All language subtitles for Cold War - S01E24 - Conclusions (1989–1991) (480p x265 EDGE2020).eng

[ Helicopter]

NARRATION:
After six months in office as President,

George Bush at last decided
it was time for a summit

with Mikhail Gorbachev.

GEORGE BUSH:
I said, "I want to meet Gorbachev

and I want to do it soon".

I felt it was important.

But we had different
feelings inside our administration -

still some wariness about
the reality of the change

and what Gorbachev's
heartbeat really was,

what his pulse really was.

[speaking Russian ]

The George Bush administration
spent a long time deciding

what their policy
should be.

Whether to continue that
of President Reagan-

when George Bush was
Vice-President -

or to make a change.

NARRATION: Bush and Gorbachev
would meet to try to end the Cold War.

But for Gorbachev,
beset by problems at home,

the question was, would the
Soviet Union itself survive?

But finally, Gorbachev
and Bush agreed to meet

in the Mediterranean
on board ship.

GEORGE BUSH:
We finally hit upon Malta

because it was a nice
peaceful harbor,

a place that they never
had bad weather,

and nobody would
get seasick.

NARRATION:
But they did get seasick.

JOHN F SIGLER: We had a weather
satellite tracking station on board

the ship, so we were able
to keep track of weather

across the Mediterranean
and around the world.

And we saw a little storm
developing toward Gibraltar

and it really stayed
right over Malta.

The world changed
dramatically between President Bush's

first overture to
Gorbachev in, I believe, August,

and December when
we actually met.

The Wall had come
down in Berlin.

Poland was no longer
a communist country.

Hungary was no longer
a communist country.

Everything had changed.

GEORGE BUSH: We surprised
people by coming forward with an agenda.

"Here's what we are
going to do with you".

And before we even got
through the first pleasantries,

we unleashed this on him.

[speaking Russian ]

They came well prepared;

the discussion
was interesting.

We met one to one - only our
assistants were present.

He laid out his vision and
proposals, and I agreed.

We had the same views.

Our discussions moved
onto a new level.

NARRATION:
Outside, the storm rose higher.

The Americans left the Russian
ship, and couldn't get back.

The talks didn't restart
till the next day.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: President Bush
said something about America's allies

wanting the United States to
stay in Europe and Gorbachev

said, "We want the United States
to stay in Europe too.

The United States is
a European power."

And given the history where
we had always believed and

where all of us who had been
taught about the Cold War

believed that it was the
principal goal of Soviet power

to get America out of Europe,

this was an
extraordinary statement,

and it stuck with everybody.

[speaking Russian ]

Malta was the place,
where for the first time,

we said we no longer
considered each other enemies.

Sentence was passed
on the Cold War.

NARRATION: Leaving Malta,
Gorbachev now had to face grave

difficulties Within the USSR.

Beyond its borders,
he could accept change.

Prague, Czechoslovakia.

The Communist Party was
still in power.

On November the 19th, Civic Forum,

an opposition
group was formed,

among them the
playwright Vaclav Havel.

They met in the Magic Lantern
Theatre underground.

[Speaking Czech ]

Society was already
pregnant with problems.

It was clear that sooner or
later the regime would collapse,

but nobody knew
exactly when or how.

In this sort of situation, a
snowball can start an avalanche.

[ Shouts ]

NARRATION: Protesters in Prague
were persistent and good humored.

They jangled keys to make their
point to the government-

your time is up!

[Speaking Czech ]

There was an atmosphere of
non-violence, of tolerance.

People of very different views,
under a common threat,

worked well together.

NARRATION:
It worked.

[Speaking Czech ]

[cheers & applause]

NARRATION: Present that day was
Alexander Dubcek, the Communist leader

deposed by Soviet tanks in
the Prague Spring of 1968.

[cheers & applause]

[Speaking Czech ]

It was a clear sign that the
regime was starting to give up.

It didn't give up easily, but it
was an important breakthrough.

NARRATION:
As people found their voices,

Czechoslovakia was
finding democracy again.

Before the year's end, Vaclav
Havel was elected President.

It came to be called
the Velvet Revolution.

No blood was spilt here.

Timisoara, Romania.

In mid December, during
riots against the Communist

regime of Nicolae Ceausescu,

security forces shot dead
seventy-three men and women.

The tyrant Ceausescu
was ruthless in

suppressing opposition.

[crowd demonstration ]

NARRATION:
In Bucharest, on December the 21st,

the Romanian government
staged a pro-Ceausescu rally.

These workers were
sent here to cheer him.

[speaking Romanian ]

[ Interrupted by crowd ]

NARRATION:
The crowd began to jeer.

