Season 1
10 episodes
0 min. per episode
Where to watch
This title is not available anywhere yet. Click the button below to promote it and highlight it.
Amidst chaos and opportunity, a disillusioned politician battles betrayal and ambition to shape a nation’s fate.
Episodes
The young General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev is trying to reform the decrepit regime, inadvertently launching a chain reaction of events that the Soviet government quickly becomes unable to control. A new leader is born from the turmoil of perestroika: Boris Yeltsin becomes the spearhead of democratic forces, and Gorbachev soon begins perceiving him as a threat.
Determined to quell the democratic reforms, Soviet hardliners, led by the director of the KGB, place Mikhail Gorbachev under house arrest and orchestrate a coup d'état. However, citizens of the emerging new Russia, spearheaded by Boris Yeltsin, stop the plotters from seizing power. The Soviet regime is now doomed.
The defeat of the coup launches a chain reaction: republics leave the USSR one after another, and soon the Soviet Union, which seemed unbreakable just a year ago, officially ceases to exist. Boris Yeltsin and his comrades have only a few months to decide which way path the new Russia will take.
To avoid the looming economic disaster in Russia, President Boris Yeltsin appoints a cabinet of "Young Reformers" and launches radical reforms, which face significant public opposition. The President implements necessary but painful measures, sacrificing his popularity for the sake of the country's economic stability.
Boris Yeltsin faces an unexpected opponent: the Russian parliament, which hinders his reforms and attempts to seize power. In the autumn of 1993, the political crisis escalates into a civil war on the streets of Moscow, as the president and parliament clash violently for control of the country's future.
From the collapse of the Soviet Union to Putin's rule: how Russia became free and what it did with this freedom. The story of Boris Yeltsin and his times, told by his comrades, family, friends, and foes.