The Fall of the Soviet Union, with Vladislav Zubok
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 27 December 2021
⏱️ 46 minutes
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Summary
This past weekend marked the 30th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. To discuss the collapse and its implications, Bryce Klehm sat down with Vladislav Zubok, professor of international history at the London School of Economics and author of the new book, “Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union.” They covered a range of topics, including Mikhail Gorbachev’s economic and political reforms, Professor Zubok’s experience reading Solzhenitsyn for the first time, and the Russian military’s recent buildup along Ukraine's borders.
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Transcript
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| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:34.0 | When I say system, of course, it's something different from the state. |
| 0:37.6 | So I illusion at the time among people and I belong to those people at the time was |
| 0:43.5 | that, okay, communism would go away pretty much like in, I don't know, Czechoslovakia |
| 0:49.4 | is Germany, Poland, but we would still live in the same state. |
| 0:56.2 | So very few people paid very close attention to ethnic separatism, multicovid independence |
| 1:03.2 | and would say, oh, it's not only the Pulse. |
| 1:05.3 | If the Pulse go, then it would be a falling domino effect. |
| 1:11.0 | And of course, very few people, I repeat, understood the implications of the Russian drive |
| 1:17.2 | for sovereignty and declaration of sovereignty. |
| 1:20.6 | So people inside the Soviet Union, particularly Moscow, where the center of action always was |
| 1:28.4 | during those times, they continued to shake things in expectation that one more push |
| 1:36.1 | and the rotten communist system would fall apart, but they never, never expected that with |
| 1:43.3 | the system, the state itself would fall apart. |
| 1:47.4 | Ambrice Klem and this is the Lawfare Podcast, December 27, 2021. |
| 1:52.9 | This past weekend marked the 30th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. |
| 1:57.1 | To discuss the collapse in its implications, I sat down with Vladislav Zubuk, professor |
| 2:01.7 | of international history at the London School of Economics, an author of the new book, |
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