no in here at r.t. h.q. tonight in central moscow thanks for being with this let me update you if you will in our top news stories the international community calls on egypt to help restore security in the region is cars are in israel exchanged deadly fire after days of violence in israel activists are taking to the streets across the country in protest against government policy demanding more focus on domestic problems. it's been another turbulent week for the world's markets as fears are mounting that the u.s. and europe are on the brink of another devastating downturn investor panic at the bleak economic outlook has prompted

a massive share. of mark thirty years to the day when moscow was placed under military curfew during the attempt to overthrow mikhail gorbachev the coup faced fierce resistance and failed to topple the government then but nonetheless did change the course of history for the south even. if you're in the plains it's all about maxing it out at the international air show near moscow this weekend with a final day of gravity defying stunts on lucrative deal making two multibillion dollar contracts in fact and the maiden public flight of russia's latest fight suggesting just something it's. seven thirty one pm moscow time i'll have more news for you in full in thirty minutes next though watch out show spotlight is on the. hello again and welcome to spotlight the end of the show on r.t.

i'm al gore no my guest is no one matthew years the book he dedicated to his family called stolen children three generations of love and war has become a bestseller in britain and was translated into several languages recently it was published in russian and today is the guest of spotlight to tell us about the fascinating story of his parents. newsweek bureau chief in moscow when matthew chance has been wrong thing around the world searching for great stories but he found his best story in moscow trying to track his family tree born in london to the russian market the welsh father who became a journalist and arrived in moscow to plunge into work and break away on his own instead he stumbled on his roots and started searching for more he dug through the k.g.b. archives until he found a tragic story of his grandfather who died at the hands of stalin cyclical leagues and we became fascinated by russia and says despite his relatives having to escape

from this country they still carry something of great inside themselves please explain more in his dramatic them his story on matthew's joins us today on spotlight. on the show thank you very much for being with us. here i want to go first of all hugh. spent quite a while in russia you speak fluent russian you have. from russian family and so the you consider yourself to be russian at least half russian or you prefer to observe as a foreigner like that from a distance well i'm not sure what i what i prefer but the fact is that i was born and raised in london so. although i was spoke russian with my mother and indeed i do speak excellent russian but that's i can't count that as my team and that's because my mother told me from childhood. and although it turns out that i have now spent actually pretty much half my adult life in russia i'm still

a foreigner here i'm still around and one of the things that i think a lot of russians why i was slightly nervous about this book appearing in russian is that above all it's a journey of of someone a foreigner albeit a foreigner with my close ties with. the russian language it's a foreigners journey into russia trying to explain so i'm trying to explain some for myself i'm trying to explain to the reader so it's not a russian book about russia it's a it's a problem as book about in your book here you take a view of the foreigner. and insert yourself you always consider yourself to be a londoner rather and their russian is something something from a book here for you this is early because actually i'm now my my wife is russian an hour before my children and i are three quarters so no i mean i should probably feel more at home and doing london and i certainly find it more interesting to. live in moscow ability to spend time in london restaurants are surely tasty. but

this is the way that i think there's a great letter which russia great was really into thought of a route from paris and she got a revolution she spent some years in paris and she writes to her friend are not much of a who see the remains in an leningrad the she can't bear this to she she misses the movie to talk a little on the little wind in russia but all the people in russia are you know subjected to the sort of seismic events of history and. so i was thought even before i live in russia that there was some. you know more real if you do have this feeling for this arc and stuff then please tell me was it your idea to change their name the time of your novel when it was in russian and it was published under a name

a nice name then ty's soviet novel which is that we were we shock always can be translated as an anti surveyed romance exactly so so you think it's justified well here's here's the thing. i think the title in english style instilled in. when you first hear it your presumption is more that it's the good it's it's not literally about the children of joseph stalin it's with our numbers. but more about you know that a generation who is stalin's children and in russian i think the tendency is more to presume that it's literally about stalin's children so there's a technical issue that i didn't want to you know sort of fool people into into thinking it was a book literally about stalin's children but also there's a more important aspect of this and is that that actually unfortunately tragically the story which makes up the first half of the book is of the life and death of my grandfather

