Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks seize power in the chaos of 1917, and this History Hit production traces the state they built across seven decades, from the Russian Civil War through Stalin's forced collectivization and purges, the Second World War's eastern front, and the long Cold War standoff with the West. Archival footage and photographs carry the narration through Khrushchev's thaw, the Cuban missile crisis, and the stagnation years under Brezhnev, before the film turns to Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost reforms and the cascade of events that ended with the union's dissolution in 1991. The film keeps its focus on the men at the top, tracking how each leader consolidated or lost power, and treats the economic strain of the arms race and the war in Afghanistan as forces working alongside the ideological cracks that eventually split the Soviet bloc apart. Running just over two hours, it functions as a single continuous account of the state's rise and collapse rather than a deep dive into any one episode.