Why the Cold War Still Matters - Episode 3, The Fall of an Empire

This four part radio documentary series examines the end of the Cold War, and considers why and how it ended in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall. It combines interviews with experts, oral history, and academic expertise.Episode 3 explains how changes in the Soviet Union help explain the peaceful end of the Cold War. A declining Soviet economy was increasingly challenging to manage, and Mikhail Gorbachev came from a new generation. Gorbachev became an accidentally revolutionary leader: his attempts to reform the Soviet economy led to fundamental changes in the way the USSR and its satellite states treated open communication, and Gorbachev's insistnece on saving the Soviet economy helps explain why he did not intervene in the growing protests around Eastern Europe in 1989.