Original subtitles

Beautiful, right?

We can already indulge ourselves

into something special, such a beautiful day.

Pony ride.

Absolutely.

Now we are coming to your most

beautiful fascination side of

Russian legacy, the forest of birch.

Ah, what a place.

♪

All hail, the maximum leader.

Now let's dance.

♪

Okay.

Thank you.

Well.

♪ I took a walk through this beautiful world ♪

♪ felt the cool rain on my shoulder ♪

♪ found something good in this beautiful world ♪

♪ I felt the rain getting colder ♪

♪ sha la la la la

♪ sha la la la la la

♪ sha la la la la

♪ sha la la la la la la

whatever you think of this

guy, his dead, affectless eyes,

his smooth pulled tight like a

snare drum face, he ain't going anywhere.

Look at him.

He's the Russian Superman, the

KGB middle manager desk jockey

turned expression of greater Russia's hopes and dreams.

He lets no opportunity to take

his shirt off pass him by, pose

with a large gun, he's there.

And no matter how transparently

autocratic, vengeful, oblivious

to even a thin veneer of democracy, Russians love him.

They seem to feel about him like

new yorkers used to feel about Giuliani.

He may be a son of a [ expletive ] But he's our son

of a [ Expletive ].

It's February 2014, and the

Sochi Olympics are just coming

up when I arrive in Moscow.

It's a different Moscow every time I come here.

The '80s style go-go capitalist

conspicuous consumption see who

can spend the most money disco-techno thing that I saw

when I first came here in 2001,

it's still going strong.

In fact, these days, Moscow has one of the highest

concentrations of billionaires in the world.

But as never before, its imperial Russia now, a one-man

rule.

All power emanates, every

decision must consider this guy.

♪

Russia is full of characters

with murky pasts and shadowy connections.

One of them I' called a friend for more than a decade.

Tony!

Wow.

Zamir.

Now, my concern is back in the

day, this place was famous for

all of the rooms were bugged.

Not anymore, I'm sorry.

Oh, really?

I'm really sorry about that.

Times change.

My long-time crony tries at

least to be diplomatic about these things.

I mean, he's got to live here, right?

He doesn't want problems with his blintzes.

The forward-thinking Russia,

they removed the surveillance devices?

Listen, as a born Muscovite,

I'm trying to be a good patron.

I really want you to tell me

frankly a week from now, Zamir,

now I understand why stereotypes

sometimes send a bad message about Russia.

I have an open mind.

Everything's great.

Russians have everything they want.

Listen.

Why don't we just taste.

Oh, thank you.

The most gorgeous women are in Russia.

Welcome to Russia.

I'm trying to be kind of sober.

United we stand.

I prepared the special for you.

Russian tapas.

With small pancakes like blinis and caviar.

All this cocoon with honey.

This is Baltic sprouts.

Thank you.

I'm hitting the caviar and the blini.

Oy-yoy-yoy.

Maybe some more vodka.

Thank you.

And your smile makes it feel like it's water.

What do you think?

What is the perception of Mr.

Putin these days, after 14 years he's in power?

My perception?

You really want to hear it?

I'm not sure, but let's see.

A former midlevel manager in

a large corporation, short, I

think that's very important,

short, who has found himself

master of the universe and like

a lot of short people, if you

tick them off, bad things happen to you.

He likes to take his shirt off a lot.

Let's be serious.

He strikes me as a businessman.

He is.

A businessman with an ego.

Okay.

So he's like Donald Trump but shorter.

I think my friend needs some kind of booze.

To you, comrade.

Like this, you know.

You can have that one.

I'll get the other two.

I'm serious about your one week stay in Russia.

I want you to enjoy every minute of it.

I hope you'll get something new,

positive to learn and share around the world.

That's my mission.

♪

Advertise your product or brand here contact www.OpenSubtitles.org today

Okay, Tony, so being part of the opposition rally.

This is nothing new for me.

Strike against the empire.

I go way back on this.

I marched on the Pentagon with my dad when I was a kid.

Seriously.

Yep.

So you are well prepared.

It is physical and brutal today.

I don't know.

My day as a dissident may be over quickly.

There is opposition to Putin but it's a mixed bag.

If you do see a demonstration like this one, it is with

permission along a planned

route, carefully managed and the

cops and security tend to outnumber the demonstrators.

The main topic of this rally

is to support the political prisoners.

Last may when they came to protest against Putin's

re-election, which allegedly was...

The election results were, shall we say, dubious.

Some of them were arrested

and put in prison and some of them are still there.

Divide and conquer?

Well, look who showed up today.

Everybody from human rights

activists to ultra right wing

nationalists who think Putin has been too soft.

Putin is not right wing enough for them.

No.

He's like a liberal to them.

He doesn't refuse immigrant workers.

I'm kind of shocked shees these guys are at the same

demonstration.

Russians are not united against one political agenda.

It's general unhappiness with Putin.

That's it.

♪

Bad things seem to happen to critics of Vladimir Putin.

Journalists, activists, even powerful oligarchs once

seemingly untouchable are now

fair game if they displease the leader.

So we were supposed to be dining

at another restaurant this

evening and when they heard that

you would be joining me, we were uninvited.

Should I be concerned about having dinner with you?

This is a country of corruption.

If you have business, you are in

a very unsafe situation.

Everybody can press you and destroy your business.

That's it.

This is a system.

Meet Boris Nemsaw.

He was deputy prime minister

under Yeltsin and today is one

of Putin's most vocal critics.

This restaurant was kind enough

to take us in but the chef is a

Brit so maybe he has less reason to worry.

First course, gentlemen?

At Yornick restaurant they

are serving their own versions

of Dino-era Russian classics.

A modern riff on borscht,

typically a hearty cabbage broth

with meat, here's a puree with a

more elegant shall we say deconstructed presentation.

Critics of the government, critics of Putin, bad things

seem to happen to them.

Yes.

Unfortunately, existing power

represent what I say Russia old

19th century, not of 21st.

Critics of Putin, beware.

Oligarch Kolikofsky accused

Putin of corruption and spent

ten years in prison and labor camps.

Alexander Litvinenko accused state security services of

organizing a coup to put Putin in power.

He was poisoned by a lethal dose

of radioactive polonium and Viktor Yushenko poisoned,

disfigured and nearly killed by a toxic dose of dioxin.

I'm not saying official Russian

bodies had anything to do with

it but it's mighty suspicious.

I don't think you need to be a

conspiracy theorist to say whoever did this very much

wanted everyone to know who done it.

Everybody understands.

Of course.

Everybody is meant to understand.

Everybody understands.

Everybody understands everything in this country.

When you're talking classic conspiracy theories and

classically Russian style

paranoia, you want some classic

Russian food to go along with it.

Pelmini, minced meat dumplings

served on a pillow of cabbage with sour cream.

Mh.

Very good.

Maybe the most extreme and

visible example of how things

seem to work here is the Sochi Olympics.

If you look at the map of Russian Federation, it's

difficult to find a sport without knowing... but Putin

did.

It seems like a pretty obvious question, if you wanted

to hold a winter Olympics in

Miami, presumably someone would

say isn't it a little warm there.

This is absolutely personal Putin project.

They spent more than $50 billion

of dollars, which is the most

expensive games of mankind.

$26,000 a seat for the curling stadium?

To build?

The road is 30 miles.

Price for that, $9 billion U.S.

This is a road, right?

It's three times expensive than

American program flying to Mars.

And who got many of those contracts for the roads and

stadiums and infrastructure?

Well, there's these guys.

Putin's childhood friends and

judo partners, the Rottenburg brothers, whose companies

received contracts worth upwards of $7 billion.

And Putin's associate of 20

years, Vladimir Yakunin, who owns the state railroads.

