Video: Stirring Up The Comrades

Phil Donahue takes his talk show to the Soviet Union

The taping was only 20 minutes old, and Phil Donahue was agitated. Not because of a raging controversy over abortion or the death penalty; the trouble with this particular show, featuring a studio audience of Moscow teenagers, was the absence of any controversy at all. "You are like sheep," Donahue goaded at one point. "Are we going to spend the entire program listening to you tell ((Americans)) how wonderful everything is here?" Replied one youth: "What can we do if everything is all right? Do you want us to create problems?"

The discussion soon livened up, however, as students grabbed for...

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