I'm in the Arctic Circle
at the start of a spectacular journey, an amazing adventure.
I'm both exhilarated and daunted,
because this is not only the largest country in the world,
but it's name is Russia.
This is the Arctic midsummer, which means literally the sun never sets.
It's daylight for 24 hours.
Conversely, in winter it's bitterly cold
and you never see daylight at all.
And in a way, I suppose, it's a metaphor for my journey,
because the story of this country
and of its people is one of extremes.
Nothing is ordinary here.
I started my journey across Russia in the far northwest of the country.
I've been to Russia before, but in a very different era.
Then, in the Cold War, the Russians were on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
And daft as it may seem today, I was always a little fearful of them.
'But my first port of call has quite the opposite associations.'
I took the ferry across to Murmansk, a city which became famous in the Second World War
when the Soviet Union was not an adversary but our ally.
Murmansk was once a tiny fishing village, but during the last century
it grew into a mighty commercial port and naval base.
The reason - the flow of the Gulf Stream
means that the sea here never ices over, even in the harshest winter.
In the darkest days of the war, Murmansk
became a crucial link in the supply chain from the western allies to the Soviet front line against the Nazis.
I found my way through the city, which is rather down at heel
in a Soviet way, until I came to a little allied war cemetery.
'On one headstone, I read the words, "JB Anderson.
'"Steward's boy on the SS Induna. Aged 16.
"His leaf perished in the green, blasted by Arctic gales."
'The conditions on the Arctic convoys were unspeakable.'
Frozen decks, violent storms, but worst of all the Luftwaffe and the U-boats.
In all, more than 50 allied ships were lost on what was called the Murmansk run.
But the people of the Soviet Union suffered far, far more.
Overlooking the harbour today, there is a gigantic statue of a soldier in Soviet uniform.
Massive he may be, but he looks surprisingly gentle.
He's a memorial to those many, many thousands who died
when the German bombers raised Murmansk almost to the ground.
Those who survived were starving.
When the bread ran out, they lived on sap from trees and boiled shoe leather.
Russia's history is one of terrible suffering in both war and peace.
But on this journey, I want to explore not only the past
but the present and the future of this richly turbulent nation.
It was Winston Churchill who talked about the Russians
in terms of riddles, enigmas and mysteries.
And one of the reasons for that is, of course, that there's been
a long period of great secrecy in Russia
which has only just really, in historical terms, come to an end.
Then, travelling on a train like this for a reporter would have been a complete nightmare -
passes, permits, minders, people viewing you with a lot of suspicion.
And the difference between then and now is...is quite extraordinary.
''Now, I could talk freely to anyone.
'And, this being Russia, offer a little inducement as well.'
Da. Da.
Thank you.
'My producer, Teresa, saves me from getting lost in translation.'
Karin was saying that in the White Nights you can talk to friends
all night, because from midnight till eight in the morning all telephone calls are free.
Is that true! Yes.
So you talk on the phone all through the White Nights? Yes, with friends.
'I wanted to explore the changes since the collapse of communism.'
We've walked in here and I say, "Can we talk?"
And the train's conveniently waiting for us to talk.
It's a very slow train, this train, isn't it?
But you would not have said, "Oh, yes, I'll talk to you,"
20, 25 years ago, would you?
SHE SPEAKS RUSSIAN
At that time we would've been followed or asked what we're doing
because if you were talking to foreigners or anything like that, you would have been the subject of
some kind of investigation or something. So we would have been scared to do that.
Do you feel that life is better today than before?
Her answer, "Yes, of course. We are much freer."
Before everything was laid out in advance,
you know, from cradle to grave.
Every step of the way you knew what you would do or what would happen to you.
You didn't have any sort of leeway at all.
It is very different today.
But, and here's my real challenge, I want to find out what's replaced
'communism and what Russia is really like beyond the politics and the headlines.'
Since the start of my journey, we've been travelling south from Murmansk along the shores of the White Sea.
My destination is Karelia.
East from the city of Petrozavodsk, across Lake Onega,
to a faraway place
that very few outsiders ever visit, and which I had barely heard of.
I'm beginning to get a sense of the real vastness of this country
cos we're only in a tiny corner
and yet we could sail like this through these lakes for days
and still not reach a destination.
I'm just thinking, I'm looking at the sun there and I keep thinking
"The sun will go down soon, cos it's about eight o'clock in the evening.'
Of course it's not going to go down.
It'll go down just above the horizon, and will stay there
at about one o'clock in the morning and then it'll begin to rise again at three o'clock.
It's what they call the "White Nights".
It's always more difficult than it looks.
If you push the tiller that way the boat goes that way.
