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03:30The stunning news from Moscow spread quickly, both within the country and abroad.
03:37Brezhnev had risked his life to grab power from his friend.
03:42He quickly made it clear that he planned to follow a more orthodox political path.
03:47In his inaugural speech he said, under Stalin, people feared repressions, under Khrushchev, they feared reorganizations and shakeups.
03:57The Soviet people deserve a quiet life.
04:02In his private life, Brezhnev was a man of risk.
04:06He passionately loved party going, hunting, cold water swimming and car racing.
04:12But as a politician, he was cautious and avoided any radical moves.
04:19Brezhnev considered himself to be a peacemaker, but he also had a strong desire to prevail in the Cold War, not in a nuclear conflict with the United States.
04:29He believed there was a man of course.
04:35He believed there were safer and more effective means to achieve his goals.
04:38We must stop immediately and firmly any acts of aggression and international tyranny.
04:43Brezhnev believed in the concept of detente, where the world's two superpowers would attempt to reduce the threat of conflict as they continued to disagree.
05:04However, in his view, decreasing tensions did not involve making concessions to the West.
05:09There was the belief that we could relax tensions with the Soviet Union.
05:17This was based, I would say, on Western hope, Western optimism.
05:22There was really very little evidence of it.
05:25We thought of detente as a relaxation of tensions.
05:31The Soviet term for detente was peaceful coexistence,
05:35which meant that under the umbrella of peace,
05:39that they would gradually achieve more and more advantages vis-a-vis the West.
05:45While Brezhnev appeared to pursue peace on the surface,
05:49he worked behind the scenes to drastically increase the power of the Soviet military
05:54and the country's nuclear stockpiles.
05:56He also supported countless wars of revolution around the world
06:02and did not hesitate to send his own troops into battle.
06:06But in these militant attempts to achieve parity with the West,
06:10Brezhnev would unwittingly put the very system he had devoted his life to build into jeopardy.
06:20Brezhnev was from a family of traditional steelmakers in the Ukraine.
06:24His road to power began in 1939 when, at 33 years of age,
06:30he became secretary of a regional Communist Party committee.
06:35Brezhnev was a handsome womanizer, dynamic and good-humored,
06:39someone who knew how to read and influence people.
06:42It was during this time that he first met another rising political figure in the Ukraine
06:47by the name of Nikita Khrushchev.
06:54When World War II broke out, Brezhnev was a seasoned party functionary.
07:01During the war, he was promoted to Major General
07:04in charge of the political department of the Ukrainian front.
07:08Brezhnev was never in any combat situations,
07:11but was proud of the fact that he'd served near the battlefronts for most of the war.
07:16When peace returned, Brezhnev held senior party positions all over the Soviet Union.
07:24In 1956, Khrushchev made him secretary of the Central Committee in charge of defense.
07:31This was one of the most powerful positions in the country.
07:36Throughout his career, Brezhnev remained devoted to the interests of the military complex
07:41and, in return, enjoyed its loyal backing.
07:45His strong relationship with the military was one of the key factors
07:49that allowed him to retain power for almost 20 years.
07:55During Khrushchev's time as leader,
07:57he often wildly exaggerated the strength of Soviet military forces and strategic capabilities.
08:03However, Brezhnev knew that he could not rely on Khrushchev's preferred method of bluffing
08:10as technological advances continued in the West.
08:17Politically, they were competing with us,
08:20but militarily, they were far behind it.
08:22They were aware of the new intelligence,
08:25that the United States indeed knew exactly what they had
08:29and that they better have something rather than simply attempt to fake it.
08:35And so, Brezhnev launched a build-up of the Soviet military
08:39and, most notably, the Soviet strategic forces.
08:47Discovery of rich oil fields in western Siberia
08:50allowed Brezhnev to allocate billions of dollars for military spending.
08:55By the late 1960s, the Soviet Union secured its status as the world's second superpower.
09:04But Brezhnev knew that military power was not enough.
09:09To retain his leadership within the country
09:11and to truly compete with the United States,
09:14he had to control the KGB as well.
09:18The most effective way to do this
09:20was to put his own man in charge of the powerful Secret Service.
