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Episode 3 - Meet the Historians - Martin McCauley - Soviet History
Meet The Historians Podcast
English - April 20, 2014 00:00 - 32 minutes - 47 MB - ★★★★★ - 1 ratingHistory ussr level russia history historiography Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Today’s episode is the first of a two part programme with Dr Martin McCauley, formerly a senior lecturer in Russian and European history at the University of London. Dr McCauley has a long standing interest in the Soviet Union, having conducted research there in the late 1950s. He is the author of a wide range of books on the Soviet Union, including The Khruschev Era, and the excellent, Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union.
This first programme is taken from a lecture given at Guiseley School to Sixth Form students in March of 2014. In the lecture, Dr McCauley looks at the origins of the Marxist-Leninist ideology, and how successive leaders of the union tried and failed to reform the system over a period of some 70 years. He also takes some time to explore the reasons for the collapse of the Union, and makes some interesting points about the clan-like system of political patronage in operation in the USSR.