After the Fall

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>It is 1998. After twenty-five years as a BBC TV reporter and producer Michael Delahaye is sent to Russia as part of a UK/US programme to develop independent journalism in the former Soviet Union. With Boris Yeltsin in power hopes are high of Russia along with the other one-time Soviet republics becoming functioning democracies.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Over the next five years Delahaye and his fellow media missionaries will criss-cross the vast Russian Federation south through Georgia Armenia Azerbaijan ... and into Moldova Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Their brief is to bring enlightenment to countries where the very concept of journalism has been unknown for seven decades; to support - sometimes help create from scratch - television stations that will be independent impartial and promote human rights.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>What they find is the rouble in freefall state assets being sold off black BMWs cruising the streets and an ex-KGB officer tipped for promotion in Yeltsin's administration ... Vladimir Putin.</span></p><p></p><p><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>After the Fall</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> a foot-soldier's story charts Delahaye's realisation of the challenges both cultural and political of transition; how as in Iraq and Afghanistan the West has repeatedly over-estimated its power to recast other nations in its own image.</span></p><p></p>