Steve Rosenberg

I have been for decades, and I want to see how this very dramatic story ends.

So it was a personal decision, but I totally respect the decisions taken by those colleagues who left Russia after the start of the war.

It was a long time ago.

I had more hair in those days.

It was in 1980.

And I was 12, and BBC Television broadcast its first, and I think only ever, Russian language course on television.

And I sat there transfixed,

The Russian alphabet.

Over 260 million people know it quite well.

And by the time we get to programme five in this series, you will too.

There was something about the Russian language which was enchanting.

The sound, the sounds of the letters.

These letters together make the Russian version of USSR.

S-S-S-R.

S-S-S-R.

and I watched this language course religiously every week and got really interested in the language and the country.

And at that time, you know, the Soviet Union was a very closed place.

And then a few years later,

Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the USSR, and this mysterious, very closed superpower began to open up to the world.

And it was on our television screens every day, virtually, in the news.