Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says the world faces a growing “cult of violence,” and Moscow must not let events like those in Libya and Syria be repeated in Russia. Deborah Lutterbeck reports.

Alexander Yellin (Photo: Julia Barton)

Putin’s supporters and detractors both have pop songs to sing about him. But oddly, Russia’s best-known pro-Putin and anti-Putin songs were written by the very same songwriter.

Alexander Yellin sits in an expensive café in downtown Moscow. The 53-year-old lyricist is partly bald – what’s left of his graying hair is tied back in a pony-tail.

Yellin writes songs that others sing. Ten years ago, he bet a friend $200 that he could create a hit song in Russia on the cheap.

Yellin won the bet. His pop song “A Man Like Putin” became so huge that it’s been translated into English.

When “A Man Like Putin” came out, Putin had been president for two years. Yellin said his song reflected the country’s admiration for the man.

“At that moment, there was such euphoria that there was this new, young leader who’d move the country forward,” Yellin said. “The song was a bit ironic. It wasn’t opposed to Putin—it was written in a way to depict Putin as the ideal man, even the ideal husband for women.”

Yellin may have written “A Man Like Putin” as light satire, but it wasn’t taken that way. Vladimir Putin made it his anthem and even played it at rallies. Yellin, who’d been a dissident rocker in Soviet days, seemed a bit uncomfortable with the embrace.

But even just a few years ago, he told foreign journalists there was no point writing anti-Putin songs—no one would listen to them.

All that changed last September, when now-Prime Minister Putin announced he was running for president — again. A political opposition leader asked Alexander Yellin if he’d write a different kind of song now, one that reflected the country’s disgruntled mood.

Yellin came up with “Our Madhouse Votes for Putin”, which is from the viewpoint of a patient in a psychiatric ward. “Why is there a hole in my head, and in the budget?” he asks his doctor. “Why instead of tomorrow today is yesterday?

“It’s all so complicated!” the patient concludes. “It’s just too messed up. Our madhouse will vote for Putin, and with Putin we’ll be happy.”

Alexander Yellin said mental illness provides an obvious metaphor for the way Russians view their leaders.

“Schizophrenia seems to me inherent in Russians,” he said. “On the one hand, Russians don’t love those in power, but on the other, they just go along with everything that’s done in the political arena.”

Yellin and his group Rabfak—a Soviet acronym for “Workers’ College”—released the song in October and the video went viral.

Rabfak performed at protest rallies here in Moscow last December. A group of Russian linguists named “Our Madhouse Votes for Putin” the Russian phrase of the year. The last time Yellin won that honor was in 2002—for the phrase “A Man Like Putin.”

All told, Yellin said he made about $8,000 off “A Man Like Putin,” plus the $200 bet. He doesn’t regret writing the song; he even hopes it might get recorded again.

“This time,” he said, “its satirical nature might come through.”

Steve Rosenberg’s video report

Operating in Tehran during World War II, he tracked German commandos who had arrived to attack a summit attended by Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill.

Realizing they were being followed, the Germans called off the attack.

Robert Service is British historian and the author of a forthcoming book Spies and Commissars.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I am Marco Werman. This is The World. Russians are remembering the Soviet era spy Gevork Vartanian. He passed away this week at the age of 87. President Dmitry Medvedev sent his condolences to Vartanian’s widow who collaborated with her husband on missions. The legendary spy couple famously helped to derail a Nazi plot in 1943. British historian Robert Service says the goal was to assassinate allied leaders Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill as they gathered for a conference.

Robert Service: The western allies were meeting in Tehran in Iran because Stalin just wouldn’t leave the vicinity of the USSR. So, Roosevelt and Churchill had to fly to Iran to work out what they were going to do to prosecute the war effort. The Soviet Intelligence Agency was interested in keeping all of the allied leaders alive – Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill, and one of the principal agents of the Soviet cause in Iran was an Iranian of Armenian descent called Vartanian, who has just died. He was only 16 when he was recruited. He was one of the most brilliant of the lot.

Werman: What made him so brilliant? I mean, he sounds, at least in Iran and this particular plot, long jump, he sounds like the perfect insider.

Service: Well, he was someone who got wind of what the Germans were up to. The Germans sent over a mission to prepare the way for the redoubtable Otto Skorzeny to fly into Iranian airspace and either abduct or assassinate all three allied leaders. This would have been a disaster for the allies in the Second World War. What Vartanian did was get the mission team arrested.

Werman: The Nazi mission team…just got them arrested.

Service: The Nazi mission team that was going to be put down in Tehran and would set about abducting or assassinating the allied leaders. So, he was a very practical, on-the-ground, very, very young man. I mean, he was only in his teens!

Werman: After World War II, when the KGB took over from Russia’s Intelligence Service, it’s interesting Vartanian wasn’t alone in a lot of his espionage. His wife was also a spy along with him – the husband and wife spies.

