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Meet The Historians PodcastA new series from andallthat.co.uk Author: www.andallthat.co.uk
Hello and welcome to andallthat.co.uks new podcast series: Meet the Historians. Over the course of this first series I will be talking to a number of historians who have written about the Soviet Union and finding out a bit more about their historical methods and approaches. I will also be exploring their interpretations of key topics such as: Stalins wartime leadership; the effectiveness of Khrushchevs de-Stalinisation programme; and the reasons for the breakup of the USSR. The series will be available to download as a podcast at PodOMatic, to subscribe to via iTunes, or as individual episodes here at www.andallthat.co.uk/meetthehistorians Language: en-gb Genres: History Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Episode 5 - Meet the Historians - John Keep - Brezhnev
Sunday, 18 May, 2014
The period of Soviet history between Nikita Khrushchev’s fall from power in 1964, and the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev as premier in 1985, has often been seen as a period of economic, social and political stagnation in the USSR. For the vast majority of this twenty year time frame, the USSR was governed by one man, Leonid Brezhnev. As such, the Brezhnev era has earned a reputation for being a flat-line in the development of the socialist experiment. However, this view is far from universal. To discuss the nature of Brezhnev’s rule in Russia, and particularly the extent to which it might be considered as period of stagnation, I am joined by John Keep, the emeritus professor of Russian history at the University Toronto. Since retiring in 1988, he has co-written a retrospective on Stalininsm, and has also produced a fantastic overview of the Soviet Period in his “A History of the Soviet Union 1945-1991: The Last of the Empires” which is recommended core reading for the study of the USSR.
