In short
Part 1 of “The Fall of the USSR” explains how USSR collapse accelerated from 1985-1991 via Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms (perestroika and glasnost), economic dysfunction, and the domino effect across Eastern Bloc satellite states and Soviet republics.
Guest backgrounds
Josh, Chuck, and Jerry are the hosts of Stuff You Should Know; they describe themselves as “Cold War kids” with ongoing fascination with the Soviet Union.
Key claims
The USSR ended “breathtakingly fast” without a nuclear war. Gorbachev’s perestroika (restructuring) introduced limited market-like changes, but the podcast argues glasnost (openness/transparency) was the main catalyst because it exposed social ills and undermined conservative control. Gorbachev also renounced the Brezhnev Doctrine, removing Soviet military backing and enabling rapid uprisings.
Notable examples
Chernobyl cover-up (1986), Afghanistan war costs, Poland’s Solidarity electoral sweep (1989), Berlin Wall fall and Eastern Bloc communist collapses, Romania’s 1989 revolution and execution of Nicolae Ceaușescu, and Soviet republic secessions (Baltics, Ukraine referendum with ~90% independence support).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOIntroduction to the USSR
1:42 to 2:28
The hosts introduce the topic of the USSR and their fascination with it.
“I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too.”
The Collapse of a Superpower
2:28 to 4:42
Discussion on the swift collapse of the USSR and its implications.
“Like smashing this into a single 45-minute episode would have short-stricted it, I think.”
Gorbachev's Reforms: Perestroika
4:42 to 6:41
Exploring Gorbachev's reforms, particularly Perestroika and its impact.
“I always heard both throughout our youth.”
Economic Challenges of the USSR
6:41 to 8:14
Analysis of the economic issues faced by the USSR prior to its collapse.
“But by this time, by the 80s, it was just it was not in good shape.”
The Role of Glasnost
8:14 to 10:41
Discussion about Glasnost and its crucial role in the fall of the USSR.
“So if you put all those things together, the Soviet economy had no way of signaling who needed what, where, when.”
Consequences of Reforms
10:41 to 14:00
The immediate ramifications of Gorbachev's reforms on the Soviet economy.
“So now all of a sudden you have new expertise, new ideas, new innovation.”
Introduction to Glasnost
14:00 to 15:18
Learn about the concept of Glasnost and its significance in the Soviet Union's history.
“It took glasnost, in my opinion, to bring down the Soviet Union.”
Innovative Grocery Solutions
15:26 to 16:32
Learn about Nourish and Bloom Market's autonomous grocery store technology.
“We can eradicate food deserts with this technology.”
The Impact of Glasnost
17:51 to 23:33
Understand how Glasnost changed the perception of Soviet society and governance.
“All right, Josh teased Glasnost, and that was the second part of the one-two punch to try and introduce a new style of government in the Soviet Union.”
The Fallout of the Soviet Union
23:33 to 27:23
Examine the consequences of Glasnost on Soviet satellite states and internal conflicts.
“And, you know, like I mentioned, especially in Russia, because that was sort of the center of the Soviet Union.”
Show all 19 chapters
Cliffhanger and Break
27:23 to 27:33
Listen as the hosts tease the next topic before taking another break.
“Now, I think you've created a really good cliffhanger.”
Cliffhanger and Break
28:53 to 29:45
Listen as the hosts tease the next topic before taking another break.
“Guys, we got to talk about your secret late-night internet searches.”
Cliffhanger and Break
29:48 to 29:58
Listen as the hosts tease the next topic before taking another break.
Gorbachev's Reforms and Nationalist Movements
29:58 to 42:00
Explore how Gorbachev's abandonment of the Brezhnev doctrine led to nationalist movements in satellite states.
“we're going to show up with our military if there's any unrest in any of the satellite states or republics.”
Gorbachev's Reforms and the Dissolution of the USSR
42:00 to 46:00
Discover how Gorbachev's actions led to the weakening and eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union.
“And to just loosen the knot on all of that was just really a pretty wacky thing to do.”
The Impact of Ukraine's Independence
46:00 to 46:30
Learn about the significance of Ukraine's independence and its effects on Soviet dynamics.
“Like he does not see these as independent countries.”
The Fallout of the USSR's Collapse
46:30 to 47:14
Understand the ramifications of the USSR's collapse and Russia's role in the aftermath.
“And now, now everyone's looking to Russia, which being a Cold War kid, I always basically used Russia and the Soviet Union as interchangeable.”
The Fallout of the USSR's Collapse
47:59 to 48:32
Understand the ramifications of the USSR's collapse and Russia's role in the aftermath.
“Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.”
The Fallout of the USSR's Collapse
49:12 to 49:39
Understand the ramifications of the USSR's collapse and Russia's role in the aftermath.
“You ever show up late to the game and your friends have already saved your seat and your drink and even a plate?”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Josh Clark:This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
0:04Chuck Bryant:With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder that Capital One Bank Guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also tell you about how Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends. It's pretty much all he talks about. In a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash Bank Guy. Capital One N-A, member FDIC.
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1:34Josh Clark:So if you like YouTube, you'll love premium. Sign up now for your free trial. Terms and conditions apply. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
1:51Chuck Bryant:Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too. And we're just a few Cold War kids working out our ongoing fascination with the Soviet Union.
2:03Josh Clark:That's right. This is a, man, it's been a long time since we've done a two-parter. I was trying to remember the last time we did this. Probably ADHD. Yeah, maybe. I'm weirdly excited by a two-parter for some reason.
2:17Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it is a little weird. It feels like less work, even though it's not. It's fun also to tackle something and like really understand it even further, you know?
2:28Josh Clark:No, I totally agree. Like smashing this into a single 45-minute episode would have short-stricted it, I think.
2:35Chuck Bryant:You know what we did? We scored it with a sickle and then smashed it down the middle with a hammer.
2:41Josh Clark:Wow. Look at you.
2:43Chuck Bryant:Yeah. So we are talking about the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR. are, for some reason, the CCCP in Russia, Soviet Russia. I mean, how many times are we going to do Yakov Smirnoff in this episode?
2:59Josh Clark:I'm going to try not to do it once.
3:01Chuck Bryant:No. Well, you do a better Yakov Smirnoff than me, so I hope you will. Although, Brent's in the very nicest time of year. There you go. So, yeah. And in the, I think the, basically 1990 to the very beginning of 1992, this, superpower, one of two superpowers in the world, the way that the world was aligned was based on these two superpowers. One of them just fell over and was gone in the blink of an eye. Like really quickly. Yeah. I mean, like just breathtakingly fast, it went away. And not just the country, this superpower, but also the Soviet communism itself. It was just gone, Chuck.
3:50Josh Clark:Just gone. Gone. And the end of an ideal, the end of a Cold War, like it was, you know, I can't think of anything that was bigger since the end of World War II geopolitically. Like this had to be the biggest thing.
4:06Chuck Bryant:I think absolutely for sure. The best part about it, though, at least as far as the world was concerned, it didn't take a nuclear World War III to bring the Cold War and the bipolar, I guess, orientation of the world to an end.
4:26Josh Clark:Yeah, and it was a top-down thing. Like, it wasn't an uprising. Although, as we'll see, like on the Eastern Bloc, there were definitely some uprisings and things that happened as a result. But the whole thing started as a top-down thing because of one guy, because of Michele Gorbachev. Is it Gorbachev? I always said Gorbachev.
4:45Chuck Bryant:I always heard both throughout our youth.
4:48Josh Clark:All right, great. So I'll just say both. I'm just going to call him Gorby. Yeah, that's right. It was because of a series of decisions that he made to not fully westernize the Soviet Union, but to loosen the reins some, to get a little capitalism in there, to get a little more transparency, relax the reins on the hard fist of the Soviet regime, to kind of just have a newer sort of softer Soviet Union moving forward. and boy, he, I don't know if he didn't fully think it through or if it was just the domino effect was so fast. I'm sure he was probably like, wow, like I didn't think this was going to happen.
5:35Chuck Bryant:Yeah, he's just standing there like looking guilty while the whole room is just falling down around him because he touched something he wasn't supposed to, kind of.
5:44Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. But it all sort of started with these two major reforms that he set out to establish, which was in Russian, it would be perestroika and glasnot. But to us, that would be restructuring and transparency. And I guess we should talk about the restructuring first.
6:05Chuck Bryant:Yeah, perestroika. One more thing I do want to say about Gorby, though, before we move on, is I didn't see anything anywhere that suggested that this was secretly purposeful. I think you're absolutely right. I think he was completely taken off guard by the consequences of these pretty legitimate and good ideas at the time. Because Gorbachev inherited a USSR that was in deep stagnation by the mid-1980s, right? Yeah. It was a planned economy and had been moving along in that direction for decades. But by this time, by the 80s, it was just it was not in good shape. And so, like you said, to kind of like jumpstart the socialist economy, not replace it, but jumpstart it.
6:54Chuck Bryant:He was willing to implement some Western style free market ideas. Yeah.
6:59Josh Clark:I mean, he was a very progressive guy for Soviet Russia, you know. So it was the late 80s where he launched this, like we mentioned the first thing, the restructuring or the perestroika. And that was to sort of that was sort of the economical, political side of things to kind of loosen the grips a little bit, because he was like the reality of what our ideals are and what's really going on. And like there's a big gap there. So he thought maybe if we have this program of like political renewal and maybe some ethics and morals being introduced like systematically, then maybe we can improve what's going on here.
7:42Josh Clark:And that was what perestroika was supposed to be about.
7:45Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and Glastonis, both of them together. But that so that planned economy, Chuck, here's what Gorby inherited. So you have the ruble, which was the official currency of the USSR. It was not accepted or recognized outside of the USSR or outside of the Eastern Bloc, I should say, outside the Iron Curtain.
8:02Josh Clark:Yeah, big problem.
