WEBVTT - THE LAST SOVIET - EP 2: Salyut 7 0:00:15.920 --> 0:00:20.720 Mission Control just outside of Moscow. Picture of vast hall 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:25.759 with rows of desks and those massive eighties computers. It's 0:00:25.800 --> 0:00:29.560 February nineteen eighty five and a few ground controllers are 0:00:29.560 --> 0:00:32.120 trawling through graphs and signals sent from a space station 0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:35.640 called Salute seven, the pride and joy of the Soviet 0:00:35.680 --> 0:00:41.040 space program. Right now, Salute seven hasn't got any cosmonauts 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:44.960 on board. It's on autopilot, orbiting the Earth, waiting for 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:49.879 its next crew. So the ground control's work is fairly routine. 0:00:50.720 --> 0:00:59.840 They record data, talk about their weekend plans. But then 0:01:00.640 --> 0:01:03.800 right at the end of the shift, someone notices something 0:01:03.880 --> 0:01:09.160 weird on one of the dashboards. There's a light flashing 0:01:09.160 --> 0:01:14.040 on the control panel, a warning light. Everyone's on their 0:01:14.040 --> 0:01:17.039 feet trying to fix it, but then another light goes down, 0:01:18.360 --> 0:01:26.040 and another. One by one, the whole dashboard goes dark. 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:35.080 A horrified silence fills the room. They've just lost the 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:40.160 space station. It's like a dead piece of thing in orbit. 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:44.240 That's also Sadiki, our Soviet space galu heard last time. 0:01:44.880 --> 0:01:47.639 They couldn't find any kind of signal, nothing from the station. 0:01:49.240 --> 0:01:52.880 It's essentially floating, spinning, probably out of control in Earth. Orbit, 0:01:53.640 --> 0:01:57.280 and it's huge, this huge chunk of metal. If they 0:01:57.320 --> 0:02:01.840 don't control it, it might fall uncontrollably uninhabited country and 0:02:01.920 --> 0:02:04.680 it could land on a city, a village somewhere, and 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:08.200 so they're very afraid of that. Thousands of people could die. 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:12.640 It would be a human tragedy and a huge embarrassment 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:16.520 for the Soviet Union, and so they need to do 0:02:16.600 --> 0:02:21.520 something that's never been done before, to land on a 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:24.760 dead object in space and out of control chunk of 0:02:24.800 --> 0:02:35.079 metal and bring it back to life. I'm Lance Bass 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:39.840 and from Kaleidoscope. iHeart podcast and exile content. This is 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:49.359 the last Soviet as y'all know. I am obsessed with 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:53.120 space and with this one particular space movie. Houston, we 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:57.679 have a problem. Apollo thirteen. I freaking love this film. 0:02:57.680 --> 0:03:00.280 In my books, Tom Hanks can do no wrong. Power 0:03:00.360 --> 0:03:03.040 up the level three hours by the checklist. We don't 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:06.120 have that much time. It tells the story of a 0:03:06.240 --> 0:03:11.040 space flight going seriously awry. The rescue mission became live news. 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:15.280 All of America was watching, asking themselves with the astronauts, 0:03:15.400 --> 0:03:19.400 make it home alive. The Apoto thirteen to the Moon 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:22.560 is in serious jeopardy. Disasters are one of the big 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:25.200 reasons we fall in love with space. Now coming to 0:03:25.240 --> 0:03:28.520 the moment, the last moments of Apolo thirteen as it 0:03:28.560 --> 0:03:30.480 begins it's re entry. The best thing we can do 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:34.480 now is just to listen. I'm hopeful. The stakes could 0:03:34.560 --> 0:03:37.760 not be higher, and it's all beamed into your living 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:42.240 room twenty four seven. They hate it. All three shoots 0:03:42.240 --> 0:03:51.080 out great and extremely loud applause here in mission control. 