The Fall of the USSR, Pt I

It’s rare that the downfall of an empire can be chalked up to the decisions of just one person. It’s even rarer, when the empire falls over the course of a year. That’s pretty much what happened with the Soviet Union when Mikhail Gorbachev dissolved it. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:38Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:48Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And we're just a few Cold War kids working out our ongoing fascination with the Soviet Union.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  That's right. This is a, man, it's been a long time since we've done a two parter. I was trying to remember the last time we did this.

• 2:08Josh Clark?

  Probably ADHD.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe. I'm, I'm weirdly excited by a two parter for some reason.

• 2:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it is a little weird.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  It feels like less work. Even though it's not.

• 2:20Josh Clark?

  It's fun also to tackle something and like really understand it even further, you know?

• 2:24Speaker 02

  No, I totally agree. Like smashing this into a single 45 minute episode would, it short shrifted it, I think.

• 2:32Josh Clark?

  You know, we did. We scored it with a sickle and then smashed it down the middle with a hammer.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Wow, look at you.

• 2:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So we are talking about the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The USSR, for some reason, the CCCP in Russia, Soviet Russia. I mean, how many times are we going to do Yakov Smirnoff in this episode?

• 2:56Speaker 02

  I'm gonna try not to do it once.

• 2:58Josh Clark?

  No, well, you do a better Yakov Smirnoff than me, so I hope you will.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  Although, Branson, the very nicest time of year.

• 3:04Josh Clark?

  There you go. So, um, yeah. And in the, I think the, basically 1990 to the very beginning of 1992, this superpower, one of two superpowers in the world. The way that the world was aligned was based on these two superpowers. One of them just fell over and was gone in the blink of an eye.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Like really quickly.

• 3:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I mean, like just breathtakingly fast. It went away and not just the country, this superpower, but also the, the Soviet communism itself. It was just gone, Chuck, just gone.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  Gone. And, and the end of an ideal, uh, the end of a Cold War. Like it was, you know, I, I can't think of anything that was bigger since the end of World War II geopolitically. Like this had to be the biggest thing.

• 4:03Josh Clark?

  I, I think absolutely for sure. The best part about it though, at least as far as the world was concerned, it didn't take a nuclear World War III to make, to bring the Cold War and the, the bipolar, um, I guess, orientation of the world to an end.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it was a top down thing. Like it wasn't, uh, an uprising, although as we'll see, like on the Eastern Bloc, there were definitely some uprisings and things that happened as a result. But the whole thing started as a top down thing. Because of one guy, because of Mikhail Gorbachev. Is it Gorbachev? I always said Gorbachev.

• 4:42Josh Clark?

  I, it was, I always heard both throughout our youth.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  All right, great. So I'll just say both.

• 4:47Josh Clark?

  I'm just gonna call him Gorby.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. It was, uh, because of a series of decisions that he made to, um, to not fully westernize the Soviet Union, but to loosen the reins some, to get a little capitalism in there, to get a little more transparency, relax the reins on the, you know, the hard fist of the Soviet regime, to kind of just have a newer sort of softer Soviet Union moving forward. And boy, he, uh, I don't know if he didn't fully think it through, or if it was just, um, the domino effect was so fast. I'm sure he was probably like, wow, like I didn't think this was gonna happen.

• 5:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah. He, he's just standing there like looking guilty while the whole room is just falling down around him because he touched something he wasn't supposed to, kinda?

• 5:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. But it, it all sort of started with these, um, two major reforms that he set out to establish, which was, uh, in Russian, it would be, uh, perestroika and glasnost, but to us, that would be restructuring and transparency. And I guess we should talk about the restructuring first.

• 6:02Josh Clark?

  Yeah, perestroika. One more thing I do want to say about Gorby though, before we move on is I didn't see anything anywhere that suggested that he, this was secretly purposeful. I think you're absolutely right. I think he was completely taken off guard by the, the consequences of these pretty legitimate and good ideas at the time. Because Gorbachev inherited a USSR that had, that was in deep stagnation by the, the mid 1980s, right?

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:32Josh Clark?

