Bbc Communism

Footballers from Russia, Hungary and East Germany recall how the Beautiful Game was manipulated for political ends during the Cold War. Despite the high stakes, many courageous footballers resisted attempts by ruthless leaders from the Eastern Bloc's totalitarian regimes to exploit their sporting celebrity for political gain, with their careers often being destroyed as a result.

In 1989 an entire way of life ended for millions behind the Iron Curtain. Combining 1st hand testimony with extensive archive footage, this 3 part series recreates and examines the world that disappeared twenty years ago - the lost world of communism. See unique archive and personal testimony from those who lived behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania. The personal stories of dissident leaders, artists, athletes, entertainers, members of the communist elite, secret police and 'ordinary' citizens evoke the moods, and experiences across 4 decades of a now lost world of communism.

Historian Dominic Sandbrook takes us back to the strange years of the Cold War.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 is one of the most controversial events of the 20th century. Three men - Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin - emerged from obscurity to forge an entirely new political system. In the space of six months, they turned the largest country on earth into the first Communist state. Was this a triumph of people power or a political coup d'etat that led to blood-soaked totalitarianism? A hundred years later, the Revolution still sparks ferocious debate. This film dramatizes the 245 days that brought these men to supreme power.

Reggie Yates discovers contemporary China, diving deep into four megacities in search of the new generations transforming their future.

We will never know how many people were victims of communism between the October Revolution of 1917 and Stalin’s death in March 1953. Some historians say 20 million died others 50 million. Millions more worked as slaves in the Gulag, the system of mines, factories and building sites which lay at the heart of the great Soviet drive for industrialisation. Gulag is tragedy on a harrowing scale. The stories of a nightmare world, told in the words of both victims and perpetrators, continue to haunt today’s society.

J Robert Oppenheimer was one of the most celebrated scientists of his generation. Shy, arrogant and brilliant, he is best known as the man that led the Manhattan Project to spectacular success.

Storyville: an investigation into who killed Welsh journalist Gareth Jones. Jones's greatest scoop was to reveal the starvation to death of millions in 1930s Ukraine, caused by Stalin's policies. A portrait emerges of a fiercely bright young man who preferred a journalist's life of courage and danger which took him from smalltown Wales to even hitching a lift in Hitler's private plane. However, in a 1930s world of competing ideologies, there existed a fine line between journalism and spying.

The remarkable rise of one of the world's most controversial leaders, Jair Bolsonaro, from obscurity to the presidency of Brazil.