Sarah Paine

And the Russians...

were shocked by how unpopular they were.

They were thinking they were going to get credit, Gorbachev, for East Europe's liberation rather than blame for Eastern Europe's ensurfment.

And here you have Yuri Ryuzhov, a scientist and parliamentarian going, all of our former satellites by compulsion cast off from us as fast and as far as possible.

Anatoly Kovalyov, who is a deputy foreign minister, said, look, we had no confidence whatsoever concerning whom the East German army is going to shoot, the demonstrators or us.

The same thing for the Polish and Hungarian armies.

Great.

With allies like this, who needs enemies?

The allies got to cover it.

Under this argument, unrest in the empire forced the Soviet Union to forfeit the Cold War.

Okay, I got another counterargument.

It says nonsense.

The real problem was the satellites were unhealthy.

That's why the whole thing fell apart.

So this map is 1960, and you see all those tempting green places?

They're about to become independent, and they are really sick of their Western European colonizers.

Enter the Soviet Union with a program to put the West out of business.

There were many takers.

Okay, fast forward to the late 1980s.

Soviet Union is on a roll.