Welcome to Cold War Conversations, the home of real stories of the Cold War.

And I remember doing one with the Deputy Foreign Minister with the responsibility for Asia,

who said to me, we're going to pull out of Afghanistan.

And I thought, yeah, you know, propaganda.

You know, and I reported it and, you know, it went out on the headline on the BBC World Service,

but I didn't think, wow, this is it, because I didn't know whether to believe him or not.

This is Cold War Conversations. If you're new here, you've come to the right place to listen to first-hand Cold War history accounts.

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Today we have another Cold War contribution from James, who is taking the helm again with a fascinating

chat with Bridget Kendall, the BBC's Moscow correspondence from 1989 to 1995, when she was

witnessed to the power struggles in the Soviet Communist Party as Mikhail Gorbachev tried to introduce reform.

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