at least six paul garion have used self-immolation as a very desperate and extreme form of protest but why kristen ghodsee a professor at bowdoin college who has extensively talked to bulger and protesters claims that those who self-immolating are just incredibly desperate and cannot feed their own children and that people are actually becoming a stealth check for communism because at least that system at the people's basic needs the current democratic system from the populous us perspective according to her just cycles through a few new crooks every few years although it does get media attention and you may be feeling desperate suicide is never an answer the more living bulgarians the better bog areas chances believe me but that's just my opinion.

this is the best time to come here before opening hours to hear all this silence you can feel that the holes and everything in them are waiting for this day. i was about three years old or maybe less when i first came to the hermitage i remember the impression that everything here is alive but i'm in a sort of buried tale and when i touched the feet of the atlantis i felt that they were alive and only statues of ancient gods they seemed alive to me too maybe they were just frozen in the moment but they were still living and probably still working some of their miracles.

it's need to preserve in the starfish near tears david got there oh yeah and. you didn't have to do this. the hermitage is them and international. institution and it's famous worldwide if you for yes very jealous that i get to have this opportunity to see what the most of the public wouldn't be able to see. i don't think too many people have ever seen me or even heard of me but i am one of the oldest guardians of the herman taj who knows what could have become of the exhibits if not for me and my friends. biota balance line is never late for work but she isn't an employee here at the

hermitage or a good iona is a volunteer from england and we stand in the entrance we have seats healthy full and they're passing three t.v. and ten styles we have to tell them to take off the outdoor plating case in jackets and put them in the play family and just answer any general questions that they may have about an uneasy about west finds not so guy. an excursion. in london iona studies russian culture a friend from russia recommended that she worked at the petersburg built into. the schools to the best of yes and that certainly sent it i says say when the c.s. both a solid thought and put a ninety m. yes it's. not totally fuzzy and you just wouldn't die and uncle sam uncle escudo

will be conservative lol. iow no bucks here for free she's one of one hundred fifty volunteers they all share in the visitors carry boxes arranged chairs where they needed to be whatever it takes to earn that prestigious title become a volunteer not everyone is worthy of the on a. just about five hours is what we expect from people if they really want to become fully fledged volunteers then we'll have a museum pass made for them. five hours a week is the minimum true quiet newcomer oksana can find enough free time and she passes her probation period she will also become a volunteer at russia's grand museum. where you will be taking part in one of our

grand events dharma taj camp day. instead of an interview i was taking by the hand and led to the basement where we're hanging peaches i have absolutely no idea what we're doing or what it is for but i see that it's all about the cats day of camp. which is. it's for the cats and there's lots of people you realize underneath the heavy it would catch in my very early through the day and. get in the way down as any of the precious life that they have. she's right no enemies down here i've been in the museum basement with my friends for years roan dare not set foot in this place they can sense danger from all four.

volunteers. could you help. me felicitas i think we need to fix this here. you don't need scissors and i'll show you. ok. so this is how we put our volunteers to work. on a becomes a volunteer will be mysterious decision. came to the home of his one day to offer his own help. both of us in petersburg three hundred verse three was approaching and i didn't want to be just an onlooker in two thousand and two i came to the hermitage offer to organize a group of state hermitage volunteers our task was to find one hundred fifty people and select the most active ones who would be able to act in any unexpected situation you have to remember that on the night of may twenty seventh when the hermitage was open all night it had the highest number of visitor many many

pregnant ladies because a lot of them hope to have their child on this very day because there were special prizes offered like apartments for babies who were born on some petersburg's anniversary. indeed a few women did deliver their babies right here in the hermitage. or so the volunteers had to be ready to do whatever was needed to react quickly and keep smiling while helping us to resolve all possible situations. but first the volunteers were not well received at the museum. veterans sort of the new generation wanted to take away their jobs after only a few years the stuff members became more friendly. how are you. first of all please. because. it's very important

what is the. it's. i will tell you a little bit. about comparing the trees studying them can reveal a lot of information about the state of the environment the tree grew in and its age. francis infelicitous to work out how these. two have. put it out of the water. that it's so. scary to do it wrong and.

show any rings and it's easy. it's more useful to do it was. recently volunteers have begun taking photographs. descriptions measure ancient greeks found on the north sea coast. they've measured the whole sarcophagus as well as every tiny detail you can see the. so many decorative elements every single decoration needed to be measured and photographed. most important is that each volunteers will be mentioned in the academic prospectus has. featured dozens of names of people who worked on the team here for over a year all of them were really immersed in. in this fascinating process.