8:03Chuck Bryant:It is a big problem. Number two, the Soviet government was responsible for deciding how much of what any given thing was made in any given year, right? It wasn't based on supply and demand. It was based on a planned economy. Yeah. They also set prices for those things. So if you put all those things together, the Soviet economy had no way of signaling who needed what, where, when. And so there were shortages everywhere. There was lots of waste. And there were very few businesses. All the businesses in this planned economy were owned by the state. There were very few of those businesses that didn't need to also be propped up artificially because they were just losing money left and right.
8:50Yeah.
8:51Josh Clark:So, I mean, like you said, what he inherited was in bad shape already. One of the reasons, and, you know, I remember this is something we heard a lot, like, growing up as Gen Xers, was that the Soviets are trying to keep pace in the Cold War and the space race and everything else. And they can't keep up that spending like we could there in the West. And that was true. All that government spending put a real dent in their financial outlook. the war and invasion of Afghanistan over a 10-year period from 79 to 89 was very costly. And then Chernobyl. I mean, we'll talk a little bit about just the cost of, like, the, I guess, ethical cost of the cover-up and what that did to dent their image, like, within, you know, Russia and the Soviet Union.
9:41Josh Clark:but it literally cost a lot of money, like at least$18 billion, like 1986 dollars, to clean it up, to contain it. And that was on top of everything else, like the straw that broke the camel's back.
9:54Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that was a big deal for them, for sure. Did you ever see that Chernobyl miniseries with Jared, I can't remember his last name. Jared Harris. Yeah, one of the finest actors of all time, I think.
10:06Josh Clark:Yeah, you bet your butt I did. It was outstanding.
10:09Chuck Bryant:Outstanding. I wish all miniseries were that good.
10:13Josh Clark:Yeah, it was one of the best ones I'd seen.
10:15Chuck Bryant:Yeah, agreed. So again, Perestroika is Gorby coming along and being like, okay, we're in big trouble, we need some money fast, and we need to just make some adjustments. So some of those adjustments were basically, this was huge. Like, these were incredibly radical with the backdrop of the Soviet economy, right? Yeah, for sure. One was allowing companies from outside the USSR to start up businesses in the USSR, and they would be joint ventures co-owned by the company and by the Soviet Union, right? Yeah. So now all of a sudden you have new expertise, new ideas, new innovation. Better stuff. New high-quality products coming in, and a bunch of money outside investment coming into the USSR.
11:01Chuck Bryant:That's a pretty good idea, right?
11:03Josh Clark:Yeah, that was a good idea. As part of that, he said, maybe we should also get, like, the locals involved. So hand over some of the ownerships of some of these state-run enterprises that we've had, which is basically all business. Right. From the government only owned by the government to a locally elected workers collective or a series of them. And so that meant that you could have private business in the Soviet Union for the first time. And then the other one was, you know, you mentioned that they had, like, quotas for companies. They didn't look at market corrections like supply and demand to indicate how they should run stuff.
11:41Josh Clark:They said, all right, maybe we should allow businesses to, like, you know, instead of having shortfalls of stuff that we really need, maybe they should fulfill beyond the quotas for a change. And, you know, you've got to make the amount set by the quota. But beyond that, you could continue making that stuff if there is demand for it.
11:58Chuck Bryant:For sure. Okay, so these are very radical ideas, but had he just gone with Perestroika, my money is on Perestroika alone would not have torn down the USSR. I think it was a combination, and probably more than anything, it was really Glasnost that did it. The problems with Perestroika were immediately apparent. There were, by investing more power into the republics that all made up the Soviet Union. They started to withhold tax payments that were supposed to go to the central government, right? They were kind of a little bit emboldened, I guess, by that little extra power they were given.
12:44Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure.
Read the full transcript
12:44Chuck Bryant:Some of the ministers who had run these places for the government were now running them kind of like as private citizens. and they started looting industry however they could. It just immediately started. And then the old quota system was what they had in place of supply and demand, but no one under the Soviet regime had any idea what other stuff you could use for supply and demand. Plus the ruble was still artificially controlled, so they didn't have any market signals. Nobody knew what the heck was going on at this point.
13:19Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, it was all brand new. And we'll talk about this later. But, you know, you can't just flick a switch overnight and say all of a sudden we're a more free market economy. And let's just see how that works because it had been so long.
13:32Chuck Bryant:Right.
13:33Josh Clark:And so, you know, entwined in the government's iron fist. It was just a mess. And so the economy started just going bananas in all sorts of weird ways. And the government tried to rein that in by spending a lot to try and like outmaneuver all the weird things that were happening. and it was just a big mess kind of right off the bat.
13:54Chuck Bryant:Yes. So it was a mess, but the Soviet Union's economy was already a mess. And I don't think just Perestroika would have done what happened. It took glasnost, in my opinion, to bring down the Soviet Union. Should we keep going right now? Are you kidding me?
14:11Josh Clark:With a cliffhanger like that? Okay. Oh, man. I was like, we're taking a message break and you're like,
14:19Chuck Bryant:Hey, man, you convinced me immediately.
14:22Josh Clark:Yeah, that's a great cliffhanger. We're going to come back and explain what Glasnost was right after this.
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15:27Josh Clark:Wayfair. Every style, every home.
