The journalist Taratuta Mikhail, whose biography has been associated with the United States for many years, is considered a real symbol of perestroika. He embodied the hopes of the Russians to establish relations with the West, but they were not destined to come true. We will tell you about the life of Mikhail Taratuta and what he does today.
Early years and education
Mikhail Taratuta was born on June 2, 1948 in Moscow. The family was, according to the journalist, bohemian. Mom worked in the cinema, stepfather was the director of the Great Hall of the Conservatory. Mikhail grew up in an atmosphere of the sixties, but he did not think about politics and implicitly was convinced that the communist idea was not so bad, just something was not being realized as it should.
In his youth, Michael did not plan to be a journalist. He received an excellent education at the Institute of Foreign Languages Maurice Thorez. He studied as a translator with knowledge of English and Swedish. After graduation, Taratuta was sent to Egypt as a translator, and then was drafted into the army, which he served in Bangladesh as a translator.
The beginning of a professional career
After serving in the army of Taratut, Mikhail, by the will of fate, enters journalism. He settles in the Radio and Television, in the service of Broadcasting. It was a special radio that covered life in the USSR for foreign countries, the tasks of the journalists were exclusively ideological, they had to popularize the Soviet way of life. For 14 years, Taratuta went through all the steps of the career ladder from editor to deputy head of broadcasting in the USA. At the same time, the journalist was a member of the party, was a party organizer and still did not doubt the correctness of communist ideas. In 1988, a small incident happened to him: he allowed the presence of an American journalist at the party meeting. The label “lost political vigilance” was glued to Taratuta, this somewhat complicated his professional life, and he began to look for an opportunity to change his job. And he did not think about leaving the radio. He even asked a senior friend to help him leave as a correspondent in the United States. But life decided everything in its own way.
Work in the USA
In 1988, Vladimir Dunaev, a correspondent for the Vremya TV program in the USA, suddenly died. And Taratuta was quickly ordered: pack up and go to America, we are waiting for a report from you. So he was in every sense in an alien environment for himself. He moves to San Francisco, where he heads the correspondent office for the Time program. He had to learn everything from scratch. He mastered the basics of the profession of a television journalist directly in the course of work. Perhaps this is precisely what allowed him to develop his own manner of supplying and selecting material. In total, Mikhail Taratuta made over 1000 reports in 12 years. After 4 years, he matured to create his own author’s program. In 1992, the program "America with Mikhail Taratuta" was first broadcast. This program talked about life in the USA, about ordinary people, about life. A journalist literally opened the United States to the Russians. He says that he was lucky to become the first correspondent in the United States who could honestly fulfill his professional duties without submitting to ideology. We can say that Mikhail Anatolyevich Taratuta became a symbol of perestroika. His broadcast personified the interest of the Russians in another world, in which they hoped to join. In a sense, the fate of Taratuta repeated the fate of perestroika, after years of popularity and relevance by the end of the 20th century, it ceased to be necessary, they gradually forgot about it.
Mikhail Taratuta says that life in America has changed him greatly, he has acquired many new habits, for example, has become extremely punctual. His views also changed; he began to understand the whole falsehood of communist propaganda.
Homecoming
In 2000, Mikhail Taratuta, an American journalist, returned to Russia. Far from his homeland, he idealized the processes taking place here, he dreamed that Russia would become like the United States. But everything turned out differently. Upon his return, he worked for some time on television, released the program "Russian Hills", but after changing several television companies, he still did not receive the desired ratings, and the program was quietly closed. Taratut explains the reason for this failure by the fact that he could not fit into the new television format. He says that he cannot make a program about what he does not believe in.
Life today
In recent years, the journalist has been working on Ekho Moskvy radio. His reprimand still retains a slight American accent. Therefore, Mikhail Taratuta, who defines his nationality as Russian, is still often associated with the United States. He wrote several books about his life in the States, about the features of this country. Today, a journalist often acts as an expert on America, giving comments on various events.
