In 2019, Werner Herzog took us along to Meeting Gorbachev. The interview has the spirit of a respectful and at times jovial chat with an elder with a fascinating former job, rather than an interrogation of a world leader whose architecture of one of the world’s largest and most formidable power structures contributed to its demise. While some celebrate and others call it catastrophe, the fall of the USSR completely jolted a political and economic balance with reverberations throughout the world today.

Today, news has emerged of the death of Mr. Gorbachev at age 91. There are tributes all over the web, but here, I would rather to share options for a Soviet binge – a variety of media to briefly visit the world in which Gorbachev’s legacy is woven.

–State Funeral by Sergei Loznitza. This is one of the most intense and boggling 90 minutes you will witness on film, a collection of footage from around the USSR taken on the massive funeral day of Joseph Stalin. The legacy of Stalin is part of what Gorbachev inherits.

-Oliver Stone’s four-part Putin Interviews, 2017.

–Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union by Vladislav M. Zubok. The book could be an in-depth companion to Herzog’s documentary, for context and scale of the USSR state apparatus, Russian society, and Gorbachev’s analysis and reforms: from domestic economics, global politics, and the military.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev.