Season 1

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  N/A/100 votes

  Enter Gorbachev

  Season 1 Episode 1 - Aired 5/31/1991

  How Mikhail Gorbachev became president of the Soviet Union. Yuri Andropov, the dying Secretary General, named Gorbachev as his successor, but the nomination was suppressed for two years by the conservatives.

  Director: David Ash

  Writer: Unknown

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  N/A/100 votes

  The Battle for Glasnost

  Season 1 Episode 2 - Aired 6/7/1991

  Follows the attempted coup while Gorbachev was away in March 1988, at how the Kremlin tried to cover up the Chernobyl disaster. Afterwards, glasnost flourished and Soviet society opened up.

  Director: David Ash

  Writer: Unknown

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  N/A/100 votes

  The Yeltsin File

  Season 1 Episode 3 - Aired 6/14/1991

  How Boris Yeltsin rose to the top as a Soviet Communist Party official and how he came to fall out with Mikhail Gorbachev.

  Director: Unknown

  Writer: Unknown

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  N/A/100 votes

  Revolution from Below

  Season 1 Episode 4 - Aired 6/21/1991

  The first Congress of People's Deputies was elected in 1989, but a new rebelliousness was soon unleashed. Soviet miners protested and, for the first time since Lenin, the State gave in.

  Director: Unknown

  Writer: Unknown

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  N/A/100 votes

  Breaking Ranks

  Season 1 Episode 5 - Aired 6/28/1991

  At first nationalism in Lithuania, Armenia and elsewhere was encouraged, but the nationalists were demanding independence. Gorbachev's aides reveal what he said to Ceausescu of Romania, Landsbergis of Lithuania and other leaders of communist-bloc countries of the time.

  Director: Oren Jacoby

  Writer: Unknown

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  N/A/100 votes

  End of the Beginning

  Season 1 Episode 6 - Aired 7/5/1991

  Gorbachev visited London in 1991 to ask world leaders for aid, and they demanded that he move to an open market economy. His plan to do so failed. The programme contains tapes of Gorbachev’s meetings with Deputies and interviews with Yeltsin and Shevardnadze.

  Director: Angus Macqueen

  Writer: Unknown