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The last millennium has seen
a world shaped by waves of change
at a blistering pace,

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but there is one nation
which perhaps more than any other

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has been witness to a thousand years
of explosive drama,

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all concealed behind an iron curtain
of intrigue and mystery.

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Russia.

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Russia has always had to invent
history to legitimate itself

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when the real story
was not palatable.

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So what is the real truth
behind mighty Mother Russia
and her hidden past?

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It's a story that takes us
from its earliest leaders
to its most notorious...

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Stalin proves that, let's face it,
the 20th century was
the perfect century for dictators.

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..and on to its leader today.
Vladimir Putin is
a man with a mission.

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His goal has been
to make Russia great again.

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It's the story of its proud people
and the demands of their motherland,

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from bloody revolution to a regime
that demands loyalty at any cost.

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The knock on the door
at three in the morning.

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Someone in your apartment block
is being dragged away
by the secret police.

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Maybe because he was very close
to some truth,

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it was the last straw
and he was killed.

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From a mighty superpower to an
empire on the brink of collapse...

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This was really a disaster
that nobody had ever seen before

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and never really imagined
at this scale.

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..and now to a new global threat.

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Despite all the obstacles
that have been posed over the years,

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Russia still is such an enormous
player on the world stage.

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There's such a wealth of opinions
on what Russia is,
what it should be.

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The real victims in this game,
in this drama, are Russians.

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It's a melting pot of every single
political system you could think of.

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This is the epic story of one of
the biggest and most extraordinary
countries on the planet.

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Churchill once described Russia
as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery
inside an enigma".

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And so it remains today.

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In every sort of major modern period
of Russian history

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there have been significant barriers
to actually knowing

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what's happening inside the country.

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We know this is a country of proud
people who have a remarkable
relationship with their motherland.

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This idea of what Russia is,
where it belongs,

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has been something that's been
discussed in the country publicly,

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in literature, in politics,
really all through time.

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And yet, in the West,
we are almost conditioned
not to trust its leaders.

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Our quarrel is with Putin's Kremlin.

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Whether we like it or not,
Russia appears to play a part
in all our lives,

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but why?

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How do you begin to unwrap
this mystery?

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For some,
the key is surprisingly simple.

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Look at the map.

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Russia's place in the world
is staggering.

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This has been a country that has
always been pushing outwards.

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It covers one-eighth
of all the land on Earth,

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stretching across
the whole of northern Asia

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and the eastern third of Europe.

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One thing that I find
endlessly fascinating is
how much more there is to Russia

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and I suppose the challenge of
ruling over that vast land mass.

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And when you start to dig down
into the sheer range

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of landscapes, peoples and culture
all under one Russian flag,

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it becomes
all the more extraordinary.

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Seventy times bigger than the UK,
Russia is so vast

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that when the sun rises in the west,
at the same time it is setting
in the east,

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over 11 time zones away.

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This is a country
that spans half the globe.

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It covers from
the incredibly fun, metropolitan,
24/7 capital that is Moscow,

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which is a rich, prosperous,
European city,

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all the way through
to much, much more impoverished
backwater villages.

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Over the last thousand years,

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much of Russia's vast wilderness
has remained unchanged,

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even back to the moment that Russia
was little more than a loose
confederation of tribes

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ruled over by her patron saint,
the Grand Prince Vladimir.

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At the turn of the century,
the Grand Prince had been in power
for 20 years

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and ruled over a kingdom
known as Kievan Rus',

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which had emerged after
the conquest of the Rus' Vikings.

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The Rus' were this whole selection
of different, individual
principalities and citystates,

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most of which had very little power.

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It's seen as being the cradle
of Russian civilisation

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and something that joins
Slavic peoples together.

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From the grand capital,
which then was Kyiv,

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Vladimir was to leave
a lasting legacy on Russia,

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one which still plays a key part
in Russian life today.

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Vladimir imposed Christianity
quite literally
at the point of a spear

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on his own people, who were driven
into the rivers in Kyiv
to be baptised.

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This allowed him precisely
to be able to assert

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that Kyiv was not just the biggest,
most splendid city of the Rus',

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but it was the heart
of the new Rus' Christianity.

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It is a core part of Russia
a thousand years on.

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Today it is estimated
over 70% of Russians identify
as Orthodox Christian.

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And like the Grand Prince,
President Putin professes
a deep Orthodox belief.

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This is a man who also believes
the story of Russia that followed
its founding father

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has been grossly distorted
by the West.

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And he pointed to one of Russia's
most divisive rulers
as a case in point,

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a man who, centuries on
from the sacred Grand Prince,

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would defeat the Mongol invaders
and transform Russia

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from a medieval state
into a vast empire.

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The man who first made Russia great.
You just wouldn't want
to argue with him.

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There is a very strong myth
within Russia itself

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that what they need
is a strong hand.

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There are many leaders
of Russia and the Soviet Union
who would qualify as such.

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And none more so than Ivan
the Fourth, or Ivan the Terrible,

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who was to become
the first Tsar of Russia.

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And he certainly earned his name.

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The degree of ruthlessness
with which Ivan dealt with

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any perceived threat to himself
was actually quite phenomenal.

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This is a period in which
you have enemies being dealt with,

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whether they're being impaled
in the centre of Moscow

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or sewn into the skin of a bear
and have the Tsar's hunting dogs
unleashed upon them.

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He regards brutality as being
one of the central attributes
of being a strong ruler.

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The Tsar was important.
He was master of everything.

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Everybody else could be
easily punished by him.

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Even when he was 15,
he had his kennel men

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take one of the great boyars,
who had been a particular power
in the land, and beat him to death.

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This is a guy who even at 15
was beginning to realise
the power that came with his title.

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Ivan the Terrible's reputation
in Russia

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is a good symptom
of the distinctive way

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in which Russians see
strong leaders who terrorise them.

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And yet,
while he may have been terrible,

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this was a strong leader
who would change Russia forever.

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This is a man who established
the first real standing army

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and then used it to fight off
previous aggressors to the south,
the Khanate of Kazan, for example.

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This is a man who started
the inexorable eastward sweep
of Russian expansion across Siberia.

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This is also the period
in which, actually, for a while,

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Ivan creates
a whole kingdom within a kingdom.

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Under Ivan's tyrannical rule,

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Russia established itself
as a vast empire

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and at its very epicentre
was Moscow.

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I mean, Ivan is recognised as
the monarch who established Muscovy,
Moscow,

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the symbolism of, "We are here
to stay and this is a fortress."

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People often talk about Russia
as a fortress.

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Ivan created a capital
built around power,

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around a leader and around fear.

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This was an autocracy
under an iron fist.

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And in doing so, he was to begin
a tsardom, which would grip Russia
for centuries to come

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and steer her towards an explosive
entrance onto the world stage.

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Russia.

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How, over the last thousand years,
did this sprawling, rural country

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rise up the global pecking order
to become a superpower?

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It's an epic tale
that would see the Russian people

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dominated by a roll call
of some of history's
most notorious rulers,

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but perhaps none more so
than her almighty tsars.

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A dynasty of 18 Romanovs
would take to the Russian throne
over 300 years

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and each would leave their mark.

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But three in particular - Peter
the Great, Catherine the Great,
and Nicholas II -

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would leave legacies so seismic
that they still define the people

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and the great cities
of Russia today.

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This is one of the tallest statues
ever created,

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weighing in at a hefty 600 tons.

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It's regularly voted one of
the ugliest statues in the world.

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Meet Peter the Great.

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If you're in Moscow,
you can't miss him.

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This was a man determined for Russia
to start looking outwards.

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Peter the Great is always hailed
as one of the great
Russian modernisers.

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He wasn't interested in
the spiritual side of being a tsar,

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he wasn't interested in the
philosophical side of being a tsar,

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he was interested in practicalities.

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By the time
Peter the Great became Tsar,

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Russia was the largest country
in the world,

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stretching from Europe
to the Pacific Ocean.

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His was a country of 14 million
Russians, many of whom
worked the land to survive.

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Peter wanted Russia to catch up
and he was convinced
the West had all the answers.

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He'd even lived for four months
in Deptford, London,
to learn shipbuilding.

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He wanted a Russia that could mirror
its great armies,
equal its maritime might,

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even one that could follow
European education and fashion,

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and he wanted a brand-new capital
to prove it.

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He didn't like Moscow,
so he wanted a new city

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and one that absolutely would look
like a Western European city.

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Moscow was out and a new capital
city, St Petersburg, was born.

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It was to be Russia's
window on Europe.

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St Petersburg, in my view,
looks even now

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much better than Moscow.

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St Petersburg is
a very beautiful city,

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it's a city that's associated
with that period

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around its foundation -
Enlightenment ideals,

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progressiveness, education.

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All of these general themes are
kind of associated with the city.

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It's basically seen as
Russia's cultural capital,

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yet it was built on the backs
of slaves who lost their lives.

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Built on an inhospitable swamp,
this is known as the city
built on bones.

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Historians believe
under its foundations

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are the remains of some 100,000
skeletons of the pressganged
slave labourers

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drawn from the length and breadth
of the then Russian Empire.

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This vast and gruesome enterprise
gives some idea of the ambition

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and the single-mindedness
of the man behind it.

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He brought in foreign architects
and stonemasons

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and engineers from Italy,
from Britain, from Germany,
from the Netherlands,

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and they built him
this beautiful, modern, airy city.

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Peter the Great was one of
the Russian leaders who has gripped
this perpetual problem

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of Russia being behind the West,
particularly Europe,

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recognising that Russia
was drifting further and further

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into irrelevance and seeking
to do something about it,

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particularly by emulating the West.