09:25In May 1967, Brezhnev dismissed Vladimir Semichasny
09:30and appointed Yuri Andropov as the new head of the KGB.
09:35An orthodox communist, hardworking and obedient,
09:39Andropov had won Brezhnev's affection
09:41and unconditional trust with his personal loyalty.
09:45Each day, Andropov briefed Brezhnev
09:48on the most valuable intelligence information worldwide,
09:51both in capitalist and communist countries.
09:57Brezhnev's model to challenge the West indirectly
09:59by building up his own forces
10:01seemed to be progressing according to plan.
10:05But trouble closer to home would soon threaten
10:07the peaceful era of detente.
10:09Although Khrushchev enacted many liberal reforms
10:16within the Soviet Union,
10:18he was feared throughout Eastern Europe
10:20during his regime after crushing a revolt in Hungary.
10:24It was actually Brezhnev who had instituted
10:27progressive economic reforms in these countries
10:30in the mid-1960s.
10:32But after several years of these new economic policies,
10:36it seemed Eastern European leaders and residents
10:39still craved more extensive political and personal freedoms.
10:44In early 1968, Soviet secret agents alerted the KGB
10:49to growing anti-Soviet sentiments in Czechoslovakia,
10:52warning of its potential breakaway.
10:54The KGB claimed that the American Central Intelligence Agency
11:00and other NATO member secret services
11:03had orchestrated the demonstrations in Czechoslovakia.
11:08We have now the documentation available on Dropov's reports
11:13that clearly show that the KGB
11:16played the role of sort of agent provocateur
11:19in trying to present some kind of evidence of the presence
11:23of West German intelligence or US intelligence.
11:28But it was a very, very weak case.
11:30I mean, they really couldn't find anything.
11:35In order to provide more justification for Soviet intervention,
11:39the KGB began to forge evidence of Czech militancy.
11:47They showed hideouts full of weapons on TV.
11:49It was a sheer provocation.
11:51Just before the invasion, the KGB sent agents to Czechoslovakia,
11:55disguised as West German tourists.
11:57They had secretly filled these rooms with weapons,
12:00and they also accidentally found them later.
12:06In reality, the Czech government and its leader,
12:09Alexander Dubček, merely called for political and further economic reforms,
12:15based on a more compassionate form of socialism.
12:18The Czech people enthusiastically supported Dubček's new policies,
12:23which included a free press and limited democracy.
12:29The political situation was still unclear, but the Czech people suddenly felt free during the time in early 1968,
12:36known as the Prague Spring.
12:41Brezhnev was eager to make an example out of the Czechs,
12:44but he also knew that any large-scale military action,
12:48even within the Soviet bloc,
12:50might destroy the climate of peaceful coexistence with the West.
12:54It took Brezhnev and his associates almost six months of debate and indecision to make a move.
13:03To disguise the invasion, in June of 1968,
13:06Moscow announced large-scale military maneuvers of the Warsaw Pact troops.
13:11Meanwhile, KGB agents in Prague identified several pro-Soviet secondary members of the Czechoslovak government,
13:21and convinced them to send a letter to the Soviet leadership.
13:25The letter asked the Kremlin to bring in troops to combat counter-revolution.
13:31Brezhnev had to choose between the system, in other words, sheer power, and his desire to look like a modern and civilized leader.
13:43Naturally, he chose to protect the system.
13:49Once the decision was made, Brezhnev was ruthless and swift.
13:52The invasion, codenamed the Tumor, began on August 21st, 1968.
14:01Within 24 hours, Czechoslovakia was completely occupied.
14:08The United States was somewhat surprised.
14:12How could they do this?
14:13Don't they know that this will ruin detente?
14:16The answer was, the Soviets, if they were to preserve their East European Empire, really had no alternative but to suppress this.
14:27To complete the operation, the Kremlin needed to crush the spirit of General Secretary Dubček and the other Czech leaders.
14:35A special KGB team received the top-secret assignment.
14:39We went to the second floor, into Dubček's office.
14:48Dubček was sitting with his back to the windows.
14:51I told him that they were expecting him in the Soviet embassy, right away, and that he could take with him anyone he trusted.
