Hi, very welcome to Dan Snow's history on 19th August 1991, 30 years ago.

There was an attempted coup in the Soviet Union.

Mikhail Gorbachev was temporarily imprisoned as hard line has sought to reestablish the dominance of authoritarian rule in the Soviet Union and its satellites.

The coup failed after three days and it eventually led to collapse of communism, disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev resigned as first secretary of the Communist Party on the 24th of August and on the 29th the Supreme Soviet suspended all activities of the Communist Party.

Days later, Soviet states declared independence.

Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, Belarus, Madalva, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

And that I think we can all agree has got some fairly, fairly important enduring consequences for us today.

That is a story that has not yet come to an end.

And talk about that collapse of Soviet Union. I've got the very brilliant Peter Kinesh.

He's a historian. He specializes in Russian Eastern European history in politics.

As you'll hear in this episode, I didn't want this to be the focus, but he was born and hungry and he is a Holocaust survivor.

He survived as a child. And so we do at the end talk about his experiences.

So he's someone who has lived through extraordinarily traumatic history himself.

He's America's professor at University of California, so I talked to him over on the west coast.

And he gave me such an interesting and thoughtful take on the collapse of the Soviet Union 30 years ago this month.

If you wish to deepen, deepen your engagement in history and I can understand why everyone do that.

Go to historyhit.tv. You don't believe your eyes. Historyhit.tv. You get 30 days free now if you can check it out.

It's a history channel folks, whether or hundreds of history documentaries or history fans watch by tens of thousands of people.

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And the meantime, everyone here is Peter Kinesh talking about the fall of Soviet Union. Enjoy.

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