0:03:59.480 --> 0:04:01.880 But the story I'm about to tell you now took 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:05.880 place in complete secrecy. No one was allowed to know 0:04:05.960 --> 0:04:09.360 about it. And yet it's the Soviet Union's very own 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:12.760 Apollo thirteen. And the man who would lead it from 0:04:12.760 --> 0:04:18.360 the ground Yep, you guessed it, Sergey Krekolev. In our 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:21.880 last episode, we left our cosmonaut in nineteen sixty one, 0:04:22.279 --> 0:04:25.720 aged three, the Soviet Union was still recovering from the 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:29.360 wreckage of World War Two, but they'd beat the Germans 0:04:29.760 --> 0:04:40.240 and now, against all the odds, they'd conquered space too. O. 0:04:42.760 --> 0:04:45.279 Space was going to be the future of the Soviet Union, 0:04:46.600 --> 0:04:49.120 and that generation who grew up in the nineteen sixties 0:04:49.600 --> 0:04:52.039 were really sort of, I think, encouraged to think in 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:56.279 utopian terms. The Soviet Union putting the first person in 0:04:56.320 --> 0:05:00.719 space was the defining moment of Saragey's childhood, and there 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:03.160 was a sense that this was just the beginning of 0:05:03.279 --> 0:05:08.160 space exploration, of the Soviet Union's rise on the global stage. 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:11.320 All Russia's just wild about. Jurica got in, first man, 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:16.640 took conquer space. Please. For Sarah Gay, life's possibilities must 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:20.000 have seemed endless. So I think it's very much part 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:23.040 of his DNA and that generation in particular, growing up 0:05:23.040 --> 0:05:25.320 in the sixties and seventies as children and then as 0:05:25.400 --> 0:05:29.920 young teams, to be immersed in that world of future 0:05:29.920 --> 0:05:34.760 oriented thinking about the Soviet Union. Future oriented things are 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:39.880 good and you only expect them to get better now. 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:41.919 If you grew up in the United States during the 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:44.440 tail end of the Cold War, like me, I know 0:05:44.480 --> 0:05:47.800 what you're thinking, you'd have been fed the same propaganda 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:50.320 that the Soviet Union was a cold, gray place where 0:05:50.400 --> 0:05:53.400 kids go hungry. Well, in the sixties, that was more 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:56.440 likely to be true of America. Seventy three percent of 0:05:56.480 --> 0:05:59.799 all Clay County families received less than three thousand dollars. 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:02.880 They're very young, their mothers, the aged are the most 0:06:02.960 --> 0:06:07.760 numerous inhabitants of this permanent culture of poverty. Yep, Because 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:11.440 in the Soviet Union, basic stuff, food, a roof over 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:14.839 your head that was all provided for by the state. 0:06:14.960 --> 0:06:18.239 Whether in Communist headquarters in Odessa on the Black Sea 0:06:19.000 --> 0:06:23.400 or in the Hermitage art gallery in Leningrad, every activity 0:06:23.880 --> 0:06:27.480 is controlled by directives that originate under the gold domes 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:30.400 of the Kremlin. So if you're Saragai, a young boy 0:06:30.440 --> 0:06:33.120 coming of age in Leningrad in the sixties and seventies, 0:06:33.480 --> 0:06:38.880 things would have seemed pretty good. He didn't grow up 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:42.479 in luxury, but it was a care free environment. He 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:45.960 knew everything was going to be just fine. He went 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:49.680 to school, he went swimming, he joined the city's gymnastics 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:54.000 team and the local airplane club, all for free and 0:06:54.120 --> 0:06:56.560 in a spare time. He was doing what all the 0:06:56.560 --> 0:06:59.120 other kids were doing. In the Soviet Union, he would 0:06:59.120 --> 0:07:04.040 have been leading the same kinds of exciting popular science 0:07:04.080 --> 0:07:08.400 fiction novels titles like Hard to Be a God, The 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:13.400 Land of Crimson Clouds, The Man from Mars. It was 0:07:13.560 --> 0:07:21.800 all about space, limitless possibility, utopia, and not just in 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:24.200 the pages of his books. He would have grown up 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:27.960 watching these hero cosmonauts being eulogized he was proud of 0:07:28.720 --> 0:07:32.680 fellow cosmonauts and Russell and doing amazing things in outer space. 