14:59But the discussions at the embassy led nowhere.
15:02Then a decision was made that our Czech comrades should come to Moscow.
15:12The KGB operatives airlifted the Czech leader and most of his cabinet members to Moscow.
15:18The Kremlin disguised the situation as an official visit.
15:23In Moscow, some of the Czechs were subjected to sleep deprivation and relentless interrogation.
15:28Dubček remained in power, but his government forever dropped any talk of their liberal brand of socialism.
15:38With the Eastern Bloc once more firmly in Soviet control, Brezhnev intended to turn his attention back to the Cold War struggle against the West.
15:48Instead, he was surprised to find his next challenge came from an ally, communist China.
15:54Brezhnev's conflict with China was of a geo-strategic nature.
16:02Both the Soviets and the Chinese couldn't challenge the Americans in an open confrontation.
16:07So they had to compete in another sphere, the Third World.
16:11But both the Chinese and the Soviets were vying for the same influence in the Third World.
16:16This was the defining reason for their conflict.
16:19Aggravating the competition for communist supremacy in the Third World were long-running
16:27territorial disputes between the giant neighbors.
16:31Thousands of minor armed clashes took place along the border during the 1960s.
16:37By 1969, Soviet military manpower in the area increased from 200,000 soldiers to 1 million.
16:46However, some in the West wondered if there was a hidden reason for the build-up.
16:52The United States tended to think in terms of a Sino-Soviet bloc.
16:57Indeed, after, long after, the Soviets and the Chinese were at each other's throats,
17:04there were many who continued to think that this was all some kind of charade designed to deceive the West.
17:11Demansky Island, known to the Chinese as Enbao, became the flashpoint for these very real skirmishes.
17:22The island is about a mile and a half long by half a mile wide.
17:26It sits in the middle of the Usuri River, the border between northeastern China and Russia's Far East.
17:33Ownership of the island had been disputed for centuries, but in 1969 it was uninhabited.
17:40On March 2nd, the Chinese landed approximately 30 soldiers on this tiny island.
17:47The Soviets considered this a violation of their border and sent a patrol from their side of the river to investigate.
17:54A firefight erupted on the island and more than 20 Soviet soldiers were killed.
17:58The Soviets claimed their patrol had been ambushed and Prezhnev approved a vicious response which occurred 13 days later.
18:10Artillery and rocket strikes flattened the entire island and devastated territory along the border several kilometers into China.
18:18Hundreds of Chinese soldiers were killed.
18:20Although the Chinese claimed to have inflicted a greater number of casualties during the one-day battle,
18:27they remained apprehensive for the next two decades.
18:31Since 1969, Soviet-Chinese border clashes ceased, even as tension between the communist rivals continued.
18:39However, there were many critical events during the Cold War which galvanized the Soviet Union and China.
18:49The American conflict in Vietnam was one such event.
18:55Since the mid-60s, a half-million strong U.S. Army group had suffered heavy losses in South Vietnam.
19:01Brezhnev decided to send Moscow's latest weaponry, military equipment and hundreds of advisors to the communist North Vietnamese in order to weaken the United States.
19:13The Soviet military advisors trained Vietnamese anti-aircraft missile units and pilots.
19:19The Chinese also provided weapons and other equipment.
19:23The most useful thing that the Soviets did, aside from providing much of the firepower for the North Vietnamese,
19:32was to provide them with the SAM missiles that made it very difficult for our operations against North Vietnam.
19:41In total, Soviet-made anti-aircraft systems destroyed over 2,500 U.S. military aircraft.
19:55Many American pilots were killed while hundreds of others were tortured in North Vietnamese jails.
20:02Several Soviet intelligence coups in the United States also aided the North Vietnamese.
20:08John Walker worked as an officer in the communications center of the U.S. submarine fleet in the Atlantic region during the Vietnam War.
20:18He had access to top-secret code keys as well as coding and decryption devices.
20:24Walker began spying in 1967 and worked for the Soviets for more than 18 years.
20:31During that time, KGB agents paid him over one million dollars to hand over cryptographic secrets
20:39and provide access to more than one million messages on U.S. weapons, naval tactics, submarine and airborne training.