Service: Yes, the Soviet Intelligence Agency often did this sort of thing. It was a way of keeping the moral of an agent high while he was abroad, and Vartanian was, with his wife, a really primary agent. The thing that changed in 1945, of course, was the cooperation between the British and the Americans and the Soviets completely vanished. During the Second World War, there was a lot of cooperation and there was even a British liaison officer in Moscow working with what became the KGB. It’s an extraordinary story of cooperation, not just among the armies but among the intelligence agencies. It’s not really yet been fully told.

Werman: The Vartanians worked together through the ’80s. Do you know of a very late case that they worked on together that was probably lesser known than “Operation Long Jump?”

Service: Well, until the turn of the millennium, the Russian authorities have kept quiet about the details of what Vartanian got up to even in the Second World War and they’ve kept stum almost entirely about what he did next. What we do know for certain is that he got every medal in the book. I mean, he was a very highly regarded spy.

Werman: I guess his medals indicate that, for many Russians, Vartanian was a hero. I’m just wondering, what do you think current members of the KGB in Russia, how will they be reflecting on the late Gevork Vartanian?

Service: The FSB as it is now is the successive organization of KGB and, of course, Prime Minister Putin – soon-to-be President Putin, again – he too worked for the KGB. So, what he did in sending condolences to the wife of Gevork Vartanian was give a message, I think, from his heart. He’s still a KGB man at heart, the man who rules Russia.

Werman: Historian Robert Service, author of the forthcoming book “Spies & Commissars”, thank you very much.

Service: Cheers!

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

When the USSR broke apart 20 years ago, the biggest shock for Russians and other ex-Soviets was what came afterwards.

Communism was out, capitalism was in and with it, life based on the Almighty Ruble.

“Did they really want a market economy where prices and money determined things? I’m not so sure,” said James Collins, former US Ambassador to the Russia Federation.

“It was a terribly wrenching experience, because it essentially upended the entire system by which everybody had structured a life — everything from the fact that money counted, to the idea that an academic would make less than some fellow selling Snickers bars in a corner kiosk. I mean this was just incredible,” Collins said.

Many people simply couldn’t make the transition, according to Valery Solovei, a professor at the Moscow State Institute for International Relations.

“Very often I say to my friends, those who could survive the 90s and who are still mentally healthy and who are not hard drunkards, they could survive anything,” Solovei said.

Another university professor, Nikolay Nikolayev taught in Nizhniy Novgorod, a Russian city 250 miles east of Moscow. After the collapse of communism, he drove a taxi at night so his family wouldn’t go hungry.

“I remember meeting with my friends every New Year’s, and our first toast was, ‘Well, it can’t get any worse!’ And it kept getting worse,” Nikolayev said. “We just couldn’t believe how much things could fall apart, and how poor people were.”

Nikolayev said things are better now. He and several colleagues left the university in the mid 90s to form a small publishing firm, and their office is in a beautiful old building in downtown Nizhniy Novgorod.

Lena Konstantinova, who works there as a graphic designer, said, “People have learned to be like frogs, to beat the butter with their little legs to survive in these new conditions.”

“Look at us”, she added, “we’re obviously fine, we’re sitting here in this nice office. But the underlying chaos and uncertainty hasn’t really disappeared. We’ve just gotten used to it.”

Larisa Bukarina, Nikolay Nikolayev, and Elena Konstantinova (Photo courtesy of http://master-raduga.nnov.ru)

“It makes life much narrower, much poorer, and less interesting, because everything is measured by how much it costs, or whether you can afford it. It’s very sad actually.”

Konstantinova said one of the most positive aspects of the Soviet Union was that you almost never thought about money when you considered love, work, or anything else.

But at this point, Nikolayev interrupted: “You were just running with the wrong crowd back then. There was always a group of people who cared about money or whose car was better.”

Yes, said Konstantinova, but they were a minority. She also thinks because consumer goods were so scarce in Soviet times, people were satisfied with a lot less.

“If I managed, for instance, to buy this one really cool sweater and a pair of boots, I was really happy to wear them over and over, and I felt very fashionable.”

Larisa Bukarina, who sits next to Lena, said since there wasn’t much in the stores to tempt them, they spent their money on concerts or theater tickets, and it was all very cheap, though the shows sold out immediately.

“Now we have a lot more entertainment — foreign movies and performers — but many people can’t afford to go because it’s so much more expensive,” Bukarina said.

Same goes with travel. Lena and Nikolai say they’re grateful that Soviet-era travel restrictions have disappeared.

But the end of communism has also meant the end of cheap holidays and travel within the former Soviet Union.

“Back then, totalitarian though it may have been, we could afford to take a river cruise on the Volga. Anybody could. It was very cheap. Now I can’t afford it, even though I have a good job,” Konstantinova said.

Nikolay Nikolayev added that they also had a lot more time off back then to enjoy a holiday.

“I remember when we were young, even though we didn’t earn a lot, my wife and I could afford to spend a month in Crimea. Now, I can afford to go to Turkey, but the most I can take off is 10-12 days,” he said.

In fact, Nikolayev hasn’t had a vacation in more than five years. But he’s not complaining.

Everything is just different now, he said. Things are much more unpredictable – but in some ways, more interesting, too.