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:37.440 After Gagarin, the USSR just kept beating the Americans to it. 0:07:38.640 --> 0:07:41.600 First probe to Mars, landing on Mars by an unmanned 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:45.080 space probe from US. First woman in space, space girl, 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:48.600 Valentina Tereshkova. There's one of place in history. First person 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:51.559 to walk in open space. Man for the first time 0:07:51.600 --> 0:07:56.800 has stepped forth into the emptiness of space. Okay, the 0:07:56.800 --> 0:07:59.320 Americans got to the Moon in nineteen sixty nine, obviously 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:04.200 a big deal, but the Soviets were working on something bigger, 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:13.080 a permanent home in space, a space station where cosmonauts 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:17.120 can go live and actually do some science. The Soviets 0:08:17.160 --> 0:08:21.600 wanted to spend months up there, maybe eventually forever. It 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:24.240 looked like a weird lego tube with solar panel wings. 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:27.960 They call it Salute one, and over the next decade 0:08:27.960 --> 0:08:31.880 they upgraded it with better and better versions, Salute two, 0:08:32.320 --> 0:08:36.480 Salute three, kind of like iPhones, until they got the 0:08:36.559 --> 0:08:44.079 best version yet, Salute seven. The Americans were jealous, they 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:47.400 had nothing like it. Once again, the Soviets were winning, 0:08:48.280 --> 0:08:52.160 and it's in this atmosphere that Sarage finished school and 0:08:52.200 --> 0:08:55.880 decided he too wants to become a cosmonaut to go 0:08:56.000 --> 0:08:59.280 and live on a Soviet space station. And so we 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:02.480 went to an engine a university and in nineteen eighty 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:06.480 one he graduated top of his class, and because of 0:09:06.520 --> 0:09:09.559 that he was chosen to work for a very special place, 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:13.880 the same place that designed the first space satellite, the 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:18.920 first spaceship carrying the first man, a place called Anarkia. 0:09:20.559 --> 0:09:24.760 Sarage starts out working on instruction manuals for cosmonauts, not 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:27.560 the most exciting work, but it will come in handy 0:09:28.120 --> 0:09:32.880 because one day in February nineteen eighty five, Serge gets 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:40.360 a call the space station Salume seven. It's lost power. 0:09:41.679 --> 0:09:45.959 It's dead. If we don't rescue it, the Americans will 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:50.640 overtake us and win the space race. So here's the plan. 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:54.959 It's kind of crazy. We're going to send two cosmonauts 0:09:54.960 --> 0:09:57.920 to this dead thing and try to turn the power 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:01.800 back on. But we don't really know how to do 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:06.160 it because it's never been done before. So we need 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:09.720 someone who can figure out how to do it, someone 0:10:09.800 --> 0:10:13.280 to lead a mission from the ground, someone who knows 0:10:13.320 --> 0:10:18.520 the station back to front, and we're thinking this could 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:41.160 be you. June sixth, nineteen eighty five, ten forty am 0:10:41.160 --> 0:10:46.520 Mission Control, a loud, ominous rumbling starts up on Sarage's radio. 