20:48The classified information that Walker passed along allowed the Soviets to intercept
20:56and understand U.S. military plans and operations in Vietnam.
21:02The Soviets then passed the information over to the Vietnamese.
21:08Soviet trawlers using eavesdropping equipment near the waters of Vietnam
21:12also provided early warning about inbound U.S. bombers.
21:18The CIA station chief in Saigon noted that the North Vietnamese usually knew in advance of any impending air raids.
21:27Even when air raids were diverted to secondary targets,
21:30the enemy knew in advance which targets would be hit.
21:33This advanced knowledge severely diminished the effectiveness of U.S. airstrikes on the North Vietnamese.
21:43The CIA never uncovered the problem during the war.
21:48Despite the KGB's valuable assistance,
21:51the North Vietnamese attitude towards the Soviet Union was somewhat mysterious.
21:56The relations between the Vietnamese and Soviet intelligence were extremely tense and difficult.
22:04The Vietnamese often refused to cooperate.
22:07For example, when the KGB asked to see the wreckage of a U.S. plane,
22:10the Vietnamese claimed they could not find it.
22:13We then suspended the delivery of weapons.
22:15They promptly located the plane and we got access to it.
22:18Soviet and Chinese assistance and the unconventional tactics employed by the North Vietnamese
22:30eventually led to America's withdrawal from Vietnam.
22:34Brezhnev had succeeded in temporarily draining America's resources,
22:39deterring the U.S. from opposing communist expansion in southeastern Asia.
22:44He had also demonstrated to other countries the value of aligning themselves with the Soviet Union.
22:52However, Brezhnev's strategy of building Soviet influence would not always
22:57prove to be as successful in other regions of the world.
23:05In 1972, the friendly charade of detente continued as Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president
23:12to visit the Soviet Union.
23:14But in private, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev made it clear to his military staff that he would
23:21welcome an increase in all types of covert military actions.
23:27In Moscow, Nixon and Brezhnev signed the historic Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Agreement,
23:33or SALT Treaty, designed to reduce each country's nuclear arsenal.
23:38It seemed to represent an encouraging turning point in the Cold War.
23:44The following year, during Brezhnev's visit to the United States,
23:48the leaders signed another treaty pledging to avoid nuclear confrontation at any cost.
23:57Brezhnev declared the Cold War to be over.
24:00However, another conflict which had been brewing for years was about to erupt again.
24:06In 1967, Egypt and Syria suffered crushing defeats at the hands of Israeli forces.
24:15For the next six years, Brezhnev spared neither money nor effort
24:19to re-arm and re-equip the armies of Egypt and Syria.
24:25The ink and the signatures of the new U.S.-Soviet treaty was still drying
24:29when the world found itself on the brink of a new war.
24:33Brezhnev longed for an Arab victory over Israel as a means to reduce American influence in the Middle East.
24:42On October 6th, 1973, on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur,
24:48Egypt and Syria unleashed a surprise attack on Israel to regain land lost in 1967 and other previous conflicts.
24:56Moscow denied any role in encouraging the Arabs,
25:02but recently declassified documents tell another story.
25:06The KGB report warned Egypt's leaders of Israel's military build-up along the border,
25:16interpreting it as a sign of an imminent Israeli assault.
25:21The KGB report was either a deliberate provocation or simply inaccurate,
25:27since it appears that the Israelis had no intention of striking.
25:30Regardless of the intent, the KGB's warning justified Egypt's claim that its attack was
25:38not an act of aggression, but a preemptive and protective strike.
25:45For the first few days, the Arab assault was highly successful.
25:50In the following days, the world's two superpowers quietly became more involved.
25:57When the war broke out, the first resupply operations were by the Soviet Union.
26:03The United States had been reluctant to get into resupply operations.
26:08But then the Soviets started to resupply their clients, and the United States responded.
26:15Now, our objective was to keep them basically out of the Middle East.
26:25On October 10th, the tide of the war suddenly turned in favor of the Israelis.
26:32Brezhnev was furious.
26:34On his orders, the Soviet Black Sea Navy sailed full speed toward Egypt.