Then the compass here works in the opposite direction.
So it's very, very easy, unless you've done it for quite a long time, to forget.
And I'm skilfully forgetting.
So we're doing a rather zigzag course on what is going to be a 10-hour journey.
If I continue to be in command of this vessel, we will undoubtedly
take twice as long as we should take.
I'm just getting it now, I'm getting it back on track.
I'm trying to get, get the back from 90 to 80.
Just about on it... there!
I'm doing all right now. Not too bad.
Yes. You, you, you, you on course.
We're now on a steady course.
Captain, she's all yours!
This is Karelia, a land of myths and mysteries; of rivers and forests; an explorer's dream.
'We made our landfall on a rocky headland, which is thought
'to contain the oldest evidence
'of Russia's almost unknown pre-history.'
This is Demon's Nose and...
these are said to be between three and 5,000 years old.
You can see this shape of an animal here.
And there's a fish, I think, on...
speared in some way. And then you...
it's quite difficult to see, but if you move around here, from here
there's this figure of a giant man and this is the demon.
He's got an arm, a hand and he's got a fish in one hand.
And as we're right by the sea that's obvious.
And it's said that they used to have sacrifices here,
that the gap in this rock was here before these were actually made.
They were blood sacrifices
and the blood used to run down here and out into the sea.
And they say that this is the depiction of good and evil.
Good where I started, evil to here.
But whatever the case, for me there's something
I've just seen over here which is absolutely wonderful.
They're swans. They're so elegant.
You can trace the neck and the body and there are one, two,
that's been slightly broken away through there,
and some young ones, cygnet, little cygnets here, I suppose.
They are absolutely... I'm not usually turned on I have to say, by cave paintings, wall paintings.
But it is wonderful to see these here. Just to come here and walk through them.
This is quite another Russia from any that I'd ever imagined.
Not hard to be entranced, and yes, ensnared by the magic of this place.
Karelia is laced by a network of rivers that wind deeper and deeper
into the forest - still, quiet and remote.
Out of time and out of place,
it seems not at all odd to be on a pilgrimage to meet a white witch.
Is this an island where we're coming now?
Yeah. This, this is an island and this bridge
is the only way to this settlement.
I'm a sceptic. I don't believe in witchcraft.
At least, that's what I tell myself, but here I'm not so sure.
With a helpful guide called Andrei, we are following in the footsteps
of many other pilgrims who believe absolutely in the power of magic.
A budgerigar takes a fancy to me while we wait for the white witch.
She is called Baba Valya. Come.
OK.
SHE SPEAKS RUSSIAN
Baba Valya is a healer who casts spells
which have been handed down through her family for generations.
But she claims that her powers are God-given
and she works her magic in his name.
'My back's been playing up. Not serious, but a pain.'
Mmm-hmm. Trousers half down.
'Baba Valya offered to help. When I saw the knife, I wasn't so sure.'
Kak? Dzhon...
Jonathan.
In fact, it was quite painless and her whispered incantations
filled me with an unexpected sense of peace.
'It's remarkable that in Russia, of all countries, a belief in
'magic should have survived the last century and be flourishing in this.
'But when she later instructed me to have a bath in salt water
'and then drink from it, I have to say
'my scepticism about magic returned with a vengeance.
'But her sincerity was palpable. I wanted to know more.'
SHE SPEAKS RUSSIAN
'Andrei is an anthropologist who has made a study of magic in Karelia
'and has won Baba Valya's trust.
'Baba Valya explained that the forest
'contains both sprites and demons.
'But when, through Andrei,
'I asked how she makes contact with them, she was clearly put out.'
HE SPEAKS RUSSIAN
'I'd upset her by implying she made contact with demons,
'a force for evil, when she only ever communicates with sprites, a force for good.
'In theory, witchcraft was abolished under communism.
'In reality, no commissar could stop it.
'And Baba Valya says that even the boss of a nearby collective farm
'used to ask her to cast spells to protect his communist cattle from marauding bears.'
Thank you very much.
'I began to see why she had a real following.'
I'm very grateful for you saying...
I'm also grateful for your friend. How lovely!
'Though she hadn't quite made a convert of me.'
However, a reminder of the very non-magical world beyond was timely.
In this tranquil region, it's only too easy to slip into self-indulgent folksiness.
That's both unreal and patronising,
not least because life in post-Soviet Karelia is hard.
At least communism offered security. Now, there's none.
The jobs have gone, the young have fled to the cities and the old die before their time.
BABUSHKI SINGING
So, it was all the more poignant to find a troop of babushki - grandmothers - singing about love.