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It's seen as the source
of great progress, of opening up
opportunities for Russia,

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and of establishing Russia
on an equal footing
with the great powers of Europe.

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I think that's why his period is
seen as significant

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because it really puts Russia
on the map

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as a genuine, global, great power.

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So it's perhaps no surprise that
President Putin recently claimed

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that the man who founded
the city he was born in
was his favourite leader.

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Just like Putin the Great,
Peter was a man astride an empire

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who wanted to expand
Russia's influence and power.

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And everything about
his St Petersburg was designed
to have that impact,

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especially the grand Winter Palace,

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which is now home to one of
the most important and biggest
museums in the world.

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This is the Hermitage Museum.

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It holds three million works of art,
which means if you looked at
each artwork for a minute,

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you'd be there for nearly six years.

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The walls which are now home
to priceless works of art

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were once home to the Russian
royal family for almost 200 years.

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And all this started out
as a private art collection
for one person,

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the next great leader
to make their mark on Russia,

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Catherine the Great.

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Whilst Putin may encourage
comparisons with Peter,

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many think that Catherine the Great
would be nearer the mark.

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Like Putin,
Catherine was an unexpected ruler,

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who would go on to become
one of the greatest in its history.

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The woman whom history would
remember as Catherine the Great

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wasn't actually called Catherine,
and she wasn't even Russian.

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She was born Princess Sophie
of Anhalt-Zerbst,
a German backwater,

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in what was then
the Holy Roman Empire.

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At the age of 16, she married
the heir to the Russian throne,
Peter III.

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But by 1762, she had seized power
in a daring coup

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and became Empress of Russia, and
her husband was secretly murdered.

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She's seen as someone who was
quite ruthless in disposing
of her husband to take power.

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One of the greatest female rulers
of her age,

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Catherine's reputation would come
under sustained attack
from that moment on.

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Was she the promiscuous usurper?

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Or a modernising force
with the interests
of her adopted nation at heart?

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She was writing letters to Voltaire
and getting letters from him.

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She was very civilised
and she did have a lot of lovers.

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Certain stories about her are myths,

225
00:16:39,500 --> 00:16:43,780
but it's fairly well documented
that she did have various lovers,

226
00:16:43,780 --> 00:16:46,060
and this was not actually unusual.

227
00:16:47,100 --> 00:16:50,740
Throughout history,
monarchs have taken lovers.

228
00:16:50,740 --> 00:16:54,460
It tends to be talked about more
if they are women monarchs.

229
00:16:56,020 --> 00:16:58,900
The shape of Russia grew
under her rule.

230
00:16:59,940 --> 00:17:05,020
Some 200,000 square miles were
added, including what's now Poland,

231
00:17:05,020 --> 00:17:08,140
Crimea, Lithuania and Belarus.

232
00:17:11,020 --> 00:17:13,900
Russia has always seen itself
as a superpower,

233
00:17:13,900 --> 00:17:16,940
but it's under the reigns of Peter
and, subsequently, Catherine,

234
00:17:16,940 --> 00:17:20,140
that Europe first started to be
seriously alarmed about its power

235
00:17:20,140 --> 00:17:22,340
and particularly
about its intentions.

236
00:17:22,340 --> 00:17:26,820
I think that it was a pretty
glorious period in Russian history.

237
00:17:26,820 --> 00:17:30,660
This is a period in which Russia was
actually consolidating
its military force,

238
00:17:30,660 --> 00:17:33,540
it was continuing its pressure
against the Ottoman Empire,

239
00:17:33,540 --> 00:17:38,820
and so what's really interesting is
that in this period you have
a very, very distinct change

240
00:17:38,820 --> 00:17:42,980
in how the outside world,
how Europe rather, looks at Russia.

241
00:17:45,220 --> 00:17:48,660
Catherine's triumph was
how people thought about Russia

242
00:17:48,660 --> 00:17:51,620
and the extent to which
they believed it had changed.

243
00:17:51,620 --> 00:17:53,940
And in politics,
perception is everything.

244
00:17:53,940 --> 00:17:59,060
She is generally talked about
as being an enlightened autocrat,

245
00:17:59,060 --> 00:18:02,180
somebody who was obsessed
with the West,

246
00:18:02,180 --> 00:18:07,860
with improving the ways
in which Russian autocrats ruled.

247
00:18:09,300 --> 00:18:15,580
But I do not know any leaders
staying in power
for 20, 30 and more years

248
00:18:15,580 --> 00:18:19,100
was becoming better than he used to
be or she used to be initially,

249
00:18:19,100 --> 00:18:22,180
and I think Catherine the Great is
a good example of this.

250
00:18:23,180 --> 00:18:25,700
And yet, for the everyday Russian,

251
00:18:25,700 --> 00:18:29,140
whilst Catherine may have brought
enlightenment for the aristocracy,

252
00:18:29,140 --> 00:18:31,980
they were still trapped
in a system of serfdom,

253
00:18:31,980 --> 00:18:36,740
and for the following century
across a dynasty of the six tsars
to follow

254
00:18:36,740 --> 00:18:41,580
little would change in terms of
the hardship and poverty
of the Russian people.

255
00:18:42,820 --> 00:18:48,260
This was still a country
whose population was made up
overwhelmingly of peasants

256
00:18:48,260 --> 00:18:53,300
and the tsars wielded
their considerable power
over a vast empire

257
00:18:53,300 --> 00:18:56,060
that extended
across three continents.

258
00:18:57,580 --> 00:19:01,340
By the 19th century, this autocratic
way of running a country

259
00:19:01,340 --> 00:19:04,340
was increasingly out of step
with its people.

260
00:19:04,340 --> 00:19:09,460
In the cities, the workers suffered
appalling exploitation and squalor,

261
00:19:09,460 --> 00:19:14,700
and its countryside was in turmoil
after a devastating famine.

262
00:19:14,700 --> 00:19:19,500
It was amidst this volatile cocktail
of hunger and unrest

263
00:19:19,500 --> 00:19:23,660
that a new tsar took power,
Nicholas II.

264
00:19:24,580 --> 00:19:27,620
His legacy would change Russia
forever.

265
00:19:27,620 --> 00:19:31,420
These are the last pictures
of this unhappy man and his family.

266
00:19:41,740 --> 00:19:44,700
This is the Alexander Palace.

267
00:19:44,700 --> 00:19:51,140
Having fallen into disrepair,
the favourite residence
of the last tsar, Nicholas II,

268
00:19:51,140 --> 00:19:56,020
has finally been restored.
It is the symbol of a lost era.

269
00:19:57,980 --> 00:20:00,420
Nicholas was born here in 1868,

270
00:20:00,420 --> 00:20:05,100
the heir to a dynasty that had ruled
over Russia for 250 years.

271
00:20:09,860 --> 00:20:14,260
When his father, Alexander III,
died suddenly in 1894,

272
00:20:14,260 --> 00:20:17,140
a 26-year-old Nicholas stepped in.

273
00:20:17,140 --> 00:20:19,620
To his cousin, he confessed...

274
00:20:27,900 --> 00:20:34,220
Part of the reason that he struggled
in the role as Tsar is because
he was completely unprepared for it.

275
00:20:34,220 --> 00:20:38,700
I think this is really reflected
in the way he essentially
kind of continued

276
00:20:38,700 --> 00:20:44,460
without any real attempt to engage
with the social trends that were
emerging in that country

277
00:20:44,460 --> 00:20:47,500
until it was really far too late.

278
00:20:47,500 --> 00:20:53,060
With Nicholas II, they have,
arguably, one of the least-fitted
individuals to be leading Russia

279
00:20:53,060 --> 00:20:55,260
at a time of extraordinary turmoil.

280
00:20:55,260 --> 00:20:57,620
The peasants were still,
in many ways, tied

281
00:20:57,620 --> 00:21:00,740
to a very unfair system
in which they did not own the land.

282
00:21:00,740 --> 00:21:06,260
Urban living standards were very
low, but the cities were becoming
increasingly overcrowded.

283
00:21:09,340 --> 00:21:12,180
Nicholas understood little
of modern Russia

284
00:21:12,180 --> 00:21:17,140
and its ever more educated,
urban and agitated society.

285
00:21:17,140 --> 00:21:20,740
They were on a collision course
that would come to a head

286
00:21:20,740 --> 00:21:23,140
on the infamous Bloody Sunday.

287
00:21:25,540 --> 00:21:30,700
The essence of the 1905
Bloody Sunday massacre is
that it came out of

288
00:21:30,700 --> 00:21:36,540
a loyal petition,
that thousands of Russians
marched on the Winter Palace

289
00:21:36,540 --> 00:21:38,340
in St Petersburg,

290
00:21:38,340 --> 00:21:42,140
not to topple the Tsar,
but to simply give him a petition.

291
00:21:43,420 --> 00:21:46,340
Someone panics, shooting starts,

292
00:21:46,340 --> 00:21:49,940
and before you know it
there has been a massacre
by the palace guards.

293
00:21:52,660 --> 00:21:56,420
The country starts to seem to fall
apart. The Tsar and the people
around him, they panic.

294
00:21:57,460 --> 00:22:03,060
He wasn't great enough
to lead such a big country

295
00:22:03,060 --> 00:22:05,460
at a time of troubles.

296
00:22:05,460 --> 00:22:09,740
He was good father and good husband,

297
00:22:09,740 --> 00:22:16,340
but we do evaluate leaders
not by how good they are
in their small families,

298
00:22:16,340 --> 00:22:21,500
but how good they used to be
with regard to the whole nation.

