0:11

In a Moscow TV studio. A

0:13

thirty something guy with thick, wavy

0:16

hair leans forward in his chair.

0:18

His name is Artemy Troitzky,

0:20

the barricade building journalist from the last episode.

0:23

He's about to invite you to something revolutionary

0:27

from my TV offices. I've

0:30

made the last announcement alive,

0:33

saying the Gagart Party is starting

0:36

very soon. You are welcome

0:38

to the first ever Rave

0:41

in Moscow, the

0:43

first ever Rave in Moscow,

0:46

a rager to end all ragers and

0:49

named after your Gagarin, the first

0:51

human to journey into space. And

0:53

it will be techno music played

0:56

all night, Russian,

0:58

Latvian and German and French

1:01

DJs, and the location also

1:04

cosmonaut themed. The Space Pavilion

1:07

a museum dedicated to the glories of

1:09

the space program. It was like Snayland.

1:15

You walk in, There's a curved ceiling

1:17

made of glass. It's

1:20

dark, the music so loud

1:22

you feel it in your chest. All

1:27

around you are models and relics

1:29

from the Soviets glorious space program,

1:32

satellites, the capsule

1:34

that sent Gagaren into space, gagaren

1:37

space suit from his flight. And

1:39

the place is packed bodies,

1:42

sweating, bodies, dancing,

1:45

throwing their heads up to the sky, young

1:47

people free at last to party.

2:00

I think that the whole of cool Moscow

2:03

was there, artists,

2:06

actors, models,

2:10

the new generation creating something

2:12

beautiful from the ashes of the old world.

2:15

We felt like a brand

2:17

new country which

2:19

is aiming at the bright future,

2:22

which will be totally

2:24

different from what we've had

2:26

before. But

2:31

what would that mean for the cosmonauts, the

2:33

Soviet citizens who once represented

2:36

the future? What would happen

2:38

to them in the new Russia.

2:44

I'm Lance bass And from Kaleidoscope Exile

2:46

and iHeart Podcasts. This

2:49

is the last Soviet mingling

2:58

with the rush hour traffic, army

3:00

armored personnel carriers on the streets

3:02

of Moscow. The August nineteen ninety

3:04

one, a faction of hardline

3:07

communists just tried to take control of the

3:09

Soviet government tanks in Red Square.

3:11

The official tanks rattled through the streets of Moscow

3:14

and hundreds of thousands of people stood

3:16

up to them. Three civilians had died

3:18

last night when light tanks tried

3:20

to slam through a barricade. In just three

3:23

days, the coup felled, the hardliners

3:25

were pushed out, and the people won. Tonight

3:27

n Caligorbatrophia is again president

3:29

of the Soviet Union, the man who tried

3:31

to bring him down or either under arrest

3:34

or being hunted. But as the dust settled

3:36

and all of the old values and structures

3:38

of the Soviet world fell away, a

3:41

brand new system was beginning to take

3:43

shape. As if to harold this

3:45

new dawn, something very unusual

3:47

was about to happen. On the Soviet space station,

3:50

where our man Sarage is still hard

3:52

at work. The cosmonauts

3:54

on Mirror were about to become the face of

3:56

one of the most famous brands in the world,

3:59

Coca Cola. If you taste

4:01

it, there's the burn and bite

4:03

at the back of your throat for a moment that

4:06

then gives you the In

4:11

the summer of nineteen ninety, Craig

4:13

Kohan was twenty seven years old, newly

4:16

single, and ready to take Moscow

4:18

by storm, one can of Coca

4:20

Cola at a time. I

4:22

was sent to

4:24

figure out how to build the cocola

4:27

system in the Sovietinia. That

4:29

was the brief. Craig was the

4:31

new face of capitalism,

4:33

the alternative to the old Soviet way

4:35

of doing things. Remember, in the

4:37

USSR, private enterprise had

4:40

been banned completely for decades.

4:43

So Craig was a representative of a totally

4:45

new mindset, a totally new

4:48

way of life. And

4:51

you could say Craig was born to do this job.