  It was a planned economy and it had been moving along in that direction for decades. But by this time, by the eighties, it was just, it was not in good shape. And so, like you said, to kind of like jumpstart the socialist economy, not replace it, but jumpstart it, he was willing to implement some Western style free market ideas.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, he was a very progressive guy for Soviet Russia. You know? So, uh, it was the late eighties where he launched this, like, uh, we mentioned the first thing, the restructuring or the, uh, perestroika. And that was to sort of, that was sort of the economical, political side of things, to kind of loosen the grips a little bit. Because he was like the reality of what, um, our ideals are, uh, and what's really going on. Like there's a big gap there. So he thought, maybe if we have this program of like political renewal and maybe some ethics and morals, uh, being introduced like, uh, in a, like systematically, then maybe we can improve what's going on here.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  And that was what perestroika was supposed to be about.

• 7:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and glasnost, both of them together. But that, so that planned economy, Chuck, here's what Gorby inherited. The, so you have the ruble, which was the official currency of the USSR. It was not accepted or recognized outside of the USSR or outside of the Eastern Bloc, I should say, outside the Iron Curtain.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, big problem.

• 8:00Josh Clark?

  It is a big problem. Number two, the Soviet government was responsible for deciding how much of what any given thing was made in any given year, right? It wasn't based on supply and demand. It was based on a planned economy. They also set prices for those things. So if you put all those things together, the Soviet economy had no way of signaling who needed what, where, when. And so there were shortages everywhere. There was lots of waste and there were very few businesses. All the businesses, um, in this planned economy were owned by the state. There were very few of those businesses that didn't need to also be propped up artificially

• 8:43Josh Clark?

  because they were just losing money left and right.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, I mean, like you said, that what he inherited was in bad shape already. Uh, one of the reasons, and you know, I remember this is something we had heard a lot, like growing up as Gen Xers, was that, um, the Soviets are, are trying to keep pace in the Cold War and the space race, uh, and everything else. And they can't, they can't keep up that spending like, uh, we could there in the West. And that was true. All that government spending put a real dent in, uh, their, their financial outlook. Uh, the war and invasion of Afghanistan over a 10 year period from 79 to 89 was very costly.

• 9:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Uh, and then Chernobyl. Uh, I mean, we'll talk a little bit about just the, the cost of, like, the, the, um, I guess ethical cost of the cover up and what that did to dent their image, like within the, you know, Russia, uh, and the Soviet Union. But it literally cost a lot of money, like at least $18 billion, like $1986 to, to clean it up, to contain it. And that was on top of everything else, like the straw that broke the camel's back.

• 9:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that was a big deal for them, for sure. Did you ever see that Chernobyl mini series with Jared? I can't remember his last name.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Jared Harris.

• 10:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah, one of the finest actors of all time, I think.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, you bet your butt I did. It was outstanding.

• 10:06Josh Clark?

  Outstanding. I wish all mini-series were that good.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was one of the best ones I'd seen.

• 10:12Josh Clark?

  Yep, agreed. So again, Perestroika is Gorbachev coming along and being like, okay, we're in big trouble. We need some money fast and we need to just make some adjustments. So some of those adjustments were basically, this was huge. Like, these were incredibly radical with the backdrop of the Soviet economy, right? One was allowing companies from outside the USSR to start up businesses in the USSR. And they would be joint ventures co-owned by the company and by the Soviet Union, right?

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:46Josh Clark?

  So now all of a sudden, you have new expertise, new ideas, new innovation, new high-quality products coming in and a bunch of money outside investment coming into the USSR. That's a pretty good idea, right?

• 11:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was a good idea. As part of that, he said, maybe we should also get like the locals involved. So hand over some of the ownerships of some of these state-run enterprises that we've had, which is basically all business, from the government, only owned by the government, to a locally-elected workers' collective or a series of them. And so that meant that you could have private business in the Soviet Union for the first time. And then the other one was, you know, you mentioned that they, they had like quotas for companies. They didn't look at market corrections, like supply and demand to indicate how they should run stuff. They said, all right, maybe we should allow businesses to like, you know, instead of having shortfalls of stuff that we really need,

• 11:43Speaker 02

  maybe they should fulfill beyond the quotas for a change. And, you know, you got to make the amount set by the quota. But beyond that, you could continue making that stuff if there's demand for it.

• 11:55Josh Clark?