299
00:22:22,700 --> 00:22:28,780
Amidst this, the Russian people
began to see the Tsar and his family
as something of a circus,

300
00:22:28,780 --> 00:22:32,180
making other royals round the world
shudder.

301
00:22:33,220 --> 00:22:35,820
With his unpopular German wife,
Alexandra,

302
00:22:35,820 --> 00:22:38,940
and the increasingly influential
Rasputin,

303
00:22:41,540 --> 00:22:44,860
a Russian mystic
and self-proclaimed holy man

304
00:22:44,860 --> 00:22:48,540
who appeared to have
an extraordinary hold
on the inner circle.

305
00:22:48,540 --> 00:22:53,220
Nicholas was, frankly,
bad enough as a tsar.

306
00:22:53,220 --> 00:22:57,660
The fact that he had
an overbearing German-born wife

307
00:22:57,660 --> 00:23:01,700
at a time when actually the Russians
were going to find themselves
facing the Germans

308
00:23:01,700 --> 00:23:04,860
as their primary antagonists,
did not help.

309
00:23:04,860 --> 00:23:09,100
The fact that also, especially
under pressure from his wife,

310
00:23:09,100 --> 00:23:13,780
Nicholas for so long countenanced
this charlatan Rasputin

311
00:23:15,460 --> 00:23:18,340
and his various dissolute antics
around the court,

312
00:23:18,340 --> 00:23:21,380
dissolute antics that everyone
read about enthusiastically

313
00:23:21,380 --> 00:23:24,420
in all kinds of yellow papers,

314
00:23:24,420 --> 00:23:29,380
again contributed to this sense
that this was a tsar

315
00:23:29,380 --> 00:23:33,220
who not only is out of touch
and not on the side of the people,

316
00:23:33,220 --> 00:23:37,540
but is actively harbouring
hostile forces.

317
00:23:39,300 --> 00:23:42,500
The Tsarina became dependent
on Rasputin.

318
00:23:42,500 --> 00:23:47,140
Rumours started to circulate
there was more to their relationship
than met the eye.

319
00:23:48,140 --> 00:23:50,140
She allegedly wrote...

320
00:24:05,180 --> 00:24:07,700
This was a family issue

321
00:24:07,700 --> 00:24:12,500
that really influenced negatively
how state affairs panned out.

322
00:24:12,500 --> 00:24:14,620
A weak tsar,

323
00:24:14,620 --> 00:24:21,140
over-reliant on
this one particular adviser,
somehow let everything slip.

324
00:24:22,780 --> 00:24:26,020
But the royal soap opera
was to become deadly

325
00:24:26,020 --> 00:24:31,380
when Nicholas made the decision
to take supreme command
of the armed forces

326
00:24:31,380 --> 00:24:33,940
as Russia entered
the First World War.

327
00:24:35,020 --> 00:24:41,860
With an estimated 2,000,000 deaths,
once again the Russian people would
have their loyalty severely tested.

328
00:24:43,820 --> 00:24:46,900
And for the first time
in centuries of tsarist rule,

329
00:24:46,900 --> 00:24:49,620
they had reached
their breaking point.

330
00:24:49,620 --> 00:24:54,180
What would happen next would become
one of the biggest events
of the 20th century.

331
00:24:55,220 --> 00:24:59,100
The revolutionary fire of the masses
was finally unleashed.

332
00:25:02,980 --> 00:25:06,500
Moscow. It's one of
the world's largest cities.

333
00:25:09,500 --> 00:25:13,220
It is grand, glittering
and utterly imposing

334
00:25:13,220 --> 00:25:15,780
and it's meant to be.

335
00:25:15,780 --> 00:25:20,700
This is a monument to the global
ambitions of its leaders,
past and present.

336
00:25:21,780 --> 00:25:27,020
Over the last thousand years,
this has been a country
defined by its all-powerful rulers.

337
00:25:27,020 --> 00:25:31,060
And yet, for all its grand cities
and decadent leadership,

338
00:25:31,060 --> 00:25:35,300
in 1917 there was to be
a political earthquake

339
00:25:35,300 --> 00:25:38,300
that would shake
the very core of Russia.

340
00:25:42,340 --> 00:25:44,300
The people had had enough.

341
00:25:44,300 --> 00:25:48,260
They had faced a devastating war,
they were starving

342
00:25:48,260 --> 00:25:50,500
and their loyalty to their leader
was spent.

343
00:25:51,660 --> 00:25:57,460
Into this power vacuum stepped a man
who would trigger one of the biggest
political upheavals

344
00:25:57,460 --> 00:26:01,940
of the 20th century.
But what would be the human cost
of a revolution?

345
00:26:01,940 --> 00:26:05,660
And what does it really mean
to the Russia of today?

346
00:26:13,220 --> 00:26:20,820
There is one man who is instantly
recognised around the world
by just one word - Lenin.

347
00:26:25,820 --> 00:26:31,220
Lenin himself, Vladimir Ilyich
Ulyanov, who took that
revolutionary codename Lenin,

348
00:26:31,220 --> 00:26:34,260
was an extraordinary figure.

349
00:26:35,300 --> 00:26:39,700
Today if you want to meet Lenin,
his embalmed body awaits

350
00:26:39,700 --> 00:26:42,620
in a mausoleum
at the heart of Red Square,

351
00:26:42,620 --> 00:26:45,220
but be prepared to queue.

352
00:26:46,340 --> 00:26:50,020
Many people go to pay their respects
not just to the man,

353
00:26:50,020 --> 00:26:52,660
but to the ideals
he still represents.

354
00:27:02,100 --> 00:27:06,580
He was a man who did believe
in an ideology that he thought
would, ultimately,

355
00:27:06,580 --> 00:27:09,460
possibly passing through
rivers of blood,

356
00:27:09,460 --> 00:27:12,940
but ultimately create
this extraordinary world

357
00:27:12,940 --> 00:27:17,380
of egalitarianism, with no hunger,
no want, no oppression.

358
00:27:18,420 --> 00:27:22,660
The vision that Lenin had
was very simple -

359
00:27:22,660 --> 00:27:26,940
bread, land, and peace, which was
an almost-universal longing

360
00:27:26,940 --> 00:27:31,300
of the Russian people
after this disastrous participation
in World War I.

361
00:27:31,300 --> 00:27:35,140
And in Russia
at the turn of the century,

362
00:27:35,140 --> 00:27:38,100
this resonated
with a country on its knees.

363
00:27:39,700 --> 00:27:42,100
In February, 1917,

364
00:27:42,100 --> 00:27:46,180
Russian people and soldiers took
to the streets in St Petersburg,

365
00:27:46,180 --> 00:27:49,340
originally as
a peaceful demonstration.

366
00:27:49,340 --> 00:27:53,180
So February to March, 1917,

367
00:27:53,180 --> 00:27:58,700
there was an enormous upswell of a
sense that something had to change,

368
00:27:58,700 --> 00:28:01,700
that the political system
had become dysfunctional,

369
00:28:01,700 --> 00:28:05,900
that the Tsar was no longer
listening to what the people wanted,

370
00:28:05,900 --> 00:28:08,820
and in February, 1917,

371
00:28:08,820 --> 00:28:13,500
what we would think of
as a popular revolution happened.

372
00:28:13,500 --> 00:28:18,820
It spontaneously grew into a general
strike and outright mutiny.

373
00:28:18,820 --> 00:28:23,020
After just seven days,
Tsar Nicholas II had abdicated.

374
00:28:23,020 --> 00:28:25,300
A provisional government stepped in.

375
00:28:25,300 --> 00:28:28,380
There are all these
kind of very excited responses

376
00:28:28,380 --> 00:28:33,500
to revolution, which I think can be
forgotten, in a sense,
when we think of what came later.

377
00:28:35,060 --> 00:28:40,700
In October, Lenin seized his chance.
His followers,
known as the Red Guard,

378
00:28:40,700 --> 00:28:43,780
captured control in a bloodless coup

379
00:28:43,780 --> 00:28:47,380
and put the radical Communist Party,
the Bolsheviks, in power,

380
00:28:47,380 --> 00:28:50,660
but it launched the country
into a civil war.

381
00:28:50,660 --> 00:28:56,180
There continued to be a situation
of chaos as each part of Russia,
and even individuals within Russia,

382
00:28:56,180 --> 00:28:58,980
decided where their future was
to be, or were just caught up

383
00:28:58,980 --> 00:29:02,460
by one side or the other and forced
to fight in the civil war.

384
00:29:05,220 --> 00:29:08,220
On the one side was Lenin's
Bolshevik Red Army,

385
00:29:08,220 --> 00:29:13,260
and on the other was the White Army,
made up of tsarist nobles
and aristocrats,

386
00:29:13,260 --> 00:29:16,140
and no mercy was shown
on either side.

387
00:29:17,340 --> 00:29:22,420
Tsar Nicholas and his family,
who had been put under house arrest
in Siberia,

388
00:29:22,420 --> 00:29:28,340
were awoken on July 17th, 1918,
by guards from Lenin's Red Army.

389
00:29:30,580 --> 00:29:33,620
The entire family were made
to gather in one room

390
00:29:34,620 --> 00:29:36,900
and were then brutally shot.

391
00:29:36,900 --> 00:29:43,140
The dynasty that had ruled Russia
for three centuries
had come to a horrifying end.

392
00:29:45,060 --> 00:29:48,820
And yet it would not bring peace
to the people of Russia

393
00:29:48,820 --> 00:29:53,020
and they were plunged into
an ever more brutal chapter.