They had heard we were in the district and put on national costume to welcome us.
This song is of a young girl who doesn't want to marry the man chosen for her by the village matchmaker.
He chases other women and he drinks too much.
In the end, the young couple live happily ever after.
Though the divorce statistics in Russia suggest a somewhat different ending.
CLAPPING
Ti ochen molodets!
Krasivy paren.
You're a handsome man!
Ah!
She says, "Nobody's hugged me like that for 30 years!"
It was a great delight for me.
She says, "I am going to remember all my life that such a handsome man clasped himself to my breast."
If I die it's OK now."
What is life today like in this village?
SHE SPEAKS RUSSIAN
She says, "We've got everything except love.
"We're all old women without any old men." That's how...we need love.
"We need love so much."
'So where were the men, I asked.'
'She pointed to the cemetery.'
They all died. Yeah.
She buried two.
'Behind the smiles and the laughter and the singing is a painful truth that Russian men
'smoke and drink themselves to an early grave, and that their life expectancy is just 58 years.
'Like Ulysses from the sirens, I had to tear myself from Karelia,
'heading west to a very different destination.
I love this sound, just the sea, creak of the sail, knowing you're not using any fuel.
And it doesn't take a great deal of imagination to think
what it must have been like 300 or more years ago coming across these seas like this, trading.
My journey had taken us south from the Arctic Circle, through what was for me an unknown Russia.
But I was now on my way towards a great international city built
deliberately as a showpiece to the world.
'This was my first visit to St Petersburg.
'I knew Venice and Amsterdam, but this was quite different.'
And it's disconcerting.
Yes, it's an astonishing achievement.
Impressive. Even overwhelming.
But it's a confection.
An artifice.
'We were still so far to the north that while I was there
'the sun seemed reluctant to set, and the parties never stopped.'
This is St Petersburg chic.
Very 21st century.
Urbane, charming, and, to a man and woman, only too happy to speak English.
When I was in a different place the people asked, "Where are you from?
"From Moscow?" "No. I'm from Leningrad."
They'd say, "Oh, you are from Leningrad!" The Russian people like this city.
It could easily be mistaken for London or Paris.
But that's on the surface.
Unfortunately, big country, little people.
Like, well, this is big country...
Yeah. a lot of people. This is big country, less people. You know, so...
Practically, here Petersburg, this is Murmansk, this is Vladivostok and we have to, you know, "Hello!"
And when the information reaches the thing
and internet nothing changes this.
So, it's a natural delay system under the title 'Russia', you know?
Perhaps that distance helps explain attitudes which are very, very different.
Where does democracy, much vaunted democracy, fit into all this?
No, my friend, I'm not the right person to speak of this word, because I don't think this word has meaning
any more right now in the modern world, in the modern civilisation.
When we see top leaders using this word we can say, "OK, they have to do it.
"As individual to individual, as citizen to citizen, I don't think we have to use this word any more."
It's not that the glitterati don't go to the West.
They do, but they see it from a very different, very Russian perspective.
If you compare Germany and Russia, we have much more freedom here
in comparison to Germany, because they are so strict with laws.
They invent the laws to help people to feel they're themselves comfortable, and in the end
everyone is just following laws and it brings you to so many complicated situations. And here...
Nobody care about laws.
That's a kind of danger.
It's also part of life and part of freedom.
So, how does the word democracy fit into that then?
I don't like it, myself.
I don't like this kind of democracy.
And democracy for Russia it can, could be death. Really?
Because people don't like democracy at all.
You can go to the State organisations and work for bureaucratic system
and be part of all this vertical of power, which our President is building at the moment.
If you want this way you can go this way.
But if you don't want it you just do your life...
You live outside. You live outside or you live your own life. Very good.
'Such disdain for democracy has its roots in Russia's past, both distant and recent.
'But for me, it was still shocking to discover
'that these sophisticates should feel like that.'
The man who founded this city was a visionary and an autocrat whose memory is still revered.
Today, Peter the Great looks across the River Neva towards the spot
where the story of St Petersburg began a little over 300 years ago.
A modest beach, a little summer playground,
which was then no more than a marsh.
The story has it that one spring day in 1703,
Tsar Peter came through this pestilential swamp, as it then was
with his noblemen. They were looking for a place to build a fort to avoid invasion from the north.
He surprised them suddenly by leaping off his horse, seizing one of their swords
and cutting a swath of turf in the soil
and what is now actually imported sand for the bathing beach.
He could hardly have chosen a worse place for a fort,
let alone for what he soon said
was going to be the most magnificent city in Europe.
Grandeur on this scale took more than one tsar to create and more than one century to complete.
