Shots Moscow building/ men cleaning building exterior

Campbell:  On a Gothic tower built by Stalin, Moscow's crack dirt-assault squad swings into action.

Music

01.00.00

Map of part of Europe. Russia and Moscow highlighted

Shots man wearing cleaning mask/Andrei cleaning building/ Men cleaning building exterior

Campbell:  Andrei Isupkov, a champion Soviet climber turned cleaner has worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week to sand back decades of stagnation.

01.00.33

The city government ordered these mountaineers to clean the facade of the landmark Ukraine Hotel, in time for Moscow's birthday.

Andrei normally survives on US$300 a month. For the past three months, he's made ten times that.

Andrei on cleaning scaffold with city highway in b/g

Andrei:  We must finish cleaning this front wall before the anniversary and I think we'll manage. There is not a lot of pressure, we understand the responsibility and want to do it quicker. We get paid for it.

01.01.05

Shots Moscow sky line with cranes/ workers cleaning and repairing buildings

Campbell:  Across Moscow, public buildings have been repainted, restored and rebuilt for the city's anniversary.

01.01.22

The Russians have one word for it - remont. And this has been the biggest peacetime remont in Moscow's 850 year history. It's turning the city into the one place where Russians feel confident of getting ahead.

Andrei on cleaning scaffold with city highway in b/g. Men cleaning exterior of building

Andrei:  I'm not a Muscovite-I have been living here for four years but my wife is from Moscow. I really like the city. For me it's just a way to make money.

01.01.48

Shot highway/Krel sitting in back of car

Krel:  Definitely it is not a depressed place. It is a very exciting place. It's a place which you really feel if you want to achieve something, you want to move something, then it's okay, it's only up to you.

01.02.09

Shots Moscow landscape/ Campbell and Krel in back of car/Moscow streets

Campbell:  Sunday morning is the only time Michael Krel has to enjoy his adopted city. The rest of the week he's too busy making money.

01.02.24

Michael is part of Russia's new business class. Twenty years ago he left Moscow as a Jewish emigre to start a new life in Australia. But since communism's demise, he's spent more time here than in Sydney, organising joint ventures for foreign companies, in a city he now sees as the world's greatest boom town.

Krel:  It's the biggest market in the world.

Krel in back of car.

Super:

MICHAEL KREL

Businessman

Krel:  It's the biggest storage of mineral resources. It's perhaps one of the most culturally educated work forces, if I can say it's a work force. It's only a matter of putting the components together.

01.02.54

Shots Moscow streets/ police with guns/people

Campbell:  In Moscow, this involves accepting that things are done a little differently.

01.02.10

The city bristles with more guns than at any time since the Russian Revolution. And no one does business here without protection.

But what distinguishes Moscow from the rest of Russia is that there are countless opportunities. Even in the need for guns.

Krel at business meeting/

One of Michael Krel's best business tips was advising his old friend Valery Velicchko too start his own security firm.

01.03.36

Valery's team had Russia's best training, and an unbeatable marketing pitch. They're all ex-agents of the KGB.

Krel: I've brought a photograph to show you...

Campbell:  Valery once headed security for Mikhail Gorbachev. And as Michael himself found when he recommended them to some clients, the ex-KGB look after their customers.

Krel :  I'm representing a few major companies in Russia. We never have any problem of any nature. Neither cars were stolen, anyone breaking in the office, neither one was attacked personally, neither one was approached for some kind of ransom. We're dealing with hard commodities, oil, diamonds.

Krel/Campbell

All that we have is a sticker on the car, and a logo of the KGB Veterans' Association on our office, stating that this office, or this business, protected by such association. That's good enough to us.

01.04.39

Campbell:  So KGB is still the best name to scare people?

Krel:  Scaring the people who have to be scared.

Shots security personnel responding to alert

Alarm

01.05.00

Guard:  Attention! Alarm signal. Leave immediately.

Shots security personnel responding to alert/security personnel patrolling foyer/ Colonel Velicchko with associates

Campbell:  On the principle that any publicity is good for business, Colonel Velicchko insists that we see how these former secret agents respond to an emergency call.

01.05.16

Normal duties aren't quite so dramatic.

They're usually manning foyers checking documents.

Colonel Velicchko and many of his men lost their jobs over their involvement in the 1991 coup. But like many of the old communist elite, they were best positioned to cash in on the new capitalism. And they're making it big in Moscow.

Colonel Velicchko

Super:

VALERY VELICCHKO

Security Consultant

Velicchko:  The KGB was the most informed organisation. Before I retired I visited dozens of countries. I saw how people lived in America, New Zealand, South Korea, Africa and Latin America. That is why for us-Communists with a capital ‘C'-communism doesn't mean stubbornly following one dogma. We can flexibly follow the political situation.

01.05.52

Shots people boarding bus/highway/people on bus

Campbell:  Another ex-Communist with a flexible way of doing things is the city mayor, Yuri Luzhkov.

01.06.28

Music

Campbell:  Today he's inspecting his proudest work, a new 180 kilometre ring round around Moscow.

Almost every road beyond this is a potholed death trap. But for the people inside the ring, Luzhkov is the man turning Moscow into a near normal city.