4:54

He grew up in Toronto and what he called

4:56

a McDonald's family, all the panti,

4:58

sat sauces, cheez pickles,

5:01

McDonald's big Man. When he was a kid, his

5:04

dad, George Cohan, brought the first ever

5:06

McDonald's to Canada. Canadians

5:08

went crazy for it. Break

5:11

today at McDonald's

5:13

where your dollar gets a break every

5:16

day. George

5:18

Cohan even had a bus called the Big

5:21

Mac Bus, used to raise money

5:23

for charity. And then in nineteen

5:25

seventy six, during the Montreal Olympics,

5:27

the Canadian government came to Craig's dad

5:29

with a strange favor. Would

5:31

he please let the Soviet delegation

5:34

use his bus to get around the city And

5:36

so we met all the Soviets in nineteen

5:38

seventy six. They

5:41

rode the big backbus and in the evening

5:43

they went out to dinner and what did

5:45

they eat, Yeah, you guessed

5:47

it, Big Max. And

5:49

that's when Craig's dad had an idea. Watching

5:53

these big Russian guys tucking into burghers

5:55

and fries. He thought, I know what I'm

5:57

gonna make my life's mission to

6:00

bring McDonald's to the Soviet Union.

6:06

It became from my father a fourteen

6:08

year, amazing epic odyssey

6:11

to get the first McDonald's built in

6:14

Pushkin Square. Pushkin

6:16

Square is a square in central Moscow,

6:18

a stone's throw from the Kremlin. And

6:21

so that was fourteen

6:24

years of conversations

6:26

at home, conversations

6:28

in the car, conversations at dinner about

6:30

the Soviets. Year in and year

6:33

out, they would host a rotating cast

6:35

of Soviets at the Kohen Residence, anyone

6:38

and everyone who could get a word back to the Kremlin

6:40

about the wonders of McDonald's, whether

6:42

they're ambassadors or ballet

6:45

dancers, or artists or politicians.

6:48

And then in January nineteen

6:50

ninety, well, it's been fourteen years in the

6:52

making, and today finally McDonald's

6:54

threw open the doors to its first restaurant

6:57

in Moscow. Thirty thousand

6:59

people stood in line that day. They started

7:01

lining up this morning at four o'clock. This

7:04

woman doesn't know what she just date, but she says

7:06

it was unusual and delicious.

7:09

Clearly George Kohen had been on to something

7:11

ahead of McDonald's. Canada waxed the lyric

7:14

in this day and age, it's nice when the people can come

7:16

out and get meat, reputations

7:18

and milk of the highest quality. Craig

7:20

watched in amazement at what his dad had just

7:23

done. Happiness today in Moscow lay

7:25

in the communal pursuit of a big mac,

7:27

but he wanted to do something even bigger.

7:30

For Craig, it was about more than just

7:32

business. He was an idealist,

7:35

and he had this vision that capitalism

7:37

could actually bring Russians together with

7:39

the rest of the world, that East

7:42

and West could unite under the banner

7:44

of a big brand. In

7:48

December nineteen ninety, he flew to Moscow

7:51

to attend the opening of his dad's McDonald's,

7:53

and while he was there he bumped into

7:55

the CEO of Coca Cola.