State television took
the pictures off the air.

It was too late.

There was fighting
throughout the night.

Next day, crowds stormed the
Central Committee building,

and charged upstairs.

Ceausescu and his wife
escaped by helicopter-

an aide held a gun
to the pilot's head.

[crowd chanting ]

[speaking Romanian ]

It was important to call on the
whole population of Romania

to get out on the streets,

so that they could
paralyze the country.

And that was what happened.

It was important to
say that Ceausescu

had fled in his helicopter

because people couldn't
believe what was happening.

NARRATION:
That same day, Ceausescu was captured.

He and his wife had got just
45 miles from Bucharest.

[gunfire]

In the muddle and
confusion that followed,

different factions fought
it out in the streets.

Nearly a thousand
were killed.

The Ceausescus were tried
by court martial.

[speaking Romanian ]

[speaking Romanian ]

NARRATION:
Sentence was carried out.

[gunfire]

Television faked
the actual execution,

but the corpses
were real enough.

[speaking Romanian ]

It reassured me to know
Ceausescu was dead,

even though we are humanists
and I am a poet.

If he hadn't died,
then we would have died

and that's the truth.

The executioners took care their
victim could be recognized.

It was in the
Soviet Union itself,

that Gorbachev faced
insuperable problems.

He could allow freedom
to the satellites,

but would he allow it
to the Soviet republics?

There were fifteen
separate republics -

most wanted independence.

The Soviet Communist Party
was losing control.

Goods in the shops
were scarce.

[speaking Russian ]

We rightly chose freedom,
democracy,

glasnost and pluralism,
but we got one thing wrong.

People judged the state of the
country by what they could

or couldn't buy in
the markets and shops.

NARRATION: Many older people
found the pace of change upsetting.

ALEXANDER YAKOVLEV:
[speaking Russian ]

We promised that things
would get better,

but things were getting
worse and worse.

We should have allowed
freedom of trade,

but Gorbachev didn't dare.

NARRATION: Making the transition
to a market economy was hard,

but they did allow the opening
of Moscow's first McDonalds.

The young wanted pop music,
fashion,

the chance to make money,
the right to travel.

[speaking Russian ]

Society moved on and the
Party stayed where it was.

People started running like
rats from a sinking ship.

NARRATION: Gorbachev gave
Soviet citizens for the first time,

the freedom to demonstrate.

Now demonstrations called for
an end to the Communist Party's

monopoly of power.

[ Russian propaganda speech ]

NARRATION: But Communist
hard-liners opposed reform.

Despite them, Gorbachev,
himself a Communist,

chose pluralism.

The Communist Party,
which had ruled

since the October Revolution
of 1917,

would have to share
power with others.

It was a complete break with the
practice of Lenin and Stalin.

Of the fifteen republics
of the Soviet Union-

the Russian Federation
was the largest -

most were responding to
Gorbachevs loosening control

with demands for
national freedom.

In the Baltic states of Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania,

annexed by Stalin in 1940,
the demand was;

total independence.

In January 1990,
Gorbachev had gone to Vilnius,

the capital of Lithuania,
to argue that the Soviet Union

must not be broken up.

[speaking Russian ]

NARRATION: Despite
Gorbachev, the other Baltic States,

Estonia and Latvia,
followed Lithuania's lead

and also demanded
independence.

[cheers & applause]

[speaking Russian ]

He was trying to dam a river
that was in full flood.

But the current
was too strong.

It broke the dam and flooded
everything in its path.

NARRATION: Boris Yeltsin had
been Communist Party chief in Moscow.

Popular, ambitious,
he now used economic discontent

to weaken Gorbachev
and the Soviet Union.

In May 1990, he was chosen
Parliamentary leader

of the Russian Republic.

Yeltsin is very good man
for Russian people.

Gorbachev, Bush -
goodbye, goodbye,

goodbye, goodbye.

[speaking Russian ]

People began to question
Gorbachevs reforms.

They started to listen to
demagogues who promised

that everything would
be better tomorrow.

NARRATION: Yeltsirfs struggle
with Gorbachev was out in the open.

Russia,
richest of the Republics,

would be Yeltsirfs
road to power.

[speaking Russian ]

Gorbachev would never
really acknowledge that

the Soviet Union
would break up.

Yeltsin recognized that
it was inevitable

and he was one of the first
to take the initiative -

saying that Russia should
declare its sovereignty

and independence.

Indeed, that's how he actually
urged the other republics

to become independent.

NARRATION: On the international
scene, Gorbachev was still the man

the West could
do business with.

At their meetings, Gorbachev
asked Bush for help in his

economic difficulties.

