Description
Presented by Daniel L Schlafly Jr. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Sesame Street decided to produce a Russian version. It would embody the same values as Sesame Street in the US and other countries—friendship, sharing, and love of learning—in a Russian setting with distinctly Russian characters. Starting in 1993, executive producer Natasha Lance Rogoff worked tirelessly to overcome enormous obstacles—cultural stereotypes, political and economic crises, even assassinations, before she and her talented and dedicated Russian-American team aired the first episode in 1996. Ulitsa Sezam was an instant success, watched by millions of children until it was taken off the air in 2010 under Putin’s increasingly nationalistic and repressive regime. Rogoff’s “Muppets in Moscow” (2022) is a vivid first-hand account of the Ulitsa Sezam story.