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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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