With his departure, the USSR dissolved, and the first socialist state was consigned to the dustbin of history.
It was the end of an ideology, and an empire. (Watch the Soviet flag lowered for the last time.)

Andrey Grachev retired from politics the day after Mikhail Gorbachev did. His final assignment, as Gorbachev’s press secretary, was to tell the international press corps that the Soviet Union was no more.

“Somebody compared my role in those days to a character in the medieval theater, who’s switching off the light once the play is over,” Grachev recalled.

There are lots of theories for the Soviet Union’s sudden demise. But how does an insider like Andrey Grachev explain it?

“I think it died from inside,” he said, and not as a result of external pressures or enemies.

Grachev said he thinks the times of greatest conflict, the Second World War and the Cold War, actually strengthened the Soviet state.

“The most dangerous phases for the regime were the periods of detente, of peaceful co-existence, the periods when the external threat could not be used as the justification for the persecution of dissidents and the internal opposition,” Grachev said.

The Soviet Union’s chief vulnerability, he added, was a structural one; it was a huge, multi-ethnic empire.

“The great historic paradox of the Bolshevik Revolution was that when most world empires were breaking up, it was this new project, the communist project, with its international message, which amazingly helped the former Russian Empire to survive in the form of a new, rejuvenated, revolutionary state. A common motherland for all the nations, with most of the oppressed nations participating in the struggle against the Czarist regime.”

The Bolsheviks were the first Marxist party ever to seize state power. They promised to build a worker’s paradise, and a common motherland for all of Russia’s national and ethnic minorities. But by the l930s, the dictatorship of the proletariat had turned into the dictatorship of Josef Stalin, and the Soviet state came to resemble the vast, imperial system it had overthrown.

“It was a very rigid structure, which could be kept together mostly by force and coercion,” Grachev said.
It also barricaded itself and its citizens from the rest of the world.

Even so, the Soviet regime had some staggering achievements. It transformed Russia from a mostly peasant society to a modern industrial state; it vanquished Hitler’s armies during World War II; and it became a world leader in science.

On April 14, l961, Soviet cosmonaut Yury Gagarin became the first man to orbit the earth. There was world news coverage of Gagarin being greeted by Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev.

Four years earlier, the Soviets had launched Sputnik, the world’s first satellite. It was the height of the Cold War, and the beginning of the space race.

Soviet leaders poured money into space and military programs. By the early l980s, the Soviet Union had more tanks, troops and nuclear weapons than any other nation on earth.

“The Soviet Union was competitive in one sector, which was this military economy,” Grachev said, “but at the price of destroying the rest of the economy and the standard of living of most of the population.”

When Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party in l985, the Soviet economy was in a state of near collapse.

“He realized something had to be done. We can no longer live like this’ was a common line,” said Masha Lipman, a political analyst at the Carnegie Endowment in Moscow.

“A common word that people used to describe the period of late stagnation was ‘marasmus.’ And it was merazum in Russian. Because the system was in a state of degradation, and everybody saw it.” Lipman said.

It was an economy of shortages; Soviet citizens spent hours standing in line for basic necessities. The gap between the official communist rhetoric and reality was a mile wide.

“The ideology that had been part and parcel of the system early on, after all it was an ideological empire, this ideology had grown hollow, and become hypocritical.”

Gorbachev tried to rescue the system by allowing private enterprise and ending the communist party’s monopoly on power. He also vowed to slash military spending, and end the Cold War.

But then in June of l987, President Ronald Reagan stood in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, and dared him to do even more. He famously urged Gorbachev to “Tear down this wall.”

Two years later, Gorbachev allowed that to happen.

In an interview on Russian television earlier this year, Gorbachev said he knew he was doing the right thing by letting the Eastern Europe satellites go. But it was still hard.

“And it was so moving because he admitted it,” according to political analyst Masha Lipman. “He as a person who inherited this huge empire felt that there was something very wrong about them suddenly setting free of us. I mean we are the boss, we are the master, we are at the center of this universe. But he let them go.”

Andrey Grachev in the backyard of his dacha outside Moscow. (Photo: Brigid McCarthy)

Andrey Grachev said that during his last months in power, Gorbachev was trying to transform the USSR into a voluntary federation.

But once it became clear he would not use force — or fear — to keep the USSR together, the whole structure imploded.

“After all one of the elements of keeping together this huge historic and geographic reality was fear,” according to Andrey Grachev.

But the USSR wasn’t just destroyed by the forces of nationalism. The collapse of communism unleashed something even more powerful: greed and lawlessness.

Perhaps that’s what Gorbachev was warning about in his farewell address to the nation on Christmas Day of l991, when he said that Soviet society had acquired political and spiritual freedom, but that it had yet to come to grips with that achievement.

“People in this country are ceasing to be citizens of a great power,” Gorbachev added.

In the end, the collapse of the Soviet Union turned out to be a great misfortune for most of the population, said Boris Kapustin, a visiting professor of ethics and politics at Yale University

“We are increasingly becoming a third world in any respect,” he said, citing declines in science, education and health. “This is not just an economic disaster; it’s a cultural disaster as well.”