7:58

He was drunk one night at the Kremlin

8:00

after the opening of McDonald's. The

8:03

CEO of Coca Cola looked at Craig and

8:05

had an idea, and he said, Craig,

8:07

I'm thinking of three things. You the Soviet

8:09

Union and you and the Soviet Union. Big

8:13

companies like Coca Cola saw an incredible

8:15

opportunity in the Soviet Union. It

8:18

was an open market. Western products

8:20

basically didn't exist, so the potential

8:23

for profit was mouthwatering. And

8:25

now the CEO has the perfect man

8:27

for the job, Craig Cohan,

8:30

the son of the guy who got McDonald's into

8:32

Moscow. But this was a very

8:34

different challenge. Craig's dad

8:36

had opened a single McDonald's. The

8:38

CEO of Coke wanted cans in every

8:41

corner shop in Russia, total

8:43

domination. Craig

8:47

accepted the challenge stage

8:50

one reconnaissance. For

8:52

the first six months June

8:54

of nineteen ninety December of nineteen ninety,

8:57

I spent every day going

8:59

to every single metro stop in

9:01

the city understanding how people

9:03

drink beverages. You know, they used

9:05

to have these amazing vending machines, or

9:08

there was a single glass. Incidentally,

9:10

just when you expect hard frost, Moscow

9:12

has a thirsty heat wave. So buy yourself

9:14

a cups. I'd think when you wash the glass

9:17

and you would get a

9:19

cool beverage a cavass out of that. Cavas

9:23

not my favorite drink, but if

9:25

sour bread and liquid form floats your boat,

9:27

you might like it. And it's probably the

9:29

second most popular drink in Russia after vodka,

9:32

which was definitely more my thing, especially

9:34

the infused ones. The pineapple very

9:37

good. You would wash the glass and

9:39

put it back in the next person and use the same glass,

9:42

wash it and put it back and put five copecks

9:44

in. So that's how people were

9:46

experiencing beverages, very

9:48

different to American vending machines, and

9:51

so Craig had a ton of questions he needed

9:53

to ask people lining up for their glass of cavas,

9:57

although he was careful not to tell them he worked

9:59

for Coca. No one really

10:01

knew that I was working there. I

10:03

was this interested guy doing

10:06

a study on beverages

10:08

in the Soviet Union. It

10:11

was like he was an undercover agent. People

10:13

just opened their arms to me for

10:16

all the information, and that's how I got data.

10:18

And then I worked at a chokovskis a vote

10:21

for two and a half weeks. It was a champagne

10:23

factory, and so I saw exactly

10:26

how they mixed the product. I saw how they mixed the

10:28

concentrate. I saw the rats

10:30

in the sugar. I saw the

10:32

whole system, the whole Soviet system.

10:36

After a few months Craig felt like the reconnaissance

10:38

stage of his mission was complete. But

10:41

for Craig and Coca Cola to actually launch

10:43

themselves in the Soviet Union, they

10:45

needed a way to get into the hearts, minds,

10:47

and eventually the mouths of Soviets.

10:50

So they were going to have to get creative.

10:56

Cocola never been on the North Pole, and

10:58

so we got colas

11:00

a North Pole. The company

11:02

sponsored a famous Russian Arctic explorer.

11:05

He put a Cocacola in his bag, and he took his husky,

11:08

bringing huskies, and he went up to the North Pole and took a pictures

11:10

the North Pole crank, and

11:12

then it was time to head to the Kremlin.

11:15

I made sure that when Bush met

11:18

Gorbachov there was a

11:20

Coca Cola on that table. So

11:22

Craig starts thinking, what's the next

11:25

frontier. If

11:27

you could go to the North Pole and you can get it on the table at

11:29

the Kremlin, you could certainly get it in space

11:33

infiltrating the Soviet space

11:35

station. This was going to be the most

11:38

spectacular triumph for Coca Cola

11:41

and good old fashioned American capitalism.

11:45

And so Coca Cola's engineers started working

11:47

away in a lab in Atlanta trying

11:50

to create a coke can that could survive on

11:53

mirror, and after months

11:55

of work, it was ready, a

11:58

little red can that looks a lot like the

12:00

ones we have here on Earth, except

12:03

it was fitted with a strange white nozzle

12:06

and a metal button on top. This

12:09

was meant to stop it from exploding in zero

12:11

grabbing. On

12:15

August twentieth, nineteen ninety one, the

12:18

Soviet Space Agency launched their M nine

12:20

cargo spacecraft from Bikanore in kazakh

12:22

Stop. On board is a crate

12:24

of spaceproof Coca Cola cans, making

12:27

their groundbreaking journey to the space station.

12:31

The next day, Sarage presses a button on top

12:33

of the can and it squirts the coke into

12:35

his mouth. Burn

12:37

and bite at the back of your throat. Even

12:40

in space. It's

12:42

a huge moment. Although

12:44

Serge wasn't really sure about the taste.

