Project: Does Russia Have Its Own Special Way? Lessons in Democracy

The Dynasty Foundation, jointly with the Internews News Agency, and US organizations: the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center, provided organizational and financial support for the project.

The major objectives of the project are as follows:

• Correcting the general public's ideas about civil society and the market economy;
• Creating the impulse to discuss the issue of why the democratic development of society and the development of the market economy is so important for everybody, and what it gives people in their everyday life.

The project believes that a weekly, two-month-long TV documentary series could create such impulse. Based on examples of Western countries, the documentary will tell the audience about alternative ways of society development. The planned audience for the documentary is 45 million.

The project is developed and headed by Mikhail Taratuta, a well-known TV journalist, the author and producer of such series as America with Mikhail Taratuta, Russian Rollercoasters, and many other popular documentaries.

The project's strategy envisages not only the creation and broadcasting of the documentary series, but also its subsequent use as an instrument for organizing public discussions on civil society issues within the framework of the regional mass media (TV, press, Internet).

The project is to be implemented in two stages:

• Pilot broadcasting of a serial and holding of a discussion in Urals region — September–October 2005;
• Film shows and holding of a public discussion — February–December 2006.