The Burning Archive

The Burning Archive looks ahead to Nobel Prize week, and reviews predictions and the odds of who will win the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature. I also take a brief look at the controversy behind the Nobel Peace Prize. Regular listeners, please note the Burning Archive will be taking a one month release break until early November when the podcast will review the 2022 Winners of the Nobel Prize, and will resume the series of podcasts on Russian history.

Part Two of this extended episode on Mikhail Gorbachev's significance in world history begins with one of Gorbachev's favourite old Soviet songs - Tyomnaya noch'/ Темная ночь/  Dark is the night  (1942). It continues with a discussion of Gorbachev's legacy to the world with each of his key ideas - glasnost, perestroika and peace. The episode includes a section of the fateful press conference in 1991 when the USA recommitted to the Cold War and concludes with Gorbachev himself singing a beautiful old Soviet ballad. ### Dear Listeners - My apologies. THere was a glitch in my audio editing of this episode so there are many words and syllables that were clipped. This had made the sound quality not as good as I would like. I will replace in time but will need to re-record the whole episode. In the meantime, do please listen despite the flaws.

Mikhail Gorbachev was one of the most important and the most tragic figures of 20th century history. He has largely been presented in media obituaries as helping end the Cold War. In truth, he sued for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons, while liberating his society to pursue its own forms of democracy. But he was betrayed abroad by the USA, whose leaders were convinced they had ended history, and who engineered the collapse and looting of the Soviet world. That betrayal remains at the heart of the conflict in Ukraine and the difficult birth of a New Russia and the multipolar world. How does the tragedy of Mikhail Gorbachev - a man of peace - help us understand the world crisis today?  Listen to the end of the show and hear Gorbachev in his own voice, giving his resignation speech on 25 December 1991 (with English translation voiceover).

We cannot hope to find peace with Russia unless we seek to understand Russian history in all its complexity, its highs and lows, its tragedies and its farces, its inspirations and its horrors. To understand that rich history, we need to confront the Black Legend of Russian History, which tells a story of a benighted people, cursed to poverty, despotism and the dark strivings of the Russian soul. What is the black legend of Russian history? That is the question on the Burning Archive. Vale Mikhail Gorbachev. Credits: - Mark B. Smith The Russia Anixiety (2019) - Do buy this book - it is essential to understanding Russia and the world today. - Leonid Kharitonov and The Russian Red Army Choir - "Song of the Volga Boatmen" ("Yo, Heave Ho!",  "Ej, Uhnem!") The concert in Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow, 1965 via Youtube

History can be an aid to making good decisions - in government, in any walk of life, in your personal life. History is not only useful for leaders of governments and professors. It helps us all make sense of the events around us, and free us from false narratives and misleading comparisons that we all fall prey to from time to time. History can even be an antidote to doom-scrolling. Find out how on this episode of the Burning Archive.

The Burning Archive podcast explores how the past is not dead, the past is not even past. But if that is so, what are the uses and lessons of history? How can history be used for guidance in our lives, and to advise governments on the big decisions that shape our fates. A recent Australian book, Lessons from History: Leading Historians Tackle Australia's Greatest Challenges, eds, Holbrook, Megarrity and Lowe (NewSouth, 2022) explores this question. In this podcast Jeff Rich explores how the authors seek to cross the bridge between policy and history, and reflects upon how he has stood on that bridge in his career as a very minor government official.

As the multipolar world takes shape and tensions over Taiwan rise, it is timely to ask, what should be Australia's role in the emerging multipolar world? Are we, as Hugh White suggests in his recent Quarterly Essay, sleepwalking to war with China? Have we given up on framing our own foreign and defence policy to service the will of that "indispensable nation", America. What will it take to develop a new vision of Australian foreign policy suited to history, geopolitics today, and our real place in the world, not in the Atlantic Alliance but on the coasts of Eurasia? Credit: Hugh White, Sleepwalk to War: Australia's Unthinking Alliance with America (Black Ink, 2022)

Three spectres are haunting America - the ghosts of the American Mind, the American State, and the American Empire. Faced with intertwined crises of culture, governing and international dominance, the 20th century's Uncle Sam has not aged well, and become the 21st century's Bad Granpa Joe. Will America break? That is the question on this episode of The Burning Archive.

This podcast explores the Clash of Civilizations theory and its relevance to the conflict between Russia and the West in Ukraine. It discusses the challenges of defining Europe's boundaries and the expansion of NATO and the EU in Eastern Europe. The impact of economic sanctions and the West's approach to the Ukraine war are also explored.

This episode of The Burning Archive explores the life cycle of civilizations and challenges the idea of Western civilization. They discuss the influence of Oswald Spengler and Francis Fukuyama, explore the decline of the West and the rise of the modern world, and examine the concept of civilizations in shaping global history. They also delve into the complexity of civilizations clashing and evolving, highlight the importance of irony in writing history, and reflect on previous episodes and introduce Samuel Huntington's clash of civilizations theory.