Original subtitles

[ 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.