  For sure. Okay, so these are very radical ideas. But had he just gone with Perestroika? My money is on, Perestroika alone would not have torn down the USSR. I think it was a combination, and probably more than anything, it was really Glasnost that did it. The problems with Perestroika were immediately apparent. There were, by investing more power into the republics that all made up the Soviet Union.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:32Josh Clark?

  They started to withhold tax payments that were supposed to go to the central government, right? They were kind of a little bit emboldened, I guess, by that little extra power they were given.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 12:41Josh Clark?

  Some of the ministers who had run these places for the government were now running them kind of like as private citizens. And they started looting industry however they could. It just immediately started. And then the old quota system was what they had in place of supply and demand. But no one under the Soviet regime had any idea what other stuff you could use for supply and demand. Plus, the ruble was still artificially controlled, so they didn't have any market signals. Nobody knew what the heck was going on at this point.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it was all brand new, like, and we'll talk about this later. But, you know, you can't just flick a switch overnight and say, all of a sudden, we're a more free-market economy, and let's just see how that works. Because it had been so long and so, you know, entwined in the government's iron fist. It was just a mess. And so the economy started just going bananas in all sorts of weird ways. And the government tried to rein that in by spending a lot to try and like outmaneuver all the weird things that were happening.

• 13:46Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  And it was just a big mess, kind of right off the bat.

• 13:51Josh Clark?

  Yes, so it was a mess, but the Soviet Union's economy was already a mess. And I don't think just Perestroika would have done what happened. It took Glasnost, in my opinion, to bring down the Soviet Union. Should we keep going right now?

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Are you kidding me? With a cliffhanger like that?

• 14:09Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  Oh, man. I was like, we're taking a message break, and you're like.

• 14:16Josh Clark?

  Hey, man, you convinced me immediately.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a great cliffhanger. We're going to come back and explain what Glasnost was, right after this.

• 14:34Josh Clark?

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• 17:52Speaker 02

  All right, Josh teased Glasnost, and that was the second part of the one-two punch to try and introduce a new style of government in the Soviet Union. And this, you know, calls for this kind of started coming after the Chernobyl cover-up in 86. And the whole idea behind Glasnost was more transparency. Like I said, that's what the word means. So relax some of this, you know, very notorious state censorship of everything. And so, once that was done, all these social ills that plagued the Soviet Union started to be exposed a little bit in the media. So, you know, like mass famine, the Gulags,

• 18:37Speaker 02

  you know, Soviet history basically kind of being realized for the first time and displayed for people to make their own like judgments on it was. A good idea, but again, once those floodgates were open, it was like, turned out to not be a very good idea.

• 18:54Josh Clark?

  Yes. So I believe Gorbachev was a true believer in the idea that the Soviet Union needed greater freedom of speech and greater freedom of the press. I think he truly believed that.

• 19:06Speaker 02

  I do, too.

• 19:07Josh Clark?

  But this was also calculated politically as well. And his position was, okay, if I can have an open conversation with the Soviet people about the need for reforms and all the stuff we need to implement because of these problems we have, they're going to support my policies and plans and me. And by doing that, I will be, I will pull the levers of power away from the conservatives who have managed to hang on to power and keep things as they were stagnated and in trouble by that censorship, by the silence, silencing of critics, by intimidation and actual violence. Like, if I get people talking

• 19:49Josh Clark?

  openly about the problems, then we can have real change. So it was politically calculated, even though he did almost certainly actually believe that it needed to happen, too.

• 20:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. But the thing is, like, what you're saying was the conservatives had managed to hang on to that power by keeping things as they were, which wasn't great, but it was stable in a way. Like, it wasn't, it wasn't chaos. It was highly controlled, and that's the way they liked it. So to disrupt that system was, you know, it was a pretty bold move. He himself, he was part of the, what was known as the nomenclatura, which was the, sort of the upper echelon of Soviet society. It's like the elite bureaucrats, and they had, they had perks that other people didn't have, obviously. They had, like, you know, estates, and they had nicer cars and things like that. And that was not a part

• 20:44Speaker 02

  of the communist experiment, the communist idea, or this idea of social equality.

• 20:48Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  And I think he had spent so much time in his career in the nomenclatura that he really was out of touch with what was going on for the average, sort of, day-to-day life of the average Soviet.

