ORF-E | 2021
1 x 52 min
German with English Subtitle
Worldwide

ORF has had an office in Moscow for 50 years and reports regularly from there on the ups and downs of Russian politics, from the totalitarian Soviet state during the Cold War to the opening and democratization of Perestroika and Glasnost to today’s authoritarian Russian nation-state. In this documentary, former Moscow correspondent Christian Schüller demonstrates how reporting from Moscow has changed over the past half-century and how the image of Russia has changed over this period. ORF reporters were there when the Soviet Union was dissolved thirty years ago—a historic rupture their predecessors in Moscow would have thought unimaginable. Nor was it foreseeable in 1991 how Russia would develop without the Soviet Union. Some of the twists and turns in Russian politics can be better understood with hindsight. In his review, Christian Schüller talks to the former Moscow correspondents Otto Hörmann, Franz Kössler, Susanne Scholl, Georg Dox, and Carola Schneider about the limitations and uncertainties they had to contend with and what they learned from their years in Russia.