well look. it's technology innovation all the developments around russia we've got the future covered. talk about a second look at our main headlines now the head of the u.n. that criticizes the syrian regime for cracking down on the opposition at this point pledges from damascus to cease military activity within days of peace plan indorsed by un arab league envoy kofi annan sounds that thursday that must be a ceasefire between the authorities and rebels. so who is in mali agreed to step down and how to civilians after immense pressure from neighboring countries supporting two weeks of military rule. and critics lash out at the u.s.

for trying and sentencing you adults only it's cruel and unjust around ten thousand miners are held in jails and prisons throughout the country. but next russia to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of the russian socialism right alexander gets a spotlight talked to his great great grandson michel and some comments. ok. hello again i welcome to spotlight the answer you shall follow to another last

place program is a tribute to great russian philosopher and thinker alexander kurtz answer the sometimes called the first russian political blogger in the middle of blanking century by a weekly column called the battle published london was as influential among liberal minded people in russia as facebook and niger like today researches claim a person created a political background for the abolishment of serve in the shop and call him the father of russian socialist this weekend russia celebrates road since two hundred but has descended from all over the world came to moscow and one of them is in my studio mr michael harrison the rights is great great grandson living in the. nineteenth century writer philosopher and a rabble on xander hurts and is often described as the founder of russian socialism

he started questioning that sorry stop salute isn't in his university years he's ready made he and almost permanent exile he left for the west in avian flu seven and spent the remainder of his life there becoming one of the most prominent thinkers of he's time hurts and set up russia's first free press his newspaper. or the bell was published in london in the mid nineteenth century it had to be smuggled to russia. it was forbidden but nevertheless had tremendous success it is said to have been read by the tsar the album nation of serve them and russia is considered to have been inspired by her turn and he's a newspaper person and my the west and he's only years but the longer he lived in europe and the disillusioned he became of capitalism and civilization he's later works that have served this inspiration for junior ations of revolutionaries in russia and globally the british playwright tom stoppard has recently revived

interest in harsens work on intellectuals worldwide person is one of the main characters and he's truly due to cost of utopia which focuses on the philosophical debates of one thousand st should we rush. hello and welcome to the show thank you very much for being with us. harrison was a thinker and author and he was influential not only in russia but also in the works for example he was the favorite thinker our british philosopher. and then he's the principal character in a trilogy the coast of utopia by famous british playwright tom stoppard what do you think makes harrison so much interesting for the western intelligence and for the western public well it's a very good question as a matter of fact i think he hasn't been a very interesting picture person until very recently largely thanks to mr stark

but i have had the opportunity to meet him in london at the last performance of the coast of utopia there the what they call the marathon performance for all three of the players were played together it was a fascinating seven hours or something i think is even a little more than that yeah you know you go to the theatre about noon and you get out about eleven and i think of a great. night. it's quite quite an experience but it's an isn't well known hasn't been but it's becoming more so i think largely due to this play. of course he played a large role i think in russian history and in fact in the russian revolution but it's not well known especially in the worst now that it's changing i'm hoping it's changing permanently will see this two hundred anniversary is going to be attended by. today this many folk this afternoon and i perhaps two hundred people

which maybe fifty will be relatives of parents coming from various parts of the world mostly from western europe and the united states how did. exile. ever try to return to the russian return to road you know or to bring the family to russia i mean was part of the interest well that's a complicated question out there i'll give you the answer to that. the fact is that harrison himself wanted to return but couldn't. he wanted his son to return and his son was refused a visa by the russian ambassador of the time who was the son of the foreign minister and you know russian official. eight hundred sixty eight. in. his second wife so to speak did return.

but he never did and none of his children ever did. but one his grandchildren did and that person happens to be my grandfather and he was the only one that came back and then he came back for reasons that are. really personal and political and he came to yes you could say sentimental also he had a love interest. married and he became a quite thing most surgeon and pathologist here. so there are only some rich kids and he was buried in the duties imagery we wanted to see his group yesterday i just know he still lives where he had kind of a said story his wife had three children. and in one thousand and eleven

she took the children. unbeknownst to him. she stated that he was because she was going with them to their usual spot in germany but instead of going there she got word of the ship and home board and still be in the united states and didn't come back. really. good things for him probably a good thing for us but not for him. and there was a small episode this sort of dad was one of these children my dad one of those three children so it was one of the russian who's actually been. born in russia but in the three children came back actually in one thousand nine hundred thirteen at the request of her father was a rich. actually greek russified greek who lived down in the review and a very large estate there and he begged her to come back she loved her father so she did the children back knowing that she couldn't really make peace with her husband

