again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. corporation's rule the day. at seven thirty pm last time these are your headlines on our thousands rallied behind president also that in the syrian capital with the regime blaming terrorist groups for escalating violence head of the cease fire deadline this is the u.n. denounces damascus for recent attacks. all these new military leaders agreed to hand power to civilians to end the sanctions imposed by the embattled african countries neighbors and nations parliamentary speaker is to be sworn in as in term

president and will organize elections within fourteen days. was relentless constant record on floyd leave investors cagey over whether spain can really escape a bell out you know sarah he has drawn hundreds of thousands of people out in protest they say the government's leaving them on the bread by. next the legacy of the man held as the as russia's first socialist political publicist as great grandson tells us of the challenges the renowned writer faced in a country mired in censorship. ok.

hello again i walked into a spotlight the interview shall call to another los angeles program as a tribute to great russian philosopher and thinker alexander kurtz answer the sometimes told the first russian political blogger in the middle of the nineteenth century by a weekly column called the battle published london was as influential among liberal minded people in russia as facebook a larger like today researches claim hurts and created a political background for the abolishment of serve in the shop and call him the father of russian socialist this weekend russia celebrates hope since two hundred has descended from all over the world came to moscow and one of them is in my studio today mr michael harrison the writer's great great grandson living in the us . the. nineteenth century writer and

alexander is often described as the founder of russian socialism he started questioning that saris absolutism as in his university years he's ready made him an almost permanent exile he left for the west in eighty seven and spent the remainder of his life there becoming one of the most prominent thinkers of he's time hertz and set up russia's first free press his newspaper. the bow was published in london in the mid nineteenth century it had to be smuggled to russia were. it was forbidden but nevertheless had tremendous success it is said to have been read even by the tsar our beliefs and of serve them in russia are considered to have been inspired by her chin and he's newspaper merchant and my the west and he's early years but the longer he lived in europe the more disillusioned he became of capitalism and civilization he's later works have served as inspiration for

generations of revolutionaries in russia and globally the british playwright nonstop really has recently revived interest in harsens work on intellectuals worldwide person is one of the main characters in history would you the coast of utopia which focuses on the philosophical debates of nineteen century russia. and welcome to the show thank you very much for being with us. harrison was a thinker an author and he was influential not only in russia but also in the west for example he was the favorite thinker of british philosopher berlin and he's the principal character in a trilogy the coast of utopia by famous british playwright tom stoppard what do you think makes a person 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 starr but i in fact had the opportunity to meet him in london at the last performance of the coast of utopia there the what they called a marathon performance for all three of the players were played together it was a fascinating seven hours and something that i think is even a little more than yeah you you go to the theatre about noon and you get out about eleven and i think of a great. it's quite quite an experience but it's and 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 in there and in fact in the russian revolution but it's not well known especially in the west 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 may affect this afternoon by 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. ever had to return to to the to question returned him to read you know what to do to bring the family to russia i mean was part of that it's a question 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 would. he wanted his son to return and this son was refused a visa by the russian ambassador and was the son of the foreign minister said no 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 of his grandchildren did and that person happens to be my grandfather and he was the only one that came back you know he came back for reasons that are. personal and political and he came to a yes you could say sentimental also he had a love interest and we married and he became a quite famous surgeon and pathologist here. their only crime of which gives and he has varied in the duty is immaterial i went to see his group yesterday and his family still lives where he had kind of

a said story his wife had they had three children and in one thousand and eleven she took the children. unbeknownst to him. she stated that he was she was going with them to their usual spot in germany but instead of going there to go aboard the ship. and still be in the united states and didn't come back. really not. a good thing for him probably a good thing for us but not for him. and there was a small episode that was one of these children my dad one of those three children but it was one of russia has actually gone. 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 to actually love her father so she did brought the children back knowing that she couldn't really make peace with her 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. how well is alexander. legacy how was it kept in the family well that's another good question. i would say it depends on the family the european a manly jogging. i have

a genealogy family in my guess is that there are over two hundred fifty of them living piece today living people dozens of families yes absolutely here is that right now is that the reason for that is that his son now xander had a very large family he had ten children. and they of course had their children you know so branch of very quickly and. the other two children that harrison had one of them never had any children but the other did have and her family also spread out and she had four children over onto a living all over in the states and europe. and so some of them are coming for this event i hope to meet some out a lot of them of course i don't know but i'm looking forward to those really like the pushkin's of the tall stories because they're good. at can you judge how.

really hasn't let you see is steady by historians by. by the. well thanks to as you point out thanks to isaiah berlin he's in fact studied quite a bit but he's in strode an early difficult figure to study. first he he knew too many will think 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. and so you you you have that trouble the other parable 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 it

also i would say that i did i did really didn't and his language just sort of reminds me of soldier and it's very hard to read it's not sort of easy reading stuff you know i think there's something to that on the other hand you know some great writers. have have looked 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 that he was writing he knew that the man was a master of prose which he which he truly was i personally believe and there his memoirs are the greatest memoirs ever written in the russian language and maybe one of the greatest ever anywhere there really is something masterful says mikhail garrets and great great grandson of the russian writer and thank for all of

that the spotlight will be back shortly to break so stay with us don't. to.