Valery Solovei, a professor of history at Moscow State Institute for International Relations, thinks this might explain the current protests against the Putin regime.

“The Russians hate the authorities,” Solovei said.

He said he doesn’t think most Russians want a return to Soviet socialism, but they’d like to have a functioning state.
“They want to have normal health care, which they’re willing to pay for. But even for money, they can’t receive anything. Even very rich people can’t receive normal health care or education for their children,” he said. “It means that the social system doesn’t work now, and the authorities don’t function either. The Russians see it and this is a problem.”

In other words, it’s not over yet.

Twenty years later, the Soviet Union is still collapsing.

• Program 1 – Part 2
• Program 2 – Part 1
• Program 2 – Part 2

Lawmakers were elected earlier this month in a vote marred by allegations of fraud.

Medvedev’s announcement amounts to a rejection of demands that the vote be annulled.

That’s part of what tens of thousands of Russian protesters demanded in massive street demonstrations this past weekend.

Russia’s educated, middle class rarely heads to the streets in protests. So, what’s brought them out this time?

Marco Werman talks with Julia Ioffe, Foreign Policy magazine’s Moscow Correspondent.

Westerners trying to understand the Russian national character might start by looking in the home. For many of those who grew up in the USSR, home was the cramped confines of a communal apartment

Valentina Baskina grew up in a large communal apartment in the center of Moscow, in the 1930s. Her entire family lived, ate and slept in one room. They shared the apartment with three other families, plus an old woman who lived in an alcove off of the kitchen.

As for privacy? It didn’t exist. There’s not even a word for it in the Russian language.

Still, Valentina has fond memories of her childhood home.

“I don’t remember that we visited each other or made some communal food. No, each family lived their own life, but it was very peaceful.”

Valentina mostly remembers the hours she spent in the long, dark corridor with her friend, Irina, whose family lived in the room across the hall. They’d sit on top of a large dresser and play imaginary games. Her mother worked as a truck driver, so she had to leave Valentina at home by herself.

Valentina said every family had children, so children became “a communal responsibility.”

When Valentina got married, her husband moved in with them. They shared the room with her older brother, her two younger sisters, her mother, and grandmother.

“It was not comfortable,” Valentina said. “But nevertheless we lived and enjoyed. And we didn’t feel it as a problem, because we couldn’t compare it.”

All of Valentina’s friends lived in communal apartments, too, and some of the apartments were terrible.

She thinks hers was better than most.

“Maybe it was just luck,” Valentina said. “I don’t know. Maybe it was just nature of my mother who was very friendly to everybody.”

That’s probably why everybody liked to go to Valentina’s flat.

“All friends of my older brother, all friends of mine in school and university, and friends of my younger sisters would sit around the table with some small food. Only my grandmother was very serious.”

When friends rang their bell, Valentina’s grandmother would open the door and say: “We have nothing to eat!” Valentina laughs, saying her grandmother, “took life very seriously, very tragically. But not for us. We were young and had many friends.”

Valentina and her friends may not have realized it, but they were actually part of a massive and ambitious social experiment.

After the Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks expropriated the apartments of the upper classes, and filled them to the brim, one family per room. All of the tenants had to share the kitchen and bathroom. The housing authorities deliberately mixed people from different social classes.

The aim was to create a truly collective society. But it was also the Bolsheviks’ solution to the urban housing shortage. Communal apartments remained the most common form of housing in Soviet cities for several generations.

The Russian poet and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Brodsky, who grew up in a communal apartment in Leningrad, wrote: “For all of the despicable aspects of this mode of existence, a communal apartment has its redeeming side as well. It bares life to its basics, it strips off any illusions about human nature.”

Valentina Baskina and her family were evacuated from Moscow during the Second World War. While they were away, their neighbors across the hall, an elderly couple, quietly paid their rent for three years.

“When the war was at the end, and we returned home, we got our rooms back,” Valentina said.

Even so, Valentina says her mother, who was widowed during the war, resented this couple, who were professors.

“She always found a pretext to be ungrateful, always felt they lived good and we lived bad. She was always stressed by the differences in the levels of our lives.”

Valentina lived in this communal flat even after she and her husband had a daughter. They eventually moved into a private two-bedroom apartment in the late l960s. Her daughter cried every night for the first year; she missed the kommunalka.

Andrei Barbje (Photo: courtesy Andrei Barbje)

“I remember my parents actively disliked living in the communal apartment, and my grandmother, who was little when our apartment was taken away, was always angry and resentful,” Barbje said.

But young Andrei didn’t mind it a bit.

He said everyone in his kommunalka did their best to get along, by following an elaborate system of rules.

“For instance, there was an unspoken order of people who went to wash in the morning, based on what time they had to get to work.”

The communal kitchen had four stoves, and each family used two burners. But if someone was having dinner guests, they could always ask to borrow one or two burners.

No one ate in the kitchen; they took the food back their room. They also kept refrigerators in their room.

Still, they all celebrated the holidays together. Andrei said there was a ritual.

