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Podcast: People In The Know
Episode: Agriculture in Ukraine and Russia 1986 Many Parallels to Today
Description: In the mid-1980's the Soviet Union was softening its stance against foreign journalists in the Glasnost and Perestroika period under Mikhail Gorbachev.. But it was still the cold war and neither side trusted the other. A group of twenty-five farm broadcasters and agricultural specialists headed for the agricultural lands of Ukraine and the big cities of Russia just months after the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident. Â
We were the first western farm journalists who were able to see the people and farming operations in Ukraine. The comparisons we made to U.S. farming were shocking. We also were watche...