but she made the least. attempt to do so in moscow and it didn't work but she couldn't come back the way she wanted she wanted to come through western europe the war had broken out and she was required to go siberia back to the united states which she did and i have pictures of my father in a rickshaw in. in japan where they stopped on the way back coming back to the united states. that sounds like dr zhivago and you know yeah. oh well alexander. legacy how was it kept in the family well that's another good question if i would say it depends on the family the european in italy yes i have a genealogy family in my guest is that there are over two hundred. fifty of them

living people it is a living people dozens of families yes. here is that right now is that the reason for that is that his son alexander had a very large family he had ten children. and they of course had their children you know so that branch of very quickly and then the other two children inherit and had one of them never had any children but the other did have and her family also spread. she had four children over. in europe. and so some of them are coming for this event and i hope to meet some a lot of them of course i don't know but i'm looking forward to this really like the push comes up to tell stories exactly. how. it really has its legacy is steady it's by historians. by the end of the.

well thanks to as you point out thanks to isaiah berlin he's in fact studied quite a bit but he's in a straw ridden early difficult figure to study. first he he knew too many thanks which is. he and he wrote in all of them you know and he wrote masterfully in all of them and this story and himself has mastered all those languages is a rare bird indeed. so you you have trouble the other problem is that even when you look only at his russian his russian is not simple he has foreign words thrown into it he invents words. and he has plays on words all the time so it's not trivial to do you also see that i did they did really did his language just sort of reminds me of soldiers in its. since very hard to read it's still sort of that easy reading stuff

you know i think there's something to that on the other hand you know some. great writers. have have looked to harrison and said this was one of the greatest of us all you know untold story one point said his time will come because he knew him and met him in london you know and and knew of his writings even though he didn't agree with he was writing and he knew that the man was a master of prose which it was he truly was i personally believe of it his memoirs are the greatest memoirs ever written in the russian language and maybe one of the greatest ever anywhere they are really something masterful says mikhail gere it's and great great grandson of the russian writer and thank you alex that spotlight will be back should we opt to break so stay with us.

wealthy british scientists are. not like. markets finance scandals find out what's really happening to the global economy with mikes concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on our cheek you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so clear. if you think you understand it and then something

else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't. charge becomes a big picture. looking to to go live to live. i. think. that's a. few. i knew her. live. i wish i looked cute little bit misleading please

please please. please. please please. let lee. i feel. her. welcome back to spotlight i'm old enough i'm just a reminder that my guest here on the show is me highly geared sounded great great grandson i was a russian writer and thinker alexandra harrison will be celebrating is two candidates anniversary these days. mr had said i have heard that today in the early caucus morning more documents more and more like interesting papers are surfacing at. people are discovering something new i don't understand who gives

and practically every year is that true but i don't i think it's a bit of an exaggeration. it's kind of interesting that blimpie when he when he published his work here it's and which is a classic work of the brain is its name you call the pulley it's a brain it's in the complete works which actually was an impossibility he probably knew at the time but for some reason didn't didn't think to change it when the so you didn't came out in the years one hundred fifty four to nineteen sixty three or some or something like that in thirty volumes which was much larger than there is in it's a really superb edition they didn't do it they just called it the some great news that you need easton. and then of course things are cropping up. in fact in the in the one nine hundred sixty s. a whole series of letters corrupt but really had to do more with his daughter and

her relationship with religion recalled to try than anything else and not too long ago there was another major discovery i would say of the correspondence between harrods and james rothschild in paris his banker which was quite critical to his sort of financial wellbeing but outside of that no i can't think of anything that's really changed much of the picture of things and even those haven't changed very much and you would have known because this far as i've heard you you're planning to. use his biography the truth. may be going too far i would love to but i think he wanted or not well you think you are you know we're going to. see it. right. i don't know but ever. since going to be a posthumous work. so if you're writing as we say into the table there you go again

you're the one well it's as i mentioned he's a difficult man to handle he's you can get your arms around him he's so big i mean that in physical terms of an intellectual terms and to really handle that. mind and breadth of knowledge and accomplishment for one person is really really off and do. well i've been here a hundred times but this is my even one hundred second trip. but i'm not counting you know. a recently publishing house in russia printed notebooks for schoolchildren which had stolen support made on the front page you may have heard that this was a great deal a big scandal and so. you wouldn't be surprised i see well this here is actually they said it's a serious hold the great russians for kids. they had like lots of people under from