“We’d visit each other’s rooms, and sit for half an hour or so,” Andrei said. “It was always customary when you visited to bring a small gift, so it was all very friendly.”

He said the one place where the system broke down was over the telephone, which was kept in the corridor.

“There was only one line for five families, and if someone liked to sit and chat and somebody else needed to make an urgent phone call, that’s when it got ugly.”

His most vivid childhood memory is of an old German man who lived in the basement of their building. He was a former P.O.W. The man’s entire family was killed during the war, so he just stayed in Moscow. He played the organ at a Lutheran Church.

“He was very very kind,” Andrei said, “and all the children, we just adored him. Even though he had a tiny salary, he’d buy old harmonicas and fix them. He gave them to us and taught us how to play. I still play the harmonica.”

Andrei Barbje’s family moved to a private apartment in l978, when he was 18. It was in a newly built high-rise on the outskirts of Moscow, with a small balcony and two bedrooms. They loved all the space, but they also felt isolated, because they didn’t live near anyone they knew.

When asked how growing up in a kommunalka shaped him, Andrei Barbje thinks for a moment before responding.

“Before I do something, I always think about whether this will bother someone else,” he said. “It’s about self control, and learning to take responsibility for your actions from a very young age, simply because you’re surrounded by so many people.”

Two well-dressed elderly women brush past our table. We watch as they walk down the sidewalk arm in arm.

Andrei Barbje then points to them: “I’ll bet they grew up in a kommunalka, too.”

Dozens are arrested across Russia as tens of thousands protest recent election results.

Tens of thousands of Russians are expected to turn out this weekend for street protests against election fraud.

Saturday’s rally in Moscow may be the largest. It is planned in two city squares, one of which is just across the river from the Kremlin.

But Moscow is not the only place where demonstrations will be happening. We are looking for a remote Siberian city where local activists say they will be out on the streets.

It is a city near Russia’s borders with Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China.

The city lies along the Ob river, a major river that runs through western Siberia.

The Russian city of Barnaul is the answer to the Geo Quiz.

Protest activity map of Russia. (Map: Yandex.maps)

Alexey Sidorenko has been looking at the map of Russia’s social media sites to try and anticipate the size of Saturday’s Election protests in Russia.

He is a social media analyst for Global Voices.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to Sidorenko to gauge the upcoming protests in Russia.

Moscow Protest (BBC Video)

Protesters chanted slogans against the ruling party as the Putin loyalists beat drums and chanted “Putin, Russia”.

Police arrested at least 100 protesters, including veteran liberal politician Boris Nemtsov.

A rally on Monday against alleged fraud in Sunday’s parliamentary elections was Moscow’s biggest protest in years.

Miriam Elder, a correspondent for The Guardian talks with host Marco Werman from the scene of the demonstrations.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World. Protestors in Russia are not standing down. Police and demonstrators clashed for a second day in Moscow. Protestors came out to denounce Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his ruling United Russia party after reports of fraud in Sunday’s parliamentary elections. Police also detained some 200 people at a rally in St. Petersburg. Miriam Elder is a correspondent for The Guardian newspaper. She was at the rally in Moscow’s Triamfalnaya Square earlier today. Elder says it wasn’t just protestors in the streets. There were also many counter protestors.

Miriam Elder: Today, the square has been filled with thousands of activists from Nashi, the pro-Kremlin youth group and the opposition has been sort of sidelined and it’s actually impossible to tell how many of them has turned out, but it’s far less than turned out yesterday.

Werman: So would you describe this as a standoff or is there real tension between the two sides?

Elder: I wouldn’t say it’s a standoff just because the opposition is still outnumbered. You know, Nashi was created several years ago after pro democratic revolutions in the Ukraine and Georgetown precisely to counter any potential unrest in Russia as a whole. And so they’ve been here for over an hour shouting and beating on drums, and shouting “Medvedev Victory” and “Putin Russia,” waving flags. So they’ve won today.

Werman: So who exactly is out on the streets protesting Putin and how would you describe the demographic as being? Employed, middle class?

Elder: Definitely middle class. I talked to a lawyer, a financial analyst, a man who owns his own business. And what I found most interesting is these are people who didn’t come to the protests yesterday, they just heard about it via social networks, Facebook and the Russian version of Facebook, [speaking Russian]. And that’s why they came out today.

Werman: Miriam, we hear that blogger and activist, Alexei Navalny, was arrested and got 15 days in jail today. Tell us who he is and what the reaction to his arrest has been.

Elder: He’s a lawyer by training. We started this campaign about a year ago against corruption in Russia and he would point out specific cases of corruption, and it built into this real grassroots movement where people write in with cases for him to explore. And he runs a very popular blog where he talks about all that. And then about half a year ago he went on this radio program and he came out completely spontaneously he says with this term calling United Russia the party of crooks and thieves. And all the sudden it’s become the rallying cry for anybody who’s against this government.

Werman: Right, I’m just wondering does this descent extend outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg?

Elder: No, this isn’t like a countrywide protest movement that’s sweeping the nation as people at the protests, speakers at the protests said yesterday, this is a small step toward something that can potentially become bigger. But I think there is a recongition that this is not huge for Russia.

