TraumaZone (2022) Adam Curtis on Russia

What it felt like to live through the collapse of communism and democracy. A series of films by Adam Curtis.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0d3hwl1/russia-19851999-traumazone

Part One - 1985 to 1989
Perestroika. The dream of saving communism. But the oligarchs start to loot the system.

Part Two - 1989 to 1991
No potatoes in Moscow. The Soviet plan runs out of control. But McDonald’s opens.

Part Three - 1991
Hardliners try a coup. Power slips through their shaking hands. Money replaces ideology.

Part Four - 1992 to 1994
Russia goes through the mirror to a chaotic dream world where nothing is stable any more.

Part Five - 1993 to 1996
Russian society implodes. Yeltsin attacks parliament with tanks to save democracy.

Part Six - 1994 to 1998
Yeltsin believes a war in Chechnya will save him. While gangsters become heroes.

Part Seven - 1995 to 1999
Oligarchs choose Putin as their puppet. Russians turn against the "curse of democracy".