The regime postponed the Assembly—for about 70 years. But it meant that Russia, which had lost two million people in the war, played no role in the peace or indeed in post-war Europe, reversing centuries of European ambitions. In the newly-named Union of Soviet Socialist Republics including Ukraine civil war, ineffectually supported by the Allies, raged for three years.
Three million people emigrated. Immobilized by a brain tumour in , Lenin tried in vain to block Stalin succeeding him. Stalin ruled by terror for 29 years, using the apparatus of a brutal security state to repress dissent and squelch artistic expression.
He forced collectivization of agriculture that killed more than ten million in a man-made famine and liquidated a million citizens in mass purges. Every institution was overturned, every urge subordinated to survival. In , real German enemies replaced imaginary internal ones. But the staggering costs of victory over Hitler fueled ambition.
National pride in the USSR bloomed over Sputnik, superpower status and global clout, universal literacy, and improved welfare. But a dysfunctional economy sacrificed consumers, a stagnating state culture deformed factual truth and evaded accountability, and created what Solzhenitsyn famously christened a gulag archipelago.
A losing war in Afghanistan from to added to destructive centrifugal forces. He aimed to palliate the legacy of cruelty by opening up the existential economic and civic reforms of perestroika and glasnost. But a society traumatized by decades of terror with no habit of self-empowerment could hardly re-boot itself.
Economically, undoing old rigidities was easier than providing effective and fair substitutes. Well-meant but shallow western advice just to open markets to free competition ignored the scale of the unprecedented make-over involved.
Shock therapy generated much more shock than therapy. Initial public euphoria over new freedoms and the dismantling of state security gave way to despair over the destruction of everyday life as the economy crashed. Gorbachev ended the Cold War, changing our world as well as theirs. Abandoning corrupt eastern European communist regimes, he accepted German unification, not a given for a historically-minded Russian, withdrawing 1.
Congress, ever short-sighted, denied its appropriations. Gorbachev faced a backlash for too much change and disruption with too few workable solutions. Weakened by an inept but pivotal coup attempt against him from hard-line security chiefs, he was challenged for power by his populist rival, Boris Yeltsin.
Yeltsin became the first elected president of the Russian Republic and, in a deal with party bosses in Ukraine and Belarus, dismantled the Soviet Union itself in December, Nationalists pushed back against discredited democratic reformers. Episode Kennedy assassination and Nixon resignation.
A decent, and not melodramatically over-done recreation of the end of two presidencies. However, two glaring errors--easily avoidable by less than five minutes of on-line research--leave an impression of amateurism.
Sam Ervin, who headed the Senate Watergate Committee, is shown and the name of the special prosecutor in the Watergate case a quite distinct office , Leon Jaworksi, is given. Not even haste or budget constraints can excuse such slipshod journalism. I will still watch more episodes for the sake of the overall effectiveness of the depictions, but will have to keep an eye out for occasional misinformation. Details Edit. Release date March 22, United Kingdom. United Kingdom.
Technical specs Edit. Color Color. Contribute to this page Suggest an edit or add missing content. Top Gap. See more gaps Learn more about contributing. Edit page. A Day That Shook the World recalls the days of the 20th century that proved to be era-defining and pivotal in the course of modern history. These are the days on which political revolutions, technological breakthroughs, and sporting triumphs took place, and whose effects were felt the world-over. Beginning with the funeral of Queen Victoria and recounting such iconic events as the Hindenburg airship disaster and the Cuban Missile Crisis, the series also contains concise overviews of more recent events such as the Asian Tsunami and the Olympic bid.
Narrated by John Humphrys. Queen Victoria's Funeral. The Wright Brothers' First Flight. Battle Of The Somme. Abdication Of The Tsar Nikolas. Irish Free State Treaty Signed. Suzanne Lenglen Breaks Wimbledon Record. Hitler Becomes German Chancellor. Hindenburg Airship Crash. Hitler Annexes Austria. Germany Invades Poland.
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