Bush warned Gorbachev not to use
violence if the Baltic states

pushed for independence.

It looked like the Soviet Union
was coming unstuck a little bit.

At that point, I think
we started to believe we were in

a race to try to finish
the business of ending

the Cold War with
Gorbachev still in power.

NARRATION: The Red Army
was pulling out of an Eastern Europe

it had dominated for decades.

In Germany,
the troops would leave

a question mark behind them.

Divided by the Cold War,

Germany was moving
towards unification.

Would the Soviet Union really
allow a united Germany to

belong to the West's
military alliance, NATO?

[speaking Russian ]

Personally, for Gorbachev
and for me, it wasn't a problem.

But it was a problem for Soviet
society, which had gone through

the terrible war
with fascist Germany,

and suffered the death of
twenty or thirty million people.

They really ended up not
having any other alternative.

If they really meant what
they said about we will not use

force to keep the
empire together,

that meant that a country
should be free to choose

its own alliances.

NARRATION: The West
German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl,

undertook to limit
Germany's military strength;

to pay the Red Army's
resettlement cost;

not to station nuclear weapons
in East Germany.

Kohl was ecstatic.

Gorbachev had accepted
that a united

Germany could
belong to NATO.

We called the agreement
between Gorbachev and Kohl

'VE Day 2' because it
really was-

that was the end
of the Cold War.

NARRATION: The divided
Germany, at the heart of the Cold War,

was reunited.

[ Fireworks ]

NARRATION:
August the 2nd 1990.

Iraq invades Kuwait.
Iraq was a Soviet ally.

In spite of Iraqi-Soviet ties,
Secretary of State, Baker

succeeded in persuading
Shevardnadze to a joint

condemnation
of the invasion.

The Minister has
indicated that there was

some difficulty on the
part of the Soviet Union

in coming to this
agreement.

NARRATION:
Shevardnadze had consulted Gorbachev,

but he knew their
hard-line enemies

would use it
against them.

In Moscow, the daily lines
for food grew longer.

Tempers rose.

[fighting/woman pacifying ]

[ Russian ]

Can you imagine, we'd live
to see the day when we needed

coupons to buy socks?

There weren't even
any socks available.

There was nothing on the shelves
except out of date tins of fish.

That was the result
of perestroika.

When Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin
suggested a new way forward,

of course people
supported him.

[church service]

[speaking Russian ]

Russia, where Yeltsin
and his radical democrats

were taking over,

had practically declared
independence from

the Soviet Union.

They adopted law after
law that replaced

the laws of the Soviet Union.

NARRATION: All that winter,
Gorbachev was harassed by pressures

from each side -
for reform and against it.

In December,
Eduard Shevardnadze, resigned.

With Gorbachev
sitting stony-faced,

he warned watching of
a hard-line coup.

EDUARD SHEVARDNADZE:
[speaking Russian ]

NARRATION:
Gorbachev had changed tack.

He tightened security,
and brought hard-liners

into government.

He appointed Gennadi Yanayev
his Deputy.

Yanayev declared:

'I am a communist to
the depths of my soul.'

NARRATION:
Vilnius, Lithuania.

On the 11th and 12th
of January 1991,

crack Soviet troops entered the
capital to take back public

buildings for
the Soviet State.

[ Chanting ]

[gunfire]

Lithuanians flocked to
defend their Parliament,

and the radio
and television stations.

In the early hours of January
the 13th, Soviet tanks attacked.

If Lithuania were allowed to
break free, there would be

nothing to stop the other
republics doing the same.

[gunfire]

LORETA TRUCHILIAUSKAITE:
[speaking Russian ]

Some people tried to push the
tank back with their bare hands.

My legs got tangled.

I stumbled and
fell on my back.

I felt the tank treads
pressing on my legs.

I didn't feel great pain.

But I was shouting very loudly,
with all my strength,

'Mama

NARRATION:
Loreta's leg was saved.

In the fighting,
hundreds were injured;

14 were killed.

[ Shouting ]

NARRATION: In Moscow, thousands
marched to protest against the crackdown.

Gorbachev,
caught in the middle,

defended his
government's actions.

[speaking Russian ]

NARRATION:
Army Day, 1991.

The banners say
"Strong Army. Strong Union"

and "No to Capitalism
in the Soviet Union"-

back to the old ways.

In summer,
Gorbachev went to London.

As usual, he basked in the
welcome he received overseas.

He had business to do.

At the United States Embassy,
he met Bush

and agreed the terms of another
new deal on arms limitation.

But for the Soviet economy,

the urgent need was
for financial aid.

Gorbachev asked the
leading capitalist countries

for massive loans.