a party who was executed and. who is executed mostly thirty seven and his children my mother. will raise by the state but part is actually much more familiar tragically to millions of russian families so i wanted a little bit to change the emphasis of the book for the for the russian reader to a story which is less familiar and less usual and of the sudden incident which is it was so because the second i which is the romantic story of my my father a welshman and and his fiance and how they struggle for six years to. go to get married and have a question about their russian version the russian translation the russian vision of the book the picture. and the car cover shows your parents like resembling the famous statue of a worker and a peasant but if they. carry a hammer and sickle you are scary an x. . whose idea. it was it was just

a joke. is just a joke it's actually from a series of very funny photographs that were taken my mother was is very young and she was a librarian and it's her. fooling around. pretending to be the work and the presence of the actual picture i mean it's like something that is a shock it is a real political moment to say you can like many years you have taken. that was your watch fargo it was just it was just just playing around. so they had no drama nor sitting. in the library i don't know what they did on this. and they just sort of it was a series of sort of funny photos it's not ok well this sort of kidding would have been considered anti-semitism stems and you know i very much sort of ok. tell me about the book tell me about the book first of all the critics already said

that there are too many cliches able to be cliches about russia and that they're like you're a journalist a specialist in this country and part russian should know know this country better when to use the cliche what it well what did you get well the i think what's what they describe as cliches is actually. particularly i think what book but people might take objection to is that my. my journey into russia in the one nine hundred ninety s. when i arrived as a young journalist. there is there's a great phrase from jarvis cocker everybody hates a tourist and especially one who thinks it's all such a laugh. at those who work in the tourist industry and i suspect they would have voted put it in in a more found sense i mean indeed only the whole idea of a sort of you know rather spoiled young journalist coming to moscow and you know having this feast in the time of famine you know how to have

a enjoying and sort of. descending into all of the underworld which i describe because i was a young city reporter the moscow times when i can see how people would be would be offended that i was sort of enjoying all this sort of. underworld of moscow while the people were suffering but actually i think that i also balance that because i actually sort of saw a lot of the very nasty underbelly in it and it affected me very deeply with the homeless children and prisons and so on and i think part of the criticism is because people don't like to be reminded of that world because it was a very nightmarish and last time and i don't i certainly make it clear i hope that russia has changed since then russia is no longer about sort of a narcotic wild dark last place that it was in the ninety's happily a human. grandfather and this and this is where your book started as far as and they said you found you found the archives of the end of a dead now and the k.g.b.

not your first book and then there are the f.s.b. and there are cards away you actually let the story of your grandfather boris be a good cover for what was a party a party apparatchik and he was very well to do and then he disappeared. and he was he was actually prosecuted by but by the k.g.b. so how come you found them you just you don't just walk into the into the k.g.b. golding looking for archives well actually the for the historical purposes i was very fortunate in in surprise that he was but also how did all this happened in ukraine. in russia even today the f.s.b. archives are closed there was a brief period of slight liberalization in women in the early one nine hundred ninety s. but basically i could not have written a book had my grandfather be shot in russia in the last name because of the be still likes to keep its secrets in the closet and to the people in power in the

kremlin preferred to close the hole in the stalls and live as part of the k.g.b. our hands they that were kept by the by the ukrainian bureau you know the link you that's still there and unlike in russia in ukraine as icicles to tional right for relatives to get the documents so fortunately it didn't require really any greater technical difficulties i just wrote to them and sure enough i got a you know a lot of back saying you know your your your copus is here and you can you can view it and it's indeed it and a terrifying document how do you know you just walk into the building you give yourself a pass on any any given a firm belief files and a good part of it there's a very devoted copy you know what you can photocopy some technical issue. something positive but the most interesting detail is that. he the ukrainian s.b.u.

