Dan Snow's History Hit - The Muppets Take Moscow!

Episode Date: February 13, 2023

Car bombings, assassinations and a military takeover: these are just some of the things American TV producer Natasha Lance Rogoff and her team faced when trying to bring The Muppets to the former USSR in the 1990s.After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russia that emerged was a chaotic, sometimes violent free-for-all for western investors and oligarchs, swooping in to buy up businesses, natural resources and really anything they could. For regular Russians, they had to navigate a new, more free society and Natasha, a fluent speaker with experience in Russian TV, was drafted in to introduce The Muppets as the ambassadors to show children how to do that.An exercise in trying to introduce western values but also establish international relations with a former enemy, almost every aspect of the Russian Sesame Street- Uliza Sezam - was coloured by cultural clashes. Both nationalities had to learn to work together and better understand one another. What was created was a wholly Russian show, with new characters founded in traditional folklore and music informed by Russia’s rich cultural history. The show was a huge success, beloved by children across the entire USSR and ran for 10 years into Putin’s reign of power.Natasha joins Dan to tell this extraordinary story as they delve into the societal pressures faced by Russia after the Soviet Union and its relationship with the west which is still so relevant today.Her new book is called ‘Muppets in Moscow.’Archive of Sesame Street and Uliza Sezam courtesy of Sesame Workshop.Produced by Mariana Des Forges and mixed by Dougal Patmore.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download the History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download the History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. Today we're going to be talking Muppets. We're going to be talking the Muppets in Moscow. It's not who you think. It's the actual Muppets. Like Ernie and Bert and Big Bert and everybody. The actual Muppets were taken to Russia. This was a huge plan, a publicly funded plan to take the hit US TV show that modelled good behaviour for young people, turning them into citizens of liberal democracies, eulogising, reading, collaboration, citizenship, all the things that you would need as citizens of this bright new democratic Russia in the 1990s. The Muppets went to Moscow, and I'm going to talk to the woman who took them there. She is Natasha Lance Rogoff, and she was a young filmmaker. She'd worked in Russia in the 1980s. She spoke some Russian. So she was selected to try and launch the Muppets into the former Soviet Union.

It's an astonishing story because over the next few years, she would experience car bombings, assassinations, military intervention, and gigantic commercial success for the Muppets. The Muppets took Russia by storm in the 1990s and were only cancelled by Vladimir Putin, who thought they were too Western. This is a story about the recent history of Russia through the eyes of the Muppets, and it is fascinating. You're going to love it. Natasha Lance Rogoff has just written a book called The Muppets in Moscow, and she's come on the podcast to tell me all about it. Enjoy. T-minus 10. Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till Natasha, thanks for coming on the show My pleasure, glad to be here Tell me, what were your qualifications for this super elite mission into the heart of the former enemy's empire?

When you say mission with an accent, it just, oh my God, it makes it sound so much more glamorous than it actually is. I had zero qualifications to be executive producing a children's television show at the time I was hired by Sesame Street. At least that was my opinion, because I had spent over a decade making documentaries and news, but no work with puppets or Muppets prior to that. But I did speak Russian fluently and had worked inside Russia's television industry when it was Soviet. And that was from the 80s to the early 90s, culminating in a documentary film called Russia for Sale, The Rough Road to Capitalism. And that aired just prior to when Sesame Street's executives approached me. So, you know, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed person is king. I mean, you had proper Russian TV experience.

Yes, I suppose there weren't that many people at that time. Okay, so you head into Russia. You're going to take the Muppets to Russia. Is this like taking McDonald's to Russia, taking Burger King, taking the Muppets? Is this just capitalism, the invisible hand of the market? Or is this like a strategic, this Russia, taking Burger King, taking Muppets? Is this just capitalism, the invisible hand of the market? Or is this like a strategic, this is like the government going, we need to get the Muppets in there. This is very, very different from McDonald's or Pizza Hut, or the thousands of investors and bankers who were flooding into Russia just after the collapse

of the Soviet Union. I mean, first of all, Sesame Workshop, then called Children's Television Workshop, is a non-profit then. It was a non-profit then, and it is now. And our approach was not to import a show. This is not what we were doing. We were not selling the show into Russia. We were creating an original production with hundreds of local artists in Moscow, Russians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians. And the whole idea was to create a program that would, I would say, model idealistic values that would reflect an open society. So that decision about what that content was going to be was decided in collaboration with many post-Soviet children's education experts and the creative team. And eventually the team numbered 400 people in Moscow, writers, producers, animators,