26:39Two Soviet paratrooper divisions also stood ready to be airlifted to the Middle East battlefield.
26:48In response, President Nixon announced a global red alert for American troops.
26:54Detente was once again on the brink of collapse.
27:01As the Israelis took control, Brezhnev ordered a halt to the relocation of Soviet forces.
27:07Despite his desire to reduce American influence in the region, he could not risk an open confrontation
27:14with the U.S.
27:17On October 25th, the war in the Middle East ended.
27:22The Arab nations won back only a small fraction of the territory they had hoped to regain.
27:30A new attempt at detente took place in August of 1975.
27:36Brezhnev, U.S. President Gerald Ford, and the leaders of 30 European countries gathered
27:41in Helsinki, Finland to sign a document known as the Helsinki Agreement.
27:47It promoted peaceful resolution of conflicts and respect for international borders, as
27:53well as a variety of economic and human rights initiatives throughout Europe.
27:59At the same time, Brezhnev and the other Kremlin leaders secretly stepped up military support
28:05to anti-American and pro-communist regimes worldwide.
28:11About three months after the Helsinki Conference, in November of 1975, Brezhnev dispatched military
28:19equipment and advisers to Angola to prop up a pro-Soviet movement.
28:25The Soviets lost Egypt, but they gained Angola in 1975.
28:32They supported a military coup or revolution, depending on your views, in Ethiopia.
28:40Then there was Mozambique, then there was Yemen, and so on and so forth.
28:44For Americans, it created the pattern of Soviet expansionism.
28:51By the late 70s, American presidents were under increasing public pressure to discipline the
28:57Soviets, to hold the Soviets accountable for what was going on in the Third World.
29:04And if the Soviets were not going to stop assisting these revolutionary regimes, the United States
29:11would force them to pay a price.
29:13The price the Soviet Union paid for continued expansion would soon become very high in a
29:21bloody war just across its border.
29:25But Brezhnev's deteriorating health secretly became the next great crisis for those inside
29:30the Kremlin's walls.
29:36By the late 1970s, the most closely guarded Soviet secret had nothing to do with nuclear
29:42weapons stockpiles or covert military operations.
29:46The Kremlin leadership's top priority was to conceal any facts about the health of Leonid Brezhnev.
29:54Beginning in the mid-1970s, Brezhnev's health began to decline due to a disorder which restricted
30:01blood flow within his brain.
30:04His ability to work and focus on a variety of tasks quickly began to fail.
30:09Twice he asked the Politburo to let him go, but the Kremlin's inner circle didn't want
30:15to change the status quo.
30:18He became a puppet in the hands of his own inner circle.
30:26All the serious decisions were made by the most influential members of the Politburo.
30:33They were using Brezhnev as a symbol or rather as a helpless straw scarecrow.
30:40Now they were in charge of the country's destiny.
30:43The main power brokers were military leader Dmitry Ustinov, head of the KGB Yuri Andropov, and
30:54foreign minister Andrei Gromyko.
30:57Gromyko had managed to hold key positions as far back as the Stalinist era.
31:02He served as Soviet ambassador to the US under Stalin in the 1940s, then started his long career
31:09as foreign minister under Khrushchev in the 1950s.
31:14These three men were the most influential members of the Kremlin's old guard.
31:20They continued Brezhnev's double-faced version of detente while using him as a puppet for
31:25ceremonial appearances and to communicate public policy.
31:31In 1976, Brezhnev addressed the Communist Party plenary meeting.
31:39On behalf of the party and the nation, I pledge that our country will never take the path of
31:45aggression, never will raise the sword against another nation.
31:55Just a few years later, Soviet troops prepared to invade neighboring Afghanistan.
32:03The Soviets had exerted their influence over Afghanistan for decades and helped to install
32:08leaders who would act in Moscow's best interest.
32:13But in 1978, a group of Afghan officers trained in Soviet military schools assassinated the pro-Soviet
32:20Afghan president and took power.
32:24The Kremlin old guard was alarmed, then curiously enough, the new leadership in Afghanistan declared
32:31that they would follow the Soviet path.