15:33Josh Clark:We can eradicate food deserts with this technology. Hey, everybody. It's Chuck from Stuff You Should Know, and that was Jaleah Hemings. She and her husband created Nourish and Bloom Market, a fully autonomous grocery store. You can scan a QR code to enter, pick up what you need, and just walk out. Or as Jaleah puts it, Tap, grab, and go 24-7.
15:52Chuck Bryant:We started to get flooded with folks saying, hey, I need you in my city. It became their mission to develop a store that could open within three months, even without any infrastructure.
16:02Josh Clark:And just when we were like, how are we going to accomplish this goal? We won the AT &T Small Business Contest Grant.
16:08Chuck Bryant:That$50 ,000 got us over the finish line where we built the first AI-powered grocery shipping container in the country. For Jalea, it's about building a legacy to show the world that you can solve any problem when you work together. Having the support of AT &T, the city of Atlanta, is huge. Look at how many people we've been able to help.
16:29Josh Clark:Connecting changes everything. AT &T.
16:35Hey, everybody.
16:37Chuck Bryant:YouTube Premium takes something you already love, YouTube, and makes it even better. The content, the creators, the feeling of finding exactly what you're into for every mood and moment of your day. Like, for example, let's say you want to learn to cook, but you don't have time to go take cooking classes across town. Well, you can find tons of instructional cooking videos, all without ads, on YouTube Premium.
16:59Josh Clark:That's right. Premium transforms that experience into a more supercharged, enhanced way to enjoy YouTube. A YouTube Premium subscription gives you access to exclusive YouTube features and benefits, including, but not limited to, ad-free, so we're talking about uninterrupted videos, background play, so background play lets you keep listening with your screen locked, and offline downloads, so you can download your videos to watch anywhere, even without Wi-Fi connection.
17:22Chuck Bryant:That's pretty awesome. And Smart Downloads automatically downloads videos by your favorite creators. So even if you forget to download it ahead of time, Premium has you covered. So if you like YouTube, you'll love Premium. Sign up now for your free trial. Terms and conditions apply.
17:51Josh Clark:All right, Josh teased Glasnost, and that was the second part of the one-two punch to try and introduce a new style of government in the Soviet Union. And this, you know, calls for this kind of started coming after the Chernobyl cover up in 86. And the whole idea behind Glasnost was was more transparency. Like I said, that's what the word means. So relax some of this, you know, very notorious state censorship of everything. And so once that was done, all these social ills that plagued the Soviet Union started to be exposed a little bit in the media. So, you know, like mass famine, the gulags, you know, Soviet history basically kind of being realized for the first time and displayed for people to make their own like judgments on it was a good idea.
18:47Josh Clark:But again, once those floodgates were open, it was like turned out to not be a very good idea.
18:53Chuck Bryant:Yes. So I believe Gorbachev was a true believer in the idea that the Soviet Union needed greater freedom of speech and greater freedom of the press. I think he truly believed that. I do, too. This was also calculated politically as well. And his position was, OK, if I can have an open conversation with the Soviet people about the need for reforms and all the stuff we need to implement because of these problems we have, they're going to support my policies and plans and me. And by doing that, I will pull the levers of power away from the conservatives who have managed to hang on to power and keep things as they were, stagnated and in trouble, by that censorship, by the silencing of critics, by intimidation and actual violence.
19:45Chuck Bryant:Like if I get people talking openly about the problems, then we can have real change. So it was politically calculated, even though he did almost certainly actually believe that it needed to happen, too.
19:59Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. But the thing is, like what you're saying was the conservatives had managed to hang on to that power by keeping things as they were, which wasn't great. But it was stable in a way like it wasn't it wasn't chaos. It was highly controlled, and that's the way they liked it. So to disrupt that system was, you know, it was a pretty bold move. He himself, he was part of what was known as the nomenklatura, which was sort of the upper echelon of Soviet society. It was like the elite bureaucrats, and they had perks that other people didn't have, obviously. They had, like, you know, estates, and they had nicer cars and things like that.
20:40Josh Clark:and that was not a part of the communist experiment and the communist idea or this idea of social equality. And I think he had spent so much time in his career in the nomenclature that he really was out of touch with what was going on for the average sort of day-to-day life of the average Soviet.
21:00Chuck Bryant:Yeah, so he knew enough to know that they were suffering and weren't fully aware of why, but he had no idea of just how much their suffering was promoting a desire for real, real change. Yeah. Not even like small incremental change or even semi-big change like he was proposing, but sweeping change essentially. And that's what he found out once he opened up Glasnost. And it wasn't immediately adopted. I think the press actually kind of hung back for a little while at first. Like, is this a trap? Are you trying to, are we going to be arrested? And he was like, no, no. I think he said at some point, like, there's no subject that's off the table.
21:42Chuck Bryant:Everything is open for discussion. And very quickly, the press started to do what they're supposed to do. They began reporting on the ills of Soviet society.