394
00:29:57,060 --> 00:30:01,500
In 2017, there was a really
interesting reimagining

395
00:30:01,500 --> 00:30:03,380
of the revolutionary period
in Russia.

396
00:30:03,380 --> 00:30:08,260
TV programmes came out that trashed
the legacy of the Bolsheviks

397
00:30:08,260 --> 00:30:12,500
and portrayed them as personally
morally reprehensible

398
00:30:12,500 --> 00:30:16,100
and the structures they created
as being flawed from the start.

399
00:30:17,180 --> 00:30:22,700
In 2017, Putin made it clear
that the 100th anniversary
of the Revolution

400
00:30:22,700 --> 00:30:25,940
would not be an occasion
for state celebration.

401
00:30:25,940 --> 00:30:29,380
He even clamped down
on unauthorised rallies.

402
00:30:29,380 --> 00:30:30,900
Why?

403
00:30:30,900 --> 00:30:37,500
For many, it's the sign
of a distinctly anti-revolutionary
and deeply apprehensive leader

404
00:30:37,500 --> 00:30:40,540
for whom revolution represents
a challenge to stability.

405
00:30:40,540 --> 00:30:45,700
The idea of celebrating something
which was in any way

406
00:30:45,700 --> 00:30:51,500
a kind of mass overthrow
of the existing regime
is clearly uncomfortable.

407
00:30:51,500 --> 00:30:55,460
For others, it may be because
the civil war that followed

408
00:30:55,460 --> 00:30:57,580
has given the Revolution
a darker narrative.

409
00:31:04,100 --> 00:31:08,820
The war devastated the country,
causing an estimated
14 million deaths,

410
00:31:08,820 --> 00:31:12,620
but after four long years
it was finally over.

411
00:31:14,180 --> 00:31:16,380
Civil wars rarely end neatly,

412
00:31:16,380 --> 00:31:20,620
but pretty much by 1922,
the fighting had been, had finished.

413
00:31:20,620 --> 00:31:24,380
On the one hand,
the Bolsheviks wanted to

414
00:31:24,380 --> 00:31:27,580
essentially now move into
nation-building mode.

415
00:31:27,580 --> 00:31:30,300
And on the other hand,
they wanted to mark their victory.

416
00:31:31,980 --> 00:31:34,340
"We've won and we're building
a new state."

417
00:31:34,340 --> 00:31:36,580
Not just a new state,
but a new kind of state.

418
00:31:38,140 --> 00:31:43,660
And that new state was created
when a treaty between Russia,
Ukraine, Belarus

419
00:31:43,660 --> 00:31:48,260
and the Transcaucuses formed
the Union of Soviet Republics.

420
00:31:49,300 --> 00:31:52,940
Lenin's vision for a new
Communist state had arrived.

421
00:31:53,940 --> 00:31:56,820
The Soviet Union was born,

422
00:31:56,820 --> 00:32:00,380
but would it be the egalitarian
paradise Lenin had once promised?

423
00:32:01,460 --> 00:32:06,180
The truth was that having demolished
the oppressive autocracy
of the tsars,

424
00:32:06,180 --> 00:32:09,900
an equally brutal leadership
now took their place.

425
00:32:11,300 --> 00:32:15,860
The communist leadership could start
experimenting with different means

426
00:32:15,860 --> 00:32:18,060
of actually making that state
function,

427
00:32:18,060 --> 00:32:21,420
but very swiftly defaulting
to terror and repression

428
00:32:21,420 --> 00:32:24,900
as once again the only way
to govern a country like Russia.

429
00:32:24,900 --> 00:32:30,580
Lenin ordered an all-powerful
security service into being
called the Cheka,

430
00:32:31,620 --> 00:32:35,540
paving the way for what would become
the notorious KGB.

431
00:32:42,820 --> 00:32:48,140
The Cheka's function was to protect
the fledgling Bolshevik state

432
00:32:48,140 --> 00:32:50,900
and actually to destroy
class enemies - aristocrats,

433
00:32:50,900 --> 00:32:53,140
anti-revolutionaries,

434
00:32:54,220 --> 00:33:00,500
people whom Lenin and Trotsky
thought posed a sort of
existential risk to communism.

435
00:33:01,900 --> 00:33:05,220
And their role essentially was,
putting it nicely,
internal security,

436
00:33:05,220 --> 00:33:09,260
but putting it as it was
to smash enemies of the state.

437
00:33:09,260 --> 00:33:13,540
Cheka agents exuded
terror and control.

438
00:33:13,540 --> 00:33:15,860
With his people under their control,

439
00:33:15,860 --> 00:33:21,140
Lenin wanted to apply an equally
firm hand to the running
of the state.

440
00:33:22,340 --> 00:33:28,820
He needed to chart a way
for his new Soviet Union to recover
from years of famine and war

441
00:33:28,820 --> 00:33:34,460
and to do so might mean playing
a little fast and loose
with his Marxist ideals.

442
00:33:36,260 --> 00:33:38,260
So there's a need to rebuild.

443
00:33:39,340 --> 00:33:44,700
And Lenin very, very pragmatically
adopts his so-called
new economic policy,

444
00:33:44,700 --> 00:33:47,740
which is in some ways
a limited form of capitalism.

445
00:33:47,740 --> 00:33:50,860
The state maintains
the so-called commanding heights
of the economy,

446
00:33:50,860 --> 00:33:53,460
the big, heavy industries,
the banks and so forth,

447
00:33:53,460 --> 00:33:57,700
but on the other hand,
the opportunities for small-scale
capitalist enterprise,

448
00:33:57,700 --> 00:34:02,180
farmers being allowed to grow extra
and then sell it in markets.

449
00:34:04,220 --> 00:34:08,500
The communist leaders found
that their ideals,
their Marxist ideas,

450
00:34:08,500 --> 00:34:12,780
were in direct collision
with actually managing
a functioning state

451
00:34:12,780 --> 00:34:17,500
and so a return to capitalism had to
be a stop-gap measure to be sure the
country didn't collapse altogether.

452
00:34:19,180 --> 00:34:23,060
And so, a new form
of communism was born,

453
00:34:23,060 --> 00:34:27,420
one which could be adapted,
re-interpreted and reinvented

454
00:34:27,420 --> 00:34:29,940
to meet the needs
of this brand-new Russia.

455
00:34:31,020 --> 00:34:36,660
Its success at doing so would be
tested time and time again
over the next 70 years

456
00:34:37,740 --> 00:34:40,460
and would come
with an extraordinary human cost,

457
00:34:40,460 --> 00:34:45,300
especially when placed in the hands
of the man who would succeed Lenin.

458
00:34:54,260 --> 00:34:59,380
It's fair to say that Russia today
has a somewhat mixed relationship

459
00:34:59,380 --> 00:35:04,260
with one of its most notorious
leaders, Joseph Stalin,

460
00:35:04,260 --> 00:35:07,340
and yet his rehabilitation
has gathered pace

461
00:35:07,340 --> 00:35:12,980
with a record 70% of Russians
in a recent poll approving
of his role in Russian history.

462
00:35:14,500 --> 00:35:16,300
So who was he?

463
00:35:21,940 --> 00:35:27,180
In 1924,
the man who had made an indelible
mark on the 20th century

464
00:35:27,180 --> 00:35:29,940
and changed the fortunes of Russia,
died.

465
00:35:31,020 --> 00:35:36,220
Lenin was gone and whilst a host
of loyal Bolsheviks jostled
to take his place,

466
00:35:36,220 --> 00:35:42,500
a lesser-known Party member
was about to surprise them all -
Joseph Stalin.

467
00:35:46,060 --> 00:35:50,340
No-one beforehand thought
it could be conceivable that Stalin

468
00:35:50,340 --> 00:35:52,900
would become leader
of the Soviet Union.

469
00:35:52,900 --> 00:35:55,900
Lenin himself had advised against
Stalin being his successor,

470
00:35:55,900 --> 00:35:58,700
but Stalin did become his successor

471
00:35:58,700 --> 00:36:04,300
and this was largely on the basis
of taking out opponents.

472
00:36:04,300 --> 00:36:08,940
He could basically ally with one
against the other
and then ally the other way,

473
00:36:08,940 --> 00:36:13,180
play them all off very effectively
until there was
just one man standing.

474
00:36:15,860 --> 00:36:20,860
In 1929, Stalin became the ruler
of the Soviet Union.

475
00:36:21,980 --> 00:36:26,220
To the outside world, this was
a kindly, benevolent Uncle Joe,

476
00:36:26,220 --> 00:36:29,740
a man to look after
his fellow comrades.

477
00:36:29,740 --> 00:36:34,860
Then shift to this very radical
vision of a great leap forward

478
00:36:34,860 --> 00:36:38,420
or a great break away from
the new economic policy

479
00:36:38,420 --> 00:36:41,460
and towards industrialisation,
collectivisation,

480
00:36:41,460 --> 00:36:45,420
class war.
Russia was in for a shock.

481
00:36:45,420 --> 00:36:50,620
Stalin proves that, let's face it,
the 20th century was
the perfect century for dictators.

482
00:36:52,300 --> 00:36:56,100
The principle of terror, the Red
Terror so-called of the Civil War,

483
00:36:56,100 --> 00:36:58,180
had begun under Lenin

484
00:36:58,180 --> 00:37:00,860
and there was no difference
between Lenin and Stalin

485
00:37:00,860 --> 00:37:05,820
when it came to the principle
of repressing your enemies
in very large numbers.