12:50

His Ham radio friend Maggie asked him,

12:52

do you like Coca cola? What's it taste

12:54

like in space? And Sitgay

12:57

said, It's all right in space, he

12:59

said, but insduce his better. No

13:01

matter, Coca Cola and capitalism

13:04

had won the day. It was like integration

13:07

Finally, of these two

13:09

opposing Cold War cultures

13:11

that have come together, and Coca Cola

13:13

being a little moment that brought people together. For

13:17

idealists like Craig, it seemed like the

13:19

beginning of a new future for Russia, Sergey

13:22

and the space program. But

13:24

there was a problem lurking just around the

13:26

corner. Not everyone

13:29

in the New Russia had such noble intentions

13:31

as Craig. I think there's two ways to approach

13:33

this country, that's Gregg in an NBC interview

13:36

from the time. One is to be a pioneer

13:39

and the others to be a pirate and

13:41

coming here and try to courage

13:44

the land. And it turns

13:46

out in the New Russia the

13:48

line between pioneer and pirate was

13:51

extremely thin. Why

13:54

did you put a rock and propelled hand grenade through my

13:56

office this morning? And he

13:58

said, I've been wanting to meet

14:00

you, and I really didn't

14:02

know how else to get your attention.

14:07

That's after the break. Just

14:21

a few months after Surge drank the can of coke

14:23

on the space station, the Soviet flag

14:25

came down for the very last time over the

14:27

Kremlin in

14:31

Moscow. The hammer and sickle is lord

14:33

for the last time, the Soviet Union

14:35

was over. The tricolor banner of the Russian

14:38

Republic now flies over the Kremlin.

14:40

Communism was dead, and

14:43

while men like Craig Cohan saw this as

14:45

a moment of hope for the future, the

14:47

lives of ordinary Russians were plunged

14:49

into uncertainty. I

14:52

mean, when you lose the system that you've

14:55

grown up in and you have no idea wor

14:57

else to go. A lot of people went out and

15:00

planting potatoes at their dotches.

15:03

That's Serge Schmimon, the former New York

15:05

Times correspondent in Moscow. We've been hearing

15:07

from throughout this series. Our office

15:09

car was a Volvo station wagon.

15:12

So some of these people would ask us to go

15:14

with them to their dotch and bring

15:16

back their potatoes because you know, big

15:18

bags to bring them back to Moscow. They

15:21

were planting potatoes because at that point

15:23

in time, potatoes were the safest way

15:25

to make sure you had food. The ruble

15:27

was collapsing, the shops filled up,

15:30

but the number of people who could afford anything

15:32

plummeted. People's

15:35

life savings were suddenly worthless.

15:38

So he went into a period of kind

15:40

of an elemental primitive economy

15:42

where factories traded with each other.

15:44

You know, I'll give you a window if you give

15:47

me a banana. Remember hearing

15:49

about the Russian black market.

15:51

It always sounded so spylike, so

15:54

covert, so underground.

15:57

Well here it is at its lowest

15:59

level, and strange

16:01

things gained value. This man

16:04

stripped down a TV set, hoping to make

16:06

enough money just to buy milk or bread

16:08

a peck of Marlboroughs. Marlborough's

16:10

cigarettes was roughly the

16:13

equivalent of a dollar. You'

16:15

Barnert, who was a barter economy

16:18

and never went anywhere without four

16:20

or five cartons of Marlborough's. A

16:24

cigarette was better value than cash.

16:26

Because when communism collapsed, the

16:28

new government made a drastic decision.

16:33

With the help of economic advisors from America,

16:35

they decided the best way to transition

16:37

the economy from a communist to a capitalist

16:40

system was to do it all at once.