But Peter's was the blueprint and Peter's the obsession.
But to realise this vision, scores of thousands of labourers perished from hunger and disease, sacrificed
on the alter of his ruthless urge
to transform Russia into a truly European nation almost overnight.
Everyone but everyone, including the nobility, were literally slaves to Peter's dream.
Three centuries on, as a very conventional wedding party gathers beneath his statue, it's ironic
that, despite Peter's intent, Russia has not so much failed as declined
to turn itself into yet another great European nation, whatever it may look like on the surface.
It is an absolutely glorious city.
But I still don't know what I really feel about it.
In fact, that's so far the same of Russia as well. It's complicated.
It's dense.
It's both in your face and elusive.
I read, I listen, I try to learn, and I've still got very few answers.
I've seen quite a few of the palaces now - the fantastic confection, the facade.
But there is, as I now very well know, not least from this wonderful writer, Dostoevsky,
that there is another St Petersburg as well, the real St Petersburg behind that glittering surface.
Writing more than a century and a half ago, Dostoevsky described
those corners of the city where, as he put it, "another sun shines.
"Where all is gloomy and dingy.
"Where the floors and walls are discoloured
"and the cobwebs thicker than ever."
So this was your home, for quite a long time?
It used to be. For quite a long time?
Oh, for more than 30 years.
'Ilya Utekhin is a social scientist
'who grew up in this building in the Soviet era.
'He lived at the top of this once-grand staircase.'
It's pretty depressing that it's like this, isn't it?
But my grandmother told me there were carpets here on the stairs.
There were carpets down here? Yes.
In her childhood. Well, it was right after the Revolution.
The Bolsheviks forced the rich
to surrender their grand dwellings to the proletariat.
What had once been home to a few wealthy households,
became communal apartments
crammed with more than 100 people to every floor.
How many families living in this block altogether would you guess?
In this apartment, 53 or 55 persons in 1960s.
Yes.
So, please.
Thank you.
OK.
Inside the apartment, we found ourselves in Dostoevsky's world,
but in the 21st century.
It smelt of boiled cabbage and old sweat.
It's hard to believe that three quarters of a million people
in St Petersburg still live in communal apartments.
You lived...
This was your family kitchen, shared kitchen, for what, 30 years?
Oh, yes. That's true.
And this was my table.
It is not mine now.
And here was my cooker.
You pointed at just those two. You had half a cooker?
Initially it was half a cooker.
Then it became whole cooker when the density of the population fell.
What was it like? Oh, it was quite natural.
If you are not accustomed to anything different it's not strange to you.
It's quite possible.
You see, more than half of human kind are living in conditions even worse than this.
If I'm standing over here and I like singing when I'm cooking,
and someone's cooking there and actually hates me singing,
those things create great social communal tensions, don't they?
Yes. Really.
And this place, communal kitchen is the place of communal scandals.
When people are shouting at the same time, it's like Italian opera.
What impact did it have on people
to live like this for a long, long time?
It led to some special features of character.
This lack of privacy, this sort of being on stage,
and at the same time the idea of sharing.
The social justice in this small community
is very heavily loaded with envy.
Could you imagine ever wanting to live back in this kind of place?
Oh...
Yes, I think so. It's not...
Like this?! It would not be...
Well, you know... You'd want to?
Soviet people are accustomed to all things. Do you know why?
Because they separate their life and their everyday life.
Their life is something special,
is self-realisation, is spiritual life, is...
..Achieving something in your work,
writing books, I don't know, having good relationships to people.
And the everyday life, this sleeping,
eating, washing dishes, things like that,
they are not important for your life.
This is everyday life and you can just...
It's the material conditions. Doesn't matter.
I have to say, I'm jolly glad I don't have to make the choice.
Yes. Me too, you know.
I went to visit the spot where the man who caused the grand apartments to be turned into people's palaces
arrived back from exile by train to the Finland station.
It was the spring of 1917,
and it was in this St Petersburg square that Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
proclaimed a worldwide socialist revolution.
You can picture the scene.
Crowds here massed, their hero's returned home.
They're waving banners, chanting.
There's a band playing La Marseillaise.
And then he arrives, a stocky figure, bald-headed.
But he immediately commands their attention
and above the hubbub you can hear his words,
phrases like "Imperialist slaughter", "lies and frauds",
"capitalist pirates" and the rest.
When he's finished they put him up on their shoulders
and bear him off in triumph to an armoured car,
and there he disappears from them
to impose on the Russian people the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
I wonder what he'd think of this city now.
Leninsky Prospect.
Today, perhaps the most tangible evidence
of Lenin's vision for the city is the metro.