santa is going through her own probation period. have to go through all this herself if she succeeds. her assignment is to help organize a game for the grand event can stay at the hermitage. camps are very important inhabitants the winter palace and the state hermitage. they've lived in the old winter palace since the times of peter the great when he brought the first cats from holland a bit later his daughter elizabeth just special de craye for cats to be bred in what is now modern day ten. fifty cats were then brought from. since the seventeen forties those cats descendants have lived in the winter palace they've

been provided with food in return for keeping the exhibits say. we are also volunteers of sorts we work for food and that serena she is also a volunteer gives us food and medicine and takes care of us i don't quite understand why she does it. matter of course her name is so if you call. if you better hair she's going to. here. right here. where often asked which cat is our favorite but that was our favorite is the one that is the saddest the one who is sick at that moment we give them all the same love and care when they get well we have another favorite who is less happy than the others. and with that you will hear little girl my beauty

let's take a pill here's a good girl well done here we go. we now have sixty five cats at the hermitage that can sometimes reach eighty five there were times when we had one hundred twenty cats of course we try to make sure the number of the animals stays within a certain limit seven to is the maximum we can afford it. but if there is more there will be trouble. cat so selfish they like their own territory. and we don't have my set told we have so many cats but the money is just don't show up here there was a time when the cats were removed from the museum i don't know what happened but in a month we lost half the library because rats ate everything they don't care much for the value of an exhibit even if it's a million dollars they'll still finish it off i know i have

a cat at home and i'm starting to look a bit like a cat. i can now like a cat and my like a cat. my cat and it was good he does it like this. it meant that there meant a she's my childhood fairy tale and where my parents would take me with you while you're here and forget which century it has if feel like your it has torn i call it character but i remember when i was a child i always wanted to walk around and i stress it with the beats courage to where i had of course it was my dream to play a part in all that is to help somehow to gain access to the archives. this is a very important event both for visitors and volunteers we've been preparing for it all year it's an incredibly exciting celebration for the kids.

it is time for settle this question about britain and europe. david cameron's under increasing pressure to guarantee a vote on the u.k.'s future in the you have a song of britain's european fault this fear that such a divorce codes because as strong. choose your language. make it without going to some of that. choose to use the consensus to. choose the opinions that degrade to. choose to stories that impact your life choose be access to.

hello jim. that's the chili the game begins here this is the story today were fishing and this is a map of the hermitage to help you find your way around this is where it begins and this is a clue that you need to get to where you need to go. about this is a quiz that needs to be answered if you get the answer to the question right you go to our person in a room and then you get another flyer and go to another room to see which of the boys need to pay attention to these kiddies here. here you go. there's a lot of course many of my friends my parents at first asked me why i said because i like it it's my hobby for quite a long time mom couldn't get used to me leaving early for the hermitage and coming

home wait now she's used to it the families gotten used to it yeah she's a hermit so she's at home there and you can drag her out of there. you know usually come to the museum before opening time and doesn't leave until god closes the main entrance on the tenth anniversary of the volunteer service friends jokes that they should give you a letter or a curve but then she'd be able to spend the night there was well. i like it maybe i would have been a housewife maybe i read a book maybe watching t.v. but it's not that interesting it's boring i have bored very quickly so i came here first of all it's a museum there's always something interesting happening here there are children today is the hermitage cat day and the day involves a game we catch big fish and small fish so this is the. challenges to find stories devoted to caps and fish. we've set up a few checkpoints in the hermit with volunteers post about them it's

a mess where you see the guys all of them taking part in the quest they find the right picture the right story or piece of art the sounds of the questions and then move along the route that. you found a fish you found one so go on read that question see life two large fish glittering with scales it sits on a low table the third one at the feet of the boy who is holding a bowl of succulent fruit and a basket of green the bouyeri presents one of the summer months. to put down next question. next question. your answer. was and. usually i mean like the way children's health oh i'm helping them nice to have in fine guest.

that's very very funny. seeing that because. we got infested in a cave and i. get that it seems like a great game it's really getting teligent because they have set identified back to us back and they're all getting excited to see us and out and i think they at i find it interesting as well they give them the buy it. that's it with them so this year's reward for all the participants was a trip to the theater. performance was specially staged for them because. i. did not.