move. to. wealthy british scientists that's not the type of. market why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy

with mike's cause or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to cause a report on our cheek. welcome back to spotlight on how we love and just to do. i guess here in the shadow is. the great great grandson of a russian writer and thank you alexandra we celebrating his two anniversary these days. i have heard that today in the early comedies more and more documents more and more like interesting papers are surfacing and people are discovering something new and that i was going to give them practically every year is that true now i don't i think it's a bit of an. it's kind of interesting that blimpie when he when he published his

work in hertz and which is a classic work through. its name he called it the brain yes 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 somewhere or something like that in thirty volumes which was much larger than their peers and it's a really superb edition they didn't do that but just called it the sobranie is that you need a new piece and. and and of course things are cropping up. in fact in the in the one nine hundred sixty the whole series of letters. but it really had to do more with his daughter and her relationship with revolutionary cold and. than anything else and not too long ago there was another major discovery i would say of the correspondence between harrods in dreams

the rothschilds in paris his banker which is quite critical to his sort of financial well being 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 know the. as far as i've heard you you're planning to publish who's only who says biography isn't true. maybe going too far i would love to but what he wanted to know well yes you are you're working for. me we see it. all right to me i don't know what or whatever but i doubt it. so it's going to be a posthumous were. you writing as we say into the table very you go. you know it you know if i want to well it's as i mentioned he's a difficult man to handle he's you can't get your arms around him he's so big i

mean not in physical terms of intellectual terms and he really handled their. mind and breadth of knowledge and accomplishment for one person isn't really it really offered to come to moscow well i've been here a hundred times but this is my i mean one hundred second trip from you know but i'm not counting you know. recently a publishing house in russia printing no books for school children which had stand and support me going to the front page you may have heard about this was a great deal a big scandal in the press so. you wouldn't be surprised i see well this here is actually it's a serious all the great russians for kids. they had like lots of people and they're 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 one would you say

the russians. like. our formal rememberable we say for the tyrants then for the liberators. messagers in question was russians yeah well here's here's my take on that. we did not live in his creative life did not live in russia. and so his influence was sort of behind you know behind the door so to speak his influence on creating in the mind i personally believe in creating a mine to go it was second the idea that he had to deal with serfdom but he had to do something about it comes principally from parents but you know you can see that it's sort of again as you put it under the table it's not so visible and furthermore the spectacular lucian marries the treadle the nudes were later

and there were a lot of them oh they didn't mention harrison one of his most famous works as as an untenable part of the russian revolution process as well as a matter of fact that was a very lucky thing. because the fact that he did meant that in the soviet period he was an acceptable figure. whereas in fact if you got your visa you got a very good whereas in fact you know he was a very strong opponent of marx. so in fact had levon not said that i think we would have some trouble well you mentioned it was interesting that you mentioned you mentioned alexander the first i was one of the first. calls later the liberator right. going to circle was outside the saying yeah i said the second was called the liberator well again. stalin is more famous than harrison and like ivan the terrible is more famous than the old sense of the second the

liberator why why is that happening and i guess going to the russian women many other countries well i think he those people directly affected more lives you know and more deaths. put it that way. and didn't hear of the much more subtle manner of a sort of thinker a man who formulated i think ideas and opinion but he wasn't the man pushing the buttons you know sort of ok. about her son and today's problems many of the problems that he was thinking about that he was writing about i mean i understand her some are still troubling russia today more than a hundred years after after he died so why do you think the principal say of individual rights and freedoms which he was defending why did they take so long to triumph in russia well ok you want to our answer this.

but this is a this is a really tough start with. the now tell me you are going to be ok. here's my. brief on. 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 are constructed 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. including the freedom to vote for whom you like. so i'm not sure how that's going to end up now end up it's kind of funny for as you know things things don't happen

like that make history history doesn't and it continues to move and continue 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 me. and of course it could be better no question you were always pretty yeah yeah 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 rich people distributing the riches of the oligarchs is another thing you know which the russians are very good i don't want to know what.

was the founder of the free russian press and he published and about the call call and the beginning of the program i compared it to to the the internet today a lot like some people really compare notes and say he was the first blogger because he actually did it in london but at the bell actually wrote an. russia so do you think we really can compare what he did with the influence of the internet. my feeling is no i'm the first of all the immediacy of the internet is incomparably fast forrester dishonorably first. and second you know even to this day it's not clear to me how many of his publications actually go into russia and we do know that they did influencers or that they got to the winter palace both nicolas the first and alexander the second were reading it regularly but just how how otherwise

it was influence on the rest of ses a good question we know it was in for sure so what degree had something. to wait my . last question one of the polish insurrection are eight hundred sixty three out and harry pleaded then cause his reputation decline. and even among the liberal public so this isn't me that child and this is the main and one of the principal enemies. which is. i think you could say that i think it's a perfectly legitimate statement however a don't think that's actually what happened in harrison's case. inheritance case what happened to the liberals. turning against him in the after the oceans direction because it was supported insurrection was that he felt they thought that he did not understand the true origins of the goals of the polish revolutionaries.

and in fact sometimes wonder if he did. there was a a major element in the polish rooms in the polish rouge an area that was for reinstituting the germany the nobility and that mints. re enslaving and the poor. thank you thank you very much for being with us and it was it was a great pleasure talking to you in just a reminder that my guest today was michael harrison great great grandson of the russian thinker and all through alexander and that's it for now from all walks of life will be back with more from tom and from what's going on in and outside russia until then stay on part two and take.

me. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm charming welcome to the big picture.

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