If such concepts as ”price controls,” ”privatization” and ”welfare socialism” are beyond your ken, you may have a difficult time getting through the terrain that correspondent Hedrick Smith travels when he returns to what`s left of the Soviet Union to see what has happened in the two years since his DuPont Award-winning, four-part series, ”Inside Gorbachev`s USSR.”
The insights imparted by ”After Gorbachev`s USSR,” (9 p.m. Tuesday, PBS-Ch. 11), a ”Frontline” presentation produced by Marian Marzynski, are many, but they are not easily discerned.
Smith is an old Russian hand. A Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter, Smith was the paper`s Moscow bureau chief; he traveled more than 40,000 miles around the USSR to research his best-selling books, ”The Russians” and ”The New Russians”; and he has worked on many USSR-related documentaries for PBS.
This familiarity with his subject has its distinct advantages. He knows the scene and he knows many of the interesting players. But it also has its minor disadvantages. Since Smith is so close to the action, he is not always aware that many viewers may need background information.
The portrait he paints in ”After Gorbachev`s USSR,” then, may be hard for some to grasp. It`s like a graduate seminar and, as such, demands very close attention from viewers.
Worth it?
Absolutely. Keeping an eye on what is essentially the birth of new countries from what used to be the Soviet Union is, needless to say, of utmost global importance. Besides, like any birth, what`s happening is both fascinating and a little frightening to watch.
Although the program begins optimistically with examples of increased religious freedoms-”Russia can readily revive religious traditions because they exist,” Smith says-it gets downright bleak when exploring economic and political matters.
”This is a more tortured tale,” Smith says. ”There`s almost no tradition here of democracy and free enterprise to draw upon.”
Still, many are trying, and the early results-we`ve all seen them on the news-are not particularly encouraging, though Smith does find nuggets of hope amid the frustrations and fears.
There`s not much hope in the stores, however. When goods and food are not scarce, they are wildly expensive.
”My wife used to bake cookies every day,” says one man. ”But that bastard (Yeltsin) increased the price of flour to 16 rubles a kilogram.”
His anger explodes: ”If they want a civil war, they`ll get it.”
Of course, no one wants a civil war, especially while witnessing the horrors in Azerbaijan. But as Smith travels through the country, he finds dissension and anger everywhere: Two men argue on a train about who should control the Black Sea fleet; a state farmer and a private farmer get in a heated dialogue; old people shout in empty stores, ”We`re going to croak.”
Most of the arguments concern the new free-enterprise economics versus the old politics of welfare socialism.
A factory manager, unable to get the parts he needs, says: ”We`re heading into the Middle Ages-we`ve completely destroyed our economy based on cooperation and now we`re trying to re-establish not a serf society but our primitive feudal society.”
An entrepreneur who has amassed a fortune in the last two years sees it differently, saying: ”Private property is the same kind of brilliant human discovery as the wheel and fire. It`s part of civilization.”
To many Americans, all of this might appear to be the healthy dialogue of democracy. Listen more closely.
As Smith wisely observes near the show`s end, ”What Americans must understand is that Russia`s experience is different from ours. When immigrants came to America, they had to give up their past and had to embrace the new world. But here, Russians can cling to their past . . . and they do. And that makes it ever so much harder to build their new world.”
– ”Mobs and Mobsters” (9 p.m. Tuesday, ABC-Ch. 7), hosted by James Woods as if he were on speed, is a sadly stiff and ridiculously overblown attempt to court the public`s fascination for gangsters.
Taking us roughly from Capone to Gotti, the program fashions an uneasy mix of archival footage, movie clips, dramatic re-creations and interviews with such molls and goons as Judith Exner and Jimmy Fratiano. It is written in the style of an 8th-grade book report: ”Intertwined in the spiderlike web of crime,” or ”Charles Luciano, like his friend Capone, started early,” or
”Who knows what the 21st Century holds for the `dapper don.` ”
There`s a thumping soundtrack, far too many clips from the insipid movie
”Mobsters” and even mention of ”Capone`s vault.” That latter bit really isn`t surprising. The show`s so shrill, it`s positively Geraldo-like.
Need a gangster fix? Go rent ”GoodFellas.”
