and Estonia said yeah, we're going to secede to
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: the Georgians did the Armenians did. And these were you know,
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: kind of small time as far as the might of
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: the Soviet Union, like they could have still had a
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: Soviet Union after this, even with these I guess secessionists.
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: But it was really Ukraine, Like Ukraine was and is
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: a very big and powerful country and just second after Russia.
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: And so that is a that's why you know, after Ukraine,
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: I think they held a referendum in ninety percent of
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: the voters voted for independence, and after Ukraine left, the
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: writing was really on the wall. But that's also why
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: if you just want some modern context of why Putin
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: has why Ukraine means so much to him personally, it
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: is because Putin is of the old you know, as
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: we'll see later, when he came into power it was
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: on a wave of nostalgia for the old days, and
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: Ukraine leaving was a real big thorn in his side
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: and just the side of sort of their history, the
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: Soviet history.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he said publicly that it's ridiculous Estonia is an
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: independent country. Like he does not see these as independent countries.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: He sees them as republics of the Soviet Union that
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: should be brought back together with Russia. Right, And that's
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: what happened. I mean, this is so nineteen eighty nine
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: you saw the satellite states break out of the Eastern Bloc,
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: and then now nineteen ninety to nineteen ninety one, now
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: it's happening with republics like actual the actual Soviet Union
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: is starting to break up because the republic states are
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: now saying we're independent, we're not part of the USSR anymore.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: And now now everyone's looking to Russia, which, being a
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: Cold War kid, I always basically used Russia and the
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: Soviet Union as interchangeable. But Russia was a republic of
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: the Soviet Union, far and away the most powerful one.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: That's where the seat of Soviet government was. But it
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: was still a republic just like Latvia and Estonia and
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: so now everybody's like, Okay, what are you going to do?
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: You guys are going to try to carry on as
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: your own kind of Soviet Union, You're going to start
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: World War three? What's going on next? And I say,
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: chuck that we end this episode here.
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the end of part one, everybody, And as
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: per tradition, we don't do listener mails at the end
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: of a part one. I think we just say, you know,
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: tune in on Thursday.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, we go out and stunned silence.
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: I feel like, don't do we usually say anything? It's
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: been so long. Aren't you the one that handles this?
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I know. But it's fun watching.
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: So thank you everybody, and we'll be back with part
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: two of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: That was great, But don't forget to tell them what
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: our email addresses.
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: Oh do we have to do that?
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: We usually do?
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: All right?
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: What is it?
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: I Heart Stuff podcast at iHeartMedia dot com, iHeartRadio, iHeartRadio.
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: I see I never say it. This is your job.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: You did great?
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: All right, we'll see everyone Thursday.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.