Brian and I talk about why the West won the Cold War

We begin by talking about what the Cold War was and the importance of NATO, nuclear weapons, communism, the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall.

We then talk a little bit about Cold War movies and the general lack of them. The movie I refer to is The Deadly Affair which was based on Le Carré’s novel Call for the Dead

We ask why the Russians didn’t copy the Chinese but don’t get very far.

We mention the problems the West had such as the welfare state, and a communist 5th column.

We also ask why the Soviet Empire collapsed without a fight. The best answer seems to be that Gorbachev was played by the West. I can’t deny I am a bit dubious about that one. By the way, it was Boris Yeltsin on that tank not Mikhail Gorbachev.

We finally get round to talking about the horribleness of the Soviet Union. It started early. The Ukraine Famine, the Gulags. You weren’t even safe if you were a loyal communist. The Purges. “Stalin only ever trusted one person in his whole life and that was Hitler.” The Crozier Monarchy Theory gets an outing.

Brian advances the theory that in the end competence is decisive. 

Corrections, footnotes and further reading:

The Economic calculation debate refers to this. 

The Lubyanka was the headquarters of the KGB (the Soviet secret police)

This was a Trabant.

This is what we were referring to when we talked about the Bekaa Valley