01.00.00

Tractor and farmland

(Russian Folk music)

V/O: This rolling green farmland of Oryol on the south eastern Russian steppe is only five hours drive from Moscow.

Red Volvo drives through

But in political distance it's a world away, caughts in a ideological time warp. It's not a part of this massive country the Moscow media frequent-

00.43

Cows crossing road

They call it the red belt.

01.02

Women gardening (beneath black statue of Lenin)

It's the Russian equivalent of America's deep south - defiantly conservative and passionatly conservative and pasionately nationalistic .. but the Russian ‘rednecks' of Oryol are not mindless right wingers - thye're diehard disciples old style Stalinist communism - and they want it back.

01.15

Black statue of Lenin

I'll bet you thought that all the old trappings of totalitarian communism - the hammers and sickles - the huge statues of Lenin like this one here were a thing of the past in the brave new world of democratic Russia. Well not around here .. in this rural heartland you could say that communism is alive and well - so much so that in the parliamentary elections last December 80% of the locals around her voted for the communist. And throughout the entire country, even now - despite the so called democratic reform of the past 5 years - getting close to 6 out of 10 still vote communist - that's more than half the population.

01.52

Anatoly Kholodkhov, Member of local Communist Party - interview

People vote for the person who best protects the interest of the people - he who defends the people. Now the Communist party is the party which reflects the interests of the people.

V/O: Anatoly Kholodkov is the local party apparatchik, for him the popularity of the communists is common sense not polemics. Put simply people here were better off under the old system.

Anatoly Kholodkhov interview

Before we all lived well - everyone had a job - we were paid on time there was no crime no drastic changes which have recently ocurred (now we see that no other party promises us this and doesn't have the ability to do it even if it does promise something.)

02.36

Tree swaying in the rain in Mymrino town

V/O: Market economies may be the vogue ideology in Russian cities and towns but in the Oryol region it's still state owned collectives, quotas and low expectations.

02.59

Local school

The village of Mymrino is a rural relic from the dark days of Russian communism - but lately it's gone from total obscurity to geopolitical prominence. This sleepy ‘red belt' backwater of one hundred and fifty people is where communist leader and presidential aspirant Gennady Zyuganov was born and raised.

The adminstrator of the local school Valentina Astashkina was a classmate of young Gennady. She like virtually everybody here supports him.

03.42

Valentina Astashkina, Administrator of local school - interview

Of course he has a good programme - and he was my classmate (laughs). It's nice for everyone who knew him well. We all wish him well in the elections.

03.57

Small boy walking along, Galina opens gate

V/O: If it was left to the party faithful of Zyuganov's birth place like Galina Solodokhina who bought the Zyuganov family cottage there would be no doubt whatsoever about the result of the June 16 ballot.

04.13

Galina Solodokhina, Buyer of Zyuganov's former home standing at garden gate in rain

First of all we have no money now. We don't get paid whatsoever. We don't buy anything except bread. We can't buy sausages, we can't buy clothes, we can't buy shoes. My husband works as a driver. He never drives. The car stood still the whole winter. And it doesn't move now either.

04.33

VE Day Celebrations - Soldiers marching

V/O: Back in Moscow the media and the polls have narrowed the presidential race down to a two horse race affair - with Yeltsin and Zyuganov way out in front of the other nine candidates.

05.08

Zhirinovsky dancing

Gorbachev signing books

Yavlinsky walking through door

The other hopefuls have been written off - including highflyers like the loony nationalist Zhirinovsky .. The politically defunct Michael Gorbachev who probably precipitated all of this  .. and even the 44 year old young pretender Grigory Yavlinsky.

VE March

Whether or not the outsiders eventually throw their weight and their votes behind Yeltsin Zyuganov and the remain the sleeping giants of this election.

05.53

Communist Press Conference, Young Punks

But in the cities support for the communists is nowhere as solid as in the red belt. Here in Moscow it ranges from the dispossessed pensioners to these western sixties look and sound alike  radicals.

Cameras filming

Frankly the party faithful are having their work cut out getting their mesage across.

When the communists lost their stranglehold on the mainstream Russian media - they also lost the battle to be heard.

06.39

Soldiers firing at crowd

GUNFIRE

Army truck crashing into TV station building

V/O: Not very far back - 1993 - these were the dramatic scenes when communists and coservatives opposed to reform tried to oust the Yeltsin government. Yeltsin called in the military - successfully retook the Russian White House - and held the country's fledgling democracy together.

