Travel Documentary with no narration published by BBC in 2008 - English language
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In this revealing portrait, distinguished author and broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby crosses eight time zones and covers 10,000 miles, from Murmansk in the Arctic Circle to the Asian city of Vladivostok, in an attempt to get beneath the skin of modern Russia. In this landmark five-part series, he explores the extraordinary changes that are taking place in Russia today and reveals the contours left by history on this vast land. From the Arctic Circle, where the summer sun never sets, to the breathtaking cities of Vladivostok and St Petersburg, from white witches to hirsute masseurs, from oil wells to shamans, Dimbleby's journey is heart-warming, entertaining and compelling.
Travelling by road, rail and boat, his epic journey takes him from the splendour of St Petersburg to remote parts of Siberia, during which he meets both shamans and oil moguls and reveals the most interesting details about Russia and its culture. Jonathan was the only British television journalist to interview President Gorbachev during the Cold War, and, returning to Russia for the first time since those days, he discovers a land transformed. For Jonathan, crossing the immense Russian landmass became as much an interior journey as an exterior one.
In television's first comprehensive journey through the vast and varied landscapes of Russia, Jonathan Dimbleby makes an epic journey from one end to the other, killing cliches and revelling in the unpredictable. Look through one window and you see an authoritarian regime trying to modernise itself into an oil-rich economy. Look through another and you see exuberant people enjoying new opportunities, struggling with old problems. Everywhere, the marker stones of their turbulent past. Across seven time zones and through all extremes of weather, he seeks out the people of this strange and extraordinary land.
A Mentorn Media Production for BBC
2) Country Matters
Jonathan Dimbleby explores ten thousand miles of Russia. He takes a train to Tolstoy's estate, before moving on to the Caucasus, the ruins of School Number One in Beslan, Chechnya and the Caspian Sea. If the action in today's Russia is in the cities, the eternal spirit of Russia is in the countryside. Jonathan finds himself at a reception for a Madonna concert, attended by anyone who's anyone in Moscow. But the next day he takes the train to a different world - the family estate of Leo Tolstoy, arguably the greatest of all Russian writers. Further south he comes to the reality of farming in Russia today, where families struggle to survive after the ending of state subsidies. Voronezh is in the middle of Black Earth country, named after the rich soil that surrounds it. This part of Russia bore the brunt of Stalin's brutal project to bring all farms under state control. Millions died in the famine that followed, and in the purges he later inflicted on the survivors. In the woods nearby, Jonathan comes across a memorial to some of the victims. Pyatigorsk is a spa town, and Jonathan decides to sample the warm sulphur springs. Just above are the great mountains of the Caucasus, the scene then and now of fierce fighting between Russian armies and the local tribesmen. Jonathan gets a chance to ride one of the famous Kabardin horses whose bloodline is prized by breeders all over the world. Jonathan's route takes him past Beslan where 331 people died, over half of them children. He visits the ruins of School Number One, preserved as a memorial to them. Further on he comes across another side of the story, a Chechen village whose entire population was deported to Central Asia in 1944 on Stalin's orders. Finally he reaches the Caspian Sea, under the huge walls of Derbent, an ancient city built by the Persians to defend themselves from the peoples of the north.
