In 1988 Mikhail Gorbachev visited the USA on a state visit and experienced celebrity treatment in Times Square in New York as he came to visit the new president elect George H.W. Bush. This episode explores this fateful visit and as the Soviet Union crumbled from within and Gorbachev’s formative years and career in the Communist Party its machinery.Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each weekIf you enjoy the Explaining History podcast and its many years of content and would like t
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Explaining History Podcast
For more than a decade, the Explaining History Podcast has helped listeners around the world make sense of modern history. What began in 2012 as a simple experiment—short, accessible episodes explaining major historical events—has grown into a long-running library of carefully researched, thoughtful explorations of the 20th and 21st centuries.
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Every week I publish one piece connecting a current event to its historical roots — free, every Tuesday. Paid subscribers get two additional deeper dives and full archive access.
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