16:43

In the old Soviet Union, the government

16:45

controlled prices. Overnight,

16:47

those price controls were removed, which

16:50

meant that the candy that used to cost one rouble

16:52

now cost two thousand. Shoppers

16:55

stead in disbelief at what they now have to

16:57

pay for the most basic goods. Ham

16:59

for example, pull at more than a thousand roubles

17:01

a kilo. That's two months worth of wages

17:04

for most people. The economists

17:06

called it shock therapy. You

17:08

had to let the system

17:10

go, and it had to find

17:12

its own bottom, and it had to start rebuilding.

17:16

Overnight the cash economy collapsed.

17:18

The problem for shoppers here these days isn't

17:20

the long lines Russians are used to waiting

17:23

in line. Their concern is what happens

17:25

when they reached the end of that line. There

17:27

they'll find either bread or milk three or

17:29

four times higher than they were just weeks

17:31

ago, or worse, no food

17:34

at all. This also

17:36

led to a wave of crime sweeping through

17:38

Moscow. You had a lot of theft. The streets

17:40

became dangerous. They say that some

17:43

people belong to the mafia here. Do you know anything

17:45

about that? No? No, no, for

17:48

us, you know, I mean we were a dressed in Western closing

17:51

in Western cars. Our car was stolen

17:53

twice. This man's parting shot my favorite.

17:57

The mafia is forever. Organized

18:00

crime was emerging from the ruins of

18:02

the Soviet Empire. A period

18:04

of straight up banitry set in.

18:07

In order to get by in the new Russia,

18:09

you had to do things that you would never have dreamt

18:11

of just a few months earlier. By

18:15

early nineteen ninety two, Craig Khan

18:17

is setting up his Coca Cola factory in Moscow,

18:20

but he's beginning to realize this is not

18:22

the friendly, hopeful Russia he arrived

18:25

in back in nineteen ninety.

18:27

Things have changed so quickly, and

18:29

if he's going to succeed, it's becoming

18:31

clear he's going to have to change too.

18:34

I'm on the way to the office at five thirty in the

18:37

morning to try to start up all the equipment,

18:39

et cetera, etc. And I get a note

18:41

from our security that a Rocca propelled hand grenate

18:43

just went through my office.

18:47

No one's hurt, but Craig is

18:49

shaken. This is a far cry

18:51

from the quiet streets of Toronto, and

18:53

I said, oh, that's good. I'm glad it wasn't there. So

18:57

I asked the security where was it? Shot? From otoshop

18:59

from the big apartment block across the street.

19:02

I have this very clearly in my head, so

19:04

I said, okay, let's go find out

19:06

who it is. So

19:08

hard thumping Craig climbs into one

19:10

of those old Soviet elevators, about

19:13

the size of a porta potty and smelling

19:15

like one too. He's got no

19:17

clue what he'll find at the top. I

19:20

go to the twelfth floor and I meet

19:22

with the head of the San Suski Simia, the

19:25

san Subski family. It's like a local

19:27

racketeering group that started rough enough people.

19:31

I sat down with him, just one on one, and

19:34

I said, why did you put a rock

19:36

and propelled hand grenade through my office this morning?