(Groans from the crowd)

V/O: .. but at one crucial point Anti Yeltsin forces came dangerously close to taking the Moscow TV station.

07.33

Soldiers standing guard, inside the TV station

That was only three years ago and now at the height of the presidential election journalists here still remember that day so vividly.. so much so that they have determined that if the commuists failed in 1993 to kill off democracy with the bullet they're not going to succeed in 1996 via the ballot. The result is that local journalists are up to their proverbial eyeballs  in this campaign .. they are not just reporting it .. they're in it .. they're not observers .. they're players.

08.14

Anchorman for Vremya

Vremya is Russia's leading daily television news programme. It goes on air on Channel One - the old state controlled Moscow TV - these days half government owned half private...

In the bad old days journalists here were given no choice but to tote out the party line from the Kremlin. Now at least for the period of this election campaign, they're toting out the Government line - willingly.

Tv screens showing Yeltsin out on his campaign

But you can forget all those high sounding media principles about objectivity and impartiality ... Vremya's on and off camera staff are blatantly biassed - they're unapologetically pro Yeltsin and anti Zyuganov....

08.59

Ksenia Ponomaryova, Executive Producer of Vremya

And the instructions are coming from the top ...Ksenia Ponomaryova is the Executive Producer of Vremya.

I am quite sure that communists are bad for media and for Russia.

09.13

09.46

Zyuganov on his campaign, Communist march

Computer graphics of Zyuganov

V/O: If all things were equal in the Russia media the communists would be home and hosed. Apart from support from the older generation who've known nothing else, the red belt rural factor, crime and the country's economic asnd industrial turmoil - there's even the unpopular 18 month conflict in Chechenya to bring the government down - but still Yeltsin edges ahead (with more than a little help from his latter day friends) the media - democrats who are using their poition to give Zyuganov an awful pasting...

Nikita Golovanov, Journalist, sitting at computer screen

The first thing to do is to get a good shot of somebody...This is Zyuganov ...

V/O: Journalist and computer graphics whizz Nikita Golovanov normally works for the new and respected Russian financial and business magazine Commersant.

Nikita Golovanov

‘Have a ride with a blind driver to communism that will be your final stop' - definitely and very soon!

V/O: But since the communists re emerged as a treat to Yeltsin and reform, free thinker Golovanov and his market orientated colleagues at the magazine have been putting out this outrageously biassed publication.

10.32

Shot of paper God Forbid .. (Ne dai Bogh)

God Forbid - the name of this propaganda sheet is short for ‘God Forbid the communists should ever get back into power.'

Picture of Zyuganov as a cupid shoting bow an arrow

The communists are not impressed. To say the least, they don't get the joke.

10.46

Gregori Rebrov, Communist Party Organiser - interview

I think it's delirious - it's a mental case - the authors need medical treatment. The more newspapers like this there are the more people will vote for Gennady Zyuganov.

V/O: Party organiser and old fashioned communist idealogue Gregori Rebrov is furious about not just God Forbid's attacks but also what the party regards - quite rightly - as highly unfair and unequal coverage of the Communist campaign.

Gregori Rebrov

If the communists come to power we won't punish or persecute them. The journalists still have a chance to show their better side in this critical period. Let them tell the truth about Zyuganov now and we'll write off their sins as petty hooliganism.

11.33

Band playing music in restaurant

V/O: Petty hooliganism it might be but Nikita and Ksenia - partners in politics and in life - are not alone.

A clutch of senior Moscow journalists have thrown political neutrality out of the window.

Ksenia Ponomaryova, Executive Producer of Vremya, at restaurant

They know that the television now is not neutral. I don't think that they expect it to be neutral because it's unnatural for Russian men to expect media to be neutral.

V/O: If Boris Yeltsin loses - and the communists under Zyuganov regain their old stranglehold on this country Nikita and Ksenia face to say the least a dodgy future.

Ksenia Ponomaryova

I prefer not to think about it, I sometimes say that I will leave the country but I am not quite sure. But I am absolutely sure that we will have sometime to think about it.

Band playing..

V/O: Either way as this bold but possibly foolhardy Moscow couple could discover in a few week's time, even inthe new Russia, democracy a bit like life itself - was probably never meant to be easy.

ENDS.