Скачать или смотреть 10 years after the coup, a deep divide remains in society

(18 Aug 2001)

Moscow, August 17, 2001
1. Moscow traffic, Kremlin blocked by banners
2. Martini ad
3. Street, people walking
4. Coca-Cola sign
5. Two businessmen talking
6. Russian drives off in Mercedes
7. Cigarette billboard
8. VOXPOP (English) Lilya
"We needed certain changes, but I don't think, I can't appraise the changes that have taken place in the country as positive. There were some positive changes, but on the whole, it's not for the better for the sake of the simple people, for the ordinary people, just for a very small group of people."
9. Viktor Kremenyuk
10. Face
11. Hand writing
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Viktor Kremenyuk, Deputy Director, Institute of USA and Canada
"They feel now that enough is enough, because all the changes which were promised 10 years ago, they have brought a miserable state of affairs, misery, poverty, no perspectives for a better life, triumph of bureaucracy, corruption, crime. So, if you try to address the people and say 'hey, come on,' I am afraid they will say, 'we are fed up, thank you, no more changes.' "

Villiage Loparskaya, Murmansk Region, August 16, 2001
13. Wide shot village
14. Woman pushing wheelbarrow of hay
15. Man unloading wheelbarrow of hay
16. Sheep in pen
17. Pan chickens and ducks
18. Galina picking strawberries
19. Hands picking strawberries
20. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Galina
"It is a good thing that everything changed, times are hard now, even harder than they were before the coup, but life is more interesting. For young people is is better because there are more opportunities for them, it is just more interesting now."
21. House
22. Pan of boy on bicycle riding down bridge

STORYLINE:

Russia has had a decade to renovate its communist heritage, and on the surface, the capital wears the trappings of a modern, European city.

But are the changes more than cosmetic?

Most Russians are disillusioned to find the euphoria of the 1991 coup and the ensuing changes had much to promise but little to deliver.

Only handful of people have reaped the benefits of scrapping the communist system.

In August 1991, while then leader Mikhail Gorbachev was on vacation in Crimea, a group of hard-liners decided to prevent the signing of a new treaty that would have given more power to the 15 Soviet republics and far less to the party.

Gorbachev became a prisoner in the Black Sea villa and a group of eight senior Communists announced they had seized power.

The tanks rolled into Moscow and the Soviet Union was in shock.

People came out by the thousands, protesting against a system that they could no longer believe in, a moment of unity in Russian history perhaps only equalled in the past century by the 1917 Revolution.

But the euphoria could not last.

In the wake of communism came quick baptism of Western-style reforms that drove up prices and wiped out bank accounts.

Russians couldn't believe that this was what they had waited for.

Ten years on, they say that any change can only be for the worse.

Outside the capital, and in countless villages across Russia's great expanse, it is a fight for survival.

Lack of employment and unpaid pensions and wages leave people with only their land and what it yields to live upon.

But still they are optimistic.

Galina says the collective farm near her village of Loparskaya shut down long ago, cutting off a major employer in the area.

People now work on their own gardens and tend their small herds.

The next 10 years will show if more than cosmetic changes are in store for the next generation of Russians.

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