The Fall of the USSR – End Game
About this episode
The episode discusses the fall of the USSR and the role of Mikhail Gorbachev in its disintegration.
Welcome to the penultimate episode of Origin story season eight: the story of socialism. We close the book on Soviet communism with the story of how it all came crashing down — what has been called the most unexpected event of the twentieth century. Mikhail Gorbachev’s desire to change his country was a product of the secret speech in 1956 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. As he climbed the ladder to power, he witnessed the Soviet Union flinch from reform and slide into stagnation and decline. So when he became General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985 he sought to rejuvenate the regime with three audacious innovations: perestroika (restructuring), glasnost (openness) and democratisation. It was a punishing task. Old hardliners in the Politburo thought Gorbachev was too radical while his populist arch-rival Boris Yeltsin thought him not daring enough. Gorbachev wanted to end the Cold War and open his country to the world but he did not foresee the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact in 1989. He certainly didn’t want the USSR itself to come undone two years later. But the desire for change that he had unleashed could not be tamed. By…
More episodes of Origin Story
- Origin Story – Live at Bloomsbury Theatre, 15th April 2026
- The General Strike – The Revolution That Wasn’t
- Introvert / Extrovert – In Two Minds
- Stephen Miller – American Fascist
- 15-Minute Cities – How Urban Design Entered the Culture War
- Blue Labour: We Need to Talk About Maurice
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Origin Story podcast page.