in Moscow, writers, producers, animators, filmmakers, set designers, and the show itself called Ulitsa Sazam, which means Sesame Street in Russian. Anyone who looks at it will say, wow, this looks like a very Russian show. It doesn't look like a Disney show. It's so different. The comedy is different. The music is different. It's a very culturally sensitive program, which ended up being on the air for more than a decade and hugely successful across 11 time zones. And I don't think that would have happened if it was a piece of propaganda. The hope was it would just be a wonderful TV show that could just engage people and, as you say, promote a healthy future. Yeah, well, that didn't exactly happen, did it? Eventually. What did happen is that initially the show was developed by Sesame Street and the Russian education minister came to the United States.

education minister came to the United States and she spoke in front of the U.S. Congress at a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee meeting. Senator Biden, then Senator Biden, was the chair of that committee. So essentially, the Russian education, the Ministry of Education, was asking Sesame Street to bring the show to their country. Now, why is that? Why at this time would, you know, a couple of years after the Soviet government had fallen, why would they be interested in this? Well, it was a period of intense chaos, poverty, violence, enormous transition as the whole Soviet Union was imploding. violence, enormous transition as the whole Soviet Union was imploding. And as far as television and film goes, there was very little production at that time because there was no state funding for that. And the U.S. government was going to help support the financing of this show in collaboration

with matching funding from Russia. So it could be the Russian government, it could be private investors. But when the show came to Russia, the idea was that the Muppets would be ideal ambassadors transferring skills to kids so that they could thrive in this new open society. That was the idea. So why the Muppets though? Why are they ambassadors for liberal democracy? Like, why not Tom and Jerry? Isn't there an awful lot of violence in Tom and Jerry, come to think of it? There's a whole approach with Sesame Street, which was fascinating to work with the writers in Moscow. We had many

generations of writers working together, those who were, I would say, lauded children's literary writers and people who had been members of the Soviet Union of writers, where obviously to become a member of one of the unions, you're probably supporting the communist system. You're not going to be writing things that go against your system because you wouldn't be allowed in to participate. It was fascinating to see the young people clashing with the older people over all kinds of values that had to do with ideas of equality, wealth, gender rights, how you deal with children with disabilities.

rights, how you deal with children with disabilities. And this writing team was often struggling with a lot of the ideas about how do they approach their new society and how do they write content for children that is going to actually be helpful and useful and positive. So exactly not violent, as you said, not like Tom and Jerry, but that would model what we call positive modeling. And this was really complicated in post-Soviet Russia. And I've had people come up to me now that they say, it was so different. The show was so different because of this positive modeling. You didn't reprimand children for doing something wrong. You demonstrated how to do something well and express yourself positively. It was a very different approach. What was it like for you as an even

younger person back then? You were familiar with it from before, but were things changing? It must have been an extraordinary experience. I love talking to people that were in Russia at that time. It was an incredible time. I mean, it was so heady. The idea that we could make a difference and be in this society that was our enemy for so many years. I mean, in the West, growing up with the threat of nuclear war, and, you know, I had been a anti-nuclear activist at Berkeley in California in the 1980s. And seeing the country open up and embrace the idea of becoming a more open society, it was thrilling. You know, it was so thrilling to see this. And I say that with some caveats, because there were a lot of people that were going into the country to exploit

a market. That was their goal, you know, go in, make money. And it wasn't only the Westerners, it was Russians as well, became a lot of them quite corrupt oligarchs. But there were definitely a number of people that I think of as my people who were there to try to make life a little lighter and full of joy for millions of children. And you mentioned earlier you had to get Russian funding. Now, this is one of the first bits of grit in the old mechanism here because you've got an oligarch backer, didn't you? Boris Berezovsky, many people have heard of. He'd made a fortune out of

privatization like everybody else. Smart guy. What happened with his money? How did that go? Well, we met with him pretty early on. So I think it was like 93. He had made a lot of money from selling cars. And he was gaining more prominence in the Russian government. And also he was a media mogul, so very powerful in Russia's TV industry. So for us, he was an ideal person to partner with because we thought, well, rather than going to three different possible investors, you know, he could fund the whole thing and sponsor the show and also help us get it on the air. But it took us months to have a meeting with him. I mean, to get a meeting. And we finally met with him and told him about Sesame Street and Big Bird and what

we were going to try to create original Muppets, Slavic-based Muppets and a new Russian set and everything. And after the discussion, he was very enthusiastic. We weren't sure if he was in it because he knew he could sell advertising on either side of the show. So it was a business thing for him or was it a philanthropic thing? It was hard to know, but we were thrilled.