a few years ago a portuguese writer worked with the children here in the same way he had decided to write a book about russia and came to work and. back then volunteers were often bankers who'd gone bust in the crisis children of people who worked in world famous museums . whose father is the louis director. he didn't mention who he was a where he was from like everyone else he helped everywhere. to the conference is he helped with evening events he helped if we had to meet guests or something he helped the department carry boxes folders and he always worked with us here he also talked french here in the department to anyone who wanted. along with everyone else student visitors questions and sometimes the most unexpected questions. some people think that they're at the russian museum and when they're told at the

moment they're very surprised with where's the russian art where's the dip and they say you know one time for example a young man came up looking around the room asked where he was he was told you were in a museum. and he was still surprised his second question was which one exactly did this chinese tourists are an interesting but i've never found anything that they find particularly interesting. the paintings hanging on the poles as just decorations the same with floors and ceilings i even heard of one group of chinese tourists who turned down a trip to the hermitage because they said they'd already been to the over so they already knew what a museum was like. in america everyone always talks about the from the ties to the collection of old

renaissance art that's the most famous stuff that gets talked about america and i of course want to see it and i also in america i study history and reading about. the revolution that was in the same petersburg and that all the stuff that happened here through history and i got to see that all my first day here and i've seen that many many times in the north and. one of raymond's dreams is to join an expedition with just from a. over the summer museum staff conduct excavations in russia's regions and inflate everyone to take part. this is our expedition we've been doing it for fifty years now last year we celebrated its due to anniversary and i have to say that many monuments have been discovered over those fifty years of excavation but we can still see that even more sites remain unknown usually archaeology department

i've done translating work about different. exhibitions that people have done but signed the researchers have done and also i was doing some translating renaissance art that's definitely been the most rewarding work because it's been interesting and it also helped me practice russians. in the archaeology department is for many volunteers one of the most interesting places in the museum. you can literally touch history. for these ancient objects which are from. different things that they found and i need to document this way. to help. and you have to be very precise been doing these drawings it's not like normal and touring where you might miss out some things hey you need to every every mark is important for the. thing

to be and to be behind the thing. and to see the. good public feel the best research. which i would have no idea that there were so many shelves and shelves of all these different i. think most people wouldn't even . know about what was going on behind. sometimes thank the volunteers by giving them free tours for example a tour is a new storage facility in the old village region. of what was stored in the museum was once moved there but there's a million items. alone just being attentive that is russia's interest comes through in the second also number shows. certainly listen. there was a visit by the turkish ambassador to st petersburg with diplomatic guess and one of those gifts is this tent it's all around us it's like were inside the museum exhibit. this is i mean

a fifth of it the rest is still rolled up and stored away the tent is way to launch because it covers about a hundred square meters. along with a new storage facility. will soon be offering the museum of modern not. this building is the left wing of the general headquarters built by karl rossi in the early nineteenth century before the revolution and the ministry of finance and the ministry of foreign affairs were here next year this grand reconstruction will end and will have one of the largest contemporary art museums. of the world in one of the two courtyards which have been rebuilt so far we can already see one of the first exhibits of the it's an installation created by the

already famous russian artist. who. they created this immediately after the collapse of the soviet union. member this installation. it represents the emergence growth of the soviet union and its collapse as it. did it actually yes this isn't just a dead body left behind it's part of the installation. we lived through constant construction during communism was sold therefore this part probably just represents the continuing construction there is still many things they haven't seen the herrmann towers but i think one day they'll catch up and join in other events. maybe you want to pass something new look and thank god i did that that i glued this test says for example painted over that crack over there it's this involvement

was everything that he passed by you see it and realize you have something to do with that as while you're also part of history part of the museum part of those accidents. oxana is now all the interior of the habitat and elena its new employee after six years of selfless support to the museum she's been offered a job. but even so elena still volunteers at the end of her working day she hurries to meet the visitors with a smile. modern russia was built on coal. fields for its factories. coke for its steel. cold as it was and heat for its people.

joined me james brown to meet them in to spend their lives underground and look in one of the world's most dangerous professions. would love to see you. hearts of coal on altie. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.

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more news today violence flared up. and these are the images and seeing from the streets of canada. today. speak your language. programs and documentaries in arabic it's all here on. reporting from the world talks about six of the interviews intriguing stories. you. see in troy. visit. to.

the latest news and the week's top stories in the hunger strike at guantanamo bay passes the hundred day mark with inmates risking their lives in their protest against indefinite detention without charge. u.s. government seizes the phone records of over one hundred journalists from the associated press sparking media outrage but the white house insists it was not involved in the probe. syrian government forces take the fight to the rebels in the key town near the lebanese border. seen as an entry point for smuggled weapons and mercenaries. and more spies in disguise russian security exposes a cia chief in moscow as u.s. intelligence is left the red faced after getting caught.