CBC - Our World - The Putin Legacy

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CBC - Our World

The Putin Legacy

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Type.................: documentary

More Information.....: (none)

Part Size............: 15,000,000 bytes

Number of Parts......: 18

Archive Format.......: RAR

Part Recovery Method.: PAR2

PAR2 Blocks Provided.: 71



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Captured by..........: festering leper



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THE PUTIN LEGACY



Sunday, February 17 @ 6:30 PM ET, 3:30 PT, 7:30 PM Maritimes



As Vladimir Putin prepares to hand the Presidency of Russia to his chosen

successor we look at the controversial stamp he leaves on his country. The

program includes an interview with a vocal critic about the cautionary tale

of Mikhail Khordorkovsky, the billionaire entrepreneur who crossed Putin and

became a Siberian prisoner, and a report from our CBC correspondent Alexandra

Szacka on Putin's rewriting of the Soviet past, to suit an authoritarian

future. Also, we have an interview with CBC producer Alex Shprintsen who is

preparing a documentary about the reasons for the popularity of Putin in

Russia.



On March 2nd Russians go to the polls to choose a new President to replace

Vladimir Putin after eight years in the job. In the West, observers are

reluctant to call this an "election", so suspect is the process. The Kremlin

has put forward a candidate, Dimitri Medvedev, who will, undoubtedly become

the next President. His only real competitor, an opponent of Putin's, named

Mikhail Kazyanov, was banned from the ballot on trumped up charges. Putin

will remain powerful. He's expected to become Prime Minister. The Russian

media, largely muzzled, is cowed by the Kremlin's power moves. In the West,

leaders are shocked by this retreat from democracy, but uncertain about how

to respond.



One vocal critic, though, is a Canadian lawyer named Robert Amsterdam. He

has been tied to Russia ever since he became a lawyer for Mikhail

Khodorkovsky. He's the famous Russian tycoon who ended up in a Siberian jail,

after crossing Putin in 2003. Back then, Khodorkovsky was Russia's richest

man after buying up a huge oil company during the years of unregulated

privatization. At that time, in the early 1990'S, the government sold public

companies for cheap prices to well connected insiders. Many became instant

millionaires. Khodorkovsky was among the most influential of the new

capitalists...until he publicly criticized Putin and started supporting

opposition parties. He soon felt Putin's steel fist. Arrested for fraud

and tax evasion he has landed in a prison near Mongolia for a nine year

term. This may stretch longer.



Robert Amsterdam continues to represent Khodorkovsky, despite the setbacks.

Many ordinary Russians are unsympathetic to the tycoon, believing he made

his fortune at their expense. But Amsterdam is adament that Khodorkovsky's

fate illustrates the brutality of the Putin Regime.



Vladimir Putin's legacy will be having attempted to restore some of the

power and prestige of Russia, lost when the Soviet Union was dissolved in

the 1990's.



In that, he was successful, largely because of an oil boom that brought some

prosperity and renewed influence to an impoverished country. But Putin, a

product of former Communist and KGB networks, has clear ideas about what was

good about the past.



Unlike Boris Yeltsin before him, he did not turn his back entirely on the

Soviet era. Putin is also, it seems, not as critical of Josef Stalin and his

period in power from the 1930's to the 1950's, a time of dictatorship and

repression, but also one of nation building and a victory at War. The CBC's

Moscow correspondent, Alexandra Szacka, explores in a report on our program,

the Putin government's efforts to reappraise the Stalin era..to the horror of

many historians and survivors of the Stalinist terror.



Finally, we also have an interview with a journalist here at the CBC who has

covered Russia for many years, producer Alex Shprintsen. He's headed to

Moscow next week to work on a documentary exploring something the West has

never fully understood, the undeniable popularity of Vladimir Putin and of

many of his policies.



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