• 21:02Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So he knew enough to know that they were suffering and weren't fully aware of why, but he had no idea of just how much their suffering was promoting a desire for real, real change.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:18Josh Clark?

  Not even like, small incremental change, or even semi-big change, like he was proposing, but sweeping change, essentially. And that's what he found out, once he opened up Glasnost. And it wasn't immediately adopted. I think the press actually kind of hung back for a little while at first, like, is this a trap? Are you trying to, are we gonna be arrested? And he was like, no, no. I think, he said at some point, like, there's no subject that's off the table. Everything is open for discussion. And very quickly, the press started to do what they're supposed to do. They began reporting on the ills of Soviet society.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, it was, it's a crazy thing to do, looking back.

• 21:57Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  They, you know, because all of a sudden, the media is writing about food shortages and writing about the rampant alcoholism and the pollution and the mortality rates. We'll get to some stats later on, but the second-tier, sort of, position of women in Russian and Soviet society.

• 22:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  State crimes. A lot of that was, like, under Stalin's rule, obviously, but, you know, that stuff was still going on. And so, all of these, sort of, you know, true believers, and as you'll see, like, especially in Mother Russia, the Eastern Bloc sort of had other ideas, but especially in Mother Russia, like, this is something they really believed in, and they had never received this information. So it was easy, if you were, you know, in the United States or in the West, to be like, God, they have no idea what's going on in their own country.

• 22:47Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  Because everything is being censored. But they really didn't. And, you know, it's, if you're living in a, in a smaller town or a village, and you're looking around, you might see some ills, but if you're reading about how everything is great, then it's gonna, you know, slant your opinion of it all.

• 23:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And even more than that, as we'll talk about in a little while, a lot of Soviets' identities were rooted in the Soviet experiment that now had been exposed as being based on torture and executions and the starvation of millions and millions of peasants, you know, like?

• 23:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:24Josh Clark?

  That, it shook them to their core. It wasn't just like, a loss of faith in their government. It was a loss of faith in their own, themselves, I guess, in some cases.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And, you know, like I mentioned, especially in Russia, because that was sort of the center of the Soviet Union. But once this happened in these formerly independent satellite states, like you said earlier, I think he really underestimated how ready they all were to really break free and, and sort of rise up. And, you know, there were some, some deep-seated, like, ancient hostilities and rivalries among some of these Soviet states that were forced to be together because they were part of the Soviet Union. And, you know, a good example you found was the ethnic Albanians and the Serbs. They had hated each other since the 14th century, since the Battle of the Field

• 24:17Speaker 02

  of Blackbirds. But as a part of the Soviet Union, they were, you know, supposed to be fellow countrymen. So as soon as they got the chance to hate each other again.

• 24:27Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 24:28Speaker 02

  They did. And that's why there was so much fighting in the Balkans, like, for, basically, all throughout the 90s, once this happened.

• 24:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Because the Soviets no longer forced them together, and they were like, okay, it's on, let's start committing atrocities. And they all did. The other thing that really kind of happened with Glasnost was the, like, the exposure of Western media, Western pop culture.

• 24:52Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:53Josh Clark?

  Like, this was not something that, that people had in the USSR had, like, really been exposed to at this point. Did you ever see that documentary where somebody was smuggling, like, Chuck Norris movies into, I think Bulgaria or something like that? And they credited, like, these bootleg American movies as essentially, like, creating unrest among the youth and leading eventually to revolution?

• 25:21Speaker 02

  No. Because they were like, wow, there's a guy like Chuck Norris in the world that we don't know about?

• 25:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, essentially. Chuck Norris, Rambo, like, they went crazy for it. And they also now saw the Western view of their country and their culture. And they were like, wow, that's, maybe, maybe you are pretty backwards. We don't have anybody like that.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, you know, and I'm not saying this in jest, because you know how much I love Billy Joel. But that, I think it was a couple of concerts he did in the Soviet Union.

• 25:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 25:53Speaker 02

  That was a really, really big deal. Like, no Western artist had ever performed there. And, yeah, I think that made a big difference, you know, as far as opening people's eyes to, to Western culture.

• 26:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I think Metallica did, too.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  Oh, did they? Later, obviously.

