San Antonio College Library

On the night of October 24, 1917, a police patrol stopped two men on the streets of St. Petersburg, but failing to recognize their quarry, the police let them pass. One of them-disguised as a tramp-was the future founder and leader of the Soviet Union: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. In this program, Cambridge University's Orlando Figes, author of A People's Tragedy, and Vitaly Startsev, of St. Petersburg Herzen University, investigate the circumstances of...

What is it like when tens of thousands of refugees return home from several years of exile to rebuild their lives? In this program, Muslim refugees from the village of Stolac describe the challenges of living with their wartime enemies; Croat refugees, preparing to celebrate Easter, seek guidance from a clergy that is itself divided between a desire for reconciliation and a belief in racial supremacy; and Bosnia's major religious leaders in Sarajevo...

Nationalism is not compatible with the progress of history, says Eric Hobsbawm. In this program, the renowned Marxist historian travels 35 miles on the Pressburg Railway to prove his point-a brief trip from Vienna to Bratislava in 1996 and a century-long journey through a landscape that has seen some of Europe's most turbulent political changes. Using the excursion as a paradigm for the nationalistic struggles of the region, Professor Hobsbawm traces...

Instigated in the name of the Russian people, the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II was actually guided by moderates and aristocrats. What parallels can be drawn between the February and October Revolutions, and in what ways did the two events differ? Did the Tsar's ouster set the stage for Lenin's rise to power, or was it an attempt to stem the tide of true radicalism? This program provides answers as it sifts through the political and cultural origins...

When atheistic Joseph Stalin assumed power, he put to use his training as a Russian Orthodox priest to redirect his people's devotional fervor and to cast himself as a secular god. Using eyewitness accounts, reenactments of key events in Stalin's life, and examples of Soviet film, art, music, and architecture, this provocative program demonstrates how Stalin ennobled communism and elevated it to the level of a state religion. Neo-Stalinists, nostalgic...

In the midst of the trauma of the Vietnam War, a U.S. diplomatic strategy evolves that begins the unraveling of the Soviet Empire. This program on the Cold War of the 1970s and 80s, hosted by David Frost and featuring historian Michael Beschloss, focuses on such key events and tactics as detente, the manipulations that sparked Middle East tensions between Soviet-supported Egypt and American-backed Israel, Nixon's historic trip to China, the SALT talks,...

In 1915, the Ottoman Empire tried to exterminate its Christian Armenian citizens, killing perhaps as many as 1.5 million people. Modern-day Turkey denies that it happened. For both moral and diplomatic reasons, Israel downplays the event. This program investigates evidence of an Armenian genocide by visiting sites of mass burials and presenting testimonials from survivors and their descendants. Leading figures on both sides of the debate are interviewed,...

In late 1922, Lenin wrote a secret speech censuring General Secretary Stalin, to be read the following spring at the Twelfth Party Congress. But on March 9, 1923, Lenin suffered a debilitating stroke, and the speech was never given. Featuring Orlando Figes, of Cambridge University; Boris Starkov, of St. Petersburg Academy of Economics; and Yuri Amiantov, chief archivist of the Communist Party, this program focuses on the sequence of events surrounding...

How did a single wayward intellectual become the father of the Soviet Union? This program examines the unlikely alignment of forces that enabled Lenin to return from exile and to take power over a vast nation fully engaged in a world war. With the help of rarely seen archival clips, photographs, and artworks, the film guides viewers through developments that anticipated the October Revolution, the milestones of the revolution itself, and the roles...

This comprehensive ten-year history of Russia following glasnost and perestroika presents a dismal picture of a nation in disarray, battling with seemingly insurmountable economic, social, and political problems. Major topics include the election of Mikhail Gorbachev; dissolution of the gulag system; Boris Yeltsin's opposition to Gorbachev's initiatives; environmental legacies, including the disaster of Chernobyl; the break-away of the Baltic states;...