Russia The Wild East The Complete BBC Radio 4 Series [Audiobook]

English | ASIN: B071K9PTPL | 2017 | 11 hours and 18 minutes |MP3|M4B | 308 MB
Power struggles have a constant presence in Martin Sixsmith's story of Russia. Collected here in 50 episodes, he chronicles the Mongol hordes invading in the 13th century, through the iron autocratic fists of successive tsars, to the fall of the Soviet Union and Russia's re-emergence as a superpower. Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great, Peter the Great - all left their mark on a nation that pursued expansion to the East, West and South. Many tsars flirted with reform, but the gap between the rulers and the ruled widened until, in 1917, the doomed last tsar, Nicholas II, abdicated. After the whirlwind of the revolution, the Bolsheviks struggled to consolidate their victory. To rescue the economy and save the regime, Lenin made concessions to the people. But after his death, Stalin introduced forced collectivisation and industrialisation, condemning the Soviet people to conditions worse than those experienced under the tsars.