21:52Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, it was a crazy thing to do, looking back. Yes. They, you know, because all of a sudden the media is writing about food shortages and writing about the rampant alcoholism and the pollution and the mortality rates. We'll get to some stats later on. But the second tier sort of position of women in Russian and Soviet society. Yeah. State crimes. A lot of that was like under Stalin's rule, obviously. But, you know, that stuff was still going on. And so all of these sort of, you know, true believers. and as you'll see, like especially in Mother Russia, the Eastern Bloc sort of had other ideas, but especially in Mother Russia, like this is something they really believed in and they had never received this information.
22:38Josh Clark:So it was easy if you were, you know, in the United States or in the West to be like, they have no idea what's going on in their own country because everything is being censored. But they really didn't. And, you know, if you're living in a smaller town or a village and you're looking around, you might see some ills. But if you're reading about how everything is great, then it's going to, you know, slant your opinion of it all.
23:04Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and even more than that, as we'll talk about in a little while, a lot of Soviet identities were rooted in the Soviet experiment that now had been exposed as being based on torture and executions and the starvation of millions and millions of peasants, you know? Yeah. It shook them to their core. It wasn't just like a loss of faith in their government. It was a loss of faith in their own themselves, I guess, in some cases.
23:33Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. And, you know, like I mentioned, especially in Russia, because that was sort of the center of the Soviet Union. But once this happened in these formerly independent satellite states, like you said earlier, I think he really underestimated how ready they all were to really break free and sort of rise up. And, you know, there were some deep-seated, like, ancient hostilities and rivalries among some of these Soviet states that were forced to be together because they were part of the Soviet Union. And, you know, a good example you found was the ethnic Albanians and the Serbs. They had hated each other since the 14th century, since the Battle of the Field of Blackbirds.
24:17Josh Clark:But as a part of the Soviet Union, they were, you know, supposed to be fellow countrymen. And so as soon as they got the chance to hate each other again, they did. And that's why there was so much fighting in the Balkans, like for basically all throughout the 90s once this happened.
24:33Chuck Bryant:Yeah, because the Soviets no longer forced them together and they were like, OK, it's on. Let's start committing atrocities. And they all did. The other thing that really kind of happened with Glasnost was the like the exposure of Western media, Western pop culture.
24:51Josh Clark:Oh, yeah.
24:52Chuck Bryant:Like, this was not something that people in the USSR had, like, really been exposed to at this point. Did you ever see that documentary where somebody was smuggling, like, Chuck Norris movies into, I think, Bulgaria or something like that? And they credited, like, these bootleg American movies as essentially, like, creating, like, unrest among the youth and leading eventually to revolution?
25:20Josh Clark:No, because they were like, wow, there's a guy like Chuck Norris in the world that we don't know about.
25:26Chuck Bryant:Yeah, essentially Chuck Norris, Rambo, like they went crazy for it. And they also now saw the Western view of their country and their culture. And they were like, wow, this maybe maybe you are pretty backwards. We don't have anybody like that.
25:40Josh Clark:Well, I mean, you know, and I'm not saying this in jest because, you know, how much I love Billy Joel. But that, I think it was a couple of concerts he did in the Soviet Union. That was a really, really big deal. Like no Western artist had ever performed there. And yeah, I think that made a big difference, you know, as far as opening people's eyes to Western culture.
26:04Chuck Bryant:Yeah. I think Metallica did too.
26:07Josh Clark:Oh, did they? Later, obviously.
26:08Chuck Bryant:Yeah, a little later. But, you know, it might have been before the fall of the Soviet Union, but probably right around the time. And ALF. I mean, once they found out that ALF was on TV, they're like, it is over for communist Russia.
26:23Josh Clark:Well, the big thing that really allowed the satellite states outside of Russia itself to really, I guess, feel like they had a real chance at uprising was when Gorbachev renounced the Brezhnev Doctrine.
26:40Chuck Bryant:Yeah.
26:41Josh Clark:which was the doctrine that said, hey, we're going to defend everybody here. We're going to defend socialism with this massive army. We're all together. The Soviet bloc is as one, and we will all defend each other, sort of like a NATO thing. And in its place, Gorbachev was like, you know, you guys pursue your own reforms and, you know, govern with the support of the people, like all these satellite states. And again, just the pedal to the metal that happened after that. And once they knew that they didn't have Moscow's military support, like removing that show of force, that was kind of holding everything together.
27:20Josh Clark:So once that went away, it just started to crumble.
27:22Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Now, I think you've created a really good cliffhanger.
27:28Josh Clark:Oh.
27:28Chuck Bryant:So what do you say? Should we take our second break here? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. We're going to do that, guys. Chuck just agreed.
27:47Hey, everybody.
27:48Chuck Bryant:YouTube Premium takes something you already love, YouTube, and makes it even better. The content, the creators, the feeling of finding exactly what you're into for every mood and moment of your day. Like, for example, let's say you want to learn to cook, but you don't have time to go take cooking classes across town. Well, you can find tons of instructional cooking videos, all without ads, on YouTube Premium.