486
00:37:05,820 --> 00:37:09,580
So the Cheka evolved.
Its mission stayed the same,

487
00:37:09,580 --> 00:37:13,460
which was to smash
enemies of the Revolution.

488
00:37:14,740 --> 00:37:19,100
Under Stalin, the Cheka
became known as the NKVD.

489
00:37:19,100 --> 00:37:23,540
It was the NKVD who carried out
massive repressions

490
00:37:23,540 --> 00:37:27,780
in which millions and millions
of people were murdered and killed.

491
00:37:27,780 --> 00:37:33,020
This was an era of the knock
on the door at three in the morning.

492
00:37:33,020 --> 00:37:36,620
Someone in your apartment block
is being dragged away
by the secret police.

493
00:37:36,620 --> 00:37:40,780
Everyone just kind of keeps
their head down because
it could be you next time.

494
00:37:42,100 --> 00:37:47,660
The NKVD was so ruthless
that this era became known
as the Great Terror.

495
00:37:49,100 --> 00:37:51,540
For ordinary Russians
across the country,

496
00:37:51,540 --> 00:37:54,540
life under Stalin
was one ruled by fear.

497
00:37:55,860 --> 00:37:58,620
You couldn't even trust
your own family.

498
00:37:58,620 --> 00:38:01,540
There was the legend
of Pavel Morozov,

499
00:38:01,540 --> 00:38:08,340
who was a child who actually
informed on his own parents
to the secret police.

500
00:38:08,340 --> 00:38:13,260
Why? Because they had been
hoarding food to feed him
at a time of famine.

501
00:38:13,260 --> 00:38:16,660
This is a sense, I think,
of the paranoia

502
00:38:16,660 --> 00:38:20,660
that became part and parcel
of everyone's lives in the 1930s.

503
00:38:20,660 --> 00:38:24,100
Nighttime arrests,
large-scale deportations.

504
00:38:24,100 --> 00:38:27,220
Obviously, none of this is reported
in the press.

505
00:38:27,220 --> 00:38:31,540
What we have is the rhetoric
of wreckers, enemies of the people.

506
00:38:34,300 --> 00:38:38,660
This was a grievous, terrible period
in Soviet history

507
00:38:38,660 --> 00:38:41,820
where the secret police were
themselves, ironically enough,

508
00:38:41,820 --> 00:38:46,940
often consumed. They would be
carrying out these executions,
arresting people, often by quota,

509
00:38:46,940 --> 00:38:49,540
and then would themselves be shot.

510
00:38:49,540 --> 00:38:54,060
Others were farmed out to gulags
where very many people perished,

511
00:38:54,060 --> 00:38:58,500
or died constructing canals
in the frozen north.

512
00:38:58,500 --> 00:39:03,420
An estimated 18 million people are
thought to have been imprisoned
in work camps

513
00:39:03,420 --> 00:39:05,980
known as the Gulag.

514
00:39:12,740 --> 00:39:18,460
One of Stalin's strengths, in a way,
was precisely that he could imagine
things on a scale

515
00:39:18,460 --> 00:39:21,100
that other people thought
was just completely ridiculous.

516
00:39:21,100 --> 00:39:25,380
The thought of building labour camps
wherein you can have millions
of people

517
00:39:25,380 --> 00:39:28,700
being imprisoned and being worked
sometimes to death.

518
00:39:28,700 --> 00:39:33,180
Repressing individuals,
deporting them to Siberia,

519
00:39:33,180 --> 00:39:36,820
murdering them
more or less at whim is a constant
throughout Russian history,

520
00:39:36,820 --> 00:39:41,100
it's just that under Stalin it was
elevated to an all-pervasive system

521
00:39:41,100 --> 00:39:44,700
which affected everybody
in the country more or less
indiscriminately.

522
00:39:44,700 --> 00:39:47,780
People thought, "No,
surely it can't be that extreme?"

523
00:39:47,780 --> 00:39:50,180
If anything, it was more extreme
than was thought.

524
00:39:52,420 --> 00:39:56,660
There are almost no monuments

525
00:39:56,660 --> 00:40:00,460
to those who were killed
in Stalin's concentration camps,

526
00:40:00,460 --> 00:40:04,300
although it's a very important part
of Soviet history,

527
00:40:04,300 --> 00:40:07,860
but this is a kind of hidden part
of the history.

528
00:40:14,540 --> 00:40:19,300
On Stalin's orders,
75% of the Supreme War Council
are murdered in 1937.

529
00:40:19,300 --> 00:40:24,380
That is, two out of five Marshals,
13 out of 15 Army Generals.

530
00:40:24,380 --> 00:40:26,900
Out of a total of 6,000 high-ranking
officers in the Red Army,

531
00:40:26,900 --> 00:40:30,100
1,500 are executed during one purge.

532
00:40:32,660 --> 00:40:37,580
So how and why in Russia
has Stalin's image been
gradually rehabilitated

533
00:40:37,580 --> 00:40:41,860
from bloody dictator
to an efficient leader?

534
00:40:41,860 --> 00:40:47,300
Many have pointed towards a day
that has grown into a major
celebration of patriotism

535
00:40:47,300 --> 00:40:49,500
under the presidency
of Vladimir Putin.

536
00:40:50,780 --> 00:40:52,660
Victory Day.

537
00:40:52,660 --> 00:40:57,300
The story of Stalin's Russia was
about to take an extraordinary turn

538
00:40:57,300 --> 00:41:00,100
with the arrival
of the Second World War.

539
00:41:06,300 --> 00:41:07,620
Russia.

540
00:41:07,620 --> 00:41:11,340
A country that has never been shy
to rewrite its own history.

541
00:41:11,340 --> 00:41:13,220
Spasibo!

542
00:41:13,220 --> 00:41:15,540
Even if it's some way
from the truth.

543
00:41:16,940 --> 00:41:20,620
And Putin is a master of the craft.

544
00:41:20,620 --> 00:41:23,700
He's plundering history

545
00:41:23,700 --> 00:41:27,540
for the bits that fit
his current political needs.

546
00:41:27,540 --> 00:41:31,060
He can, essentially,
reinvent Russia

547
00:41:31,060 --> 00:41:34,020
for every single individual segment
of the audience.

548
00:41:35,020 --> 00:41:41,300
And there is one man in particular
who appears to be having his legacy
reworked for the next generation.

549
00:41:41,300 --> 00:41:45,020
Under Putin, Stalin has made
something of a comeback.

550
00:41:45,020 --> 00:41:47,260
History has been rewritten

551
00:41:47,260 --> 00:41:53,580
to the point where he's now
portrayed in Russian textbooks
for kids as "an efficient manager".

552
00:41:53,580 --> 00:42:00,420
How could the man who some estimate
was responsible for the death
of as many as 20 million Soviets

553
00:42:00,420 --> 00:42:03,420
now be remembered as a Russian hero?

554
00:42:11,700 --> 00:42:18,100
In 1939, perhaps two of the greatest
villains of modern history,
Stalin and Hitler,

555
00:42:18,100 --> 00:42:23,940
had initially entered a pact.
The Soviets would help Germany
in return for Poland.

556
00:42:26,020 --> 00:42:29,220
But Stalin was double-crossed.

557
00:42:29,220 --> 00:42:32,100
Within two years,
Hitler scrapped the pact

558
00:42:32,100 --> 00:42:35,780
and the Soviets found themselves
facing the Nazi war machine.

559
00:42:35,780 --> 00:42:39,780
Hitler attacked
on the 22nd of June, 1941.

560
00:42:41,060 --> 00:42:44,460
And so began a bloody war
on the Eastern Front.

561
00:42:44,460 --> 00:42:48,740
The German troops
crossed the Soviet border

562
00:42:48,740 --> 00:42:51,660
and thereafter follows a long period

563
00:42:51,660 --> 00:42:55,300
of tremendously traumatic retreats,

564
00:42:55,300 --> 00:42:57,260
huge loss of life.

565
00:42:59,220 --> 00:43:02,700
After five months, the Nazis
closed in on St Petersburg,

566
00:43:02,700 --> 00:43:05,420
which had been renamed Leningrad,

567
00:43:06,460 --> 00:43:09,540
beginning a siege
of the historic city.

568
00:43:09,540 --> 00:43:14,140
It would last two-and-a-half years
and go down as one of the deadliest
blockades in history.

569
00:43:16,460 --> 00:43:21,180
The siege of Leningrad, of course,
has become an iconic part
of Soviet history.

570
00:43:21,180 --> 00:43:24,380
People were reduced sometimes
to cannibalism.

571
00:43:24,380 --> 00:43:26,580
I mean, people were starving.

572
00:43:29,380 --> 00:43:32,740
More people died
in the defence of Leningrad

573
00:43:32,740 --> 00:43:36,900
than the total British,
American and French war dead
through the entire war.

574
00:43:40,660 --> 00:43:45,020
It is a moment in history
that almost defines the sacrifice

575
00:43:45,020 --> 00:43:48,460
that ordinary Russians would make
for the victory of their country,

576
00:43:48,460 --> 00:43:51,940
the loss of generations
on a heartbreaking scale,

577
00:43:51,940 --> 00:43:55,300
and yet it was indeed
a huge turning point.

578
00:43:55,300 --> 00:44:00,660
Eventually, the war on the Eastern
Front fell in the Soviets' favour.

579
00:44:00,660 --> 00:44:05,020
It's very difficult, I think,
to get to terms

580
00:44:05,020 --> 00:44:08,380
with just how vicious the struggle
on the Eastern Front was.

581
00:44:08,380 --> 00:44:13,340
When it comes down to it,
Hitler's war machine was broken
in the East.