And we agreed that his company would write up the paperwork, like a letter of guarantee. And three weeks later, his car was blown up in a car bombing. And that was the same car that drove us home after the meeting. And that was absolutely shocking to see this and terrifying to have been with him just a couple of weeks before. But he was out of the game after that. I mean, he lived, but he had severe burns on his body and he was treated, I believe, in London, I think. You said that was pretty terrifying. Did that start to put you off the whole project? Or do you think that was kind of just an unlucky hazard that you had to overcome? It was the first setback that was of that nature. And I had been in harrowing situations before that

as a documentary film producer under communism. But this felt different because it was so random. And also, he was such a powerful guy to have that happen to him. It made me feel more vulnerable at that moment and also made me question, you know, how ready is the country? There was a car bombing there, but there were lots of other things going on in Moscow at that time, similar situations of violence. So I was worried about that. But I think it was my youth. I just kind of focused on the goal. You know, we got to get these Muppets to Moscow. And this is my job. And it was also a very exciting job. I was a filmmaker. So I had worked with a small crew filming around the Soviet Union. But this was a really big project with ostensibly U.S. government support, and the

budget was way bigger than anything I had ever managed in my life. So there was a certain element of real challenge in terms of the, you know, seduction in terms of the challenge, I think. And so I kind of overlooked a lot of things that I think more perhaps sensible people than I am. My kids now certainly would be more sensible and they might say, hey, maybe it's time to go back home where it's, we have our problems, but at least it's more stable. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. We're talking about the Muppets in Moscow. Actually, the Muppets.

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We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm really interested in your creative disputes, both around the looks of the puppets. Because obviously, Russia, you're going to these countries with these incredibly rich cultures. Like, I don't think the Americans are going to tell us what to do.

So you've got these Russian folk puppets. You've got Rachmaninoff. You've got Tchaikovsky. You've got the literature from Pushkin. And you're getting quite a lot of pushback from all the Russians. We want to incorporate this into our... this needs to be authentically Russian. Yeah, that's true. Russians, you know, everybody knows now, I mean, it's heartbreaking what's happening and where Putin is taking their country now.

But they made such incredible artistic contributions to the world that it just makes this horrible war, you know, even more poignant now. But I have to say that any change in any country, especially when you have such a big transition, there's going to be some pushback. And when we presented the Muppets, so we showed them clips from the American show and a couple of other international co-productions. And their first reaction was like, hey, those puppets, they don't look Russian. And our children are not going to like those Muppets. And of course, I'm sitting here thinking, OK, they're made of foam. They have fur.

What is he talking about? And then at the same time, I understood that they had a really rich tradition. And they reminded me of that. They said, you know, we have a revered tradition of puppetry dating back to the 16th century, and we don't need your Muppets. That's what the head writer at the time had said. So I listened, and I have to say that that discussion about incorporating the Muppets, Henson-style Muppets,

went on for months, and it wasn't resolved. But eventually they came around. resolved. But eventually they came around. Though it was fascinating, their perspective on why the Muppets couldn't be Russian. You also showed them videos like Elton John or Johnny Cash singing with them. And you helped explain why contemporary music was important. Yeah, the music battle was a big one as well, because Sesame Street is famous for its innovative and diverse music. It's what makes the show fantastic, in addition to the puppets, the Muppets themselves. But initially, the music director, Katya, who is a composer herself and she studied at the Moscow Music Conservatory, she wanted all the music in the show to be classical. with Sesame Workshop, one of the reasons I took it is that I had done a lot of writing in the press as a journalist and films on underground rock and roll. And really, a lot of the musicians that I had gotten to know had been persecuted under communism during the communist period.