Werman: Miriam, I’m just still confused. What’s bringing these people out onto the streets now? I mean it’s not like a bread riot. What is the motivation right now?

Elder: People are really angry and the thing that kicks off these protests that we’ve seen the last couple of days are parliamentary elections that were held on Sunday. And the reports of falsification and violations particularly spreading through social networks like crazy because people have been videotaping and taking pictures of clear violations with their own cellphones. It’s hard to deny the scale of falsification that happens. And so people have something concrete to be upset about.

Werman: But you’re not sure where this descent may be headed. If it does fizzle out why do you think it may fizzle out?

Elder: I think because what we’re seeing today is you know, the Kremlin has created these youth groups precisely to counter protests like this first of all. So you know, today this protest was a failure for the opposition. And number two, it’s just really cold. You’re never gonna have a Tahrir Square in December in Moscow.

Werman: Miriam Elder, a correspondent for The Guardian newspaper in London, speaking with us from the streets of Moscow. Thanks so much, Miriam.

Elder: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Russia Today Video: “Gathering on Chisty Prudy on December 5, 2011″

And two years ago this week, he was found dead in his prison cell in Moscow.

The event has had serious international repercussions. For one thing, it’s spiked tensions between the US and Russia.

American officials believe Magnitsky’s death was the result of criminal conduct by a number of Russian officials.

Wednesday the US State Department called on Russia to hold the officials involved accountable for their actions.

Magnitsky’s mother Natalia has also filed a complaint in which she alleges that her son was illegally arrested, tortured and murdered.

The BBC’s Daniel Sandford is in Moscow. He’s been following the story.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: The name Sergei Magnitsky is not well known in this country. And two years ago this week, he was found dead in his prison cell in Moscow. The event has had serious international repercussions. For one thing, it’s spiked tensions between the US and Russia. American officials believe Magnitsky’s death was the result of criminal conduct by a number of Russian officials. Yesterday the US State Department called on Russia to hold the officials involved accountable for their actions. Magnitsky’s mother Natalia has also filed a complaint in which she alleges that her son was illegally arrested, tortured and murdered. The BBC’s Daniel Sandford is in Moscow. He’s been following the story. Let’s start with some background, Daniel. Who was Sergei Magnitsky?

Daniel Sandford: Sergei Magnitsky was a young lawyer working for a company in Moscow who hired by a British company called Hermitage Capital, one of the big funds investing in Russia. Sergei Magnitsky discovered that a company as it had been separated away Hermitage Capital and it then had a tax refund given to it which turned out to be entirely fraudulent. Essentially some officials in the tax department Sergei Magnitsky believed had given themselves an enormous tax refund of almost $200 million which he believed they effectively embezzled and used for their own ends and those of their co-conspirators.

Werman: And so how was he arrested?

Sandford: Well, Sergei Magnitsky was arrested by the very same people that he had accused of embezzling this money. They accused him of being involved somehow in tax fraud and threw him into prison.

Werman: So how has the Russian government explained how he died in prison?

Sandford: Well, for a long time they didn’t say anything and then earlier this year a human rights commission set up by the president came up with a report suggesting that somehow it was the prison officials that were responsible, a prison doctor and one of the people involved in the running of the prison, had been negligent in his care and had allowed him effectively to die. But that same report also said that Sergei Magnitsky had been badly beaten in the days before his death.

Werman: Now his employer Hermitage Capital are also calling for an investigation into his death. What does it mean in Russia when a white collar financial institution like Hermitage Capital says the government’s explanation isn’t satisfactory?

Sandford: Well you would have thought it would have a big effect but actually in some ways it doesn’t. Hermitage Capital had already somehow fallen out of favor with the Russian government. Bill Browder who is the man who runs Hermitage Capital had to leave the country in the build up to the Sergei Magnitsky…

Werman: And he’s a Brit, right?

Sandford: He’s British. He had already had to leave the country under investigation and this was what he was trying to dig himself out of when Sergei Magnitsky was arrested. The Russian government for two years now have avoided the calls from Hermitage Capital that they should do more about investigating Sergei Magnitsky’s death. In the last year really between the first and second anniversary of Sergei Magnitsky’s death, the pressure from abroad has been building, and particularly the pressure from the United States. And the Russian government has started to understand that it’s going to have to answer the questions about exactly how it was that Sergei Magnitsky started being investigated and how it was that he died.

Werman: Sergei Magnitsky’s mother understandably is quite upset and she too wants a full investigation into the death of her son. She spoke with the BBC program Outlook about what he wrote in his diaries about his conditions in prison. Let’s have a listen.

[TRANSLATED AUDIO CLIP: There was only maybe two square meters per person in the prison cell where he was kept. There was no hot water. At one instance they had a leakage of the sewage system and all the excrements were on the floor for 36 hours and they couldn't breathe and they couldn't walk there and nobody really cared. They didn't have windows at some point in September. In Russia that's a cold season. At the same time they didn't really let him use his warm clothes.]

