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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Free Thinking

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with artists and thinkers in debates and interviews.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with leading artists and thinkers in extended interview and debate.

Rana Mitter

Svetlana Alexievich

Stephen Kotkin

Juliane Furst

Jacqueline Smith

Free Thinking: Soviet Histories. Part of Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture

Soviet Histories. Part of Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture

08/11/2017

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Soviet Histories. Part of Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture

Svetlana Alexievich on Soviet oral history as literature, and Stephen Kotkin on Stalin.

Svetlana Alexievich speaks on oral history told by Russian women in World War Two, and Stephen Kotkin on Stalin. Rana Mitter sees a musical depicting Soviet hipsters and hippies.

Nobel prize winner Svetlana Alexeivich has collected oral histories of Russian people.  Stephen Kotkin is publishing a three-volume history of Stalin. Rana Mitter talks to them about top down/bottom up histories and also hears from Juliane Fürst about Soviet hipsters and hippies who challenged the system in ways that required no words. 

Svetlana Alexeivich's books include The Unwomanly Face of War, Boys in Zinc and Chernobyl Prayer.
  
Stalin, Vol 2: Waiting for Hitler, 1928-1941 by Steven Kotkin has just been published.  Stalin Paradoxes of Power 1878-1928 is now in paperback.  Steven Kotkin is Professor of History and International Affairs at Princeton University.  

Juliane Fürst, Reader in Modern History at Bristol, is the co-producer of the documentary Soviet hippies (dir. Terje Toomistu) and the author of Stalin's Last Generation: Soviet Post-War Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism.

 

Part of Radio 3's Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture

Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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