Today we’re bringing you the latest episode of Breaking History, the podcast where I go back in time, in order to make sense of the present. In the last episode, I told the backstory behind Donald Trump’s plan to declassify every file related to JFK’s assassination. This episode is about how America won the Cold War, with the help of dissidents who refused to repeat their regime’s lies: In the ’80s, the U.S. president aligned with the dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. And those dissidents prevailed. Today, he berates an heir to their struggle in the Oval Office.
You can listen to the episode below, or keep scrolling to read a print adaptation of it. If you enjoy either, follow Breaking History on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Let’s go back to a better time, when the Soviet empire was dissolving, one nation after another. Czechoslovakia, Poland, Lithuania, East Germany: In the late ’80s and early ’90s, all of them broke free from the Iron Curtain. On the right side of history stood America; in the landfill of history lay the Soviet Union.
This moment feels like a distant dream. Not only because the Russian bear is once again on the prowl, but also because the rhetoric of the American president has changed significantly from Ronald Reagan’s lofty directive, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
These days, we have Donald Trump expressing insane hostility toward Ukraine, a sovereign nation invaded by Russia; as I wrote last week, he seemed unmoved when Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of that nation, explained in the Oval Office that if Russia swallows his country, America will find itself with an empowered enemy.
