Boris Yeltsin’s trip to a supermarket in Clear Lake, Texas, planted a seed of the USSR’s destruction. The United States won the Cold War with free-market capitalism—and Jell-O pudding pops. Still, astoundingly, the collapse of the USSR was not what the U.S. government wanted. In this episode, Dr. Yelena Biberman and Zachary Troyanovsky evaluate the Cold War confrontational narrative and offer a new perspective on how the USSR dissolved. For a transcript of this episode and more, visit https://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/insights/how-to-kill-a-superpower

Dr. Yelena Biberman and Zachary Troyanovsky explore the role of spontaneity at Belavezha, narrowing in on the exact moment of dissolution: a dinner party. The seating arrangement, a late arrival, and the sequence of phone calls all influenced the outcome. Did vodka? For a transcript of this episode and more, visit https://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/insights/how-to-kill-a-superpower

How much agency did the signatories of the Belavezha Accords have? Factors outside of their control shaped their behavior in ways that even they could not have predicted. In this episode, Dr. Yelena Biberman and Zachary Troyanovsky seek wisdom from Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy to understand the dissolution of the USSR, as well as their own unusual life stories. For a transcript of this episode and more, visit https://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/insights/how-to-kill-a-superpower

The Soviet Union drew its last breath on Sunday, December 8, 1991, in a hunting lodge inside the primeval Belavezha forest. The life of a global superpower—offering the last ideological alternative to liberalism—ended over a boisterous weekend. Many believe that it was doomed because of flawed ideals, but few know the story of the Belavezha Accords. In this premiere episode of How to Kill a Superpower, Dr. Yelena Biberman and Zachary Troyanovsky begin unearthing the haunting legacy of the USSR’s dissolution while piecing together what happened at that hunting lodge. For a transcript of this episode and more, visit https://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/insights/how-to-kill-a-superpower

Episode 20: The Collapse of the USSR by The Davis Center

Anna Veduta of the independent media outlet Meduza discusses the challenges of journalism in Russia and the media landscape surrounding the recent Russian presidential election.

In this episode, we talk with Anne Applebaum about her new book, Red Famine. Applebaum argues that the 1932–1933 famine in the Soviet Union was part of a deliberate operation by Stalin to rid the USSR of Ukrainians who resisted the Bolsheviks and their policy of agricultural collectivization.

Mikhail Gorbachev, revered by many in the West for his commitment to “openness” and democratizing reforms, has a more mixed reputation in Russia, where he is associated with the fall of an empire. In this episode, Bill Taubman discusses his new biography of Gorbachev, emphasizing how the leader's personal history and character were reflected in his leadership, and how the policies of Vladimir Putin can be read as a response to Gorbachev’s contested legacy.

Politics increasingly pervades our everyday lives, including our entertainment and pop culture. The Eurovision Song Contest was created in 1956 as an opportunity to bring nations and people together in an expressly non-political fashion—through song. Now, 60 years later, Eurovision is often used as a specific political tool. James Evans and Yuval Weber discuss the history of the song contest and how it has been used as a political tool to reignite recent conflagration between Ukraine and Russia.

Two decades after immigrating from Kiev to Chicago, Julia Alekseyeva found her great-grandmother’s hidden memoirs of a life spanning the Soviet 20th century. With input from comics scholar Hillary Chute, she turned a lifetime of secrets into a work of art.