His company received $10 billion worth of contracts.

It's very easy to imagine

what's happened with this money.

Right.

You know who cares in Russia?

Just about no one.

This is a case of the Binenko case.

A known enemy of Putin stricken

with a bout of radioactive polonium.

Aren't you concerned?

Me, about myself?

Yeah.

You're a pain in the ass.

Tony, I was born here 54 years ago.

This is my country.

The Russian people are in trouble.

Russian court doesn't work.

Russian education decline every year.

I believe that Russia has a chance to be free.

Has a chance.

It's difficult but we must do it.

America, yeah.

All of Russia's eyes are upon you.

Bring honor to your... you know what, America, I

will break you.

I will break you.

Forget about it.

I'll bury you.

I'll rip up your visa!

No!

O'er the land of the free.

Just missed it, buddy.

That was pretty close.

I was actually out here all last night practicing.

I'm kidding.

While Zamir contemplates a

suddenly grimmer future thanks

to me, I head out to Rublevka, a

compound of luxury homes outside

Moscow, to meet Alexander Levedu.

At one time, Alexander was doing great.

Former officer of the intelligence services like

Putin, turned billionaire.

He owned pieces of Russia's most

powerful energy companies,

airlines and banks, and still publishes one of the only

opposition newspapers left in Russia.

But running a newspaper that's

been harshly critical of the ruler has cost him.

He's been stripped of nearly everything.

It can be a dangerous thing to

do investigative journalism in this country.

Your own paper, five journalists, six lost their

lives?

Yeah.

Probably the biggest number

because there was no war in this

country, so in peaceful times,

to lose six journalists killed is quite a lot.

Six journalists murdered, one paper.

Presumably for their reporting

on political corruption or human rights abuse.

Though pointing a finger directly at the government is

impossible, one can say that the

climate here is such that what

you say can certainly get you killed.

You have at various stages made

life difficult for yourself.

Business was very good for you,

then you had to have an opinion.

When you interact with the

local bureaucracies and judicial

system, it still leaves a lot to

be desired, let's put it this way.

Levedev is now a potato farmer.

That's my production.

That's my potato.

The biggest producer in Russia, true, but his billions

are gone.

He now lives the life of a mere millionaire.

Let's see how you like this one.

Very good.

Some freshly made potato chips

that Levedev is very proud of.

And his personal chef prepares

Scottish salmon, smoked on

cherry tree sawdust served with avocado.

Mm.

Very good.

Lately, he is getting into slow food.

This is cold pressed cedar tree in Siberia.

Cedar oil?

But he has not slowed down his

profile or kept his mouth shut.

Recently, in a Russian talk

show, he got in an argument over

the financial crisis with another guest, a heated

argument.

He ended up smacking the guy.

I saw the incident on television

that got you in trouble.

I found it very refreshing, actually, something that

political discourse could use more of.

The government took the opportunity to charge him with

politically motivated hooliganism, a charge that could

have resulted in a penalty of five years in prison.

He is instead been convicted of battery.

He is working off his sentence

painting fences and shoveling snow.

I mean, sitting on a bench

and expecting to spend the next

five years in prison with two

small kids, it's not always, you

know, very nice, but the guy said something very bad.

He said those who don't have a

billion go [ Muted ] themselves.

Though his victim did not

register an official complaint,

the message I think was clear.

The charges were pressed by

the Russian state which is funny

because this is a private accusation.

It's dangerous, very dangerous, to criticize or

investigate or speculate.

Why?

Why do you care?

Do you really think you can defeat it, no.

Hopefully, reason will prevail.

♪

It's the KGB.

They're blocking your signal.

I'm sure that they are, believe it or not.

I'm quite sure you've had

someone on your tail the entire time you've been here.

What's rock and roll supposed

to be about other than cars and girls and aggression?

About dissent.

About rebellion, right?

In Russia, where everything is

supposed to be just fine, that

can be a dangerous position.