0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:51.040 It's a sound of a rocket taking off. Two cosmouts 0:10:51.080 --> 0:10:57.160 are launching into space to the dead, empty station. Sarah 0:10:57.360 --> 0:10:59.640 has got a big job ahead of it in about 0:10:59.679 --> 0:11:02.560 forty eight hours, the time it'll take to reach Earth's orbit. 0:11:02.960 --> 0:11:05.319 He's gonna have to tell these two cosmonauts how they're 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:07.680 going to do this thing no one's ever done before. 0:11:08.280 --> 0:11:12.240 How to land on a dead station. Usually landing on 0:11:12.280 --> 0:11:15.440 a working station is the easy bed. It's all done automatically. 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:19.920 But this station is dead, and that means Sarage has 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:23.240 to figure out how to do it manually. How to 0:11:23.360 --> 0:11:26.120 land on the station with nothing to tell you the way, 0:11:26.400 --> 0:11:30.040 the speed, the angle. It's a bit like driving a 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:35.480 race car at night with no lights, no markers, but 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:38.480 Saragey is on it. He goes into a simulator, a 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:42.199 kind of fake spaceship. It's the same thing I trained on. 0:11:42.520 --> 0:11:45.360 It literally looks and feels like a real spaceship, but 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:48.240 it's set up in a warehouse on Earth. The next 0:11:48.280 --> 0:11:51.959 best thing to being in space, so he starts practicing 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:54.480 how to get the tiny ship to spend at the 0:11:54.559 --> 0:11:58.000 same angle as the station, how to get the right speed, 0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:02.480 and his accuracy has to be exact. If he's off 0:12:02.520 --> 0:12:05.960 by an inch millimeters, even the rocket will crash into 0:12:05.960 --> 0:12:10.400 the station and explode. The cosmonauts are dead. He tries 0:12:10.480 --> 0:12:15.800 again and again and again, failing and failing, until he's 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:19.760 got it. He races back to mission control, calls up 0:12:19.760 --> 0:12:22.000 to the cosmonauts and tells them this is how you 0:12:22.080 --> 0:12:27.280 do it. It's now or never. Hundreds of miles away, 0:12:27.679 --> 0:12:30.160 the cosmonauts can see the looming bulk of the station 0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:35.760 through their porthole. It's spinning out of control, a twenty 0:12:35.800 --> 0:12:40.040 ton chunk of metals, and they're approaching it fast. At 0:12:40.080 --> 0:12:45.959 eighteen thousand miles an hour. Sarah Gey feels his breathing accelerate. 0:12:47.240 --> 0:12:52.160 At any moment, ground control could lose contact. You can 0:12:52.200 --> 0:12:59.760 imagine him shutting his eyes, hoping, praying, and then a 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:09.320 juttering sound like something's wrong with the radio stating five seconds, 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:17.520 four seconds, three seconds, two seconds, and then he hears it. 0:13:18.400 --> 0:13:25.920 The cosmonauts voices on the radio they'd made it, but 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:30.720 Sarage knows it's just the beginning. The cosmonauts still have 0:13:30.800 --> 0:13:33.720 to enter the ship, find the root of the problem, 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:37.160 and bring the station back to life. And they've got 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:45.760 no idea what they're going to find inside. They didn't know, 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:49.840 for example, if the entire station was filled with toxic gases. 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:55.800 They didn't know if the station was frozen, they didn't 0:13:55.800 --> 0:14:00.240 know if the station was cracked. They had no idea. 