It is 1998. After twenty-five years as a BBC TV reporter and producer, Michael Delahaye is sent to Russia as part of a UK/US programme to develop independent journalism in the former Soviet Union. With Boris Yeltsin in power, hopes are high of Russia, along with the other one-time Soviet republics, becoming functioning democracies. Over the next five years, Delahaye and his fellow media missionaries will criss-cross the vast Russian Federation, south through Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan . and into Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Their brief is to bring enlightenment to countries where the very concept of journalism has been unknown for seven decades; to support – sometimes help create from scratch – television stations that will be independent, impartial and promote human rights. What they find is the rouble in freefall, state assets being sold off, black BMWs cruising the streets and an ex-KGB officer tipped for promotion in Yeltsin’s administration . Vladimir Putin. After the Fall, a foot-soldier’s story, charts Delahaye’s realisation of the challenges, both cultural and political, of transition; how, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, the West has repeatedly over-estimated its power to recast other nations in its own image.