Travis link is an ex-pat

American that manages this band, Luna.

Ruben Kazarian is Luna's guitarist and song writer.

It's very nice, we have elections, democracy, courts,

but always doesn't work as it should.

So that prevents right now in Russia to speak freely.

Formerly nothing but in reality, a lot of things.

Let's talk about MTV.

Rebel music as I understand it

was an MTV music series whose

fundamental principle was to celebrate bands who say

difficult things in environments where there might be

repercussions.

And as I understand it, your

band was chosen for one of seven episodes.

Correct.

And in fact, one of your songs was used as the title

track for the series.

So I get a letter from the

producer and essentially it says

because of political pressure,

the Russia episode has been

removed from the rebel music series.

According to the producer,

MTV Russia pushed back on the

content, she presumes because of

the negative impact it would

have on them and their ability

to do business on a day-to-day basis in Russia.

MTV's official reason for

removing Luna from the series is

that they simply did not have

enough time to air all the stories they filmed.

This was a documentary series

about musicians standing up and

risking their lives in some cases to stand up against

government abuse of power,

government corruption, and yet,

a foreign government was able to

editorially control what

American viewers see on their TV screens.

That to me is a scandal of epic proportion.

This entire documentary's gone.

Luna's song is the title track to the series, but their

episode never happened.

The rest of Russia is very very different than Moscow.

Here, you drive around it's like

Bentley, Ferrari, Maserati.

You go to buy a pair of shoes,

you pick up a Bentley on the way out.

You tour a lot in Russia.

What do you see?

We see a lot of problems.

We see the level of believing is very low.

There is something in music that unites everybody.

It's something beyond politics.

It's certain energy and this

energy is the same in every country, in every city.

We have rock music, we have common people.

We're like you.

♪

I'm going to the hometown of president Putin.

St. Petersburg.

He was born there, started his career.

The night train to St.

Petersburg is one of the great

fun things to do in Russia.

Roll on great steel wheels

through the night, through dark

forests of birch and snow.

Out there in the dark, visible

for a second or two at a time,

the real Russia, the one most Russians live in.

So Tony, time to enjoy life.

The gentle chicken meat.

I need something gentle, Tony.

The seat cushion and ratatouille.

May I propose a toast?

To gentle chicken meats.

Pro tip.

If the word gentle is used on a

menu, avoid those items and stick to the classics.

Like blini with caviar and cold

pickled herring and potatoes and

soup of sturnlgen, olives and lemon.

Is health care free anymore in this country?

Officially, it is free but if

you want to get operation within

a month, and you can't wait, you

won't get it because long line of those.

How about education?

Up to the high school, it's still free.

The quality's not best as it used to be.

People used to get a lot of things for free.

Now it's coming to an end.

You asked for capitalism, you got it, buddy.

According to Reaganomics it's the trickle-down theory.

That means if I make lots and

lots and lots and lots of money,

money will somehow trickle down to you.

You know, my masseur, my garage

attendant, my aroma therapist.

They of course will be making money.

I will be buying more things for

various wives and prostitutes.

In this way I don't exactly

share the wealth but I trickle

it down and if you don't like your job...

What can you do then?

Cleaning up for my dead prostitutes, you can leave your

job at Walmart and become a billionaire like me.

Or you go on a reality show and

become really really rich.

Doing nothing.

It's fantastic.

Tony, I'm convinced.

I think you know what you are doing in life, man.

♪

Did you put on your jammies?

Uh-huh.

I just want to state for the

record, just because you were in

the top bunk, that's no indication of any relationship

that we may or may not have.

You and me are very careful in public.

If we bring up subject like this, there could be some

different repercussions.

Tolerance never existed in Russia.

That's why when just recently

people started to come out in

Russia, like lesbians and gays,

they were either fired from

their jobs or were given like hard time to exist.

What about Tchaikovsky?

They try not to acknowledge it by saying he was a great

musician, so... he was a great musician who

liked to have sex with other men.

