Travel Documentary with no narration published by BBC in 2008 - English language
Information
------------------------------
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
3) Motherland
Jonathan Dimbleby explores ten thousand miles of Russia and arrives in a tiny village not far from the port of Astrakhan that was once the capital of the Golden Horde. The symbol of Russian patriotism is the River Volga which runs from above Moscow through the heart of Russia to the Caspian Sea. Not far from the port of Astrakhan is a tiny village that was once the great capital of the Golden Horde. He arrives there in February when the biting wind chills to the bone, and is astonished to find how little remains of the western capital of Genghiz Khan's massive empire. In Volgograd, the former Stalingrad, he meets Svetlana Argatseva, a woman who thinks Stalin has been misunderstood and discovers that she is not alone. In Samara, once a secret armaments city closed to all foreigners, it is Victory Day. Traditionally families take offerings of food and drink to the graves of their departed loved ones in the city's cemeteries. Jonathan joins them and finds that a stranger is welcome even at this most intimate family occasion. It is also the time when new recruits are called up for military service. A sobering meeting is with journalist Sergei Kurt-Adjiev. He works for Novaya Gazeta, one of the few publications that has refused to take the government line. Sergei is subject to constant harassment by the police. Jonathan travels past Kazan - the place where Ivan the Terrible finally smashed the rule of the Mongols - towards Perm. Just beyond Perm is the site of one of the last camps for political prisoners. Jonathan meets a former inmate, who shows him round the solitary confinement block and describes what it was like in the subzero winters. His final stop is in the Ural Mountains, now a place popular with off-roaders and hunters. This is the boundary between Europe and Asia, between ancient Russia and the land empire they conquered stretching to the Pacific.