patient these are these notebooks but you won't be surprised if i tell you alexander harrison wasn't there so how would you comment on that why would you say the russians. like our formal rememberable me say for the tyrants then for the liberators. interesting question russians year well here's here's my take on that. we did not live in his creative life and i live in russia. and so his influence was sort of behind you know behind the doors so to speak his influence on creating in the mind i personally believe in creating a mind about to go second the idea that he had to deal with serfdom and he had to do something about it comes principally from her it's. but you know you can see

that it's sort of again if you put it under the table it's not so visible and furthermore the spectacular reclusion aries and the creator of the nudes were later and there are a lot of them who shouldn't have seen one of his most famous words as as an integral part of the russian revolution process well as a matter of fact that was a very lucky thing for us because the fact that he did meant that in the soviet period he was an acceptable figure. whereas in fact if you look if he's as good a very good whereas in fact you know he was a very strong opponent of marx. so in fact had lennon not said i think we would have had some trouble well you mentioned it was interesting that you mentioned you mentioned alexander the first i was out of the first. cold later the liberator right. the second this out i was saying yeah i said the second was called the

liberator well and now again. stalin is more famous than harrison and like i but the terrible is more famous than old sam so the second the liberator why what is that what happened here i guess not only in russian and many other countries well i think you hear those people directly affected more lives you know and more deaths. put it that way. some didn't heard of the much more subtle manner and i sort of think you're a man who formulated i think ideas and opinion but he wasn't pushing the buttons you know sort. of the one about harrison and today's problems many of the problems that he was thinking about that he was writing about i mean i understand recent are still troubling russia today more than one hundred years after after he died so why do you think the principal say you're

going to vigil rights and freedoms which he was defending why did they take so long to triumph in russia well ok you want the to our answer and. this is a this is a really tough start. we're answered i'll tell you when we. hear here's my. brief on this. this is incredibly complicated topic and every country even the united states you have to fight for those things every day. and they don't just come to you out of the sky you have to you have to construct them and hold them and once reconstructed they don't just stay constructed you have to protect them to get those things and keep them is not simple. and i think even today in the united states i can see where

we're losing some of our most fundamental freedoms. very subtly but it's happening . in the freedom to vote for whom you like. so i'm not sure how that's going to. now end up is kind of funny for is you know things things don't happen like that history history doesn't and it continues to move and it's continued to move here in russia and i feel you know i came here one hundred times during the soviet period my goodness the changes in this country i thought i would never see just amazing absolutely amazing and i'm very encouraged and i'm sure all the rest of you were too it's there's no comparison to what it was no compare you know russians are kind of people who are never happy with the way you mean it was and of course it could be better no question what was prettier than ever and you know one of the one of the ways a lot of people think it could be better is the riches the riches of the oligarchs

could be more justifiably distributed. i think that there's something to that but i don't think it would it would turn the country overnight into a bunch of really distributing the riches of the oligarchs is another thing in which the russians are very good everyone thought it was a. very sort of was the founder of the free russian press and he published and the belt and the collar and that and then the beginning of the program i compared it to to the the internet today a lot like some people really compare heads and say he was the very first blogger and because he actually did it in london but at the bell actually wrote in russia so do you think we really can compare what he did with the influence of the internets. my feeling is no of the first of all the immediacy of the internet is incomparably fast for us to dishonorably faster. and second you know even to this day it's not clear to me how many of these publications actually got interested we

do know that they did influencers or that they got to they wondered how i was that both the first and alexander the second were reading a regular way but just how how otherwise it was influence on the rest of society is a good question we know it was influential to what degree that something will have to wait my. last question when the polish insurrection eight hundred sixty three broke out and harrison pleaded the insurgent force his reputation declined. and even among the liberal public so this isn't me that child and this is the main one of the principle and in these things which is. i think you could say that i think it's a perfectly legitimate statement however i don't think that's actually what happened in harrison's case. inheritance case happened to the liberals

turning against him in there after the old insurrection because of his support of them mr x was that he felt they thought that he did not understand the true origins of the goals of the polish revolutionaries. and in fact i'm sometimes wonder if he did. there was a major element in the polish revolution of polish rouge an area that was reinstituting the germany of the nobility and that mints. re enslaving the the poor. thank you thank you very much for being with us so this was it was a great fashion talking to you in just a reminder that my guest today was michael harrison great great grandson of the russian thank you and all three alexander and that's it for now from all walks of life we'll be back with more in some comments on what's going on in and outside

russia until then stay on target and take.