Anna Berkut—A Mirror of the New Russia

In 1990 Anna was a 22-year-old, free-spirited translator for a committee promoting US-Soviet dialogue. By the mid-1990s she had morphed into a hard-headed businesswoman and part owner of a travel agency, nightclub, and youth magazine. Then the mafia demanded protection money, her partner spent the profits, and the entire enterprise collapsed. She was appointed editor in chief of a new arts magazine in 1998, but before the first issue hit the stands, the Russian economic crisis wrecked the economy and her job. Today she is an impoverished freelance magazine writer trying to put her shattered life back together.

Anna, like many intellectuals, says Gorbachev's years of perestroika were the best in Russian history because they combined relative economic security with new political and cultural freedoms.

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US and Russian Media—Two Titans Meet

Walter Cronkite and Vladimir Pozner hold a frank discussion on the history of media repression in the Soviet Union, the relative freedom of the American press, and President Putin's controversial press policies.

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