19:40

And he said, I've

19:42

been wanting to meet you, And

19:45

I really didn't know how else

19:47

to get your attention, because I'd

19:49

like my guys just to be your drivers. And

19:52

I said, perfect, you didn't have to do that, and

19:54

so I hired a bunch of the guys. So

19:58

now these grenade throwing mobster are

20:00

working for Craig and Coca

20:02

Cola. The man who'd come to

20:04

the Soviet Union as a pioneer started

20:07

looking more and more like a

20:09

pirate. A

20:16

new breed of person began to take control

20:18

in Russia. While most people lost

20:20

their life savings after the Soviet Union collapsed,

20:23

a handful saw an opportunity, an

20:25

opportunity to buy entire industries,

20:29

oil, gas, raw materials

20:32

for peanuts. These

20:34

people, you might know them as oligarchs,

20:37

became the rulers of the new capitalist

20:39

Russia. And that meant that people

20:41

who used to be valued in Soviet society,

20:44

teachers, doctors, cosmonauts,

20:46

no longer were. That's when

20:48

I remember long lines of really

20:51

well dressed people selling,

20:53

you know, sweaters and whatever

20:56

they could choose. It

20:58

was terribly said. Everything

21:03

had turned topsy turvy. Those

21:05

who had been up were now down. University

21:09

professors selling socks in the subway,

21:11

criminals working for Coca Cola,

21:14

and cosmonauts now making less money

21:16

than taxi drivers. In

21:18

early nineteen ninety two, Serge

21:20

was making five hundred rubles a month, just

21:23

two dollars and fifty cents at the new exchange

21:25

rate. He was a highly trained

21:27

engineer, a national hero, still

21:30

up in space, risking his life for his country,

21:33

and now struggling to support his wife and

21:35

baby daughter. And

21:37

that's when rumors started going around that things

21:39

had gotten so bad the cosmonauts

21:42

were actually going on strike.

21:45

There was a silence from Citigay at

21:47

that point. He's

21:50

quite a voluble, garrylous

21:52

type of man. He always has something

21:55

interesting to say. But there was silence at

21:57

that point. That's

22:00

after the break. It's

22:19

a sunny morning on the other side of the world from

22:21

Moscow. Ham radio operator

22:23

Maggie I Quinto is out running errands

22:25

in Colak, her little town in western

22:28

Australia. She parks

22:30

her car on the wide, flat highway

22:32

that cuts through the middle of the town and

22:34

gets her shopping bags out of the trunk. She's

22:37

heading towards the bakery when a battered

22:39

farm truck pulls up next to her. I

22:42

would be stopped in the street and people

22:45

who my heart they knew, would say, how

22:47

are our cosmonauts? Our

22:51

cosmonauts. It turns out, in

22:53

the months that Maggie had been talking to Mirror,

22:56

the whole town of Colak had fallen in love

22:58

with these Soviet spacemen too. These

23:00

guys would pass me. I've never seen these farmers

23:03

before, and they look at me and

23:05

point to the sky and

23:07

go are they okay? But

23:10

today the farmer driving the truck

23:13

looks worried. He's heard things about

23:15

the cosmonauts. The cosmonauts

23:17

salaries are worthless. Their families

23:19

can barely afford groceries, so they're

23:21

gonna stop working. They're going

23:24

on strike. Maggie

23:27

tries to dismiss the stories as rumors, but

23:30

soon newspapers or publishing stuff that's

23:32

even more wild. Not

23:34

only are the cosmonauts on strike, they're

23:36

actually stuck in space. These

23:40

newspaper stories have terrifying headlines

23:42

like junked in space and stuck

23:45

in endless orbit. They're

23:47

being stranded there, They're being punished.

23:50

That's what the rumors said, that they were left there

23:52

deliberately, no one was going to bring

23:54

them down. They even say Serage

23:57

is ill. The journalists rang

23:59

up Sigh his wife and asked

24:01

her about his illness, which is must

24:04

have been rather devastating for her to listen to.

24:07

All this time, Maggie's thinking, what's

24:10

going on here? She's been talking

24:12

to Sergee nearly every day and he

24:14

seems fine, chatting to her about

24:16

their kids, his spacewalks, Newham

24:19

radio technology, but

24:21

she can't shake this doubt. Are

24:24

they okay? Is

24:26

there something they aren't telling me? And

24:32

then one day Maggie gets a call.

24:35

A radio station in Melbourne rang me and

24:37

said, please, can you find out is it

24:39

true about all of these things? Now?

24:41

In the past, Maggie has stayed clear of asking

24:44

Sarage about politics, not wanting

24:46

to put him on edge. But today,

24:48

with the world's press writing these strange

24:50

stories and people stopping her in the

24:52

street, Maggie decides she's going

24:54

to be direct with Sarage. She's going

24:56

to ask for the truth. What is really

24:59

happening to her friends, her cosmonauts?

25:02

So is it okay? I'll send them a message again

25:04

electronically, and I'll ask

25:06

them these questions. But there's no guarantee. They're

25:08

very, very busy up there. They have much work

25:10

to do, and I don't know if they'll answer. Her

25:14

fingers shaking a little, Maggie

25:16

started typing. So the questions.