Leninsky.
With only a couple of Russian words in my command,
I try to buy a ticket.
Mmm.
WOMAN SPEAKS RUSSIAN Now I'm really stuck. Erm...
Leninsky.
One.
This is a people's palace,
where even today the workers of the world really do unite,
to go to work.
Although it's not so very long in the march of history
since the final collapse of Lenin's dream,
Russian communism seems already to have been consigned to the ashcan of history.
For many young people it's simply a folk memory.
For their parents, not so much forgotten as half-buried.
But one memory is still very much alive.
So powerful that it will never be erased from the story of this city.
The siege of Leningrad.
It lasted almost 900 days.
From September 1941 to January 1944.
One million people, half the city's population, perished.
The survivors wrote of their torment by hunger,
of cannibalism, of corpses piled in the street, of the city as a morgue.
SYMPHONY CONTINUES
Leningrad survived because of this lake, Lake Ladoga,
an expanse of water so massive
that the Germans were unable to encircle the entire city.
In the bitter months of winter,
the Russians built a road across its frozen waters,
which brought some relief at least to the starving city.
It was this fact that made me realise
that for all its oil and gas,
Russia is really defined by its waterways,
the seas, lakes and rivers which form the arteries of the nation.
150 miles further along the Volkhov, you reach the first great city of the Rus.
Novgorod.
RUSSIAN CHOIR SINGS
'Novgorod was founded over 1,000 years ago.
'It became a great merchant city, a centre of culture and learning.
'As one of several independent statelets, it was remarkably open and progressive.
'But in the bloody turmoil of the 16th century,
'it was crushed by another city state called Muscovy, or Moscow.'
BIRD SQUAWKS
He disapproves.
But one powerful institution was spared the onslaught.
CHOIR CHANTS
Secure within the walls of the ancient Kremlin, the thriving Russian orthodox church.
The most potent living relic of the Rus.
Rurik presided over a pagan people.
But his descendant, Prince Vladimir, judged that the Rus would
only command international respect if it acquired a credible religion.
To this end, he dispatched emissaries to enquire into the world's great faiths.
Eventually, he opted for the eastern orthodox version of the Christian religion.
According to Russia's ancient chronicles, Vladimir was much taken by the magic of the orthodox ritual.
PRIEST SINGS
But, doubtless, he was also told that the patriarch
never sought to challenge the authority of the emperor.
It was an epoch-making decision -
arguably the most fateful in all Russian history.
It created a profound divide between orthodox Russia and catholic Europe.
The Russian orthodox church was to impose a rigid set of rules by which all had to abide.
Only religious works of art were permitted.
The use of musical instruments was forbidden. Likewise plays and poems.
Only the icon was allowed, and the icon was everywhere.
But that was not the end of it.
While Russia's spiritual leaders wanted absolute control over the souls of the people,
their earthly rulers wanted absolute power over their lives.
A deal was inevitable.
The priests would serve the tsars,
and in return the tsars would protect the priests.
It was an unholy alliance.
As Russia's great writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn put it,
"Russian history would have been incomparably more humane
"and harmonious if the Church had not surrendered its independence
"and had continued to make its voice heard among the people."
By now I felt my journey had already taken me in and out of several very different worlds.
But from an ancient Novgorod I wanted to press on to the new Moscow.
'I'd been to the Russian capital before, but it was a couple of decades ago.
'In the meantime, the city's been transformed.'
RUSSIAN ROCK BALLAD PLAYS
Communism is dead, capitalism is rampant.
'Growth, growth, growth, and the traffic jams to prove it.
'A gridlock can last eight hours.
'I needed a break.
'What better than a Russian bath house - a banya.'
I'm coming to the oldest baths in Moscow.
They tell me on the brochure, "You will gain the health and joy of full life, harmony and self-confidence."
I need all of that.
'A visit to a banya is meant to be a social event.
'You don't usually go alone.'
Extraordinary place!
It's like coming into a little Viennese palace, isn't it?
I suppose I go this way.
Morning.
'I began to feel I'd intruded on a sybaritic rite,
'to which I hadn't been invited. A touch disconcerting.'
I come around here?
It's a bit fanciful,
but there is a kind of metaphor here.
If you think all down the centuries,
the Russians have been oppressed in one way or another...
by tsars, autocrats, bloody tyrants,
dictators, the Soviet system,
and now, well, whatever it is now,
I kind of feel that I'm the Russian people here.
Frivolous thought, but it's the kind of thing that comes to your mind when you're going through this.
Argh!!
HE LAUGHS
Argh!
HE GROANS
GROANS CONTINUE
It's good, though. I know it's good for you.