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:04.480 If you open the hatch and there's a big chunk 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:10.160 of ice, you know, what would you do if you 0:14:10.200 --> 0:14:14.680 open the hatch and the led screens are broken, cracked, 0:14:15.120 --> 0:14:23.400 and there's glass, what do you do? They opened the 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:27.840 hatch and very gingerly, wanting to the what's called a 0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:34.320 transfer compartment, and they slowly, gingerly again opened another hatch 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:41.800 into the main compartment. And one of the things that 0:14:41.840 --> 0:14:47.960 I think both cosmonauts remember is that everything was just 0:14:48.240 --> 0:14:58.040 dead silence. They'd never been in space before in a 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:02.080 completely silent environment, because when you're in a spaceship, things 0:15:02.080 --> 0:15:04.600 are worrying and clicking and moving and things like that. 0:15:05.880 --> 0:15:08.320 It's dead silence, a silence that I don't think any 0:15:08.400 --> 0:15:15.440 human being had ever really heard. It's an outer space 0:15:15.960 --> 0:15:19.600 and they're moving in this dead, dark, pitch black space 0:15:19.600 --> 0:15:29.800 station in utter silence. It's also freezing everything. The walls, 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:36.320 the panels are covered in a sheet of ice. They 0:15:36.360 --> 0:15:40.320 move by touch. They have flashlights, of course, and they 0:15:40.320 --> 0:15:44.080 eventually figure out the lay of the lent. Through the 0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:46.920 weak beams of their torches. They can just about make 0:15:46.960 --> 0:15:51.120 out the station's long cavernous corridors, filled with lifeless equipment 0:15:51.320 --> 0:15:57.200 and reams of wires. Serage instructs them to work very carefully. 0:15:57.520 --> 0:16:00.320 All the batteries they check. They have these instruments, you know, 0:16:00.440 --> 0:16:05.120 zero volte zibol, zero volt, etc. All the batteries are dead. 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:09.920 And remember it's really cold, so they can't spend too 0:16:10.000 --> 0:16:13.240 long on the station. And every time, you know, they 0:16:13.280 --> 0:16:15.360 go in there and they come back and they're completely 0:16:15.400 --> 0:16:26.120 freezing on the ground. And the Soviet press this mission 0:16:26.280 --> 0:16:29.240 was really downplayed. They didn't even say it was a 0:16:29.280 --> 0:16:33.160 rescue mission at all, just routine going up there and 0:16:33.280 --> 0:16:37.360 doing some science experiments. In fact, they had a press conference, 0:16:37.480 --> 0:16:40.760 a video press conference from space during their mission, these 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:44.960 two cosmonauts, and they were told to take off their 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:48.360 warm clothes, like their hats and gloves and whatever, because 0:16:48.360 --> 0:16:50.800 people would be wondering why they're wearing this in space. 0:16:51.600 --> 0:16:54.320 So for the duration of the conference, you know, however 0:16:54.360 --> 0:16:57.400 long twenty minutes or so, they were extremely cold, but 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:01.640 pretending everything's fine. The idea is that nothing ever goes 0:17:01.680 --> 0:17:05.720 wrong in the Soviet space That's right, nothing ever goes 0:17:05.720 --> 0:17:09.080 wrong in the Soviet space program, or in the Soviet economy, 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:14.399 or in Soviet society. The system was flawless, that was 0:17:14.440 --> 0:17:18.240 the party line, and the cosmonauts freezing their asses off, 0:17:18.960 --> 0:17:28.399 had to stick it out. The cosmonauts spend days working 0:17:28.440 --> 0:17:31.879 in pitch black, subzero temperatures trying to find a working 0:17:31.920 --> 0:17:36.399 power source. These kind of situations where everything has going sideways, 0:17:36.560 --> 0:17:39.560 is what they train you for as a cosmonaut. When 0:17:39.600 --> 0:17:42.480 I was training, we ran drills where things went perfectly, 0:17:42.840 --> 0:17:44.960 but I would say eighty percent of the time we 0:17:44.960 --> 0:17:48.560 were practicing for when things went wrong. But it still 0:17:48.600 --> 0:17:52.560 doesn't prepare you fully. So for a long time there's nothing. 0:17:53.760 --> 0:17:57.960 But then finally Sage sees a small number of lights 0:17:58.000 --> 0:18:01.880 begin to flicker. The crew had managed to reactivate one 0:18:01.880 --> 0:18:05.200 of the solar panels. This means the station finally has 0:18:05.280 --> 0:18:09.600 some power. It's gonna be okay. They can save the station. 0:18:11.720 --> 0:18:15.920 Mission control erupts an ecstatic applause. Saragey finds himself being 0:18:15.920 --> 0:18:19.399 wrapped into hugs, kissed on the cheeks. Mob This is 0:18:19.440 --> 0:18:22.360 a unique, unique event in the history of space exploration 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:26.160 where the crew essentially brought their spaceship to a dead 0:18:26.200 --> 0:18:29.840 object and space and revived the whole thing within weeks. 