25:18

I asked them, where are you hungry? Is

25:21

it true that you're on strike? Has

25:24

your supply ship docked? Do you

25:26

like being on strike? And

25:28

they say, Segay, that you have fallen ill?

25:30

Is that true? And those were the questions.

25:35

Maggie hits send and she

25:37

waits on

25:40

mirror. Sarah Gay sees the question flood

25:42

in. He's taken aback for

25:45

months. Speaking to Maggie had just been

25:47

a bit of light relief, a bit of fun,

25:49

But between the lines of her anxious questions,

25:52

he can see her concern for him.

25:54

He knows he has to respond straight away.

26:00

Minutes Maggie's old Tshiba is

26:02

flashing with a new message,

26:06

Greetings Rita, which is my name, he

26:08

said. Australia is located at the other

26:10

side of the Earth from Moscow. It's very

26:13

far so news is greatly changed

26:15

when it reaches you. People in Australia

26:18

and Moscow wok upside down from each other.

26:20

Maybe this is the reason your news arrives

26:23

reversed. But what about

26:25

the strike everyone's talking about. We're

26:27

Sergey and his colleagues refusing to work, and

26:29

he said that there was a threatened strike

26:32

at flight Control. But

26:34

it's impossible, he said, for him to go on

26:36

strike. And as you can imagine, they

26:38

have to keep things running on the space station

26:41

and if they were to go on strike, they would

26:43

die. Maggie is relieved,

26:45

but then she gets another call from

26:48

a journalist. Listen,

26:50

I've got this tip off. You're not going

26:52

to believe this, but apparently the Russians

26:55

are thinking of selling the space station.

27:00

Maggie thinks fake news.

27:03

She knows things are changing over there, but the

27:05

Russians would never put their space station

27:07

up for sale. This is the

27:09

crowning glory of Soviet space technology.

27:13

But the journalist says to her, look,

27:15

the next time you're talking to these fellows, asked

27:18

them about the selling of Mirror the

27:20

space station, and

27:23

so I did. There

27:25

was a silence from Sergey at that point.

27:28

He's quite a voluble, garrulous

27:31

type of man. He always has something

27:34

interesting to say. But there was silence

27:36

at that point, and he said,

27:38

look, I'll talk with mission control. And

27:41

at that point I'm going to guess, and I don't

27:43

really know, but I'm going to guess at that news

27:45

had not reached them.

27:47

After everything Sarage has been through

27:50

archologically, it must have been devastating.

27:53

Look, I reckon it would have been to

27:58

hear from someone in Australia that

28:00

the country he'd sacrificed everything

28:03

for might sell his

28:05

home from under his feet.

28:12

That's next time on The Last Soviet.

28:24

The Last Soviet is a Kaleidoscope production

28:26

in partnership with iHeart Podcast and

28:28

Exile Media, produced

28:30

by Sama's Dad Audio and

28:32

hosted by me Lance Bass

28:35

Executive produced by Kate Osbourne

28:38

and Mangesh had a Kador with

28:40

Oz Wallashan and Kostas Linos

28:43

from iHeart executive produced by Katrina

28:46

Norvelle and Nikki Ettore from

28:49

Sama's Dad Audio are Executive producers

28:51

are Joe Sikes and Dasha Lissina.

28:54

Produced by Asia Fuchs, Dasha

28:56

Litzitzina and Joe Sikes.

28:59

Writing by Lydia Marchant, Research

29:01

by Mika Golobovski and Molly

29:03

Schwartz, music by Will

29:05

Epstein, Themed by Martin Orstrin,

29:08

Mixing and sound design by Richard Ward

29:11

and special thanks to Nando Via Welissa

29:14

Pollock, Will Pearson, Connel Byrne,

29:16

Bob Pittman, and Isaac Lee. If

29:19

you want to hear more shows like this, nothing

29:22

is more important to the creators here at Kaleidoscope

29:24

than subscribers, ratings, and reviews,

29:27

so please spread the love wherever you listen.