32:37By that time, not only Afghanistan, but the entire Third World had discovered the weak spot
32:42of the Soviet government.
32:44They knew that as soon as you proclaim that your nation wants to follow a socialist line,
32:49they were guaranteed both money and weapons.
32:56In 1979, Hafezullah Amin, a former graduate student at New York's Columbia University, became
33:02Afghanistan's new president.
33:06The new leader of the Afghan revolution desperately tried to assure the Soviets of his loyalty.
33:12Amin asked the Kremlin to bring Soviet troops into Afghanistan, claiming he needed their support
33:18to defend his new pro-Soviet regime from the opposition, the Mujahideen.
33:28The Soviet leaders were aware of U.S. and Arab support for the Mujahideen, but a vital domestic
33:33issue was also at stake.
33:36The Soviets were concerned about nationalism in the Soviet Union.
33:42Nationalism in this regard was viewed as Muslim fundamentalism or Muslim identity, the struggle
33:48for a Muslim self-expression.
33:51The Soviets saw the Afghan problem as a way of sending a signal to Muslim elites throughout
33:57the Soviet Union that enough is enough.
34:02As Brezhnev's old guard debated the situation, KGB head Yuri Andropov received top secret information
34:09about Afghanistan's new leader that added another layer of intrigue.
34:16He got intelligence reports from the KGB chief of station, who basically said that Amin now
34:24is trying to open contacts to Americans and he might defect to Americans and we might lose
34:32Afghanistan.
34:33So Andropov decided to be on the safe side and suggested that we should remove Hafizullah Amin.
34:41The decision was made.
34:43Amin's persistent request to Brezhnev for military intervention came as a handy excuse for a Soviet
34:50invasion.
34:52His fate was sealed.
34:56On Christmas Day 1979 Soviet troops entered Afghanistan.
35:02The era of detente was effectively opened.
35:06American analysts predicted that the war in Afghanistan would drag Moscow into a Soviet Vietnam.
35:14The first secret mission of the war was carried out by two KGB Spetsnaz, or special hit units,
35:21Alpha and Vimpel.
35:22They were assigned to eliminate Amin.
35:27Two days later, Alpha and Vimpel stormed the residence of the Afghan leader in the capital
35:32city of Kabul.
35:33They killed everybody in sight, including women and children.
35:42When the shooting started, Amin, in total confusion, actually tried to reach the Soviet
35:48embassy, pleading for help.
35:50He was killed, and his head was secretly brought to Moscow in a plastic bag as proof of his demise.
36:02Amin's assassination would prove to be one of the few Soviet successes in the Ten Year War.
36:08The 100,000 strong Soviet force and all of their advanced aircraft, tanks, and heavy artillery failed to crush the resistance.
36:22Within months, the Kremlin's old guard realized their horrible mistake.
36:27In a rare lucid moment, Brezhnev angrily snapped at Andropov, you dragged me into this filthy mess.
36:36The Soviet leaders were trapped.
36:38A shameful early retreat would damage their credibility as a superpower, both in the eyes
36:44of the West and within their own sphere of influence.
36:49Soviet losses continued to mount, and their biggest failures and disappointments still loomed
36:54ahead.
37:01In 1980, one year after the Soviet Union became embroiled in a war in Afghanistan, the American
37:07people elected Ronald Reagan as their next president.
37:12He immediately took a much tougher stance against communism than had former President Jimmy Carter.
37:19Reagan drastically increased military spending and dubbed the Soviet Union the evil empire.
37:24unknown to the outside world.
37:28Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev's brain disorder had reduced him to acting merely as a mouthpiece
37:35for the members of the Kremlin's old guard.
37:38KGB director Yuri Andropov led the old guard's reaction to their new threat from Reagan's strong
37:44anti-communist views.
37:49In the early 80s, Andropov strongly believed that an attack by the United States and NATO
37:55on the Soviet Union was imminent.
37:58The KGB launched an enormously expensive long-term operation.
38:03Every week, each Soviet spy station abroad was to answer an endless list of questions like,
38:09were U.S. hospitals getting additional blood units, were the windows at the NATO military
38:14headquarters lit longer than usual at night, and so on.