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:33.560 Saragey had done the near impossible. He saved the station. 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:36.000 He wasn't going to be a national hero like a 0:18:36.080 --> 0:18:40.159 garden raiding through Red Square. The whole thing was top secret, 0:18:40.760 --> 0:18:43.560 but he was going to get a reward. I don't 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:47.280 think it's a coincidence that very soon after the mission 0:18:47.280 --> 0:18:50.440 he gets assigned to a crew, a crew to actually 0:18:50.480 --> 0:18:54.000 go to space see the Earth from above, float around 0:18:54.040 --> 0:18:58.160 and zero gravity. His dream, the one he's had since 0:18:58.200 --> 0:19:02.800 he was a little boy, was finally about to come true. 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:08.160 I think for Krakalio, I think it might have seemed 0:19:08.280 --> 0:19:11.520 when he's assigned to his first mission. My guess is, 0:19:11.680 --> 0:19:15.080 you know, the future is bright, and who knows what's ahead. 0:19:15.440 --> 0:19:18.359 That's the boundless future. But I think we have a 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:20.679 better sense of it now that some of this stuff 0:19:20.800 --> 0:19:25.200 was just kind of the last gasp, the last gasp 0:19:25.400 --> 0:19:32.160 of a collapsing superpower. The Soviet Union then was frozen. 0:19:33.080 --> 0:19:36.679 The economy who was grinding to a halt. It was 0:19:36.760 --> 0:19:40.280 a time of total stagnation. Nothing was changing, and if 0:19:40.320 --> 0:19:45.600 it didn't change soon, it would come crashing down. That's Sergechmimon. 0:19:45.960 --> 0:19:48.800 He's a reporter for the New York Times. In nineteen 0:19:48.880 --> 0:19:51.360 eighty he was working as a journalist in South Africa 0:19:51.560 --> 0:19:54.320 when he was told by his editor, we want you 0:19:54.359 --> 0:19:58.479 to go and cover Moscow from the peak of summer 0:19:58.560 --> 0:20:02.919 to the depth of winter. Serge and his family stopped 0:20:02.920 --> 0:20:06.520 over in Helsinki and bought warm clothes, then took a 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:09.520 slow train to Moscow on New Year's Eve. We had 0:20:09.640 --> 0:20:13.440 one kind of beer to celebrate, and if the train 0:20:13.560 --> 0:20:16.960 was empty, nobody was traveling. On New Year's night, December 0:20:17.040 --> 0:20:25.040 thirty first, early in the morning on January first, they 0:20:25.119 --> 0:20:29.679 pulled into Moscow Central Station. It was dead. Everybody was 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:34.520 asleep after a night of revelry. Dawn was just breaking 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:37.640 and the station clock tower was bathed in this beautiful 0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:40.520 golden light, and the square was covered in a fresh 0:20:40.600 --> 0:20:44.720 layer of untouched snow. It was like a storybook. Moscow 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:54.160 a storybook Moscow. But soon enough reality hit. Shops were 0:20:54.400 --> 0:20:57.560 largely empty. You know, there was very little. There was 0:20:57.680 --> 0:21:00.919 you could survive. There was spread, there was me, but 0:21:01.040 --> 0:21:05.000 it was all on an elemental level, the bare minimum, 0:21:05.119 --> 0:21:08.600 because by the eighties the Soviet economy had stopped working 0:21:09.520 --> 0:21:12.640 for decades. All decisions about what to spend and how 0:21:12.720 --> 0:21:16.080 much to produce were made in a single office building 0:21:16.080 --> 0:21:20.399 in Moscow for millions of people. And while these bureaucrats 0:21:20.400 --> 0:21:22.560 in this office building put a ton of money towards 0:21:22.600 --> 0:21:26.080 flashy space projects, they didn't pay much attention to how 0:21:26.080 --> 0:21:29.959 people were going to feed themselves. And eventually, by the 0:21:30.000 --> 0:21:36.480 eighties this caught up with him. The system had become 0:21:36.560 --> 0:21:40.800 inefficient and corrupt. The Soviet Union couldn't produce enough grain 0:21:40.880 --> 0:21:45.280 to feed its own population. There were chronic shortages all around. 