USSR

The End of the Cold War: Ambassador Jack Matlock’s Inside Story

Bill Thompson

More than three decades after the breakup of the Soviet Union, many people today fear a return to a Cold War with Russia. So it’s important to understand how the first one ended.

Today we’re going back 20 years , to a conversation with the longtime foreign service officer, and one-time U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock.

His 2004 book was called Reagan and Gorbachev: How The Cold War Ended.

Get your copy of Jack Matlock’s book

As a top ranking career diplomat, Matlock was at the very center of the U.S.-Soviet relationship. He was there for everything from the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 to the Breakup of the Soviet Union almost 30 years later.

His book was packed with the kind of details and insight that only a key insider would have.

So here now, from 2004, Ambassador Jack Matlock.

Jack Matlock is 94 now, and lives in New Jersey.

Sergei Khrushchev

Bill Thompson
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At the very height of the Cold War, in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, one of the most vilified man in the world – at least in the U.S. – was Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev,

For 11 years the USSR was led by this brash, arrogant, often angry man.

You may have heard that he wants. Famously said the Soviet Union would “bury” the United States. That, however, was a mistranslation, and it was not something Khrushchev ever actually said.

Khrushchev’s second son, Sergei, was in his 20s, watching closely as his father guided the USSR. Sergei eventually became a highly educated, and well-respected, engineer in the Soviet Union.

But finally, in 1991 — the same year the Soviet Union crumbled apart — Sergei Khrushchev emigrated to the United States, and became a naturalized US citizen in 1999.

I met him two years later, when he wrote a book about his father.

So here now, from 2001, Sergei Khrushchev”

Sergei Khrushchev died just days before his 85th birthday in 2020 at his home in Rhode Island. He died of a gunshot wound to the head, but an investigation found no signs of foul play, and no criminal charges were ever filed.

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Luba Brezhneva
Anatoli Gribkov & William Smith

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Luba Brezhneva

Bill Thompson
Photo: C-SPAN

Some think this is the beginning of another Cold war. Or worse. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed the course of world events.

Not since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 have Americans paid such close attention to Russia .

I was thinking recently that this called to mind and interview I did in 1995, with a Russian woman named Luba Brezhneva.

If her last name sounds familiar, it should. Her uncle, Leonid Brezhnev, was Soviet premiere for 18 years after the ouster of his predecessor. Nikita Khrushchev.

Luba was just barely out of her teens when her uncle took over the USSR, and in many ways her story is simply that of a young woman finding her way in the world. Luba Brezhneva was in a unique position. And it wasn’t always a pleasant position.

In fact, it became downright dangerous when she fell in love with a German man.

Luba eventually left the USSR and came to the United States. In 1995 she wrote a book called The World I Left Behind. And that’s when I met her.

Now it is very important to remember that this interview was recorded almost 27 years ago, while the dust was still settling after the breakup of the Soviet Union. What you’ll hear us talking about should not necessarily be taken as an indication of what life in Russia may be like today.

So here now, from 1995, Luba Brezhneva.

Luba Brezhneva is 79 now. She lives in California and still writes.

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Vladimir Pozner
Yakov Smirnoff

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Yakov Smirnoff

Bill Thompson

Who knew Russians had such a great sense of humor?

Well, few Americans thought so, until the 1980s, when the young Russian-born Yakov Smirnoff burst onto the scene.

When he arrived here in 1977 from Ukraine, Smirnoff actually spoke no English.

But quickly he was able to turn his foreigner’s naivete into a very successful comedy act.

In 1987, with Smirnoff’s popularity nearing its peak — and just before a visit to the U.S. by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev — Smirnoff went on a book tour to promote a hilarious book he call America on Six Rubles A Day.

So here now, from 1987, Yakov Smirnoff.

Yakov Smirnoff is 70 now. He still performs occasionally at his theater in Branson, Missouri, and tours world wide.

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Laura Walker

Bill Thompson

How would it make you feel if you woke up one day and realized your father was a traitor to his country?

Unfortunately that was more than just a rhetorical question for Laura Walker, whose father, John Walker Jr., is considered one of the most notorious and dangerous spies in American history.

By the time he was caught in the mid-1980s John Walker Jr. had been spying for the Soviet Union for over 20 years, even bringing his son Michael into the “Walker family spy ring,” as it became known.

And he tried to recruit his daughter Laura into his spy ring as well, after she joined the military, but it was only after she tipped off authorities that her father and brother were caught.

In 1988 Laura Walker wrote a book about called Daughter of Deceit. That’s when I have a chance to meet her. So here now from 1988, Laura Walker.

John Walker was sentenced 36 years ago this week to life in prison. He died in prison in 2014 at age 77.

Vladimir Pozner

Bill Thompson
Phgto: Augustas Didžgalvis

For decades the USSR — the Soviet UInion — was a major world power, but it was held together largely through force and intimidation.

Things began to unravel in the late 1980s — the momentum built after President Ronald Reagan delivered these words at the Berlin Wall:

The wall did come down two years later, and two years after that, the Soviet Union came to an end.

Watching it all, from a front-row seat, was high-profilpe Soviet journalist and broadcaster Vladimir Pozner, who was also a freqeuent guest on American television, largely because in his youth, he spent a lot of time in tghe U.S. abd vecame fluent in English.

I interviewed Vladimir Pozner several times, including in 1992, less than a year after the breakup of the Soviet Union. He had written a book called, appropriately, Eyewitness.

So here now, from 1992, former Soviet journalist Vladimir Pozner.

Vladimir Pozner is 86 now. He’s a naturalized U.S. citizen.