NEW Screening: How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin

From the Frontline Club
NEW Screening: How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin
August 10, 2009 7:00 PM
Followed by a Q&A with Director Leslie Woodhead

From the beginning, the Soviet leadership had feared the threat of kids with guitars. In the early 60s, Nikita Kruschev declared that the electric guitar was “an enemy of the Soviet people”

The Soviet authorities were determined to keep those songs from polluting their youth. Police grabbed kids on the street and chopped their hair

Art Troitsky, Russia’s leading Rock writer tells us `The Beatles and their songs have more or less melted the hearts and brains of millions of Russian young people – and prepared them for what happened much later. There is no other Western phenomenon which had such a huge impact on the internal affairs of the Soviet Union. The thing was that the Soviet regime couldn’t offer the kids anything. The Beatles clicked in the hearts of my generation.'

The film is a personal journey through Russia by Leslie Woodhead, telling the story of a secret revolution which led to the fall of communism.

The film begins where Woodhead first met up with the Beatles in 1962. As a young TV researcher, he worked on a brief black and white film shot in the Cavern Club in Liverpool before the world had heard of the Beatles.

25 years later, when Woodhead began to make films in Russia, he became aware of how the Beatles legend had soaked into the lives of a generation of kids. He even met some who had seen that little film in the Cavern Club long ago. Now he has been back in Russia to talk to some of the Beatles generation, and to hear their stories about how the Fab Four changed their lives - and how they made the the revolution which transformed their country into ‘Beatlestan.’

We travel through Moscow, and St Petersburg and out to the former republics, Ukraine and Belarus, to meet Beatles’ fans, musicians, people whose lives were changed by the Beatles virus. Surprising, emotional, funny and revealing, the film captures the stories that show the Cold War was won by the West with music as much as Nuclear missiles. It is a journey through time and cultural history,

From the beginning, the Soviet leadership had feared the threat of kids with guitars. In the early 60s, Nikita Kruschev declared that the electric guitar was “an enemy of the Soviet people”

The explosion of Beatlemania round the world caused seismic ripples which reached the Iron Curtain. In Minsk, Yury Pelyushonok felt the tremors: “The Beatles may be compared to an earthquake. Somewhere abroad there had appeared something noisy, happy, hairy and awfully nice.

But the Beatles plague was irresistible. Reel to reel tape recordings from crackling Radio Luxemburg broadcasts circulated around the country in days, Desperate fans re- recorded the tracks on their uncle’s X ray plates, and sold them. Beatles photos were traded - and even rented by fervent Beatlemaniacs.

The Soviet authorities were determined to keep those songs from polluting their youth. Police grabbed kids on the street and chopped their hair

Inevitably, the Beatles phenomenon sparked a passion for DIY Rock n’ Roll among Russia’s kids.. Soon , there were thousands of rock bands across the Soviet Union, trying to get music from crude home - made guitars, fashioned from bits of furniture. Speakers on lamp posts installed to broadcast propaganda were grabbed by desperate rock hopefuls. An item in a Young Communist magazine suggested that an electric pickup could be cannibalised from a telephone, and within days every public call box in the Soviet Union had been raided and disabled.

Art Troitsky, Russia’s leading Rock writer tells us `The Beatles and their songs have more or less melted the hearts and brains of millions of Russian young people – and prepared them for what happened much later. There is no other Western phenomenon which had such a huge impact on the internal affairs of the Soviet Union. The thing was that the Soviet regime couldn’t offer the kids anything. The Beatles clicked in the hearts of my generation.’

The long Russian affair with the Beatles was finally consummated on a summer evening in 2003. Paul McCartney played in Red Square to 100,000 people, many of them in tears. Art Troitsky sat next to Mikhail Gorbachev and Vladimir Putin.

Interviewees include Sergei Ivanov, Russia’s deputy premier – who says he learned his English from Beatles records- starting with LOVE ME DO as a 13 year old fan.