That's what people are not meant to learn in school.

♪

That's the former palace?

You remember what happened in October of 1917?

Everybody came charging through, charged up the steps

and looted the palace.

And he had to put on his female outfit to escape the

revolutionary peasants.

That wouldn't go over well these days.

Not anymore.

Recently in the run-up to the

Sochi Olympics, attention has

been drawn to a wave of rabidly

homophobic remarks by public officials.

Images of gay and lesbian activists being beaten and

harassed in the street, often

with official or semi-official consent.

And a new law which claims to

forbid promoting homosexual

propaganda to minors but which

could be interpreted any way the authorities choose.

What's happening here?

What's going on?

Oh, my god.

I don't know what's going on.

Every day, I ask myself what's

going on, what's going on.

Do you have to be afraid?

No.

I have nothing to lose.

So I can be myself.

I'm nobody in social system.

Artist and film maker Xena

Robrek is a brave young woman.

She's openly gay.

Lately, the actual hunting of

gay people has been documented.

Violent skinhead gangs who contact gay men and women

online, arrange meetings under

false pretenses, then violently ambush them.

There have been very few prosecutions.

You can get killed for this.

Our local fixer, Dasha, helps translate.

She had a situation once

where the skinheads attacked her on the street.

Not only once.

This new law prohibits propaganda?

Amongst minors.

Soviet propaganda, you can go to jail for anything.

It means whatever they want it to mean.

Yes.

How many gay families we have

with kids, and those people are

in maximum stress right now

because their families might be hooligans.

We rightly see this as outrageous.

The Russian public, however,

it's very likely a vote getter.

A cynical pandering to a powerful and enduring vein of

deep-seated homophobia that goes way, way back.

What do you think the source of this hatred is?

It's not about Russian church.

It's about political structure.

It's about power.

We have two Russias.

Okay.

What are they?

Big like big bear.

Not very sophisticated but instincts country.

Okay.

And the other side is the

country of intelligent people, thoughtful people.

A lot of these political leaders, are they using the

issue of gay rights to appeal to a larger audience?

They try to play with bear.

Because usually what happens

when you play with the bear is

tomorrow or the next day or the

next day, the bear eats you.

Yeah.

Are you hopeful?

It's about responsibility.

We should never give up.

♪

Farm to table, in Russia?

Organic?

Local?

Why, yes.

There are those who are trying.

Sergei is a very popular

musician and leader of the band Leningrad.

It was banned in Moscow purportedly for promoting

alcoholism.

Cheers.

This is Sergei's wife, Matilda.

Together they have opened this

restaurant, Kokoko, with the mission to bring genuinely

local, quality Russian food to diners.

We opened this restaurant one

year ago which will work only

with local farmers and we are the first to do it.

In all of Russia.

Yes, in all of Russia.

Traditional combination, rye bread and Russian fish.

Chef Igor's version of Sushi.

Instead of rice, more traditional Russian black bread

with sprouts, mackerel, COD liver and salmon caviar.

Old school, but looks new school.

When I first came here 2001,

the best restaurant in Moscow

was a nightmare of French,

Japanese ingredients, recipes from nowhere.

Everyone hated Russia, wanted to be someone else.

Lightly smoked raw beef topped with quail egg.

Very interesting combination.

Very nice.

What's the most popular thing?

What do people want?

The most popular is Italian-Japanese cuisine.

Sounds like a nightmare.

Cheers.

That was good.

Before Putin, before Gorbachev, Khrushchev, Stalin and

Lenin, there was this.

Imperial Russia.

Mighty palaces spread across the

empire where the very very few

lived in unimaginable luxury.

While their people worked and starved.

Didn't work out so well for Paul, did it?

Not really.

They choked the dude to death, right?

Actually strangled with a piece of cord.

The czars of previous centuries were certainly living

the good life.

Money, no object when it came to

personal comfort or luxurious lodgings.

