The Fall of the USSR, Pt II

Stuff You Should Know

This episode of 'Stuff You Should Know' continues the story of the Soviet Union's collapse, focusing on Russia's transition after the USSR d

Key takeaways

• The failed 1991 coup against Gorbachev inadvertently accelerated his removal from power and boosted Yeltsin's popularity.

Main topics

• The dissolution of the USSR
• Boris Yeltsin's rise as president of Russia

Notable quotes

'They didn't plan for three days. They didn't know how long it was going on. It just turned out to be a three-day coup.'

Conclusion

The fall of the USSR marked a dramatic shift for Russia, transitioning from a superpower to a

Transcript preview

Speaker 7 (0:00) This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Speaker 4 (0:07) Hey, this is Hayes Davenport and Sean Clements. Speaker 2 (0:10) We host the Speaker 4 (0:10) podcast Hollywood Handbook. Speaker 2 (0:12) Each week we talk to someone in show business and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicist for letting them do our show. Speaker 4 (0:21) We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, Adam Scott, Danny McBride, Ben Stiller, and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Speaker 5 (0:35) Mungish Atikudur, and I'm back with a new season of my podcast, Skyline Drive. This time I talk to scientists, biopunks, curmudgeons, blues owners, super seniors, and Goa's top cryotherapy lab to try to understand this obsession with living forever and what it means for all of us. And I get into a bit of trouble along the way. Speaker 3 (0:53) I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Speaker 5 (0:59) Listen to Skyline Drive How to Live Forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 3 (1:06) On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 7 (1:43) Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Speaker 1 (1:52) Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Hey, Chuck, you ended the last one. You want to start this one? Speaker 6 (1:57) Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Charles W. Chuck Bryant. To my left is Josh Clark. Jerry's here in spirit and in reality this time. So this is part two of the fall of the Soviet Union. Bravo. I hated doing that, by the way. Oh, you did? Yeah. This feels like Robin putting on Batman's outfit or something. This is very strange. How do you know it's not Robin who announces the podcast? Or whatever. Batman putting on Robin's outfit. Although I heard he did that on the side as a kink. Speaker 8 (2:30) He did. But who hasn't? Who among us hasn't dressed up like Robin from Batman? Speaker 6 (2:35) That's true. Or Josh Clark from Stuff You Should Know. Speaker 1 (2:38) Which is one and the same. Speaker 6 (2:40) Yeah, I dress up like you. Speaker 1 (2:42) You do? Yeah. Speaker 6 (2:44) Big shirts and cute sweatshirts. Speaker 1 (2:46) I have to say, you have stepped up your style game lately, and it's nice. Hey, thanks. Your traveling outfits are... Well, Speaker 6 (2:57) I was always into clothes growing up, and then I wore T-shirts and cargo shorts for 25 years and then remembered, hey, I like fashion, so I got back into it. You Speaker 1 (3:07) brought it back. Speaker 6 (3:08) Yeah. Speaker 1 (3:08) You're basically the Tom Ford of the podcasting world. Speaker 6 (3:12) All right. So where we left off, December 8, 1991, the USSR is formally dissolved by decree by the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. No one knows what's going to happen next with Russia. We've kind of covered the satellite states and the Soviet states themselves and what happened there. But everyone was sort of like, all right, well, Russia's still there. And like, what the heck is going to happen? And who rolls into town? But Boris Yeltsin with a. bottle of Stoli in his hand. Yeah. Speaker 8 (3:42) And another one in his belly. Yeah, for sure. So Boris Yeltsin was the first president of Russia, which is kind of confusing because we said that Gorbachev was the president of the USSR. But remember, Russia and the USSR were not one in the same. So for a little while there, Russia itself had pretty much. two presidents at the same time for a couple of months while Gorbachev was still in power and while Yeltsin, who had been popularly elected in June of 1991, while he was like, I'm president of Russia. So there was a, what you could call a bit of a power struggle. And despite that, it wasn't until a three-day coup was mounted. And they didn't plan for three days. They didn't know how long it was going to go on. It just turned out to be a three-day coup, I guess is what I'm trying to say. It wasn't until that was mounted against Gorbachev that his power was eroded enough to take his position away and for Yeltsin to take over and take Russia straight into the hands of the West, the open arms of the West. And ironically, that coup was by hardliners who wanted to keep... Speaker 1 (4:57) who wanted to save communism and the USSR. But instead, they managed to remove the power from the one guy who conceivably could have still helped that happen and gave it to the guy who Speaker 8 (5:09) was diametrically opposed to making that happen, Yeltsin. Speaker 6 (5:13) Yeah, yeah. And it ended up being a failed coup technically, but it had the result of finally sort of getting Gorbachev out of power. In a way, it kind of worked, but it was technically a failed coup. What happened was, you know, Gorbachev came in with all these big sweeping reforms. And so the conservative elites that he had previously worked with were terrified, obviously, because their existence depended on the Soviet Union being the Soviet Union. Speaker 1 (5:45) So Speaker 6 (5:45) they were like, Gorbachev is a traitor. In 1991, they put him under house arrest. while he was on vacation in Crimea. And they sent tanks in to Moscow and took control of the government. They didn't storm the parliament building, but they lined up outside the parliament building. And then they made a mistake in that they let Boris Yeltsin, I keep saying Yeltsin, Yeltsin get on one of those tanks and address the people. And this is a time where they had not. jam the TV signals coming from outside the Soviet Union. So all of these Soviets all of a sudden are watching this unfold on the BBC or CNN, and they're seeing this Yeltsin guy sitting on top of a tank talking to them. Speaker 8 (6:32) Yeah, basically saying, like, look at what the communists are doing. They send in tanks to take over your government. Can you believe someone would do that? And it was not a good look for the Soviet Party. Speaker 8 (6:45) Not only did it make the party look bad, it made Yeltsin