Bridget Kendall explores the major turning points in the later decades of the Cold War.

By the beginning of 1991 Mikhail Gorbachev was in trouble. The Communist old guard wanted to thwart his reform agenda and prevent any more power from slipping out of central control. But, following the momentum of Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost initiatives, radical reformers wanted less control from Moscow and an end to Communist party rule altogether. At the forefront was the largest of the fifteen Soviet republics, the Russian Federation, led by its new President, Boris Yeltsin, who had established a massive popular following among many Russians.

Backed into a corner Gorbachev surrounded himself with hardliners, bringing many of them into his government and desperately tried to zig zag between the two camps.

But the zig-zagging couldn't last.

In August 1991, under the direction of Communist hardliners, Gorbachev was placed under house arrest and a state of emergency was imposed. Suddenly, it looked as though all Gorbachev's reforms were about to unravel and the clock would be turned back. The Berlin Wall might have come down and reformist governments might have taken over in Eastern Europe, but now it seemed that the era of Cold War hostility could come back.

Bridget Kendall hears from three people who remember the events of 1991 in the USSR.

With David Remnick, Sergey Aleksashenko and Sergei Yevdokimov.

Readings by John Norton.

Producer: Martin Williams. Show less