• 26:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, a little later, but, you know, it might have been before the fall of the Soviet Union, but probably right around the time. Alf. I mean, once they found out that Alf was on TV, they're like, it is over for communist Russia.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Well, the big thing that really allowed the, the satellite states outside of Russia itself to really, I guess, feel like they had a, a real chance at uprising, was when Gorbachev renounced the Brezhnev Doctrine.

• 26:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  Which was the doctrine that said, hey, we're gonna defend everybody here. We're gonna defend socialism with this massive army. We're all together. The Soviet Bloc is as one, and we will all defend each other. Sort of like a NATO thing. And in its place, Gorbachev was like, you know, you guys pursue your own reforms and, you know, govern, govern with the support of the people, like, all these satellite states. And again, just the pedal to the metal that happened after that. And once the, they knew that they didn't have Moscow's military support, like, removing that show of force, it, that was kind of holding everything together. So once that went away, it just started to crumble.

• 27:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Now, I think you've created a really good cliffhanger.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 27:30Josh Clark?

  So what do you say? Should we take our second break here?

• 27:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 27:34Josh Clark?

  Okay. We're gonna do that, guys. Chuck just agreed.

• 27:48Josh Clark?

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• 27:58Speaker 02

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• 28:11Josh Clark?

  Or discover Toyota's off-road lineup, including the iconic 4Runner and Land Cruiser, designed to go beyond the everyday. And with Toyota's proven reputation for quality and reliability, plus hybrid power on many models, you can get more for every mile and drive for less along the way.

• 28:27Speaker 02

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• 28:51Josh Clark?

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• 29:14Speaker 02

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• 29:38Josh Clark?

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• 29:59Speaker 02

  You know, you're never done decorating your home. You know what I mean?

• 30:02Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, because it's a process. There's always something you could do, or buy, or update. The only question is, what's next? For us, our animals just wear out our rugs so quickly, it's usually a new rug.

• 30:13Josh Clark?

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• 30:31Josh Clark?

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• 31:05Josh Clark?

  Okay, Chuck, so where we last left off was when Gorbachev abandoned the Brezhnev doctrine that said, "We're going to show up with our military if there's any unrest in any of the satellite states or republics." And without that show of force, that was, that was probably, like you said before the break, the thing that really kind of gave rise, or gave support to these nationalist movements. And each time, one of the, like, the satellite states, so we're focusing now on satellite states, we should differentiate. So there were 15 republics in the USSR. It included, like, Latvia, Estonia, Turkmenistan, a bunch of others. And then,

• 31:50Josh Clark?

  there were satellite states that were ostensibly independent countries, like Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Albania, a few others. Those are considered satellite states. You put all of them together, so you have the USSR with the 15 republics, and the satellite states. Now you have the Eastern Bloc, and all that's behind what they called the Iron Curtain. That whole portion of the world was turned in on itself, had turned its back on the rest of the world, and was focused on its own socialist experiment, aside from helping out other countries that wanted to try their own socialist experiments, which is why there was secret fighting in, like, Nicaragua, and why Cuba had missiles, nuclear missiles

• 32:32Josh Clark?

  aimed at the United States. For the most part, though, the Eastern Bloc paid attention to itself and kept the rest of the world out.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  That's right. And kept them in. But once there was freedom of movement and travel from behind the Iron Curtain, this was like a really, really key to, like, the weakening of the Union. And they were like, you know what's really nice is Budapest, and that's just, you know, a handful of hours by train into Austria. So all of a sudden, you had tens of thousands of East Germans defecting. Most people wanted to stay in, like, in their houses, though. Like, people want to live where they have their, have lived their whole lives. And so it wasn't like everybody left. Like, citizens of other Soviet republics, East Germans, most of them wanted to stay in their homes, but they wanted things to be different. So as soon as, sort of, the door was open politically, and all of a sudden,

• 33:23Speaker 02

  you could vote for different candidates, like, those candidates completely swept every election that happened.

• 33:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Poland was the first one. It's also probably the best example of them all. Because being in the Eastern Bloc, there was one party. When you went to vote, you voted for one party, and that was the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Even if you had an independent country, the communists had your country, your government, on lockdown, right? And at one point, as part of, like, this series of decisions that just took this rolling snowball and just turned it into an avalanche, was Gorbachev saying, "No longer are alternative parties outlawed. We can have other parties." And that first started

• 34:14Josh Clark?

  in Poland with the Solidarity Party, which had been a trade union for a decade or so,

• 34:21Josh Clark?

  and had turned into a populist, anti-authoritarian party. And now that it was possible for Solidarity to run against the communists, like you said, the board was just totally swept by then.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Wasn't that Lekko Linza?

