Kate is sent to Moscow in 1985 to write articles for The Morning Star, a left-wing British daily newspaper founded in 1930 as the Daily Worker by the Communist Party of Great Britain. She lives in a block of flats alongside Soviet citizens and enrols her 3 children in Soviet schools.
Three weeks after Kate arrives Mikhail Gorbachev comes to power and she finds herself having to cover the disorientating number of rapid reforms and attacks on the Soviet system by its leadership for a newspaper, that had always supported the Soviet Union.
Kate is fluent in Russian, speaks with Soviet citizens on the bus or at the shops, and visits every Soviet republic bar one of the then-largest country on Earth. In 1986 she reported on the Chernobyl disaster and was one of the first journalists to arrive in the area.
Buy the book here https://www.bannisterpublications.com/product-page/twilight-of-the-soviet-union
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This video features Kate in Moscow
✍️ Episode References
ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries)
https://www.ici.com/
Moscow State University
https://www.msu.ru/en/
Daily Worker (newspaper)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_Star_(British_newspaper)
Salvador Allende
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Allende
Morning Star (newspaper)
https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/
Glasnost
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasnost
Perestroika
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perestroika
Mikhail Gorbachev
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Gorbachev
Star City (cosmonaut training center)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_City,_Russia
Helen Sharman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Sharman
The Kite Runner (novel)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kite_Runner
Boris Yeltsin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Yeltsin
🔑 Episode Keywords
Soviet Union, Russian Language, Teaching, Moscow State University, Chile, Salvador Allende, Military Coup, Journalism, Morning Star, Cold War, Detente, Soviet History, Soviet Institutions, Old Church Slavonic, Soviet Friends, Soviet Scientists, Russian Literature, Glasnost, Perestroika, Mikhail Gorbachev