Werman: That’s Natalia, the mother of the late Sergei Magnitsky, speaking about his conditions in prison in Moscow. The BBC’s Daniel Sandford in Moscow, his death, Magnitsky’s death, has caused diplomatic repercussions between the US and Russia. What’s the latest there?

Sandford: Well the main thing is that a bill was passed through the US congress which has effectively put a block on 60 Russian officials that the senators including John McCain who sponsored the bill said were involved in the fraud and in Sergei Magnitsky’s death. They’ve had a block on any entry into the United States. In fact they had a Visa ban that has caused great upset in Moscow and they’ve retaliated by creating their own list of American officials that they say will not be welcome in Russia and that’s principally American officials that they say were involved in the illegal detention and mistreatment of prisoners.

Werman: How is this all going to play out? Will the world know eventually how Sergei Magnitsky really died?

Sandford: Things like this are incredibly difficult to predict in Russia. For some reason the Russian government has felt that it didn’t want to probe into this too far. It’s unclear why, who is protecting who, and why but you never know when someone’s protection might disappear as it were and they may suddenly find themselves exposed. While President [??] was around it felt as if at some point the truth of this would inevitably come out but now we know that he will be standing down in the spring and it’s almost inevitable that Putin will return to the presidency. Nobody really knows where he stands on this particular issue and I think it’s likely to be very much down to him. Meanwhile the officials that Sergei Magnitsky accused of stealing all this money have very clearly become exceptionally rich according to Hermitage Capital. They produced a huge dossier of facts on these officials who appear to have multi-million dollar property portfolios, very expensive cars and all of this.

Werman: The BBC’s Daniel Sandford in Moscow.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. Iran’s President says his country will not budge one iota on its controversial nuclear program. That program is back in the spotlight thanks to a new report by the UN’s Nuclear Agency. The IAEA says there is credible evidence that Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device. The Iranian government continues to insist that its nuclear program is peaceful. The new report has led to fresh calls to strengthen international sanctions against Iran. Karim Sadjadpour is an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He says the report might complicate Tehran’s relationship with its allies.

Karim Sadjadpour: This report is going to make it more difficult for Russia and China to continue to vouch for Iran’s peaceful nuclear intentions, but I think Russia and China will continue to argue that the only way to resolve this issue is diplomacy, not coercion. So, I don’t see the basic facts on the ground changing. What I would further argue is that, for those who are cynical about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, no additional proof is necessary. And for those who are cynical about American intentions vis-a -vis Iran, no additional proof is sufficient.

Werman: That sounds like the eternal standoff. I mean, stepping back, what will it take in the long run for the US and the Iranians to sit down?

Sadjadpour: I think the challenge you have from the vantage point of the US government is that you’re dealing with a regime in Tehran who sees their opposition to the United States as central to their identity. I think there are now 3 symbolic pillars of their identity as a regime, and that’s animosity towards the United States, animosity towards Israel, and the veil – the hijab for women. So, I think the challenge for the US government is how do you go about reaching a modus vivendi; how do you reach a rapprochement with a regime in Tehran which needs you as an adversary? And that’s the challenge for any US government whether you are Republican or Democrat. So, my sense is that moving forward US policy towards Iran is going to increasingly resemble US foreign policy towards the Soviet Union in the 1980′s. I think the challenge will be to contain our dispute with Iran, contain Iran itself until the regime is eventually forced to change under the weight of its own internal contradictions and economic malaise, or the regime essentially changes like we’ve seen in parts of the Arab world now.

Werman: Will this report and the reaction to it from the West accentuate the deep internal divisions among Iran’s rulers? I’m wondering if there are divisions over what this report says in the Iranian street, as well.

Sadjadpour: There was a very telling moment after the US-led or the NATO-led intervention in Libya. The Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei gave a speech, and he said that Muammar Gaddafi’s main mistake was giving up his nuclear program, because when he gave up his nuclear program he made himself vulnerable to this NATO intervention. So, sometimes when you read between the lines of Iranian officials, you get a sense that they believe that if they were to acquire nuclear weapon it would actually alleviate the pressure against them rather than augment it. When it comes to the Iranian people – the proverbial Iranian street- there hasn’t been any open debate about the cost and benefits of this nuclear program. I think if they were…

Werman: And that’s because they don’t care, or because there is no disagreement?

Sadjadpour: The way the Iranian government has framed this issue is that the “Imperialist West” wants to deprive Iran of this wonderful civilian nuclear energy technology. The reality is that this nuclear program for Iran has had enormous costs – tens of billions of dollars of sunk costs, not to mention the tens of billions of dollars that Iran has lost from sanctions. But, I think very few Iranians have been aware of that cost-benefit analysis. And, as a former Iranian official once put it several years ago – he said that if you were to ask the average Iranian whether they want a nuclear program, everyone would say yes; and if you were to ask the follow-up and say, “Okay, well what is exactly a nuclear program?”, very few people would be able to explain to you what it is. That’s the testament to the way the regime has limited information. And it’s also a testament to Iranian nationalism and the sense that, historically, the great powers of the world, be it Britain, the United States, Russia, have wanted to keep Iran down for their own benefit. I don’t think that’s true anymore, but that narrative still has a lot of currency within the Iranian body politic.

