{"id":361,"date":"2011-08-22T12:01:03","date_gmt":"2011-08-22T12:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/?p=361"},"modified":"2011-08-22T12:01:03","modified_gmt":"2011-08-22T12:01:03","slug":"twenty-years-ago-the-plot-to-restore-communism-collapsed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/2011\/08\/22\/twenty-years-ago-the-plot-to-restore-communism-collapsed\/","title":{"rendered":"Twenty years ago the plot to restore Communism collapsed."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Twenty years ago I was your age, and I remember\u00a0feeling genuine fear when the news came through that hardliners had imprisoned the reforming Mikhail Gorbachev (left). The plot was broadly to overthrow the reformer and restore\u00a0Communist rule. For a moment it felt like the Cold War was on its way back.<\/p>\n

The plot failed, and ironically it actually speeded reform. A good account of it can be found here<\/a>. It does however reflect a key theme of our course – is reform or reaction the most effective way to rule Russia. In our period the reformers, Khrushchev, Alexander II and perhaps even the Kerensky all lost power. The effective repressors, Stalin and Alexander III faired better. Gorbachev the reformer was greatly weakened by the coup attempt of 1991, and Yeltsin soon replaced him.<\/p>\n

In a BBC interview to mark the twentieth anniversary here<\/a>\u00a0Gorbachev compares the dominant poltical figure of our century,\u00a0Putin to Stalin. He\u00a0claims that\u00a0Putin has ‘castrated’ democracy in Russia. See what you think. One thing is however clear today Putin – the ex-KGB man is a more popular figure in Russia than Gobachev – the man who ended the Cold War. Draw your own conclusions on that one…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Twenty years ago I was your age, and I remember\u00a0feeling genuine fear when the news came through that hardliners had imprisoned the reforming Mikhail Gorbachev (left). The plot was broadly to overthrow the reformer and restore\u00a0Communist rule. For a moment … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":364,"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions\/364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}