28:10Josh Clark:That's right. Premium transforms that experience into a more supercharged, enhanced way to enjoy YouTube. A YouTube Premium subscription gives you access to exclusive YouTube features and benefits, including, but not limited to, ad-free. So we're talking about uninterrupted videos. Background play. So background play lets you keep listening with your screen locked. And offline downloads. You can download your videos to watch anywhere, even without Wi-Fi connection.
28:34Chuck Bryant:That's pretty awesome. And Smart Downloads automatically downloads videos by your favorite creators, so even if you forget to download it ahead of time, Premium has you covered. So if you like YouTube, you'll love Premium. Sign up now for your free trial. Terms and conditions apply.
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29:57Chuck Bryant:Okay, Chuck, so where we last left off was when Gorbachev abandoned the Brezhnev doctrine that said, we're going to show up with our military if there's any unrest in any of the satellite states or republics. And without that show of force, that was probably, like you said before the break, the thing that really kind of gave rise or gave support to these nationalist movements. And each time one of the satellite states, so we're focusing now on satellite states, we should differentiate. So there were 15 republics in the USSR. It included Latvia, Estonia, Turkmenistan, a bunch of others. And then there were satellite states that were ostensibly independent countries like Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Albania, a few others.
30:52Chuck Bryant:Those are considered satellite states. You put all of them together. So you have the USSR, the 15 republics, and the satellite states. Now you have the Eastern Bloc and all that's behind what they called the Iron Curtain. That whole portion of the world was turned in on itself, had turned its back on the rest of the world, and was focused on its own socialist experiment, aside from helping out other countries that wanted to try their own socialist experiments, which is why there was secret fighting in like Nicaragua and why Cuba had missiles, nuclear missiles aimed at the United States. For the most part, though, the Eastern Bloc paid attention to itself and kept the rest of the world out.
31:32Josh Clark:That's right. And kept them in. But once there was freedom of movement and travel from behind the Iron Curtain, this was like a really, really key to like the weakening of the Union. and they were like, you know, what's really nice is Budapest. And that's just, you know, a handful of hours by train into Austria. So all of a sudden you had tens of thousands of East Germans defecting. Most people wanted to stay in their houses, though. Like people want to live where they have lived their whole lives. So it wasn't like everybody left. Like citizens of other Soviet republics, East Germans, most of them wanted to stay in their homes, but they wanted things to be different.
32:12Josh Clark:So as soon as sort of the door was open politically and all of a sudden you could vote for different candidates, like those candidates completely swept every election that happened.
32:24Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Poland was the first one. It's also probably the best example of them all, because being in the Eastern Bloc, there was one party. When you went to vote, you voted for one party, and that was the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Even if you had an independent country, the communists had your country, your government on lockdown, right? And at one point, as part of like this series of decisions that just took this rolling snowball and just turned it into an avalanche, was Gorbachev saying, no longer are alternative parties outlawed. We can have other parties. And that first started in Poland with the Solidarity Party, which had been a trade union for a decade or so, and had turned into a populist anti-authoritarian party.
33:18Chuck Bryant:And now that it was possible for Solidarity to run against the communists, like you said, the board was just totally swept by then.
33:28Josh Clark:Wasn't that Lech Walesa? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I remember. I mean, all this stuff was on the news, but I was in late high school into early college. And that wasn't, you know, I wasn't paying attention like I do, you know, as you get older, I think, same as most people.
33:43Chuck Bryant:You didn't have a Solidarity Party T-shirt in the it looked like a Smirnoff label.
33:47Josh Clark:But I remember, you know, all of this stuff was in the background always on the news. Yeah. But yeah, once the Solidarity Party had a chance to run, it was it was a sort of partially free election because what they did was they said, all right, you can have a new party, but it's not just for 100 percent of the available seats. The Solidarity Party can have 35, like up to 35 percent of the seats in their, you know, the Polish equivalent of the House of Representatives or House of Commons. The other 65 percent were still reserved for the Communist Party. So they would still hold on to power. And then they also had a newly created Senate.
34:25Josh Clark:So 100 newly created Senate seats. And Solidarity won 99 out of the 100 Senate seats. The one independent that won later switched to Solidarity. And they completely obviously filled the 35 percent allotment that they were, well, allotted in the House. And the communists were so unpopular, they didn't even get all the votes they needed to fill the other 65 percent. Yeah. Yeah.
34:52Chuck Bryant:So solidarity showed the rest of the world like we like we have been under the communist thumb, the Soviet thumb. We don't want that. Not only do we want to be independent, we don't want to be communist anymore. And they weren't after that. I mean, once Solidarity came into power, Poland very quickly was like, we're not associated with them anymore, everybody. Come on over to Poland. We have amazing sausages and all sorts of other good things that you'll find out when you get here.
35:22Josh Clark:That's right. Please, no jokes. We've heard about all that stuff, but yeah, leave those at home.
35:29Chuck Bryant:Right. Our submarines do not have screen doors on them.
35:34Josh Clark:That's right. I've never understood that. I've always meant to look that up on why that was a thing.
35:38Chuck Bryant:Oh, because if you, like, once it's submerged, all the water would come through the screen door.
35:45Josh Clark:Now, I remember jokes about Polish people. I never knew the background to that.