They weren't allowed to record their music, sell their music. These tapes that they recorded in their homes informally were passed hand to hand. And I really thought that Uluz-Sezam, Sesame Street would be an opportunity to hire a lot of these people and give them a chance to express themselves on the show. So I was very disappointed about that. And I also at the same time felt that there was a lot of music, contemporary music, that could give the show a real freshness and make it very popular. But I also understood where Katya was coming from because most of the animated cartoons in Russia used classical music at that time. So what we were talking about and showing her was very different from anything that existed on Soviet or recent post-Soviet television. But fortunately, that was resolved in a really beautiful way when she meets a rock star who was also trained in classical

music, but he was now one of the lead singers of a punk band. You had other successes as well, like tell me about Ernie and Bert. How did they end up being translated into Russian, basically? So we had to dub about 40% of the show, which included Muppet segments, animation, live action, but not the neighborhood set. Not the neighborhood. That was 100% originally shot in Moscow.

So the dubbing is the stuff that's been created in the US, and you're going to refurbish that for a Russian audience, but then you're also creating original content. So for Ulysses Azam, we created three new Muppets. There was a full-size, full-body puppet, a rod puppet, and a hand puppet. And the way that these characters were created essentially came from Russian folklore and literature. So the first puppet was Zeliboba, who was based on Domovoy, which is a character from Russian folklore. And he's usually depicted as an old man who is at one with nature and protects the hearth in the home. So this character eventually evolved into Zellie Boba, who was taller than Big Bird and had blue

organza coat with fur and twigs and moss and leaves sewn into his coat so that he was at one with nature. And he lives on the set inside a 40-foot tree with a little post box on the front. So that's very Russian. And then in addition to Zellie Boba, there was Kubik, who was a hand puppet and orange with spiky red hair, who's a bit of a ne'er-do-well in Russian literature, always trying to invent things, but nothing ever works. Like, for instance, one of his inventions was a way to dry clothes, and he invented the clothesline. I think you might have a different word for that in British English. No, no, the clothesline, it's not exactly a brand new invention. Yes, that was really funny. And then the female Muppet led to enormous debates about how females, little girls should be modeled for a new Russia. Those debates were just astoundingly both hysterical and unbelievable. Eventually, she became a very outgoing, mischievous, lombada dancing, pink furry bundle of energy. And her name is Boussika. Now, March 1995, you had a bit of a setback. The violence also intruded for the second time on your project. Tell me about that tragedy. So after the situation happened with Berezovsky

and the car bombing, we eventually found a new partner who was Vlad Listiev, and he was running ORT, which was the Russia's largest TV station. And before this, he had already been advising us, helping us navigate the inscrutable TV industry that existed in Moscow. a very dangerous industry because up till the 1990s, really very little to almost no advertising existed. So there was no advertising in Russia in the 1950s, the 1960s. If you can imagine, like as an American thinking about that, Colgate and PepsiCo and everything. One of the reasons I loved living there in the 1980s, mind you. But once the gates opened and people could make a lot of money from advertising, it became immediately an area that appealed to mafia elements. So Vlad Lysyev, who was a great man in Russia who had been trying to create a free press through his own programs, similar to Larry King. And he also was the host on Jeopardy, Russian Jeopardy. And he was also trying to address

corruption in the advertising industry because there wasn't enough money for actual production of news and entertainment and everything else for the Russian TV station. So he eventually agreed to help us and broadcast our show, which we were absolutely thrilled. And sometime later, fairly quickly, he was gunned down just as he got to his house after leaving the TV station where we all worked. And the day after he died, there were tons of people outside the TV station crying and inside the TV station. And President Yeltsin at the time, he agreed to have the TV station go black with just a black screen that said, in memory of Vlad Lyschev. And then you go on a honeymoon and then there's a kind of violent moment. What happened there?

I had left Moscow to get married. And this was, I can't remember if it was one or two days after the wedding, but I was on my mini moon with my new husband. I couldn't be away from Moscow that long. So that's why we went on a mini moon to New Jersey. And I got a call from my colleague, Robin Hessman, who was in the TV station. So this is in Astankina on the 11th floor, which is the executive floor where we were all working. And what had happened is a whole bunch of soldiers came in with AK-47s and took over the 11th floor. And they gave everybody 15 minutes to evacuate the offices where they were, got them out, and then sealed the offices shut with a lock and then wax so that you couldn't break the seal. And my team, Robin, was speaking really fast, absolutely terrified.