Unique Russian archive records the struggles of Beatles fans with State vigilante patrols, and the ingenious, illegal recording of “records on ribs”, The music track is provided by the many Beatles tribute bands across Russia.

- - -

Love me Do - The Beatles 1962



Love, love me do.
You know I love you,
I'll always be true,
So please, love me do.
Whoa, love me do.

Love, love me do.
You know I love you,
I'll always be true,
So please, love me do.
Whoa, love me do.

Someone to love,
Somebody new.
Someone to love,
Someone like you.

Love, love me do.
You know I love you,
I'll always be true,
So please, love me do.
Whoa, love me do.

Love, love me do.
You know I love you,
I'll always be true,
So please, love me do.
Whoa, love me do.
Yeah, love me do.
Whoa, oh, love me do.

On the Media: Myth and reality in Russian journalism

From the Frontline Club
On the Media: Myth and reality in Russian journalism
16, September 2009

Please note the date of this event has now been changed to 16 September

Panel: Oleg Panfilov, director of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations

Manana Aslamazyan,a media and television expert who has worked with Russian journalists for more than 15 years and is executive director of Internews Europe based in Paris

Moderator: Geoff Meade, Sky News defence correspondent and former Moscow correspondent

What is the reality for journalists working in Russia? The closure of a series of television stations and other outlets by Vladimir Putin during his presidency has been interpreted as a move to centralise the state and reassert its authority over the flow of information.

With the majority of the oligarch owners of broadcast media firmly behind the government, Putin's image was carefully constructed and maintained.

With Dmitry Medvedev now president, the government has continued the use of 'black PR’ tactics to attack and discredit opponents.

What is the role of the independent journalists in a system which continues in the tradition of promoting the cult of the leader?

Anna Politskaya who was shot dead in 2006 was one of 21 journalists Reporters Without Borders claims has been killed since March 2000. What impact has this had on Russia's journalists?

Join us for a discussion with eminent Russian media experts that will examine the reality of the Russian media and the possibilities for genuinely investigative and critical journalism.

Obama and Medvedev have just signed an agreement paving the way for a new Start treaty to reduce their nuclear warheads

From today's Channel 4 News (UK) Snowmail by Krishnan:

Krishnan here, with apologies for this being a bit late. But I just had to go an interview the Russian ambassador.

From Russia with understanding

Obama and Medvedev have just signed an agreement paving the way for a new Start treaty, signed by the end of the year, to reduce their nuclear warheads by up to a third on previous treaty levels.

Both sides are hailing it as a big step. But any echoes of Reagan-Gorbachev are really just ghosts in the machine. This is an altogether different proposition.

One of the main aims is to simply normalise diplomatic relations from the depths they were at during the Bush years. The ambassador has just been telling me what a difference Obama has made. They listen, he says.

There’s also an important agreement to cooperate over Afghanistan. Russia will let American troops fly over its territory and will allow what it calls "non-lethal" supplies to be transported over land. It’s the kind of progress on an international issue that lets them gloss over the real disagreement – and that is the US missile shield.

The ambassador has just been explaining to me how nuclear weapons cannot be seen in isolation. The missile shield is an absolutely integral part of how Russia sees progress. Whether that could derail the signing of the treaty, we don’t know. But the issue hasn’t gone away.

Channel 4 News' Jon Snow blogs on Mikhail Gorbachev: http://bit.ly/gbekE

Russian spacecraft landed on moon hours before Americans

A previously unheard recording of a Russian spacecraft attempting to beat NASA's Apollo 11 in 1969's race to the moon has been released.

From Telegraph.co.uk
Published: 8:00AM BST 04 Jul 2009
Russian spacecraft landed on moon hours before Americans

The recordings from Jodrell's Lovell radio telescope, which were hidden in archives until researchers found them, show the Russian craft orbited the Moon and crash-landed onto its surface at 15:50 on July 21 - just a few hours before the Americans lifted.  Photo: AP

In July 1969, the telescopes at the Jodrell Bank Observatory, in Cheshire, were tracking the Americans' Eagle Lander carrying astronauts towards the moon's surface.