38:21Exhaustive Soviet intelligence measures, coupled with the costly war in Afghanistan and the
38:27continuing arms race with the West, began to severely drain the empire's economic resources.
38:34The old guard was also having a more difficult time hiding Brezhnev's illness.
38:40In 1980, he had lapsed into senility.
38:45One day, Brezhnev decided to decorate the Soviet television star of his favorite program with
38:50the nation's highest military award, the hero of the Soviet Union.
38:57Actor Vecislav Tiganov played a successful Soviet spy in Germany during World War II, but Brezhnev
39:04believed the actor really was a successful agent.
39:08His aides finally persuaded Brezhnev to decorate the actor with a more suitable non-military award.
39:18On another occasion, in the middle of the night, Brezhnev became convinced that enemy forces were invading Moscow.
39:25He refused to go back to sleep until his personal guard lied and told him the Soviet troops were
39:30mobilizing to stop the imagined attackers.
39:37However, the threats that Soviet forces faced in Afghanistan throughout the 1980s were very real.
39:46As predicted in the West, their campaign did begin to mirror America's experience in Vietnam.
39:54During that war, Soviet aid and a determined enemy using unconventional tactics had paralyzed
39:59against U.S. forces.
40:02By the mid-1980s, the CIA was returning the favor in Afghanistan by training and supplying that
40:09country's guerrilla fighters.
40:13Just as in Vietnam, there were no front lines in Afghanistan.
40:18The highly mobile Mujahideen guerrilla units attacked from hiding places in a hit-and-run
40:23manner, only to immediately disappear and return to their bases in mountains.
40:30The extremely mobile American-made Stinger missiles took a heavy toll on vulnerable Soviet tanks, helicopters,
40:36and personnel carriers.
40:41The United States wanted to show the Soviets that they would not go unpunished when invading
40:48neighboring countries.
40:50They wanted to show us that this just won't work.
40:52Well, they made their point, and they did teach us a lesson.
40:59KGB head Yuri Andropov was the first to realize that this war couldn't be won.
41:05The Kremlin leadership looked for a way to retreat while minimizing international humiliation.
41:11In 1987, they tried initiating peace negotiations through Afghani president Dr. Mohammad Najibullah.
41:19But the Mujahideen knew he was simply a Soviet puppet and refused to back down.
41:24Years of conflict in Afghanistan and the Kremlin's ineffective domestic policies began to take a toll
41:31on the Soviet people.
41:33Food shortages appeared as the standard of living in the communist bloc continued to decline.
41:39The longing for a peace accord became so intense that on occasion the KGB took extraordinary measures.
41:49Recently uncovered documents have revealed that the KGB actually provided the Mujahideen
41:54with information on the time and location of several Soviet assaults to reduce casualties
42:00on both sides.
42:04Soviet military leaders no longer believed in their country's propaganda, and the common soldier
42:08did not understand what he was fighting for.
42:12Finally, in April 1988, Moscow began to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.
42:21By that time, more than a million Afghan people had been killed, mostly civilians.
42:28The official Soviet casualties stood at 15,000 men, but it's widely believed that the actual
42:34number was over 50,000.
42:37The last Soviet soldier left Afghanistan in 1989.
42:45Leonid Brezhnev did not have to endure most of this disastrous conflict.
42:50He died from a heart attack on November 10, 1982.
42:55For his 18 years of leadership, he was given the honor of being buried in Red Square.
43:01However, Brezhnev's policies ultimately did more to destroy the Soviet Union than those
43:06of any other leader.
43:09His reign has been labeled the era of stagnation.
43:13But his hypocritical version of detente continually channeled spending to the Soviet nuclear arsenal
43:19and its conventional forces, as well as secretly pouring money into countless wars of revolution
43:25around the globe.
43:27His policies, carried on by the Kremlin's old guard after Brezhnev's death, eventually drained
43:33the resources of the communist bloc.
43:36In the end, his Cold War policies left the Soviet empire unable to feed its own people.
43:43Less than a decade after Brezhnev's regime ended, the Soviet system finally collapsed.
43:50T outer merced and loaded the Soviet Union until theills continued.