Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia

"How can one not like a story about Muppets? Also, it’s my childhood. I remember those Muppets when they appeared on TV. I was the child who was watching Soviet TV, which if you were fortunate, had ten minutes per day of a show called “Good Night, Little Ones!” I remember the day it was cancelled because Konstantin Chernenko died. I never forgave the Soviet regime because I was sitting there waiting and then some sad music was played by an orchestra. I asked why and was told that the General Secretary of the party was dead, bless him. In this milieu, suddenly, at the beginning of the 1990s, there was this onset of multicolored, completely stylistically and ideologically different things. I remember Disney appearing and watching my first fairy tale; I’ll never forget it. And I remember the Muppets. What struck me most—and I suspect this is what struck other Soviet people too—was the colors. We were living in a very sensory-deprived environment, in a very drab atmosphere. There were hardly any colors. These creatures looked like nothing we had ever seen before. They wore these nylon, bright colors. They had these long arms and legs. They were singing in chorus. There were songs! Sometimes it was hard to understand what the story was about because it was so different, but it was pretty riveting. To now read the story behind all this and how this Muppet show appeared in Russia, is very, very interesting. It is escapist reading, I must confess. It takes you back to those times when, as you said, we were thinking that things would go so well, so quickly. When nothing was impossible. When whatever was impossible yesterday was the new reality today. We can hardly hope for such a coincidence of circumstances again, but they say every generation has its nostalgia, and our generation-specific nostalgia is for the brightness, the newness and the limitless possibilities and risks of the 1990s. The story is sometimes funny but when you’re no longer a child, you understand that the 1990s were not just about bright colors. It was also an extremely dangerous decade and many of its realities were pretty grim. The description of the book on the Pushkin House website puts it nicely, I think. It says that the author describes her subject “with a sharp wit and compassion for her colleagues.” That’s a good formula."