the success of the k.g.b. also wanted to protect its own because there was a part of the file that was closed to me taped together and i was sitting with a young officer for two days in defense of this file and. as you know old russian script is very hard to read seriously helping me to read it and this part of the file was taped. together and he eventually succumbed also to curiosity and on tape that we looked through together and it was the part of the file that was. part of the rehabilitation investigation one hundred fifty six when all of that when he was rehabilitated when he was pretty pretty innocent and all of those all of the investigators that had been involved in the case had themselves by nine hundred thirty nine been shot those are the pudge consume the town and there's nobody left in the neighborhood because they didn't want people to know about it why did they

give you the take very. good because if it's all it's all. together. says that he is a journalist a true gentleman says we here and author of a book called stolen children spotlight will be back shortly right after the break so then go stay with us we'll continue in less than a. wealthy british science. class. markets why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy cause a report on our. welcome

back to spotlight and i'll bring out in just a reminder to my guest in the studio today is owen net he's a british journalist and author of a book called stamina children recently recently it was published in russian here in this country. and you just told us about your grand grand from the glorious bit of. was a party apparatchik can serve in times very well to do member of the press so he had no mental sure and later he was persecuted why what was the reason why you

didn't shoot him well there's several answers to that question the immediate reason was that. the stalin was about points confirming himself as establishing himself in power and there was still. a large number of. people who didn't necessarily support style museum here are the great repression the great the great courage and so basically almost all of the leadership of the ukrainian party had supported sergei cuticles the challenger and i think he was much of the night some of the devil that in perhaps a good example or so it was briefly an internal power power struggle within the party and stalin was amazing his enemies but for me i think the more important question is how did this happen. and it's and puts this question alexander solzhenitsyn because this question was part of my own because he. he asks you where does this wolf tribe come from where did it come from but it came from among us

because the line that divides good from evil goes through the heart of every man who wants to cut out a piece of his own heart so this this this paradox of this incredible horror could be unleashed by russian men doing what they thought was right but actually make poses a very complex moral question because my grandfather he's built his personal revolution in bricks and mortar he was very active in building one of the great some giant factories in the first five year plan but the men who killed him shared the exact same philosophy they built a postal revolution in the enemies of the bodies of the people they considered to be or had been told were enemies of the people and the only thing that was different was their probably their personal attitude to stalin some of them loved him more. some of them less people if they were going to be as low just world i think goes deeper than that i mean is there personality to murder because it's very

it's very good. when you quoted this this phrase from soldier notes and i think it's true not only about this country but any country about the great inquisition you can say the same thing about it early and about this line that goes through the heart of the people you know but not not not not and not many countries are practiced also genocide on the scale of russians somebody writes right here right now. some countries in europe practiced had said it's not subject. to the auto genocide not of the people even there even if they were nazis killed people who they considered to be. germany germany was pretty proper. ok ok. we're going to be able to hear your grandmother your grandmother. disappear too and this you. able also to find help trace the dead wasn't a knee in in their lives in the in the same secret as was it no was she she she she

was sent to the gulag where wish wish she spent nearly fifty years. because of what her husband did you are here to be because the wife has a as the wife of the enemy of the people. and in the she she survived and she she came back to moscow and lived with her with her daughters but unfortunately she went in insane with them in the inn in the gulag and i met. i remember it slightly but very clearly in when i was five she came to england once to meet her daughter who would by the time married a young britain and emigrated and she says and i i met her as a child but my my portrait of her was really composed of the memories of her daughters from my aunt and my mother you know where your great grandparents was

very. into. my grandparents. my grandfather was buried in his fun margaret of which there are hundreds around russia if i one was just on a bloody bus not recently. but you will know now before we start talking about your father and your mother the second point in the book this empty soviet romance well i should say that in a closed society as the us is travelling abroad or even communicating as your mother with foreigners was virtually unheard of any contact with somebody from abroad could mean big problems spotlighting to the media person. and nine hundred twenty s. so young idealists from around the world coming to russia to keep part in creating would be believed to be a better society fascination with the eighties of socialism brought and estimated twenty thousand americans and canadians to the us society it who in one nine

hundred twenty and one nine hundred twenty five and many of them found they'll are here a lot used to a disillusioned by the regime quickly enough to go home before the stalin's repressions of the 1930's any of those who stayed. to the gulags russian families of the foreigners couldn't escape the same fate in one nine hundred forty seven cross border marriages were completely prohibited by soviet law it was difficult to break the law since here a few soviets were allowed to go abroad after it was a bore wished on stalin's death things didn't become any simpler for those russians fell in love with foreigners the foreigners were in the course of provision by the key g.b. when they arrived in russia their loved ones who were regarded as potential spies the suspicion was enough for a person to lose their job and exulted to remount regions it was not until the nineteen seventies early immigration was allowed russians had to realize that once

they married a foreigner and went abroad it was in most of the pieces one we could out of the country relatives and friends who stigmatized in the soviet union as not been fooled to the regime the real freedom in their in somebody from abroad came on there with the coup apps of the u.s.s.r. . so we just saw how difficult it was to communicate the foreigners how did your father who came to russia in the sixty's manage to meet his fish or if you're living well to fall in love with there were well to become world real close there were he was actually one of the very first generation of postgraduate students the work they were allowed to study it must be roses because partly on. as part of an academic exchange and that was about thanks to chris short because already after the death of stalin and the thaw first it was the festival of youth from ninety five to seventy seven with the first time my father came to russia along with you know so well you know us part of that sense was that he was

at that he did not need him and he didn't need to so much i'm not a child of the thing. but the i was more than fifty seven. but actually that means that. also doesn't make me because i was what you were in the best of the short so and i think i was enormous the importance of turning point for soviet society in fact and by the time my. my my father my father who came to moscow several times first is a research in the british embassy briefly and fifty eight and then again as a as an academic in one hundred sixty three and then it was actually it was dangerous for people with something to lose to meet foreigners because you could get in trouble with your job but my mother was a point of working as a young librarian so actually she and i university actually the institute of marxism and leninism. how did we how how did he

a young british guy go to the market is a. they how they met somewhere somehow they went through mutual friends how my father knew from the first and how i see and the connection was the bolshoi theatre . it was sort of by letter march so so much of my mother loved the ballet and under some mutual friend of the ballet and he said and introduce it to but in fact even when they were introduced. me to a friend called political idiots and didn't didn't introduce him as as as an englishman he said he said he and the stone you know why because it was sort of so as not to frighten her son but if you do speak russian my thought that's because b. and so he's broken russian we could which could sound like a lot like it but is it going to discredit better than you know that he is he said he writes russian but what about me with an accent or you hear process so this is why your mother could have taken him from someone from the bottom before so and made an immense and and they fell in love and if i had

a naive leader it seems to us that they believe that they could get married and they and they did they register. to get married to prove our point. the k.g.b. and. they had been trying to recruit my father for some for some years i'm not quite sure what they wanted why they thought he would be important or interesting but when he finally had it got of so. fiance they they had something on him and they gave him a deal an offer which they thought he couldn't refuse which was either either you work for us or you don't marry your fiance and he took a very brave decision i'm not sure i could have had this the moral courage to do that but he he told them to get lost and he. he was kicked out of the country really persona non-grata years before he was deported and what was the reason the official reason for dating a russian gallo what little know that they actually set him up the they persuaded

a. fellow graduate student to accuse him of economic speculation selling genealogies of any of them or something and it was a really really nasty story i mean when the author of the road to throw this guy out of university you know it was it was a typical sort of nasty k.g.b. story so they basically bit these they set him up i mean very obviously it had been even conceal that it was you that it was have been you mum should have been very brave after that because she continued keeping in touch with him and enter and try to meet him and twenty to get to go to england and all that i mean this was pretty brave indeed and that's what makes the whole story so extraordinary because to us it seems almost incredible it's one hundred sixty three so it is at the height of the cold war it's in its job just as i think you cuban missile crisis and these two young people have been separated very forceful possibly by the soviet state decide that they're not going to take that for an answer they're not going to take no for

an answer they're going to fight to be together and in that decision only partly it's naive but it's also really insane be brave and it would be crazy if it weren't for the fact that they eventually succeeded six years later because in fact the. one of the oldest things about the whole story and something that surprised many western readers was that they were allowed to correspondent and they wrote to each other every day and the correspondence is magnificent it's incredibly moving it's beautiful. but a lot has got to go through some of them were down close but they corresponded freely ok well thank you very much for this interview i hope that they the readers of all learn more from reading your book thank you and just to remind you that my guest today was how when he was journalist and author of a book called stallions children and that's it for now from all of us here to talk like that and more until then stay artsy and take a thank you. it

.