August 18 – The Twentieth Anniversary of the Beginning of the End of the Soviet Union

Full Program

Part 1

First we are joined in the studio by one of Russia’s best-known documentary film makers Marina Goldovskaya who has made an extraordinary film about her best friend Anna Politkovskya, the heroic Russian journalist who was mysteriously murdered on Putin’s birthday and remains a symbol of freedom in Russia. A freedom that started twenty years ago, but with the murder of Anna Politkovskaya in 2006, began to be slowly and inexorably extinguished – with authoritarian repression continuing today as the Putin regime rolls back freedom and democracy in Russia, prompty Gorbachev to remark on the BBC today that Putin has "castrated" Russian democracy and should not run for president again..

Part 2

Then we look back at the last twenty years of Russia from a different perspective from another documentary film maker Robin Hessman, whose award-winning film “My Perestrioka”, traces the lives of young Russian schoolmates who came of age at the end of the Soviet Union and have since tried to adjust to the democratic changes and reversals with varying degrees of success in the new Russia, that in many ways is going back to the old.

Part 3

Then finally we are joined by the documentary film makers Amanda Pope and Tchavdar Giorgiou who made the fascinating documentary “The Desert of Forbidden Art’ that tells the story of an extraordinary Russian who collected thousands of art treasures forbidden by Stalin and preserved them for posterity in a unlikely museum he built in the deserts of Central Asia.