582
00:44:13,340 --> 00:44:17,220
That's where the majority
of his divisions were deployed.

583
00:44:17,220 --> 00:44:20,020
That's where the majority
of his divisions were destroyed.

584
00:44:20,020 --> 00:44:25,540
For the remainder of the war,
the Germans were attacked
from all sides by the Allies

585
00:44:25,540 --> 00:44:28,140
and were never able to regain
the initiative.

586
00:44:28,140 --> 00:44:34,700
Then on the 8th of May, 1945,
came the announcement
everyone had been waiting for.

587
00:44:37,340 --> 00:44:41,780
Yesterday morning, at 2.41am,

588
00:44:41,780 --> 00:44:45,260
at General Eisenhower's
headquarters,

589
00:44:45,260 --> 00:44:50,820
General Jodl, the representative
of the German High Command,

590
00:44:50,820 --> 00:44:55,300
signed the act
of unconditional surrender.

591
00:44:59,580 --> 00:45:01,620
The war had been won,

592
00:45:01,620 --> 00:45:04,620
at a huge cost to the Soviet Union.

593
00:45:04,620 --> 00:45:10,220
An estimated 26 million
Soviet citizens lost their lives.

594
00:45:11,260 --> 00:45:14,180
If you go to Leningrad,
as is now St Petersburg,

595
00:45:14,180 --> 00:45:17,220
the massive Piskayovskoye cemetery,

596
00:45:17,220 --> 00:45:21,660
all you see is mass grave
after mass grave after mass grave.

597
00:45:22,740 --> 00:45:29,020
The fact that Russia lost that many
at the time of the Second
World War is,

598
00:45:29,020 --> 00:45:32,220
to a large extent,
explained by the fact

599
00:45:32,220 --> 00:45:34,660
that Russian military commanders
and Stalin

600
00:45:34,660 --> 00:45:37,940
did not economise on human lives.

601
00:45:39,860 --> 00:45:44,820
In my case, I have not seen
both my grandparents.

602
00:45:44,820 --> 00:45:49,220
And it's not my unique family story.
It's almost everywhere.

603
00:45:51,700 --> 00:45:54,980
But despite this extraordinary cast,

604
00:45:54,980 --> 00:45:59,580
without the Soviet Union
the Second World War would have
ended very differently.

605
00:45:59,580 --> 00:46:04,500
The Allies emerged victorious
and more powerful than ever before.

606
00:46:04,500 --> 00:46:07,620
The Soviet Union
bought global freedom

607
00:46:07,620 --> 00:46:12,020
with Soviet soldiers' blood.
Almost that the world

608
00:46:12,020 --> 00:46:16,340
owes that victory
to the ultimate sacrifice

609
00:46:16,340 --> 00:46:19,820
that Soviet soldiers,
that the Soviet people as a whole
were willing to make.

610
00:46:22,540 --> 00:46:25,940
Which is why,
even in the height of a pandemic,

611
00:46:25,940 --> 00:46:32,780
Putin decided that commemorating
this moment in history
with his Victory Day Parade

612
00:46:32,780 --> 00:46:34,980
was what the country needed.

613
00:46:34,980 --> 00:46:37,860
It's a symbol of strength,
of Russian might,

614
00:46:37,860 --> 00:46:41,740
of a turning point
in the fortunes of the motherland.

615
00:46:41,740 --> 00:46:48,900
This is the thing that distinguishes
the Soviet participation in war
from any other countries.

616
00:46:48,900 --> 00:46:55,460
It's on a completely different scale
and that this deserves to be
commemorated on a world stage.

617
00:47:01,580 --> 00:47:05,540
And so just when Russia could have
looked at its weakest,

618
00:47:05,540 --> 00:47:07,900
they were suddenly
at their strongest.

619
00:47:07,900 --> 00:47:12,660
Stalin was transformed
and there was a new empire to build.

620
00:47:13,700 --> 00:47:17,300
Stalin was not by nature
a humanitarian,

621
00:47:17,300 --> 00:47:23,620
nor an altruist,
and he had fought the Second World
War to preserve his country.

622
00:47:23,620 --> 00:47:28,340
And he was likely also then to use
this as an opportunity to extend
his power as much as possible.

623
00:47:28,340 --> 00:47:31,380
Soviet armies had penetrated
deep into Europe,

624
00:47:31,380 --> 00:47:33,860
all the way through to Berlin
and so forth.

625
00:47:33,860 --> 00:47:39,180
And basically what happened was
that where Soviet troops
had reached,

626
00:47:39,180 --> 00:47:43,700
on the whole - there are some
exceptions - but, on the whole,
they were not withdrawn.

627
00:47:45,780 --> 00:47:49,620
With the agreements made
at the Yalta Conference in 1945,

628
00:47:49,620 --> 00:47:53,700
Stalin was able to expand
the Soviet Empire.

629
00:47:53,700 --> 00:47:59,180
New satellite states emerged
in Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary,

630
00:47:59,180 --> 00:48:03,500
Czechoslovakia, Romania, Albania
and East Germany.

631
00:48:05,700 --> 00:48:08,380
This became known
as the Eastern Bloc.

632
00:48:11,540 --> 00:48:16,100
Stalin had succeeded in turning
the fledgling communist state

633
00:48:16,100 --> 00:48:18,500
into a giant force
to be reckoned with.

634
00:48:18,500 --> 00:48:21,300
And it made the West very uneasy.

635
00:48:23,460 --> 00:48:28,860
The most notorious chapter
in Russian history
was about to begin.

636
00:48:38,280 --> 00:48:43,160
Over the last thousand years,
the Russian people have seen
their history defined,

637
00:48:44,920 --> 00:48:48,600
in part by their tumultuous
relationship with the West.

638
00:48:52,320 --> 00:48:56,200
It's fitting that their national
symbol is that of the double-headed
eagle,

639
00:48:57,200 --> 00:48:59,840
one facing east and one west.

640
00:48:59,840 --> 00:49:05,080
It's been said that if in Asia
you feel European,
and in Europe you feel Asian,

641
00:49:05,080 --> 00:49:07,200
that means you are Russian.

642
00:49:08,560 --> 00:49:12,760
This double identity
stands Russians out in the world.

643
00:49:16,560 --> 00:49:19,080
The great power identity is
something that's been very important

644
00:49:19,080 --> 00:49:21,680
during Russian Empire,
during the Soviet period,

645
00:49:21,680 --> 00:49:25,720
and in the contemporary time.
That claim just isn't plausible.

646
00:49:25,720 --> 00:49:28,440
Russia is nothing like
the Soviet Union was.

647
00:49:28,440 --> 00:49:30,320
Russia isn't equal,
not economically,

648
00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:32,120
it hasn't got Silicon Valley.

649
00:49:32,120 --> 00:49:33,960
It's...decaying.

650
00:49:33,960 --> 00:49:36,880
And yet, this is the kind
of imperial fantasy

651
00:49:36,880 --> 00:49:40,800
that Russia and the US
are co-superpowers

652
00:49:40,800 --> 00:49:45,720
in conflict with one another.
Getting along with Russia is
a good thing, not a bad thing.

653
00:49:48,240 --> 00:49:53,120
And yet, for the Russian people,
this conflict feels very real.

654
00:49:54,200 --> 00:49:58,640
For a generation of Russians,
this hostility to the West
is all too familiar,

655
00:49:58,640 --> 00:50:03,720
thanks to an era when Russia didn't
want to just measure itself
against the West,

656
00:50:03,720 --> 00:50:06,080
it wanted to beat it.

657
00:50:06,080 --> 00:50:09,960
An era of spies, lies
and an ever-looming threat

658
00:50:09,960 --> 00:50:12,120
of nuclear annihilation.

659
00:50:22,320 --> 00:50:27,320
In 1946, the now former British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill

660
00:50:27,320 --> 00:50:32,520
made a speech which is considered
one of the opening volleys
of the Cold War.

661
00:50:34,800 --> 00:50:37,880
From Stettin in the Baltic

662
00:50:37,880 --> 00:50:40,680
to Trieste in the Adriatic,

663
00:50:40,680 --> 00:50:44,480
an iron curtain has descended
across the continent.

664
00:50:44,480 --> 00:50:47,080
Behind that line

665
00:50:47,080 --> 00:50:52,760
lie all the capitals
of the ancient states
of central and eastern Europe.

666
00:50:52,760 --> 00:50:57,320
All these cities
and the populations around them

667
00:50:57,320 --> 00:51:02,880
lie in what I must call
the Soviet Sphere.

668
00:51:02,880 --> 00:51:06,920
After four years of pretending
this was benign Uncle Joe Stalin,

669
00:51:06,920 --> 00:51:11,960
who was on their side, suddenly
they had to explain the true nature
of the Soviet regime

670
00:51:11,960 --> 00:51:15,040
once it was becoming clear
in its domination of Eastern Europe.

671
00:51:15,040 --> 00:51:19,920
What had been presented as a friend
was now undeniably an enemy
and the greatest threat.

672
00:51:21,400 --> 00:51:24,960
And with this threat
came the looming fear
of a new global conflict.

673
00:51:26,280 --> 00:51:29,120
Who knew where Stalin
and his Soviets would stop?

674
00:51:31,720 --> 00:51:36,560
The leaders of Russia tell us
their only concern is the defence
of their own nation.

675
00:51:36,560 --> 00:51:41,720
Is this so? Or are they ambitious
for world conquest?

676
00:51:42,760 --> 00:51:45,680
Stalin was now
at the peak of his power,

677
00:51:45,680 --> 00:51:48,600
or at least Stalin's Soviet Union
was at the peak of its power.

