A Cold War childhood in Albania (211)
Lea Ypi grew up in one of the most isolated countries on earth, a place where communist ideals had officially replaced religion. Albania, the last Stalinist outpost in Europe, was almost impossible to...
3 Dec 20211h 1min
The Cold War handshake in the heavens - the Apollo-Soyuz mission (210)
On 17 July 1975 the first manned international space mission, carried out jointly by the United States and the Soviet Union. Millions of people around the world watched on television as a United State...
27 Nov 20211h 15min
Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev - aspiring actor and poetry fan (209)
Now, what do you think of when you hear the name Leonid Brezhnev who ruled the Soviet Union for 18 years from the 1960s to the 1980s? An old guy waving weakly from the Lenin mausoleum? Well, think a...
14 Nov 202159min
Born into a family of Canadian Communists (208)
Fred Weir was a third-generation red diaper baby from Toronto and a long-time member of the Communist Party. His uncle, trained at the Lenin School in Moscow in the 1920s as an agent of the Communist ...
13 Nov 20211h 5min
Berlin: Capital of Spies (207)
For almost half a century, the hottest front in the Cold War was right across Berlin. From summer 1945 until 1990, spying was part of everyday life in both East and West Berlin. I speak with historian...
6 Nov 202155min
How a Soviet conscript became a NATO General (206)
In 1985, an eighteen-year-old named Riho Terras arrived at the Soviet armed forces’ large conscript assessment facility in Tallinn obeying his conscription orders. Little did he know that 26 years lat...
29 Okt 20211h 1min
Terrorism in the Cold War (205)
I talk with the writers and editors of Terrorism in the Cold War a new two volume book that uses a wide range of case studies including Polish Military Intelligence and Its Secret Relationship with th...
22 Okt 202159min
Emanuela - a Cold War Romanian Childhood (204)
Emanuela Grama was born in the mid-1970s’ in a small provincial town in Eastern Romania. She provides us with a great insight into life in the Romanian provinces during the 1980s. Emanuela lived in ...
15 Okt 20211h 3min