In seeking to end the Cold War,
he was doing them all a favor.

But, in spite of the smiles
and the handshakes,

they turned him down flat.

In Moscow, his enemies were
preparing to move against him.

[speaking Russian ]

I wrote a letter
to Gorbachev,

warning him that
trouble was brewing.

He replied, "Alexander, you
over-estimate their

intelligence and courage".

In July, I resigned.

I said, "Somethings cooking,
I can sense it".

He ignored me and
went on holiday.

NARRATION:
Gorbachev had drafted a new Union Treaty,

loosening the ties between
the Soviet center

and the Republics.

When it was due for
signature in August,

hard-line communists were appalled:

Boris Pugo,

Dimitri Yazov

Gennadi Yanayev

Vladimir Kruichkov

[speaking Russian ]

When I read the text
for the first time

on the 15th of August,

I was amazed by the fact

that we only had four days left
to the end of the Soviet Union.

NARRATION: On August the 18th,
a delegation arrived in the Crimea,

where Gorbachev was on holiday.

They demanded he declare
a state of emergency,

and hand over power.

He refused,
and was put under house arrest.

[tanks ]

NARRATION:
On August the 19th,

Moscow awoke to
the sound of tanks,

and the news that
Gorbachev was ill.

An Emergency Committee
had taken over.

ARCHIVE- CNN ANNOUNCER:
This is a CNN Special Report.

CNN PRESENTER [ JOHN MANN]:
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is,

according to the official Soviet
TASS news agency,

out of office at this hour,

replaced by his Vice-President
Gennadi Yanayev.

The White House, we are told,
has now been informed.

President Bush is apparently
checking with officials

on the situation.

Well, let me make a few
comments about these momentous

and stunning events.

While we are still watching
the situation unfold

and it still is unfolding,
all is not clear.

It seems clearer all the time,
that contrary to official

statements out of Moscow,

that this move was
extra constitutional.

NARRATION:
In Moscow, confused and concerned,

people began to gather at the
Russian Parliament building,

the White House.

No one knew where
or how Gorbachev was,

or what was
really happening.

Boris Yeltsin, Gorbachevs enemy
and rival, defended him,

and the constitution.

[ Applause ]

[speaking Russian ]

NARRATION:
Yeltsin entered the Parliament building,

and prepared to resist.

The coup had not succeeded
in seizing power outright.

Soldiers were refusing to
obey the Emergency Committee.

Some commanders turned
their tanks around.

[speaking Russian ]

NARRATION:
Anxious crowds grew throughout the day.

On the evening of the 19th,
nervously,

the plotters held a
televised press conference.

[speaking Russian ]

ALEXANDER YAKOVLEV:
[speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER:
They were frightened.

They had shaking hands.

It was clear they
didn't know what to do.

At the same time I felt
scared, because, God forbid they

should really come to power-

what would happen then?

NARRATION: Gorbachev was
unable to contact the outside world.

He recorded this statement
to a home video camera.

No one saw it.

[speaking Russian ]

NARRATION: As night fell, fears
grew that the Emergency Committee,

increasingly desperate,
might order an attack on

the White House and
its defenders.

[speaking Russian ]

We were defending
a free Russia,

and the symbol of free
Russia was Yeltsin.

We joined hands and waited for
the tanks in dead silence.

[tanks ]

NARRATION: As the armored
vehicles moved among them,

three young men
were killed.

[ Screams/shouts ]

NARRATION: At three in the
morning, Kruichkov called Yeltsin

in the White House,
and admitted defeat.

[speaking Russian ]

We were not bloodthirsty.

We were not ready to pay
any price to hold onto power.

Yeltsin sent a plane to bring
Gorbachev back to Moscow.

He arrived early on
August the 22nd.

[speaking Russian ]

[ Crowds ]

NARRATION: Far more was
changed than Gorbachev realized.

Yeltsin was the victor
and was now in command.

[ Cheers ]

[speaking Russian ]

[ Cheers ]

NARRATION:
The next day in the Russian Parliament,

Yeltsin rammed home
his victory.

[speaking Russian ]

[ laughter and applause]

NARRATION:
Humiliated by Yeltsin,

and at last realizing
that the Communist Party

of the Soviet Union's
role was finished,

Gorbachev resigned
as General Secretary.

As talks on the Union continued,
Gorbachev,

still President of the USSR,
was isolated.

[speaking Russian ]

NARRATION: At Minsk on December
the 8th, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine,

the three Slav states, acted to
dissolve the Soviet Union and

set up instead a Commonwealth
of Independent States.

The Soviet Union was finished
and so was Mikhail Gorbachev.