Shots Luzhkov inspecting city works with crowd/Luzhkov speaking to crowd

The mayor heads out every Saturday to inspect the city works, berating the workers for any delays, and somehow finding money for their wages and supplies.

01.07.07

His can-do style has made  him astonishingly popular, winning 90 per cent of last year's mayoral vote.

Many believe he's positioning himself to become Russia's next president.

Luzhkov speaks at rally/ faces in crowd

If there's on thing that makes Luzhkov testy, it's any suggestion the city government is corrupt or wasteful.

01.07.33

Luzhkov:  I want to say, that we of course must work economically. But we can defend ourselves when the city, our construction companies, and our economic systems are being attacked so groundlessly. The accusations are made without previous analysis, comparisons, or even elementary calculations. To hell with them-we don't need them at our anniversary!

Applause

Campbell:  But some cynics can't help wondering where all the money's coming from.

Velicchko

Super:

VALERY VELICCHKO

Security Consultant

Velicchko:  Moscow is not Russia-Russia is much bigger than Moscow but Moscow has accumulated all the capital, all the money, all the brains and energy of Russia and the rest of Russia is in a very difficult situation. Not a single problem in Voronezh, Tambov or Kirov can be resolved without Moscow. One had to go to Moscow, and plead and bribe the bureaucrats. And the Moscow bureaucrats build houses with the bribe money.

01.08.30

Bill board image of Moscow with homeless man underneath/beggars and homeless people/ soup kitchen

Russian music

01.09.00

Campbell:  No one's been building houses for Moscow's homeless. The city's main contribution to reducing their numbers was rounding up several people and expelling them before the birthday.

For perhaps a third of the city that lives in dire poverty, Moscow is a desperate place. Many live solely on the meagre handouts of foreign charities. But however bad the poverty is in Moscow, the city is still a magnet for people from the provinces.

Shots photographer and models/Olga taking pictures

For 19 year old Natalia, this is the city of dreams. She's left her home in dirt poor Siberia, to try to make it as a model in the big city.

01.10.58

Competition will be tough, but her head start was winning second prize in a national modelling contest, organised by a Moscow magazine.

The organiser, Olga Kharmalova, is the sort of role model who barely existed ten years before.

She left her small town to escape the stifling lack of opportunity. Now she runs the magazine's advertising.

Olga's become a member of a group that's almost non-existent elsewhere in Russia - a middle class.

Olga:  I can refer to us as middle class as we won't ever be rich. But I think we will be able to rise to the upper middle class.

Shots dog in park/Olga and husband in park and apartment building

Campbell:  Olga and her husband Alexei have few trappings of Western wealth. They still live in an old Soviet street.

01.10.51

But they are slowly moving ahead. They're paying off a foreign car, the only one in the street. And they're earning enough money to help out their parents and save for somewhere better.

For now, they live in a tiny three room apartment. And they're reinventing themselves to survive.

Olga once worked in a military plant, while Alexei was a painter - jobs that depended on state subsidies.

Alexei has now put away his brushes to become art director for a budding designer studio.

Shots Olga at sink/ Alexei and Olga in apartment

Alexei:  Under communism, it was much more simple. I graduated from the Institute and knew I should do, the salary I would gain, and I know all my steps till I retired. It was boring.

01.11.48

Campbell:  Whatever difficulties they have, they would never go back to the way things were.

Olga and Alexei on couch in apartment

Olga:  I have always longed for independence-any independence-from parents, husbands, relatives and so on. And now I have left my native town. I'm living in Moscow. I've married and have a good husband who I love very much. Sorry, but it has happened.

01.12.13

Shots couple singing and playing music/models preparing for competition

Singing

01.12.40

Campbell:  Tonight, Natalia will be announced as one of the winners of Olga's modelling competition. She doesn't dare even utter what she hopes will come of it.

Natalia in make up chair.

Natalia:  I have no ambitions, I have dreams. But one can't talk about the dreams, or they won't come true. I'd rather not talk.

01.13.05

Shots nightclub and club patrons

Campbell:  The venue is just one of 300 nightclubs that have sprung up in Moscow since the end of communism. The clientele are the envied minority who've grown rich under the new rules.

01.13.15

Speaker:  I'm introducing the winner of the Miss Charm award-Natalia Zakhontova!

Natalia walks out into crowd and onto runway. Shots of crowd

Speaker:  Look at her-she's really charming.

Campbell:  There are times when it's hard to believe that this is the same city that once ruled communism. The girls' parents could never have hoped for the things their children now aspire to.

01.13.36

Though it's not hard to imagine the pitfalls they could face in the centre of bandit capitalism.

Shot of Olga in crowd in nightclub/models on display

Olga:  Only the fittest survive here, I agree. If they feel they have the strength they can stay here and fight for their lives. Moscow likes strong people, and strong people win here.

01.14.11

Shot Moscow landscape and people

Campbell:  Moscow's birthday passed in a weekend. But the preparations have left a city transformed, at least by the Soviet standards from which it's rising.

01.14.35

The climb to the top in Moscow is far harder than it should be. And nobody catches you if you fall. But at least there are heights to aim for. And after 850 years of being downtrodden, that is something to celebrate.

ENDS