PBS Frontline: Journey to Russia (1983)

Frontline follows a Western student delegation into the heart of the Soviet Union.

[mohammedsaysrashid]

What a wonderful selection by an amazing ( Mike Guardia) channel about this unique and media show documentary about past, collapsed USSR ...thanks for sharing.

[fredlandry]

They had no idea that 8 years later the Soviet Union would collapse.

[DaveSCameron]

Cheers for the upload again Mr Guardia and keep it coming please. 👍

[zeom]

Excellent channel. Thanks Mike Guardia.

[fratercontenduntocculta]

Your channel just gets better with each new video Mike! I'm a big Cold War geek and you always upload documentaries I've never heard of.

[jasonmikolajewski]

Does anyone know what Bill did in the rest of his life after this? I am fascinated by the fact that he was from Pittsburgh and does not seem to have an elite background (i.e. went to Harvard or works for a Senator) as the other two do, but definitely has the best command of Russian of the group.

[Boatswain_Tam]

March 83, this was months before the infamous Able Archer, when relations are at their lowest. Fascinating exchange. It must have been a massive shock to these Russians defending the system to realise in a few years time, their entire world would come crashing down. Or did they know in their hearts of hearts what was going on in the USSR?

[reddevilparatrooper]

I was still in Intermediate School or Junior High School at that time.

[iangold]

I was a Ukrainian toddler what time. Such documentaries is so big treasure to me, cause only soviet propaganda is another way to have a look on that time. Extremely blurred look. Thank You.

[TheNumber]

Bill is the best ADHD boy ever. He has reached peaks we can only hope to reach.

[veryveryveryvery]

Samantha Smith also visited USSR in july 1983

[KingSizzle]

From everything I’ve learned about the USSR, it seems like it was basically the same as the US with a country that is poorer.

What I mean is, connected people had better access to things, and people who weren’t party members had less.

In America, some people have huge mansions, and some people have cardboard boxes.

The main difference is that in America, it’s about your access to money, and in the USSR, it was about your access to the party.

I don’t think their system was necessarily bad. It’s just that they were working with a socialist framework in a country that never had capitalism and doesn’t have the resource endowment the US has.

[johnnotrealname]

For the record, the old guard was in power at this time. This was among the most repressive moments in late-soviet history. Truly an Edit: "unique" documentary then.

[lb_reflections]

Do we know what happened to Margaret, John and Bill afterwards? What did they go on to do in life? Cheers.

[mikebane]

I hate how the documentary producers edited the footage to make it appear that the Soviet people in the audience were laughing, smiling, and snickering whenever the American was talking about Stalin, political repression of dissidents, and things that obviously are trying to paint the Soviet people as bloodthirsty maniacs living in an insane world.

Also, this American kid was so naive and a sucker. The interpreters also are conveniently misinterpreting or misrepresenting several moments where the Soviets were offering their counter arguments. Finally, that naive American thinks the Berlin Wall was in Latvia 😂

[christopherseat]

One year before "THREADS " was to be released on TV.

[Gopferteckel]

Always wanted to visit Volgograd . Sakharov …..Russia’s equivalent to Oppenheimer US had a bloody civil war too. The US and USA seem to mirror each other in so many ways.

[Lehi]

Fun fact: at 36:11 on the left is a man who looks very much like (and very likely is) Russia's future minister of finance Alexei Kudrin

[johnchrysostomon]

How times have changed. The Supreme Court has ruled in favour of US customs checks that can be miles and miles away from the actual border

[Genevois]

I find it interesting that in their post mortem, they are discussing how they hope to have opened other people's minds, with the implication that they are right and their interlocutors were wrong, and that they hope for some degree of success in their mission to enlighten the ignorant masses. I think this is the arrogance of Americans that Americans never see and are incapable of understanding in themselves and which is so despised by so many non Americans. Are you telling me that in all of the time these people spent there, they did not walk away with even the tiniest bit of an understanding of the way the people whom they were debating felt or thought, or even why they felt or thought the way they did? Anyone who can walk away from an experience like that unaffected has truly missed the point of the exercise, I believe.