They told George Bush,

before telling Gorbachev
what they'd done.

[speaking Russian ]

It's disgraceful.

To tell the President
of the United States

and not bother to inform the
President of your own country.

It's shameful.
Absolutely contemptible.

It's dirty.

NARRATION: For 45 years, the
world feared a nuclear apocalypse.

It never came.

Statesmen on both sides,
who bad the power to

push the nuclear button,
in crisis after crisis,

put humanity's
interest first.

Nuclear deterrence
kept the peace.

GEORGE BUSH: The world is a far
safer place now that the Cold War is over.

No leader of a small
country is worrying

and saying to his cabinet,

"One of these two crazy
superpowers is going

to get us caught up
in a nuclear war".

That is not going to happen.

[speaking Russian ]

Those of us who
experienced what

I would call
'the fever of the Cold War',

the permanent state of alarm
about the prospect of a

nuclear war,
we breathe more easily now.

We no longer have to
carry this heavy burden.

NARRATION:
The Cold War ended, peaceably.

But need it have begun?

Could it all
have been avoided

when East and West were
comrades, back in 1945?

[speaking Russian ]

We missed our chance -

because there were so many
suspicions, on both sides.

The West exaggerated the
strength of the Soviet Union.

We could not possibly
have moved into Europe.

We were a
devastated country.

We'd lost
millions of people.

I can't imagine any
circumstances under which we

could have gotten along
with Uncle Joe Stalin.

I can imagine no circumstances
under which we could have worked

out our problems with
Russia earlier than we did,

or in a different way.

I've come to the conclusion
we did it pretty goddamn well.

NARRATION: Millions, who
might have died in nuclear conflict,

lived and prospered.

But there were costs,
human and material,

and a price to pay.

The manufacture and
testing of nuclear weapons

left a continuing mark.

[speaking Russian ]

The legacy of the
Cold War really means that

the Cold War is
still going on.

It's going on because the air,
water and soil are polluted.

It's very expensive

and difficult to
overcome this legacy.

It's really a delayed
action time bomb.

NARRATION: During the Cold War,
the United States and the Soviet Union,

between them, spent trillions
of dollars on armaments.

The United States, borrowing
heavily, could afford it.

The Soviet Union,
in the end, could not.

Part of that vast cost was
necessary to maintain the

balance on which
world peace depended.

Some of it was wasted.

[water splashes ]

NARRATION: There were
shooting wars within the Cold War-

they took their toll.

In Korea, millions died.

And millions in Vietnam,
soldiers and civilians.

Over a million died
in Afghanistan.

Hundreds of thousands died in
Africa and in Central America.

Some of these wars would
have happened anyway.

The Cold War made
them more deadly.

[gunfire]

Thousands died in
a divided Europe

two hundred
at the Berlin Wall.

The living, mourn the dead.

[speaking Russian ]

ARCHIVE- MOTHER:
And look, he's right here,

where my lips
can reach him.

He isn't up high where
I can't reach him.

Or down low where
I can't bend anymore.

He's right here
in front of me.

NARRATION:
The Cold War was a clash of ideologies,

and the big Cold War
loser was Marxism Leninism.

The Communist dream of a better
society that would outlast the

West, came to nothing.

But not for Fidel Castro.

[ Speaking Spanish ]

Why believe that the
ideals of socialism,

which are so generous and
appeal so much to solidarity

and fraternity,
will one day disappear?

What would prevail -
selfishness, individualism,

personal ambitions?

That will not save the world;

of that I am
absolutely convinced.

[Speaking Czech ]

Communism as a system
went against life,

against man's
fundamental needs;

against the need for freedom;
the need to be enterprising,

to associate freely;
against the will of the nation.

It suppressed
national identity.

Something that
goes against life

may last a long time -
but sooner or later,

it will collapse.

[bells]

NARRATION: The superpowers
had confronted each other, relentlessly.

Now, under intolerable pressure,
one side withdrew.

[ Gorbachev
speaking on telephone]

NARRATION: Gorbachev had done
as much as anyone to end the Cold War.

He called Bush and told him
this was his last day in office.

GEORGE BUSH:
There was a kind of sadness.

The finality of it
hit me pretty hard

and it was Christmas time,

and holiday time, and I felt
that a friend was hurt -

and I wasn't
happy about that.

NARRATION: That night,
the red flag of the Soviet Union

was lowered for
the last time.

In Washington,

Bush made his
Christmas broadcast.

For over forty years the
United States led the West

in the struggle against
communism

and the threat it posed
to our most precious values.

This struggle shaped
the lives of all Americans.

It forced all nations to
live under the specter of

nuclear destruction.

That confrontation
is now over.