Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson

history as told by people who were there.

This week, the drugs epidemic among American troops in Vietnam in the 1970s.

There was a problem.

People would overdose on some occasions, and we would walk around and see guys lounging up against fence posts clearly out of it.

Also with the modern debate raging over historic statues, we'll hear about a bitter debate in the US Congress

over restoring citizenship to the Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

Why were we honoring somebody who had taken up arms against the United States, fought for the cause of slavery.

I mean he was dead for a hundred years. It was ludicrous.

Plus we meet the driver of the first Eurostar train and get a guided tour of the world famous

Moscow State Circus.

The performances were almost always sold out.

It was a real art for the people. People came to see not just the

performance but also the building itself. They left looking extremely pleased.

That's all coming up later in the podcast. But we begin this week by revisiting one of the key moments in the history of a country which is very much in the news again right now.

This month's military coup in Myanmar has yet to fully run its course.

The National League for Democracy Leader Aung San Suu Kyi and dozens of elected government

officials remain behind bars.

This looks very much like a return to what has been the status quo in Myanmar or Burma for decades since the 1960s.

But the military has faced challenges throughout, the most significant of which came with a popular

uprising in 1988. It signaled the rise of Ansan Suu Kyi as a figurehead of the pro-democracy

movement, a role that would win her the Nobel Peace Prize, but in recent years she's been criticized over the treatment of minority communities in Myanmar.

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