{"podcast":{"title":"Explaining History","slug":"explaining-history-7091240","podcast_index_feed_id":7091240,"rss_url":"https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/55836c0e-56ef-4a51-a7cc-9055cd2a39c7","website_url":"http://www.explaininghistory.org","image_url":"https://assets.pippa.io/shows/60f6d9ac4a4aff65190f9c27/1767646091904-a5aed489-f452-4f74-af70-c7f8364b8d92.jpeg","author":"Nick Shepley","episode_count":964,"summary":"How do we make sense of the modern world? We find the answers in the history of the 20th Century. For over a decade, The Explaining History Podcast has been the guide for curious minds. Host Nick Shepley and expert guests break down the world wars, the Cold War, and the rise and fall of ideologies into concise, 25-minute episodes. This isn't a dry lecture. It's a critical, narrative-driven conversation that connects the past to your present. Perfect for students, history buffs, and anyone who wants to understand how we got here. Hit subscribe and start exploring. Join us at Explaining History for daily modern history articles and news. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.","last_synced_at":"2026-09-17T04:22:06.595928+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/explaining-history-7091240"},"episode":{"title":"Russia's post communist shock therapy 1991-3","slug":"russia-s-post-communist-shock-therapy-1991-3","published_at":"2026-07-08T19:29:52+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/explaining-history-7091240/russia-s-post-communist-shock-therapy-1991-3","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/explaining-history-7091240","url":"http://explaininghistory.org","audio_url":"https://sphinx.acast.com/p/acast/s/explaininghistory/e/6a4ea531f8a80edf85f34ca3/media.mp3","summary":"False Dawn – Russia's Two Utopian Experiments and the Legacy of Shock Therapy https://explaininghistory.org/historiography/russian-revolution/ In this solo episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we explore John Gray's False Dawn and the remarkable parallels between two failed attempts to remake Russia on a Western model – Bolshevism and the \"shock therapy\" of the post‑Soviet 1990s. After the First World War, John Maynard Keynes warned that the Carthaginian peace imposed on Germany would lead to endless instability. The Treaty of Versailles was a missed opportunity – and so, in a different way, was the settlement that followed the Cold War. Instead of a new international order that might have integrated Russia into the world system, we got free‑market triumphalism and the chaotic dismemberment of the Soviet Union. John Gray's argument is provocative: both War Communism (1918‑21) and the shock therapy of the Yeltsin era were Western utopian projects, divorced from Russian history and culture, that produced catastrophic human suffering. War Communism, with its abolition of private property and markets, was an attempt to impose Marxian socialism on a country that had no industrial base to sustain it. Shock therapy, with its sudden price liberalisation and mass privatisation, was an attempt to impose an American‑style free market on a country that had no institutions to support it. The results were devastating. In the 1990s, Russia experienced collapsing life expectancy, spiralling inflation that wiped out life savings, the rise of gangster capitalism, and the emergence of an oligarchic class that would eventually centralise power under Vladimir Putin. Yet unlike the horrors of Stalinism, this second catastrophe has received relatively little attention in Western histor…","meta_description":"False Dawn – Russia's Two Utopian Experiments and the Legacy of Shock Therapy https://explaininghistory.org/historiography/russian-revolution/ In this sol…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":2964,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/explaining-history-7091240/episodes/russia-s-post-communist-shock-therapy-1991-3/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/explaining-history-7091240/russia-s-post-communist-shock-therapy-1991-3.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}