• 34:37Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I remember. I mean, all this stuff was on the news, but I was in late high school into early college, and that wasn't, you know, I wasn't paying attention, like I do, you know, as you get older, I think, same as most people.

• 34:50Josh Clark?

  You didn't have a Solidarity Party t-shirt? It looked like a Smirnoff label?

• 34:54Speaker 02

  But I remember, you know, all of this stuff was in the background, always, on the news.

• 34:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  Uh, but yeah, once the Solidarity Party had a chance to run, it was, it was a sort of partially free election, because what they did was, they said, "All right, you can have a new party, but it's not just for 100% of the available seats." The Solidarity Party can have 35, like, up to 35% of the seats in their, you know, the Polish equivalent of the House of Representatives or the House of Commons. The other 65% were still reserved for the Communist Party, so they would still hold on to power. And then they also had a newly created Senate, so 100 newly created Senate seats. And Solidarity won 99 out of the 100 Senate seats. The one independent that won later switched to Solidarity, and

• 35:43Speaker 02

  they completely, obviously, filled the 35% allotment that they were, well, allotted in the House. And the communists were so unpopular, they didn't even get all the votes they needed to fill the other 65%.

• 35:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Yeah. So Solidarity showed the rest of the world, like, we, like, we have been under the communist thumb, the Soviet thumb. We don't want that. Not only do we want to be independent, we don't want to be communist anymore. And they weren't after that. I mean, once Solidarity came into power, Poland very quickly was like, "Boy, we're not associated with them anymore, everybody. Come on over to Poland. We have amazing sausages, and all sorts of other good things that you'll find out when you get here."

• 36:29Speaker 02

  That's right. But we're, please, no jokes. We've heard about all that stuff, but yeah, leave those at home.

• 36:36Josh Clark?

  Right. Our submarines do not have screen doors on them.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  That's right. I've never understood that. I've always meant to look that up on why that was a thing.

• 36:45Josh Clark?

  Oh, because if you, like, once it's submerged, all the water would come through the screen door.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  No, I remember jokes about Polish people. I never knew the background to that.

• 36:56Josh Clark?

  I think they just got picked on. It's one of those things where it's like, so this group has all the jokes against them, so then you start to just think they're all stupid, so that just begets more jokes against them, I think.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  It's like Detroit.

• 37:08Josh Clark?

  Yes, exactly.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  Just kidding, Detroit. We love you. So the Berlin Wall comes down, obviously. That was a big deal. Germany was reunified, you know, sort of in a model of the West, and that was just like, that was less than a year after the Polish elections of 1989. So like, things were really happening at a fast clip.

• 37:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  The leader of Bulgaria retired. The Czechoslovak government was replaced. The only place, kind of shockingly, that you had a bloody revolution was in Romania and Ceausescu.

• 37:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Chuck, that happened in a few months in 1989. All of that, all of the satellite states, just communism fell. So I mean, I can't, I wish I'd been a little older. I remember when the Berlin Wall fell, and I was like, "Mom, we gotta go. We gotta get on a plane. We have to get there. This is amazing." And she wanted to so bad, but she just, we didn't.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  You're like, "I've always wanted to see East Germany."

• 38:13Josh Clark?

  Exactly. And this is our only chance.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:17Josh Clark?

  But I wish I had been a little bit older, so I could be, so I could have paid attention to this, because I can't imagine what it was like paying attention to this over just these few months, from the time that Poland's elections were held in June to the end of 1989. Like, just country after country's communist regimes fell. And like you said, only Romania's turned bloody. And you can pretty much fully blame the Ceausescu regime for starting it. They started it, essentially.

