And I'm

I'm going to be here. Yes, yes, a ras, if yes a ras.

If yes a ras, Welcome to the Russian rulers history podcast.

Episode 108.

Michael Sergei Sergeiovich muddles through things. Now last time we recounted

Mikhail Gorbachev's rise to the top of the leadership of the Soviet Union in his own words through his memoirs.

Now it's time to look at his years at the top through others' eyes.

Now my three main sources, but not my only ones, are a history of modern Russia by Robert Service,

a failed empire, the Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev by Vadislav Zubach, and the dream that failed by Walter

Liqueur. They give a real good mix of Soviet perspective and a more Western view.

Gorbachev is a rather complex person. If you think about it from looking from the west.

But when you look at the east and the perspective of the Russians and the Soviet Union as a whole,

there's a lot less to the man that I found out

than I really initially anticipated. I had thought you know real positive

outlook on the guy I was gonna really be very up on him. But I'd like to

thank my listener Vadim who maybe look at it a little differently than reading more about Gorbachev, I found that there was a lot less to the man that we all thought of in the West.

So let's go move forward here.

The nation that Gorbachev inherited was in an internal state of chaos.

In Poland, for instance, starting in August of 1980,

labor strikes were being held in the city of Gedansk, where we first learn about a movement called solidarity.

We also hear of a man the world would learn much about, Lech Valessa. And the Kremlin, their paranoid view of the world, made them sure

that there was some sort of underground agitation fueling the strikes. It couldn't be their actions in the fury of the people, could it? the

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