Power Vertical Podcast Ep. 11
Half a century ago this week, Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia and crushed the Prague Spring. And 27 years ago this week, a hardline coup against Mikhail Gorbachev failed, precipitating the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Seventy-nine years ago this week, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, dividing Eastern Europe between Hitler and Stalin.
And 29 years ago this week, an estimated two million Soviet citizens joined hands to form a human chain spanning 675 kilometers across the three Baltic states, marking the 50th anniversary of the Hitler-Stalin pact and protesting the Soviet occupation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
What do these anniversaries, and how they are observed – or not observed – tell us about today’s Russia?
On this week’s Power Vertical Podcast, I take a look back – and a look ahead with former U.S. State Department official Donald N. Jensen, a Senior Fellow at CEPA and a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University.
WP Post Author
Brian Whitmore is Director of the Russia Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis. Before joining CEPA he was Senior Russia Analyst at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. He also worked as a foreign correspondent for The Boston Globe in Moscow and Prague; as a graduate instructor in the Department of Government and International Studies at the University of South Carolina; and as a visiting lecturer in the History Faculty at Mechnikov National University in Odessa, Ukraine and the International Relations Faculty at St. Petersburg State University.
August 24, 2018
The Power Vertical is a CEPA podcast covering the Kremlin for Kremlin watchers. All opinions are those of the guests and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.