Sir Bernard Lovell, the astronomer, was among the team listening to transmissions coming from the area of space and began tracking the unmanned Soviet spacecraft Luna 15, which was trying to collect samples of lunar soil and rock and then return to Earth before the US mission.

Sir Bernard Lovell claims Russians tried to kill him with radiation

The recordings from Jodrell's Lovell radio telescope, which were hidden in archives until researchers found them, show the Russian craft orbited the Moon and crash-landed onto its surface at 15:50 on July 21 – just a few hours before the Americans lifted off.

In the newly released recordings, which were made over three days, Sir Bernard, the founder of Jodrell Bank, can be heard narrating events with conversation from the Apollo 11 astronauts in the background.

Sir Bernard notes a change in the orbit of Luna 15 to take it closer to the US landing site and later reports a rumour from a "well-informed source in Moscow" that the craft is about to land.

People in Jodrell's control room can then be heard shouting "it's landing" and "it's going down much too fast" as they track Luna 15's final moments before it crashes.

A voice is later heard saying: "I say, this has really been drama of the highest order."

The recordings have been released by The University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Moon landings.

Related Articles

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• World's largest telescope will search heavens for habitable planets like Earth

• Uranium could be mined on the Moon

• Sir Bernard Lovell claims Russians tried to kill him with radiation

Russia plans biggest missile test for 24 years - within the Arctic circle

Russia is to carry out live fire exercises with all of its cruise missiles for the first time since 1984, the country's air force has announced.
 
The operations will take place in the far north of the country - within the Arctic circle - and last until October 12 [2008].

With Russia and the West suffering poor relations recently, the tests might be seen as a way for the Kremlin to flex its muscles.

Western countries angrily rebuked Russia when it invaded Georgia in August, while Moscow has been enraged by attempts to expand Nato to Russian borders and place a missile defence shield in Eastern Europe.

The exercises are part of the Stability-2008 strategic manoeuvres in Russia and Belarus aimed at practising defences against any threats near the Russian border.

"During these exercises, for the first time in many years, the crews of Tu-160 Blackjack and Tu-95MS Bear-H strategic bombers will fly missions carrying the maximum combat payload and fire all the cruise missiles on board," said Lt Col Vladimir Drik said.

The Blackjack aircraft can carry six 12 Kh-55 long-range cruise missiles, while the Bear-H aircraft can carry 12 of the bombs.

"The number and variety of aircraft involved in the drills shows the wide range of tasks that will be accomplished during the week-long exercise," Lt Col Drik said.

Source: telegraph.co.uk Tuesday 07 Oct 2008 - Russia plans biggest missile test for 24 years

Full combat load for Russian bombers during exercise

For the first time in over two decades, Russian Air Force bombers will conduct training flights with full combat payloads and live fire all cruise missiles on board.

"During these exercises, for the first time in many years, the crews of Tu-160 Blackjack and Tu-95MS Bear-H strategic bombers will fly missions carrying the maximum combat payload and fire all the cruise missiles on board," Lt. Col. Vladimir Drik said.

Source: Alert 5 - Military Aviation News October 03, 2008

Russian Air Force to accept Algerian MiG-29s

The 34 MiG-29 SMT fighters that were rejected by Algeria will be inducted into the Russian Air Force.

33 jets will be delivered in 2009 and one in 2010.

Russia's United Aircraft Corporation meanwhile added that Russia has not officially terminated the MiG-29 contract.

"We have not officially terminated the contract with Algeria. We are hoping that Russia's Defense Ministry will make a final decision on this matter," said Alexey Fyodorov, the UAC president.

Source: Alert 5 - Military Aviation News October 03, 2008