• 38:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was the Romanian dictator there, Nikolai Ceausescu, and his wife, Elena, who was also appointed in a high office by her husband. So they were, you know, they were a power couple, I guess. But they had mass protests breaking out, and Ceausescu went to the military, and he said, "Kill them. Fire on these unarmed civilians." And he thought that would have been like, "All right, we're going to quash this really quick." But the military was like, "Bro, that's, we're not into that." And so they defected, just like a few days after he ordered them to fire upon them. Not only did they not do that, they defected to the protester side, and he and Elena saw the writing on the wall,

• 39:32Speaker 02

  and they're like, "We need to get the heck out of here." But the military caught them, technically had a military tribunal. It was pretty short-form, though, and they were found guilty and executed by firing squad.

• 39:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and strung upside down by their ankles for public viewing.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, harsh stuff.

• 39:49Josh Clark?

  There was a rumor, too. Do you remember hearing this, that Ceausescu?

• 39:53Speaker 02

  Sort of.

• 39:53Josh Clark?

  The Ceausescus were fed to dogs.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:56Josh Clark?

  After they were dead. And that is a rumor. From what I can tell, it did not happen. But the reason that rumor came about is twofold. One, Ceausescu was very famous, especially in Romania, for having appointed his favorite Labrador as a general.

• 40:14Josh Clark?

  So there's a dog theme with that. And then he was blamed specifically for the terrible problem with feral packs of dogs, what used to be family dogs roaming Romania at times like killing children and stuff, right? Like it was a bad problem. The reason why it existed was because he had ordered a bunch of villages bulldozed so he could build these new agritechnical centers. And then after he bulldozed them and before he could build the centers, he just kind of lost interest in it and moved on. And so a lot of people lost their homes, so did a lot of dogs, and that's where they got their feral dog problem from.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:52Josh Clark?

  And then I remember this, I will never forget it. This wasn't like it jogged my memory. I think about this joke every, I don't know, year and a half, I would say.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  Dennis Miller?

• 41:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Do you remember that?

• 41:05Speaker 02

  Uh, I do. I was, I thought Dennis Miller was very, very funny when he was the SNL news guy.

• 41:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, not bad, but he was never funnier than when he was on Monday Night Football.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 41:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, what was the Chowchescu joke?

• 41:20Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, on Weekend Update, on Saturday Night Live, like a couple of weeks after the Chowchescus were executed and the rumor was that they were fed to the dog, Dennis Miller said that Purina had released a new, a new product, Puppy Chowchescu.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you remember that one?

• 41:38Josh Clark?

  What happened next?

• 41:39Speaker 02

  Uh, well, I mean, this is the end of 1989, basically, and the only communist state still left west of the Soviet Union was Albania. And, you know, Gorbachev could have, um, like stepped in, he had a very non-interventionalist way about him. I think he knew also that like the genie was out of the bottle and like trying to bottle it back up is impossible and resuming the Cold War again is a bad idea.

• 42:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  So he stayed out of it and, uh, you know, it fell, like you said, in just a handful of months, like right before the world's eyes.

• 42:16Josh Clark?

  Right. And so far, we're talking just satellite states, already independent, ostensibly independent nations, took their independence back in 1989. The USSR is still together and Gorbachev is not pushing for it to break up. He's kind of trying to figure out how to balance these reforms he just introduced with keeping the USSR together and it proves impossible for him.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, he sees what's happening all around and, uh, you know, he abandoned communism, basically. He voluntarily devolved power.

• 42:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  Which, again, just all these years later, it looks like a crazy thing to do, uh, but just ceding all that power when all they had ever known and all the West had ever known was just, just how powerful the Soviet Union was in controlling everything. And to just loosen the knot on all of that was, uh, was just really a pretty wacky, wacky thing to do.

• 43:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I mean, especially unilaterally, I don't know quite enough about modern Russian history to know who else, like who his advisors and aides were.

• 43:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:27Josh Clark?

  So it basically just seems like this is Gorbachev doing it himself, and I'm sure he did have help, but in the end, it was Gorbachev doing this himself. Like this wasn't some coalition with other people. Like he was the head of the Soviet, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the CPSU, the ruling body of the entire Eastern Bloc at one point, up until very recently. He used his position as the head of the CPSU to dissolve the CPSU. It was as simple as that. And once that happened, if you don't have the party who is pushing everybody around and censoring everything, if they don't exist anymore, now it's a free for all.

• 44:10Josh Clark?

