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The death of Mikhail Gorbachev has closed a long chapter in Russian history. Gorbachev stood at the very crossroads of history, deciding whether to continue the Soviet experiment or allow democracy to take hold in the east of Europe.
To look back on Gorbachev, and the Russia he left behind, we put together an expert panel of people who either knew him personally, or were standing in Red Square on that fateful day... witnessing "The End of History".
Guests:
Bill Browder
CEO and co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management, the investment advisor to the Hermitage Fund, which at one time was the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia
Successfully lobbied and campaigned for the introduction of the Magnitsky Act, which authorises the U.S. government to sanction foreign government officials worldwide who are deemed to be human rights offenders
Author of Freezing Order: A True Story of Russian Money Laundering, State-Sponsored Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath
You can find him on Twitter: @Billbrowder
Monica Attard
Former journalist, most notably working across radio and television at the ABC for 28 years
Attard was the ABC’s Russia correspondent during the 1990s, where she reported on the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, the collapse of Soviet communism, the rise of Boris Yeltsin and the first Chechen war and civil wars across the old Soviet Union.
You can find her on Twitter: @attardmon
Facilitated by Francis Leach
Head of Breaking News for The Red Line
You can find him on Twitter: @SaintFrankly
This space was originally recorded on 31 August 2022.