Werman: Karim Sadjadpour, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, speaking with us from Washington. Thanks very much.

Sadjadpour: My pleasure. Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Muscovite Maria, who didn’t want to use her last name, braved the wind and cold to see the opening gala.

“This is like a big holiday for us! This is a beautiful theatre. The opening is so important for all of us, for Russia, for Moscow. This theatre is the face of all Russians,” she said.

And well, that’s what brothers Julian and Nicholas MacKay want to change. They’re 14 and 10 – the youngest Americans ever admitted to the Bolshoi Academy, the training ground for the big stage. They were relegated this weekend to watching the historic performance outside, on giant TV screens, dwarfed by the historic theatre and a nearby statue of Karl Marx.

They’ve been dancing at the Bolshoi Academy for three years and two years respectively. Julian says it’s been a struggle; both teachers and students were hard on him.

“Some of them don’t like the United States, they think, “Oh … Americans.” I got a lot of that, especially from the kids. After I became friends, you kind of realized it’s not them saying that, it’s the old generation,” said MacKay.

Brother Nicholas agrees that being from the land of baseball and apple pie isn’t exactly something to brag about. He says it was hard to make friends when he first arrived, though American culture is certainly catching on. The boys agreed to meet me after 14-year-old Julian had his birthday party at the Chili’s restaurant on Arbat Street.

“If I had understood some of the things they said, I don’t think I’d be very good friends with them right now,” said MacKay.

The sweet faced, all-American boys came from Bozeman, MT to attend arguably the best ballet school in the world.

Their mother Teresa Khan, wasn’t exactly on board when eldest son, Julian, got an invitation from the Academy at the age of 12.

“When he got the invitation for Russia, I said, “No I’m not going.” It wasn’t necessarily on my bucket list to do,” said Khan.

But the family is something of a ballet powerhouse. Khan says she relented after talking to her daughter, who, along with her sister, is dancing at the state ballet in Munich, Germany.

“My son would resent it. Sooner or later he was going to realize, it’s the Bolshoi. I had the opportunity. The door opened and I didn’t run through it because my mom and dad wouldn’t let me,” said Khan.

And both her boys have been running towards that Russian stage door ever since. Julian and Nicholas spend up to 11 grueling hours, every day, on their young feet.

Blue-eyed Nicholas, the 10-year-old, looks unfazed and smiles when he describes his typical day, which includes 10 classes.

“I get up about 7:30, got to school. I have Russian class, then ballet class, maybe gymnastics, historical dance class and repertoire. The final class ends at 6:30. I come home and do home schooling with my mom,” said MacKay.

Brother Julian, 14, says sometimes his schedule gets to be more than a bit overwhelming.

“I do feel like that everyday, but I think you have to push through it. It’s after the long days of class your brain hurts, your legs hurt, everything hurts. I really feel that definitely it’s a challenge. It’s something you just have to push through,” said MacKay.

And Julian’s commitment has caught his teacher’s attention. He’s recently been placed in quite a few Bolshoi performances.

“It’s really been quite an experience. I was in Esmerelda, Paquita, Sleeping Beauty…,” said MacKay.

Julian even danced with principal Natalia Osipova when he was 13 in Coppelia. It was broadcast live and aired in more than 300 theaters in 22 countries.

“I’m standing here and there is Osipova standing right there! And she’s right there, dancing on the same stage!” said MacKay.

Little brother Nicholas has even gotten in on the action, although he would have liked to have had a slightly bigger part.

“I danced in Napoli on the Stanislavsky stage. I basically had to act like a monk. I had a very long, like black dress thing. I was the priest holding the cross to bless the boats. It’s a start,” said MacKay.

Many people would argue that being at the world famous Bolshoi Academy at such a young age is more than just a start, but both Julian and Nicholas are very disciplined and focused; though they admit it’s still tough keeping up with the Russians.

“I think Russians are a bit too harsh, but they really care about their students. As you get older, they get more tough on you. I think it’s tough love,” said MacKay.

It’s that tough love that both boys say they’ve come to appreciate and expect from their teachers.

They both hope to graduate from the Academy and join the Bolshoi as a principal dancer one day… even though it may be a rough road ahead. Julian says he isn’t fazed because he says at least that path has been blazed by David Hallberg, the first-ever American to join the Bolshoi as a principal dancer. He starts in November.

It dates back to around 1776 and the reign of Catherine the Great.

Can you name it?

A $ 700 million restoration has been going on for the past six years to restore its imperial splendor. On Friday this Moscow theater was all lit up in blue and gold for its grand re-opening.

Politicians, billionaires, and famous ballerinas were among the invited guests. They all crowded into this theater that’s outlasted the tsars, the Bolshevik Revolution, two world wars, and the Soviets.

The answer is Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater. Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with Robin Quick, who teaches theater in Maryland and is now in Moscow for the Bolshoi’s grand re-opening.