TODAY’S BEST: Khrushchev Grabs a Shoe, Brezhnev Hits the Gas Свидетели. Тридцать лет с вождями. Виктор Суходрев/The Witnesses. Thirty Years With the Soviet Leaders: Viktor Sukhodrev (Documentary. Russia, 2011)(Kanal Istoriya, 15:30) -- > An interpreter so deft he could turn A. Kosygin’s Russian into American English with a Southwestern accent for a Texas audience, the late Viktor Sukhodrev (1932-2014) became Khrushchev’s personal interpreter at age 25 and worked with/for every Soviet head of state and Party leader thereafter – plus a lot of other bigwigs, both Soviet and Other (e.g. Muhammad Ali, Frank Sinatra and scores of A-list luminaries). This extended two-part interview w/ “the Interpreter’s Interpreter” is less about the function as such than about the people he worked for – and VS is both a natural storyteller and remarkably forthcoming/revealing for a man “sworn to secrecy” by his profession (or while so employed, anyway): the tale of Brezhnev behind the wheel of his mammoth new Lincoln Continental, careening around Camp David with a captive R. Nixon riding shotgun – and trying manfully not to soil himself – is by itself worth the price of admission. And w/ the smooth and friendly-but-diplomatic Sukhodrev, what you see is exactly what you get: I got to meet him here in 1989, at a function for the first US-USSR high school exchangees, and he couldn’t have been more engaging w/ the students or more of a gentleman w/ their teacher: he happily spoke Russian w/ me as though with an equal, when we both knew perfectly well that his *English* was probably better than mine, too. Tune in (or watch online below) for an endlessly fascinating series of anecdotes about and insights into how people at the top really conduct business w/ peers who don’t speak their language, literally. And learn why giving away Lincoln Continentals isn’t always the ideal way to get a major disarmament treaty like Salt II lined up. youtube/watch?v=wC2vIw0Q15M
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 07:13:27 +0000
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