And today's imperial powers seem not far behind.

Putin allegedly had a billion

dollar palace built for him.

We couldn't license the actual

smuggled photo but our artist

rendering looks like this.

A Putin spokesman dismissed all

this, telling the "New York

times" we have congress halls

built for the Kremlin but if you

call all of them Putin's palace,

it is nothing but absurd.

Vodka.

Haven't tasted that before.

So what would I be doing on my

outing if I were a czar, looking for cool ox to press?

Enjoying life.

Picking up some good speed here.

Oh, okay.

Some suggested that Russia

is, after all this time, coming full circle.

A tiny, tiny minority in possession of nearly unlimited

power and wealth.

The idea of running up the steps

and disemboweling royals, I can

easily imagine myself doing that.

It would not take much convincing.

Wow.

That's a pleasant surprise.

I would hurl them all into the sea tomorrow.

After the revolution, in a

blood-forced strategy designed to even things out, the

government seized private

residences, dividing them into

little pieces and portioning

them out to the masses who were

arriving from the countryside to

serve the new industrialized Soviet union.

I never had any ideas of growing

up in socialist wonderland.

There was a brief period when I

was a hippie and the idea of living in a commune, not

attractive to me.

I was born in a communal flat

with three other families,

sharing one John, one kitchen.

No way.

They would treat me when I had no food.

No way.

I share my toilet with no man.

Take the first left, please.

Meet Uri, human rights activist, professor of

journalism, one of 26 tenants living in this communal

apartment.

Just in case you change your mind...

And it's here that I see for

first time a glimpse of my

friends in the years mysterious

past, growing up in a home just like this one.

This was normal for you growing up.

Yeah.

I show you how it workings.

So who decided to moved into these plays?

Those who were in charge of

the specific communal services

assigned X amount to this plan, to that plan.

You got to choose your neighbors though?

No.

I got that.

In the present day Russia

there's never been a reason to

create infrastructure to make people's lives bet per.

Nobody cared about the people

that they should have a decent toilet or shower.

How is it lately, letter?

Worse.

So he changed the

whole landscape in the country.

First of all he clamped down on the Democratic right.

The most recent laws bring up

the old Soviet union type of structure in the country.

So what happens next?

A year before the

Soviet union collapse, you would

never believe in your wildest dreams it would happen.

Now it's symbolism, it looks

stable, people are busy, money is made.

But it can't go on like this for too long.

So Uri predict we could be in a

similar overnight collapsing situation.

So there is some hope... You're due for some major

renovations.

♪

♪

Just another crisp morning in St. Petersburg.

♪

The river, ice fishing paradise.

I wouldn't go out on that,

not for a million dollars, man, not now.

It's total unstable.

♪

Lessons of history.

Where are we?

It's used to be a place for those who are a lit the

executed.

Originally built to defend the swedes, it was overrun

during the revolution.

So the 100-year anniversary of what is coming up?

Great October socialist revolution in three years from

now.

So the disparity gap in the society, very rich and very

poor, that someone might bring

the masses back to palace and

storm it again, like 100 years, nothing changed.

Every day at noon without

fail this D 30 .122 howitzer is

fired to commemorate the revolution.

Moment of truth.

♪

Come up.

Enemy is destructed.

Congratulations, you are the hero of Russia now.

Sweet.

You can't take it on the plane, though.

You understand.

Not even carry on?

Since the filming of this show a

number of things have happened.

Putin's Sochi Olympics went off as planned.

Russia won many gold medals, the most of any country in

competition which was really all that mattered.

A few journalists complained

about the bathrooms, but that is all but forgotten.

More than $50 billion of mostly public money gone.

Ukraine rose up and their pro-Putin president run away.

Russia, in broad daylight has

recently annexed Crimea and is

massing tens of thousands of

troops on the border of Ukraine.

The world has done nothing.

It will do nothing, as Vladimir well knew.

He wins again.

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