0:21:46.359 --> 0:21:50.000 Look look how expensive these carrots are, and there's nothing 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:54.280 else in this stage store. But when things did occasionally appear, 0:21:54.720 --> 0:22:01.160 people went nuts. This could be toilet paper, this could 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:05.959 be you know, toothpaste, it could be anything. News spread fast. 0:22:06.320 --> 0:22:08.439 Your neighbor would tell you, Hey, there's a cheese delivery 0:22:08.440 --> 0:22:11.200 at the store two streets over. You'd stop whatever you're 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:14.080 doing and go. People whould rush to the store in 0:22:14.160 --> 0:22:18.040 line up. People spend up to three hours a day 0:22:18.160 --> 0:22:21.800 waiting in line. The longest lines are at the vodka shops. 0:22:22.480 --> 0:22:25.119 So there was you know, like an army of people 0:22:25.280 --> 0:22:28.200 who walked around Moscow all day trying to find things 0:22:28.240 --> 0:22:31.000 to buy and getting in line. And I would join 0:22:31.040 --> 0:22:35.439 those lines. The Soviet system was at breaking point, but 0:22:35.560 --> 0:22:38.879 people felt like they couldn't do anything about it. You 0:22:39.000 --> 0:22:43.000 had absolutely no saying politics and who ran your country 0:22:43.000 --> 0:22:45.560 and who ran your life, and to think about it, 0:22:45.680 --> 0:22:50.480 to talk about it was dangerous. Surges storybook Moscow turned 0:22:50.480 --> 0:22:54.119 into a nightmare, and this was very bad news for 0:22:54.160 --> 0:22:59.359 Serage as well, because if there was no money and 0:22:59.400 --> 0:23:02.399 the Soviet Union, then there was no money for the 0:23:02.440 --> 0:23:05.840 space program, and that meant his dream of going to 0:23:05.920 --> 0:23:11.480 space might be over before it had even begun. It 0:23:11.600 --> 0:23:15.200 seemed that the country was stuck, that nothing would change, 0:23:17.640 --> 0:23:22.000 but then it did. This time, the Soviet seemed to 0:23:22.080 --> 0:23:25.040 have opted for a long term change. The man who 0:23:25.119 --> 0:23:28.719 took charge within hours of Constantine Chernienko's death, the new 0:23:28.840 --> 0:23:35.680 Soviet leader, Michael Go Mikhail Gorbach Mikhael Get used to 0:23:35.720 --> 0:23:57.480 the name Mika in the mid eighties, the gray suit 0:23:57.520 --> 0:23:59.879 of bureaucrats who had been running the country for decades 0:24:00.400 --> 0:24:05.639 began to well die off, one by one in quick succession. 0:24:06.320 --> 0:24:11.479 Andrewpov Chernenko, people you'd probably never heard of footnotes in history. 0:24:11.520 --> 0:24:14.280 Another Soviet leader who was too old and too sick 0:24:14.320 --> 0:24:16.879 when he took power to hold on to it has died. 0:24:18.440 --> 0:24:23.000 And then they chose a great and sort of fateful act. 0:24:23.119 --> 0:24:27.720 They chose a young man, well educated, well spoken, charming, 0:24:27.800 --> 0:24:32.679 smile Mikhail Gorbachev. Get used to the name Mikhail. He 0:24:32.800 --> 0:24:36.240 presented himself differently to the very formal, stuffy leaders that 0:24:36.280 --> 0:24:40.480 came before. He's got charisma, I mean, he's got charisma, 0:24:40.520 --> 0:24:45.680 Western style, much more aware of Soviet weaknesses, much more 0:24:45.800 --> 0:24:51.120 open to new ideas by Soviet standards. He was revolutionary. 0:24:51.960 --> 0:24:57.879 It was an almost immediate and Emma say, enormously exciting change. 0:24:58.960 --> 0:25:02.840 The change Gorbach would bring to the Soviet Union was seisman. 0:25:03.200 --> 0:25:07.320 This is the story of the emergence of Michael Segeevich Gorbachev, 0:25:07.880 --> 0:25:11.120 of the most sweeping changes in the Soviet Union since 0:25:11.160 --> 0:25:15.000 the Russian Revolution. In February nineteen eighty six, he delivered 0:25:15.000 --> 0:25:21.879 a speech that shook the country. Gaim was that we 0:25:22.000 --> 0:25:27.439 had to reform the way we live, to reform the 0:25:27.440 --> 0:25:30.960 way we live in order to survive, to survive as 0:25:31.000 --> 0:25:35.000 the Soviet Union, and the reform had to be radical 0:25:35.480 --> 0:25:38.920 from the bottom up. Gorbachev said that the people should 0:25:38.920 --> 0:25:41.240 be able to speak their minds, that people should be 0:25:41.280 --> 0:25:46.120 able to make money. He called it pedistroica, a restructuring 0:25:46.840 --> 0:25:54.320 and Glasnos openness is something like fresh It's a great treaty. 0:25:54.560 --> 0:25:58.479 I think that Rosness is a st step to us. 0:26:01.000 --> 0:26:05.600 Site it was an earthquake, it was a daily earthquake. 0:26:11.400 --> 0:26:14.240 For the first time, you could start your own business. 