Is There Anything That Could Have Been Different?

Muppets in Moscow is Natasha Lance Rogoff's account of launching a Russian version of the American tv series Sesame Street. If a single announcer supplies the dialogue dubbing when a foreign film is shown in Russia where do you find the technical skills you need? Should you feature exclusively ethnically Russian actors or include nationalities from former Soviet republics? What puppets from Russian folklore might be suitable and what kind of education for children are you trying to achieve? Anne McElvoy asks Natasha about how she found the answers to these questions and how that period of Russian TV differs from the media landscape there today.

Plus New Generation Thinker Victoria Donovan looks at punk protest and films such as Little Vera (1988); Lucy Weir traces the ways in which art and music responded to the era of Perestroika and beyond; and, Tamar Koplatadze explores how literature from across the former republics of the USSR is beginning to process the Soviet past.

Producer: Ruth Watts