In the middle of America

In the next episode of the series "America of the Seventies," political commentator Valentin Zorin tells about the history of the founding, economics and social contradictions of a major center of the US steel industry - the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

This film is about the administrative center of Georgia, the city of Atlanta, about the social and political problems of its inhabitants.

American cities, unlike, say, European ones, cannot boast of a history of the past two millennia. There are no old palace fences, no deep antiquity.., but even in this row, Dallas, spread out on the Texas prairies, is considered a newcomer in America - an upstart without family and tribe.

In ancient times, when heraldry was in use and every self-respecting city considered it necessary to have its own coat of arms, it was placed on that coat of arms that was symbolic and lily for the city (fortress tower, deer head, scales of justice, sword or something else, something especially revered). To this day, it would not be worthwhile to preserve this custom and wonder what the residents of Los Angeles, the third largest city in the United States, would like to take as a symbol. They surely would - they certainly would be the California Highways. Even Americans accustomed to car herds, coming from other parts of the country to California, finding themselves in Los Angeles and its suburbs, marvel at the empty weaving of concrete and asphalt belts filled to the brim with gasoline carriages...

United States of America, early 1980s. From the height of a fifty-story building located in the center of New York on a granite cliff in Manhattan, people on the streets seem small, and the problems that surround them from all sides are impossible to distinguish at all. But they are - these problems are difficult, painful and inescapable. In their tighter grip, today's America and its millions of citizens are beating...

Americans are alarmed... What they have witnessed - a group of journalists from Soviet television, having appeared on American soil in the summer of 1982, America has not yet seen. To whom it would seem in our time to surprise with mass processions, demonstrations of many thousands. They are constantly reported in newspapers, their shots are now and then flashed in television news releases, and nevertheless, the events of this summer are something completely new in the political life of the United States...