0:26:14.640 --> 0:26:18.120 And so suddenly bakeries appeared in Moscow and you could 0:26:18.160 --> 0:26:21.840 go get fresh bread. Things appeared that people could sell, 0:26:21.960 --> 0:26:26.520 little shops appeared, kiosks in the street. Culture opened up. Suddenly, 0:26:26.560 --> 0:26:31.040 every TV station is being more candid, is showing more. 0:26:31.760 --> 0:26:34.480 The girl singing in Moscow and the boy singing in 0:26:34.520 --> 0:26:38.600 Minneapolis reached out, slipped just a little and seemed to 0:26:38.640 --> 0:26:41.320 hold hands while half a world apart. And you're coming 0:26:41.359 --> 0:26:45.880 out of that system where everything was controlled to an 0:26:45.880 --> 0:26:50.080 incredible degree, and especially when it's out of that period 0:26:50.080 --> 0:26:55.040 of stagnation, when there was nothing fun on TV, nothing interesting, 0:26:55.640 --> 0:26:59.800 sort of variety shows where sixty year old veterans singing 0:27:00.000 --> 0:27:07.480 some old ballad, some old patriotic ballad, and suddenly these 0:27:07.520 --> 0:27:11.040 things are happening. American movies made it to Moscow in 0:27:11.080 --> 0:27:16.520 the past. Now you Rambo Star Wars. You should not 0:27:16.640 --> 0:27:20.800 have come back, James Bond. I've looked forward to this moment, 0:27:20.920 --> 0:27:23.520 mister Bond. There was so much demand. And then to 0:27:23.720 --> 0:27:27.200 enjoy it to the full, some savvy entrepreneurs powered and 0:27:27.280 --> 0:27:30.320 copies and set up makeshift movie theaters and their apartments. 0:27:30.640 --> 0:27:34.280 You could speak, you could buy, you could think. I mean, 0:27:34.400 --> 0:27:37.400 all these things that had been under a cloud were 0:27:37.440 --> 0:27:40.280 now out in the open. There was a sense that, 0:27:40.640 --> 0:27:44.919 you know, the system was changing, and that change encompassed 0:27:44.960 --> 0:27:50.320 everything from how you did your shopping to the space program. 0:27:50.359 --> 0:27:53.040 The space program that in nineteen eighty five did still 0:27:53.080 --> 0:27:56.560 have its space station, It's crown jewel, but had no 0:27:56.680 --> 0:28:00.520 more money. The country was in such bad shape the 0:28:00.600 --> 0:28:04.639 government could no longer afford displourage on space. This was 0:28:04.680 --> 0:28:07.119 not just a practical matter, It was a question of 0:28:07.240 --> 0:28:12.840 national identity. The cosmonauts became real heroes. Utika guide in 0:28:12.920 --> 0:28:15.919 the first men in space. So there was great pride 0:28:15.920 --> 0:28:19.720 in this program. It showed that Russia, the Soviet Union, 0:28:19.840 --> 0:28:23.680 that the Soviet people were ahead of the West in 0:28:24.000 --> 0:28:29.400 something that is so kind of advanced and dramatic and romantic. 0:28:30.160 --> 0:28:32.040 But now there was no more money to fund this 0:28:32.160 --> 0:28:36.600 dramatic and romantic cornerstone of Soviet identity. No breaking the 0:28:36.640 --> 0:28:42.120 next frontier, no inspiring the Soviet people, no future, and 0:28:42.200 --> 0:28:46.320 no future for the program meant no future for our man, Saragey. 0:28:48.200 --> 0:28:52.240 But Gorbachev had an idea, an idea of how to 0:28:52.280 --> 0:28:57.560 save the mighty but crumbling space program to sell Soviet 0:28:57.600 --> 0:29:03.480 space services globally on the commercial market. Yep. Gorbachev's big 0:29:03.520 --> 0:29:08.920 idea was capitalism. After decades of keeping everything under wraps, 0:29:09.120 --> 0:29:11.120 the Soviets were now going to say to the world, 0:29:11.440 --> 0:29:15.360 our space program is open for business. We'll launch your 0:29:15.360 --> 0:29:18.880 satellites for you. So you could pay X million dollars, 0:29:19.520 --> 0:29:22.080 deliver your satellite to the Soviets and they would launch 0:29:22.080 --> 0:29:24.760 it into space. We can also sell you some of 0:29:24.760 --> 0:29:28.160 our world class equipment, things no other space programs have. 0:29:29.280 --> 0:29:32.240 And this should have been an extremely attractive sales pitch 0:29:32.840 --> 0:29:35.920 for countries that don't have their own space programs. But 0:29:36.080 --> 0:29:41.880 there's one big problem. Of course, they don't understand a 0:29:41.960 --> 0:29:46.080 thing about capitalism, or markets or anything. The Soviets weren't 0:29:46.120 --> 0:29:49.080 great at making high tech stuff, but after years of 0:29:49.160 --> 0:29:53.400 living under communism, they were not so good at selling things, 0:29:53.520 --> 0:29:58.280 marketing advertising. But then they finally come up with a plan, 0:29:58.840 --> 0:30:01.960 a plan that would totally change the space program and 0:30:02.000 --> 0:30:06.040