And I just couldn't believe this was happening, you know, that you just go away for a few days and it's like, oh, my God, this whole hell breaks loose. And of course, I was really terrified for my colleagues. I did not know. I felt so impotent to be able to help. And Robin kept trying to type. So she asked the soldiers. She was, I think, 22 at the time.

And I kept yelling at her, get out, get out. You're taking a risk. Don't take the risk. And she kept trying to type because she was sending the budget. She was trying to fax the budget to New York, because if we don't have the budget, then we can't release the money from U.S. appropriations and all this. And I just was like, forget about the budget. Just get out of the office. And she was there with another colleague, Misha Davidoff. And then the soldiers made her

leave the office. And she was so brave. She went to the next office they hadn't gotten to yet. And she got them to send the fax in the next office where they hadn't pulled out the phone line yet. So that was absolutely horrible. And that impacted the next months of our production because we lost everything. We lost all the scripts because most people were not using computers. So they were handwritten and we were just introducing computers and training the team. Everybody was working from their different homes and there were no cell phones. So very complicated. But somehow, I mean, I don't understand how, but you got some programs made. I take my hat off to you. How did the show do?

Well, the show became a huge hit. And it went out on October 1996 and continued to broadcast for the next 10 years, well into Putin's era. So today, you know, I was back in Moscow in January of 2020. And when I was checking into the hotel, I asked the receptionist there, two young women, I was like kind of sheepishly, by any chance, do you know Ulitsa Sazam? And they like, oh, yeah, just got so excited talking about who were their favorite Muppets and singing a song from the show. And to this day, like I met a woman from Georgia the other day who was doing hair in my salon, and she had left about five years ago. And she grew up on Ulitsa Sazam as well, and absolutely loved it. So the impact of the show was enormous in terms of affecting multiple

generations. Very sad to think in Ukraine now, there will be young men and women on both sides who would have grown up watching that show. They're now of military age. I'm glad you mentioned that, Dan, because I woke up at four o'clock in the morning recently, and it occurred to me this was just after the now more than a million Russians have marched out of Russia because they don't want to fight and they don't support the war. I mean, think about that. And those are people who are in their 20s and 30s. And they all grew up on our show. It just like gave me goosebumps thinking about it. I was like, oh my God, those are some of our people, you know, some of the Muppet lovers.

But it's the same for Ukraine. I mean, the Ukrainian women and men now who are fighting for their independence, they also grew up on Ulysses Zong. And eventually, did it get canceled because of political reasons? Or did it just lose its popularity like shows do? No, no. The same team that I had assembled initially continued to work on the show. There were new people, but some of the core people remained. And when I was there in January, just before the pandemic hit, I kept asking people, what exactly

happened? Can you tell me? It was very difficult to find a concrete answer to this. And part of that is because by 2010, Putin had already started putting his hand over the independent media entities and trying to crush independent media. And it continued until now. There's no independent media outlets left. But at that time, what I understood from the people that I spoke to is that the

state-run television station wanted to have more control over the show. And they tried to fire one of the key people who had been there since the beginning. And when that happened, the other people quit in solidarity. And that's how this show ended up ending. Wow. So it's tied up with the politics of modern Russia from the beginning right through to the end. It was, I'd say, the most important thing about this show is all the people who made so many sacrifices to make the show. Many of them worked for months, you know, initially without getting paid because there was no funding to pay people. But they envisioned creating this new show,

a whole different way of seeing the world for young children, first on the little screen, and then hopefully in real life. That's why they were there. That's why they gave so much. They cared so much. And these intense debates that we had about values and culture and the differences between the East and West, I think are what make the show so good. That because we had to work through so many of those things, it was a very unique program that really had such popularity in the country precisely because it reflected their own society and where they were at the time. Looking back on that time of your life, you seem to have a sense of disbelief. It seems like a

dream that you did that whole thing. It's a wild adventure. Yeah, yeah, it is. I mean, if I didn't have the videotapes and the memos and the audio recordings and the photographs in boxes that I moved for the last 30 years every time we moved houses, I would say I dreamed it up. Thank you very much, Natasha, for coming on. Tell everyone what the book is called. The book is called Muppets in Moscow, the unexpected, crazy, true story of making Sesame Street in Russia. And it is available on Amazon and at indie bookstores. And you can reach me on my website at my name, natashalancerogoff.com. Thanks for coming on.

Thank you so much for having me, Dan. And we all hope for peace soon. you