678
00:51:48,600 --> 00:51:50,440
And it was looking to expand.

679
00:51:51,640 --> 00:51:54,440
The moment of no return had passed.

680
00:51:54,440 --> 00:51:56,880
There was a new global order.

681
00:51:56,880 --> 00:52:02,240
It was East versus West,
communism versus capitalism,

682
00:52:02,240 --> 00:52:05,760
with each side determined
to outplay the other.

683
00:52:05,760 --> 00:52:11,080
They secretly funded
communist parties in Europe,

684
00:52:11,080 --> 00:52:14,040
in France, in Spain, even in the US.

685
00:52:14,040 --> 00:52:19,320
They tried to... They supported
leftist leaders in Africa
and Latin America.

686
00:52:20,360 --> 00:52:23,400
The Cold War wasn't really cold
for much of its history.

687
00:52:23,400 --> 00:52:29,880
This was a real fight. There were
small, nasty wars around the world
as each side vied for influence.

688
00:52:29,880 --> 00:52:33,040
Some of the biggest ones, of course,
were Korea or Vietnam.

689
00:52:36,000 --> 00:52:40,480
But just as distrust and hostility
with the West hit an all-time high,

690
00:52:40,480 --> 00:52:44,280
Russia was about to lose the man
who had driven it all.

691
00:52:45,320 --> 00:52:50,080
By the end of his life, Stalin was,
ironically, on the one hand,

692
00:52:50,080 --> 00:52:53,520
absolutely untouchable politically,

693
00:52:53,520 --> 00:52:57,680
and on the other, more paranoid
than at any point in his existence.

694
00:53:00,160 --> 00:53:04,880
But, of course, he died in a way
that obviously he was a victim
of his own paranoia,

695
00:53:04,880 --> 00:53:11,280
when he had a brain aneurism,
because his guards were told
that no one could disturb him.

696
00:53:11,280 --> 00:53:17,800
He lay dying and wasn't able
to actually get medical assistance
until it was far too late.

697
00:53:17,800 --> 00:53:20,720
That this person who had been
presented for so many years

698
00:53:20,720 --> 00:53:22,960
as superhuman, immortal,

699
00:53:22,960 --> 00:53:27,400
the person on whom
absolutely all Soviet life rested

700
00:53:27,400 --> 00:53:30,800
had suddenly gone
was an enormous shock.

701
00:53:30,800 --> 00:53:34,280
What could possibly come
after Stalin?

702
00:53:35,280 --> 00:53:37,520
The Man of Steel was gone,

703
00:53:37,520 --> 00:53:41,400
but Russia was about to enter
an even more deadly chapter.

704
00:53:41,400 --> 00:53:44,320
In just under ten years
after his death,

705
00:53:44,320 --> 00:53:49,760
the USSR and the West would reach
the brink of an all-out nuclear war.

706
00:53:49,760 --> 00:53:53,920
The Cold War was about to get
even colder.

707
00:53:59,520 --> 00:54:06,600
1950s Russia. New leader
Nikita Khrushchev has skilfully
seized power after Stalin's death.

708
00:54:06,600 --> 00:54:10,440
The country was in the grip
of the Cold War

709
00:54:10,440 --> 00:54:13,000
and information was king.

710
00:54:13,000 --> 00:54:17,720
If you knew
what your enemies were up to,
you could stay one step ahead.

711
00:54:20,240 --> 00:54:23,400
The KGB had a specialist
disinformation department.

712
00:54:23,400 --> 00:54:26,000
They did all sorts of dirty tricks.

713
00:54:26,000 --> 00:54:30,440
They would plant fake stories,
they would forge letters.

714
00:54:31,520 --> 00:54:38,840
Almost every major world event has
been manipulated, affected,
or changed by intelligence.

715
00:54:38,840 --> 00:54:45,160
The Soviets operated
under the old Chinese concept.

716
00:54:45,160 --> 00:54:51,360
To win the war without a battle,
that's the acme of any foreign
operation.

717
00:54:54,800 --> 00:54:58,840
And key to that operation was
a newly developed secret service.

718
00:54:58,840 --> 00:55:02,080
Out went the military thugs
enforcing power.

719
00:55:04,880 --> 00:55:09,280
And in came a new
and far more sophisticated KGB.

720
00:55:14,480 --> 00:55:20,240
They were the guys who were posh,
who spoke foreign languages
without accents,

721
00:55:20,240 --> 00:55:23,880
who were sophisticated
and who kind of roamed the world

722
00:55:23,880 --> 00:55:26,280
trying to subvert
the capitalist West.

723
00:55:26,280 --> 00:55:31,280
The Soviets are attempting
to intimidate the Western powers.

724
00:55:31,280 --> 00:55:33,600
This is a dangerous tactic.

725
00:55:33,600 --> 00:55:37,880
We're very familiar with James Bond,
with MI6, with the CIA,

726
00:55:37,880 --> 00:55:42,520
but actually the KGB had a pretty
good run in the whole post-war era,

727
00:55:42,520 --> 00:55:47,520
not least because they were helped
by a bunch of clever, posh,

728
00:55:47,520 --> 00:55:53,840
Cambridge-educated traitors, or
double agents you could call them,
people like Kim Philby,

729
00:55:53,840 --> 00:55:59,520
who were in positions of influence,
shipping British and American
secrets to Moscow.

730
00:55:59,520 --> 00:56:04,400
I'm debarred by the Official Secrets
Act from saying anything

731
00:56:04,400 --> 00:56:07,320
that might disclose
to unauthorised persons

732
00:56:07,320 --> 00:56:11,080
information derived from my position
as a former government official.

733
00:56:19,280 --> 00:56:22,960
And there was one area
of intelligence gathering
and espionage

734
00:56:22,960 --> 00:56:25,440
that was of special interest
to Russia.

735
00:56:25,440 --> 00:56:30,960
The West had been the first
to develop nuclear weapons
and the Russians wanted in.

736
00:56:32,200 --> 00:56:37,080
I thought that perhaps
some of what I had access to

737
00:56:37,080 --> 00:56:41,320
might be useful...in helping Russia

738
00:56:41,320 --> 00:56:46,440
to keep abreast of Britain, America,
and Germany.

739
00:56:46,440 --> 00:56:50,320
At the age of 20,
Melita Norwood worked as a secretary

740
00:56:50,320 --> 00:56:53,520
for one of Britain's top secret
nuclear research centres,

741
00:56:53,520 --> 00:56:57,680
where she began to photograph
classified files for the KGB.

742
00:56:59,400 --> 00:57:03,320
Perhaps the most important female
agent in the KGB's long history,

743
00:57:03,320 --> 00:57:07,080
she had never been confronted
with the evidence of her career
as a spy

744
00:57:07,080 --> 00:57:09,680
until the BBC secretly filmed her.

745
00:57:16,640 --> 00:57:21,040
Melita seemingly lived
an unremarkable life in Bexleyheath,

746
00:57:21,040 --> 00:57:25,200
but would go down in history
as the longest-serving Soviet spy
in Britain

747
00:57:28,440 --> 00:57:33,360
and helped to take Russia one step
closer to what it longed to be -

748
00:57:33,360 --> 00:57:35,960
a nuclear superpower.

749
00:57:35,960 --> 00:57:41,120
The Soviet government's announcement
that it has decided to resume
nuclear tests

750
00:57:41,120 --> 00:57:43,720
comes as a profound shock.

751
00:57:45,120 --> 00:57:49,560
Once again the iron fist
of the Soviet Union

752
00:57:49,560 --> 00:57:51,720
has crushed the hopes
of peace-loving people.

753
00:57:53,560 --> 00:57:56,720
The Soviets,
under the leadership of Khrushchev,

754
00:57:56,720 --> 00:57:58,960
had been testing and developing
atomic bombs

755
00:57:58,960 --> 00:58:05,800
and in 1961 in the Russian Arctic
they tested the largest nuclear
weapon ever to be detonated -

756
00:58:05,800 --> 00:58:07,800
the Tsar Bomba.

757
00:58:07,800 --> 00:58:12,160
It produced the most powerful
human-made explosion ever recorded.

758
00:58:12,160 --> 00:58:16,760
It was designed to make the world
sit up and notice, and they did.

759
00:58:16,760 --> 00:58:21,040
As he said he would, Mr Khrushchev
has exploded his giant bomb

760
00:58:22,480 --> 00:58:25,720
in cynical disregard
of the United Nations.

761
00:58:25,720 --> 00:58:28,520
They have advanced
no solid justification

762
00:58:28,520 --> 00:58:32,880
for exploding this monstrous
and unnecessary weapon.

763
00:58:42,280 --> 00:58:45,040
It was obvious that
the Soviet Union needed to have

764
00:58:45,040 --> 00:58:48,560
some kind of thermonuclear capacity
in order to deter the West.

765
00:58:48,560 --> 00:58:53,480
This particular case, the Tsar
Bomba, really reflects that.

766
00:58:53,480 --> 00:58:56,120
It had very, very little
military value,

767
00:58:56,120 --> 00:59:00,200
but it had a great deal
of psychological value.

768
00:59:00,200 --> 00:59:05,080
For the first time in its centuries
of squaring up to the West,

769
00:59:05,080 --> 00:59:09,400
Russia finally wielded
as devastating a power
as its enemies

770
00:59:09,400 --> 00:59:13,680
and it looked utterly capable
of deploying it.

771
00:59:13,680 --> 00:59:18,000
There are two kinds of attack -
with warning and without
any warning.