  And that was what he did at the, I think, the end of 1990.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, he, he created a, uh, what we would think of as the House of Reps in their Congress of People's Deputies that was, you know, mostly kind of fairly elected, uh, at least compared to what it had been. Uh, he ended, uh, like we said earlier, you know, he opened it up to other political parties, which is just going to completely weaken the grip of communism.

• 44:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 44:35Speaker 02

  Uh, by virtue of doing that. And then he created an office of president. Uh, he appointed himself president, so it's not like he was elected, but this was in March of 1990 and it was a brand new office. Uh, and, you know, that was, that was a big deal to have like an eventual elected president.

• 44:52Josh Clark?

  It was. And, um, the, the reason why he did that is because he dissolved the Communist Party so he couldn't be the head of the USSR because he was the head of the Communist Party if the Communist Party didn't exist anymore. So now he's like, I call president of the USSR. He also introduced elections. So each of the 15 republics had what's called a supreme soviet, which was their own parliament. And he said, hey, guys, why don't you start having free, um, elections with alternative parties legalized and let's see what happens. I'm Gorb, I'm pretty sure that the USSR is going to want to stay together and I hope you didn't put any money on that because he would have lost big time.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, uh, you know, we already covered, uh, kind of what Poland kicked off. Uh, the Baltics really helped set a tone as well. Um, pretty much immediately Lithuania said, all right, we're succeeding. Uh, we're not a part of the USSR anymore. This is in March of 1990. Uh, very quickly after Latvia and Estonia said, yeah, we're going to secede too.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  The Georgians did, the Armenians did. Uh, and this, these were, you know, kind of small time as far as the, the might of the Soviet Union. Like they could have still had a Soviet Union after this, even with these, um, I guess secessionist. Uh, but it was really Ukraine, like Ukraine was a, was and is a very big and powerful country and, uh, just second after Russia. And so that is A, that's why, you know, after Ukraine, uh, I think they held a referendum and 90% of the voters voted for independence. And after Ukraine left, the writing was really on the wall, but that's also why, if you just want some modern context of why Putin has, uh, why Ukraine, um, means so much to

• 46:46Speaker 02

  him personally.

• 46:47Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 46:47Speaker 02

  Is because Putin is, is of the old, you know, as we'll see later, when he came into power, it was on a wave of nostalgia for the old days and Ukraine leaving was a real big thorn in his side and just the side of sort of their history, the Soviet history.

• 47:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah. He said publicly that it's ridiculous Estonia is an independent country. Like he does not see these as independent countries. He sees them as, um, republics of the Soviet Union that should be brought back together with Russia, right? And that's what happened. I mean, this is so 1989, you saw the satellite states break out of the Eastern Bloc. And then now, 1990 to 1991, now it's happening with republics, like actual, the actual Soviet Union is starting to break up because the republic states are now saying, we're independent, we're not part of the USSR anymore. And now, now everyone's looking to Russia, which being a Cold War kid, I always basically used Russia and the Soviet Union as interchangeable.

• 47:48Josh Clark?

  But Russia was a republic of the Soviet Union, far and away the most powerful one. That's where the seat of Soviet government was, but it was still a republic, just like Latvia and Estonia. Um, and so now everybody's like, okay, what are you going to do? You guys going to try to carry on as your own kind of Soviet Union? You're going to start World War III? What's going on next? And I say, Chuck, that we end this episode here.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. Let's see into part one, everybody. And, uh, as per tradition, we don't do listener mails at the end of a part one.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  Uh, I think we just say, uh, you know, tune in on Thursday, right?

• 48:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we, we go out and stun the silence.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  Uh, I feel like, don't, do we usually say anything? It's been so long. Like, aren't you the one that handles this?

• 48:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah, I know, but it's fun watching.

• 48:36Speaker 02

  So thank you, everybody, and we'll be back with part two of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

• 48:41Josh Clark?

  That was great, but don't forget to tell them what our email address is.

• 48:45Speaker 02

  Oh, do we have to do that?

• 48:46Josh Clark?

  We usually do.

• 48:48Speaker 02

  All right, what is it? I heart, uh, [email protected]?

• 48:53Josh Clark?

  I Heart Radio.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  I Heart Radio. I see, I never say it. This is your job.

• 48:56Josh Clark?

  You did great.

• 48:58Speaker 02

  All right, we'll see everyone Thursday.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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