35:49Chuck Bryant:I think they just got picked on. It's one of those things where it's like, so this group has all the jokes against them. So then you start to just think they're all stupid. So that just begets more jokes against them, I think. It's like Detroit. Yes, exactly.
36:04Josh Clark:I'm just kidding, Detroit. We love you. So the Berlin Wall comes down, obviously. That was a big deal. Germany was reunified, you know, sort of in a model of the West. And that was just like, that was less than a year after the Polish elections of 1989. So, like, things were really happening at a fast clip. Yeah. The leader of Bulgaria retired. The Czechoslovak government was replaced. The only place, kind of shockingly, that you had a bloody revolution was in Romania and Ceausescu.
36:41Chuck Bryant:Yeah. That happened in a few months in 1989. All of that, all of those satellite states, just communism fell. So, I mean, I wish I'd been a little older. I remember when the Berlin Wall fell. And I was like, Mom, we got to go. We got to get on a plane. We have to get there. This is amazing. She wanted to so bad, but she just, we didn't.
37:04Josh Clark:You're like, I've always wanted to seize Germany.
37:06Chuck Bryant:Exactly. And this is our only chance.
37:09Josh Clark:Yeah.
37:10Chuck Bryant:But I wish I had been a little bit older so I could be, so I could have paid attention to this because I can't imagine what it was like paying attention to this over just these few months from the time that Poland's elections were held in June to the end of 1989. like just country after country's communist regimes fell. And like you said, only Romania's turned bloody. And you can pretty much fully blame the Ceausescu regime for starting it. They started it, essentially.
37:42Josh Clark:Yeah, he was the Romanian dictator there, Nikolai Ceausescu, and his wife Elena, who was also appointed in a high office by her husband. And so they were, you know, they were a power couple, I guess. But they had mass protests breaking out and Ceausescu went to the military and he said, kill them, fire on these unarmed civilians. And he thought that would have been like, all right, we're going to quash this really quick. But the military was like, bro, that's we're not into that. And so they defected just like a few days after he ordered them to fire upon them. Not only did they not do that, they defected to the protester side, and he and Elena saw the writing on the wall, and they're like, we need to get the heck out of here.
38:27Josh Clark:But the military caught them, technically had a military tribunal. It was pretty short form, though. And they were found guilty and executed by firing squad.
38:37Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and strung upside down by their ankles for public viewing.
38:41Josh Clark:Yeah, harsh stuff.
38:42Chuck Bryant:There was a rumor, too. Do you remember hearing this? That the Ceausescus were fed to dollars? Yeah. After they were dead. And that is a rumor. From what I can tell, it did not happen. But the reason that rumor came about is twofold. One, Ceausescu was very famous, especially in Romania, for having appointed his favorite Labrador as a general. Yeah. So there's a dog theme with that. And then he was blamed specifically for the terrible problem with feral packs of dogs, what used to be family dogs, roaming Romania, at times like killing children and stuff, right? Like it was a bad problem. And the reason why it existed was because he had ordered a bunch of villages bulldozed so he could build these new agrotechnical centers.
39:32Chuck Bryant:And then after he bulldozed them and before he could build the centers, he just kind of lost interest in it and moved on. And so a lot of people lost their homes. So did a lot of dogs. And that's where they got their feral dog problem from. And then I remember this. I will never forget it. This wasn't like it jogged my memory. I think about this joke every, I don't know, year and a half, I would say.
39:55Josh Clark:Dennis Miller. Yeah. Do you remember that? I do. I thought Dennis Miller was very, very funny when he was the SNL news guy.
40:04Chuck Bryant:Yeah, not bad. But he was never funnier. than when he was on Monday Night Football.
40:10Josh Clark:Oh, God. Yeah, what was the Ceaușescu joke?
40:13Chuck Bryant:So, yeah, on Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live, like a couple weeks after the Ceaușescu's were executed and the rumor was that they were fed to the dog, Dennis Miller said that Purina had released a new product, puppy Ceaușescu. Yeah, you remember that one. What happened next?
40:33Josh Clark:Well, I mean, this is the end of 1989, basically, And the only communist state still left west of the Soviet Union was Albania. And, you know, Gorbachev could have like stepped in. He had a very non-interventionalist way about him. I think he knew also that like the genie was out of the bottle and like trying to bottle it back up is impossible. And resuming the Cold War again is a bad idea.
41:02Chuck Bryant:Yeah.
41:02Josh Clark:So he stayed out of it. And, you know, it fell, like you said, in just a handful of months, like right before the world's eyes.
41:09Chuck Bryant:Right. And so far we're talking just satellite states, already independent, ostensibly independent nations took their independence back in 1989. The USSR is still together and Gorbachev is not pushing for it to break up. He's kind of trying to figure out how to balance these reforms he just introduced with keeping the USSR together, and it proves impossible for him.
41:37Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, he sees what's happening all around, and, you know, he abandoned communism, basically. He voluntarily devolved power, which, again, just all these years later, it looks like a crazy thing to do. But just ceding all that power when all they had ever known and all the West had ever known was just how powerful the Soviet Union was in controlling everything. And to just loosen the knot on all of that was just really a pretty wacky thing to do.