look really good. So remember, he'd already been popularly elected, but there was a power struggle between him and Gorbachev going on. When the coup was overrun, the leaders were jailed. Gorbachev managed to come back to Moscow. But now he came back and like his authority had been directly challenged. And even though the coup had failed. It had had a huge impact on removing his legitimacy while at the same time boosting Yeltsin's legitimacy. And so Gorbachev was like, it's clear I can't hold power any Speaker 1 (7:22) longer. So he very, very peacefully, to his great credit, very peacefully handed over power and did away with any office that Speaker 8 (7:32) he held. Speaker 1 (7:33) that Speaker 8 (7:33) somebody else could have come along and filled and tried to challenge Yeltsin. He made sure that there would be no further political chaos as much as he could manage. Speaker 6 (7:44) Yeah. He was like, I'm not president of the USSR anymore. And in fact, there is no president of the USSR. That office that I created no longer exists. And technically, everybody, I'm the only guy to have ever done that. So just, you know, keep that in your back pocket. And he said, here's the nuclear codes, Boris. Please take care of those. Any communists that are in public office. Well, there is no communist party. So you're not even a valid member of that party because there is none. So you're not you're not even if you were elected because there's no such thing, then you're you're out of your seat. And Russia is now the Russian Federation. Speaker 1 (8:24) Yeah, I Speaker 8 (8:24) was I didn't see. What happened to those people? Was it just like, oh, I guess I'm independent all of a sudden, not by choice? Or if they were like, I guess I can't hold this office anymore. Who knows? But like that was just one small component of the sweeping political changes that took place over the course of a few days. I think the whole thing really kicked off on December 25th, 1991. And by the turn of 1992 was basically over. I mean, Russia became the Russian Federation and that same anti-communist spirit of renewal and revolution and like change, the winds of change, you could even almost call it, had swept through Russia itself. Speaker 6 (9:12) Yeah, they were immediately no longer a superpower. All that national identity, you know, we talked about some of this stuff in part one with promise of more. And that's right now, because for a lot of the people in Russia, it was like the fall of communism was a great thing. But for a lot of others, there was, you know, the Soviet man, what was labeled, and it was, I guess, a pejorative term, but Homo Sovieticus. That was just sort of the average Soviet man who is, you know, probably works in a factory and has lived his whole life with this ideology, this communist ideology and independent thought, like which they, you know, a lot of them voluntarily sort of bought into this thing. And so once that identity was removed and there was a vacuum in its wake, it was they were. and everything they knew was gone and they didn't know what to do. Speaker 1 (10:12) Yeah, like the patriotic of the USSR, like everyday citizens, consider themselves one Speaker 8 (10:20) part of this larger collective, the Soviet experiment. And that was their identity. That's what a lot of, like the way they thought came from, basically, like you were saying. And so when you pull that out from underneath somebody, especially when it happens suddenly and essentially without warning. It just comes out of nowhere. Like, it's really hard to put yourself in that position. Like, how would you handle that kind of thing, you know? And certainly there were plenty of people who we'll see who were rejoiced at this change. They were glad communism went away. But there were a lot of people who were not happy that communism had gone away or that the Soviet Union had gone away. Speaker 6 (11:04) Yeah, for sure. You know, religion helped fill a little of that void. The recovered Russian orthodoxy became a little more popular to help fill this moral vacuum that was left in its wake. But there was a guy in Dresden at the time. He was a KGB lieutenant colonel in his villa in Dresden, Germany. And this was before reunification. This was in 1990. Just sort of a mid-level officer. who as far as, you know, criticism of the USSR and the Soviet way was very prideful and very much defended it and got really mad, apparently had a super short fuse when it was criticized. His name was Vladimir Putin, and he saw everything that was going on around. And there's a quote from him that kind of sums it up. He said, nothing different was proposed. That's what hurt is they just dropped everything and went away. Speaker 1 (11:57) So, Speaker 6 (11:57) you know, he sensed this vacuum. And, you know, over here in the United States, like it felt like not felt like it kind of was a victory. Like we won. The Cold War is over. Their experiment failed. Democracy wins, you know. Speaker 1 (12:12) Oh, yeah, for sure. The problem was, is that the West wasn't like we're going to Speaker 8 (12:17) help. We want to dig in here. We want to help you like rebuild. We want you to be a great nation and, you know, a great partner to Europe and the rest of the West and the rest of the world. And one of the reasons why the United States didn't react like that at a really, really crucial time, which was 1991, 1992, was that President George H.W. Bush, who was a cold warrior if there ever was one, Speaker 6 (12:43) was Speaker 8 (12:44) leading the United States. And I saw it described, I think it was on a site called History Guild, which is magnificent, by the way. that he folded his arms and turned his back. It was basically like, good luck. We're glad you fell over, but we're not going to help you. We hate you. We've hated you for decades now. So we're not really going to step in and help you rebuild. Just figure out how to do it yourself. And had that gone differently, who knows what Russia would be like right now? Who knows? We have no idea. Could be worse. It could have been better. It could be... It could have played out exactly the same. But the fact that the West only helped in the most like specific economic terms and didn't in like a spirit of friendship and cooperation really step in and basically, basically the United Speaker 1 (13:34) States was a sore loser of the Cold War. Speaker 6 (13:37) Yeah. And I feel like most of that was sort of aimed at Russia specifically because I don't know how much they financially helped the former Russian states and satellite states and things like that. But it seems like the just the spirit of it all was more