42:10Chuck Bryant:Yeah. I mean, especially unilaterally, I don't know quite enough about modern Russian history to know who else, like who his advisors and aides were.
42:19Josh Clark:Yeah, yeah, for sure.
42:21Chuck Bryant:It basically just seems like this is Gorbachev doing it himself. And I'm sure he did have help. But in the end, it was Gorbachev doing this himself. Like this wasn't some coalition with other people. Like he was the head of the Soviet, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the CPSU, the ruling body of the entire Eastern Bloc at one point up until very recently. he used his position as the head of the CPSU to dissolve the CPSU. It was as simple as that. And once that happened, if you don't have the party who is pushing everybody around and censoring everything, if they don't exist anymore, now it's a free-for-all.
43:03Chuck Bryant:And that was what he did at the, I think, the end of 1990.
43:07Josh Clark:Yeah, he created what we would think of as the House of Reps in their Congress of People's Deputies that was, you know, mostly kind of fairly elected, at least compared to what it had been. He ended, like we said earlier, you know, he opened it up to other political parties, which is just going to completely weaken the grip of communism by virtue of doing that. And then he created an office of president. He appointed himself president. So it's not like he was elected, but this was in March of 1990 and it was a brand new office. And, you know, that was a big deal. to have like an eventual elected president.
43:46Chuck Bryant:It was. And the reason why he did that is because he dissolved the Communist Party. So he couldn't be the head of the USSR because he was the head of the Communist Party if the Communist Party didn't exist anymore. So now he's like, I call president of the USSR. He also introduced elections. So each of the 15 republics had what's called the Supreme Soviet, which was their own parliament. and he said, hey, guys, why don't you start having free elections with alternative parties legalized and let's see what happens. I'm Gorby. I'm pretty sure that the USSR is going to want to stay together. And I hope he didn't put any money on that because he would have lost big time.
44:29Josh Clark:Yeah. And, you know, we already covered kind of what Poland kicked off. The Baltics really helped set a tone as well. pretty much immediately Lithuania said, all right, we're seceding. We're not a part of the USSR anymore. This is the March of 1990. Very quickly after, Latvia and Estonia said, yeah, we're going to secede too. The Georgians did. The Armenians did. And these were, you know, kind of small time as far as the might of the Soviet Union. Like they could have still had a Soviet Union after this, even with these, I guess, secessionists. But it was really Ukraine. Like Ukraine was a was and is a very big and powerful country and just second after Russia.
45:18Josh Clark:And so that is a that's why, you know, after Ukraine, I think they held a referendum and 90 percent of the voters voted for independence. And after Ukraine left, the writing was really on the wall. But that's also why, if you just want some modern context of why Putin has why Ukraine means so much to him personally. Right. It is because Putin is of the old, you know, as we'll see later when he came into power, it was on a wave of nostalgia for the old days. And Ukraine leaving was a real big thorn in his side and just the side of sort of their history, the Soviet history.
45:57Chuck Bryant:Yeah. He said publicly that it's ridiculous. Estonia is an independent country. Like he does not see these as independent countries. He sees them as republics of the Soviet Union that should be brought back together with Russia, right? And that's what happened. I mean, this is so 1989, you saw the satellite states break out of the Eastern Bloc. And then now, 1990 to 1991, now it's happening with republics. Like the actual Soviet Union is starting to break up because the republic states are now saying we're independent. We're not part of the USSR. are anymore. And now, now everyone's looking to Russia, which being a Cold War kid, I always basically used Russia and the Soviet Union as interchangeable.
46:41Chuck Bryant:But Russia was a republic of the Soviet Union, far and away the most powerful one. That's where the seat of Soviet government was, but it was still a republic just like Latvia and Estonia. And so now everybody's like, okay, what are you going to do? You guys going to try to carry on as your own kind of Soviet Union? You're going to start World War III? What's going on next? And I say, Chuck, that we end this episode here.
47:06Josh Clark:Yeah. That's the end of part one, everybody. And as per tradition, we don't do listener mails at the end of a part one. I think we just say, you know, tune in on Thursday, right? Yeah. We go out in stunned silence. I feel like we don't, do we usually say anything? It's been so long. Like, aren't you the one that handles this?
47:26Chuck Bryant:Yeah, yeah, I know, but it's fun watching.
47:29Josh Clark:So thank you, everybody, and we'll be back with part two of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
47:34Chuck Bryant:That was great, but don't forget to tell them what our email address is.
47:38Josh Clark:Oh, do we have to do that? We usually do. All right, what is it? I Heart Stuff Podcast at iHeartMedia.com? iHeartRadio. iHeartRadio. See, I never say it. This is your job. You did great. All right, we'll see everyone Thursday. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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From the publisher
It’s rare that the downfall of an empire can be chalked up to the decisions of just one person. It’s even rarer, when the empire falls over the course of a year. That’s pretty much what happened with the Soviet Union when Mikhail Gorbachev dissolved it.
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