772
00:59:18,000 --> 00:59:22,400
We think that most of the time
we will be warned
before the bomb explodes,

773
00:59:22,400 --> 00:59:27,360
so there will be time for us
to get into our homes, schools
or some other safe place.

774
00:59:28,840 --> 00:59:34,640
So what was to happen next
would be a defining moment
in the story of modern Russia.

775
00:59:34,640 --> 00:59:39,760
In 1962, the stakes were raised
to a war footing

776
00:59:39,760 --> 00:59:44,400
when Russia attempted to place
its shiny, new nuclear missiles

777
00:59:44,400 --> 00:59:49,120
within a stone's throw of the United
States in Fidel Castro's Cuba.

778
00:59:50,960 --> 00:59:54,920
A victorious revolutionary
enters Havana in triumph.

779
00:59:54,920 --> 00:59:59,960
He promises his people freedom.
Instead, he gives them bondage,

780
00:59:59,960 --> 01:00:02,760
as Russia's first satellite
in the Caribbean.

781
01:00:02,760 --> 01:00:07,960
In one giant step, Russia is giving
Cuba an offensive nuclear capability

782
01:00:07,960 --> 01:00:10,840
that can strike at the heart
of the United States.

783
01:00:15,600 --> 01:00:18,160
The world held its breath.

784
01:00:18,160 --> 01:00:23,840
It shall be the policy
of this nation to regard any nuclear
missile launched from Cuba

785
01:00:23,840 --> 01:00:27,840
as an attack by the Soviet Union
on the United States.

786
01:00:30,000 --> 01:00:35,720
But at the very last hour,
Kennedy and Khrushchev managed
to come to an agreement.

787
01:00:36,840 --> 01:00:39,720
On Sunday morning, a message reaches
the White House from Moscow.

788
01:00:44,080 --> 01:00:49,760
Press Secretary Salinger announces
that Chairman Khrushchev has agreed
to remove the missiles from Cuba.

789
01:00:52,200 --> 01:00:56,240
The Cuban Missile Crisis
really highlighted

790
01:00:56,240 --> 01:00:59,600
Khrushchev's style of leadership,
which was he was impulsive

791
01:00:59,600 --> 01:01:01,160
and unpredictable.

792
01:01:02,360 --> 01:01:05,880
Khrushchev, essentially, brought
the country to the brink of war.

793
01:01:05,880 --> 01:01:11,200
America and the West would be
ingrained as the enemy of the state

794
01:01:11,200 --> 01:01:13,400
for generations of Russians to come.

795
01:01:15,120 --> 01:01:19,480
And with Russia's relationship with
the West today at an all-time low,

796
01:01:19,480 --> 01:01:22,960
and with defence budgets
at an all-time high,

797
01:01:22,960 --> 01:01:27,280
you could easily be fooled
into thinking that the Cold War
never went away.

798
01:01:29,920 --> 01:01:32,240
But the truth is
far more complicated.

799
01:01:32,240 --> 01:01:36,240
The tale of Russia
between the Cold War and now

800
01:01:36,240 --> 01:01:40,080
is one of remarkable twists
and turns.

801
01:01:40,080 --> 01:01:45,560
By the 1980s, Russia would be
about to face an extraordinary
moment in its history,

802
01:01:46,640 --> 01:01:49,680
one that would not only see
the end of the Cold War,

803
01:01:49,680 --> 01:01:52,720
it would see the end
of the Soviet Union.

804
01:01:56,690 --> 01:02:00,250
The story of the Russian people
over the last millennium

805
01:02:00,250 --> 01:02:03,330
is often one of extraordinary
hardship and sacrifice

806
01:02:03,330 --> 01:02:08,570
on behalf of a country
forever racing to catch up
with the world around it.

807
01:02:08,570 --> 01:02:15,250
But during the Cold War, she had
finally emerged as a nuclear-powered
global superpower

808
01:02:15,250 --> 01:02:17,650
to rival the United States.

809
01:02:17,650 --> 01:02:21,970
The Russian-dominated Soviet Union
encompassed 15 republics

810
01:02:21,970 --> 01:02:25,370
with control over
293 million people.

811
01:02:27,370 --> 01:02:30,450
And yet,
in just a matter of decades,

812
01:02:30,450 --> 01:02:35,250
the world's most powerful collection
of states would dramatically
implode.

813
01:02:36,330 --> 01:02:38,330
So what happened?

814
01:02:40,010 --> 01:02:43,850
For many people,
the end of the USSR began

815
01:02:43,850 --> 01:02:46,370
on the 26th of April, 1986,

816
01:02:47,370 --> 01:02:50,690
in a town called Pripyat.

817
01:03:02,970 --> 01:03:07,210
Hello. Very good morning to you.
You're watching the BBC's
Breakfast Time programme.

818
01:03:07,210 --> 01:03:10,250
This morning, nuclear experts are
assessing the extent and the dangers

819
01:03:10,250 --> 01:03:13,370
of what's being described
as the world's worst-ever
nuclear disaster

820
01:03:13,370 --> 01:03:16,370
in the short history
of civilian nuclear power.

821
01:03:17,450 --> 01:03:20,970
At the time of the accident,
it was really the peak
of the Soviet society.

822
01:03:20,970 --> 01:03:23,730
Things were going very well,
they're generating nuclear power,

823
01:03:23,730 --> 01:03:25,650
really at the height of modernity.

824
01:03:29,050 --> 01:03:33,410
It was a normal day in Pripyat.
Workers went to the power station
as usual,

825
01:03:33,410 --> 01:03:36,050
families did their regular things.

826
01:03:36,050 --> 01:03:40,850
At the unit, Reactor Number Four was
scheduled a safety test.

827
01:03:40,850 --> 01:03:43,290
It was a routine safety test

828
01:03:43,290 --> 01:03:46,370
that needed to be completed
for use of the reactor.

829
01:03:46,370 --> 01:03:49,770
And a number of things went wrong
during this safety test,

830
01:03:49,770 --> 01:03:52,530
which led to the accident
that we know of

831
01:03:52,530 --> 01:03:56,770
and the explosion that ripped off
the lid of the nuclear reactor,

832
01:03:56,770 --> 01:04:00,850
sending radioactive particles
into the local area

833
01:04:00,850 --> 01:04:06,650
and a fire that burned for ten days,
spreading a huge cloud
of radioactivity,

834
01:04:06,650 --> 01:04:10,530
not only over the city of Pripyat,
but also over the whole of Europe.

835
01:04:10,530 --> 01:04:12,650
This was really disastrous.

836
01:04:15,450 --> 01:04:19,170
At first, the Soviets tried
to suppress the accident.

837
01:04:19,170 --> 01:04:23,650
They thought the panic would be
worse than radiation
if there was an evacuation.

838
01:04:23,650 --> 01:04:28,410
Phone lines were cut in the town
to prevent anyone from telling
the outside world.

839
01:04:28,410 --> 01:04:30,610
Life must go on.

840
01:04:31,690 --> 01:04:34,410
They were allowed
to go about their daily business,

841
01:04:34,410 --> 01:04:37,210
going to shops
and going out and about

842
01:04:37,210 --> 01:04:39,130
even while there was radiation
all around them.

843
01:04:40,210 --> 01:04:45,130
And it wasn't just the local
residents exposed to lethal doses
of radioactivity.

844
01:04:45,130 --> 01:04:50,890
Hundreds, then thousands
and then, finally,
hundreds of thousands of workers

845
01:04:50,890 --> 01:04:53,010
were sent to the disaster zone.

846
01:04:56,810 --> 01:05:00,130
This was really a disaster
that nobody had ever seen before

847
01:05:00,130 --> 01:05:02,370
and never really imagined
at this scale,

848
01:05:02,370 --> 01:05:06,130
so they had to develop new types
of technologies and approaches
to put out the fire,

849
01:05:06,130 --> 01:05:11,170
including using a helicopter
to dump sand and boron
onto the nuclear reactor fire.

850
01:05:12,210 --> 01:05:16,490
Teams dubbed liquidators raced
to contain the exposed core

851
01:05:16,490 --> 01:05:22,090
with soldiers taking turns
to run onto the roof of the reactor
to shovel off radioactive matter.

852
01:05:23,170 --> 01:05:27,010
The radiation was so high
they could only stay up there
for 90 seconds,

853
01:05:27,010 --> 01:05:31,690
but even in that time they received
a lifetime dose of radiation.

854
01:05:31,690 --> 01:05:37,890
Meanwhile, one helicopter
fatally clipped a crane
killing all four men onboard.

855
01:05:40,410 --> 01:05:43,850
Eventually, after ten days
of burning, it went out.

856
01:05:43,850 --> 01:05:48,970
The radioactive lava that was
seeping down through the building
had to be dealt with.

857
01:05:48,970 --> 01:05:52,170
They didn't want it to reach
the ground below the reactor

858
01:05:52,170 --> 01:05:55,450
and hit any ground water where it
may have created another explosion.

859
01:05:55,450 --> 01:06:02,050
Miners were enlisted and tunnelled
90 feet under the melted core
to build a protective wall.

860
01:06:02,050 --> 01:06:05,610
The real concern was
that it would hit the water table

861
01:06:05,610 --> 01:06:09,650
and that drinking water in the local
area would be contaminated,

862
01:06:09,650 --> 01:06:14,650
so the release of this radioactivity
was really bad news for people
specifically near the reactor,

863
01:06:14,650 --> 01:06:19,050
but also those people who came
into contact with the particles that
were released into the atmosphere.

864
01:06:20,090 --> 01:06:22,810
Finally,
as international pressure mounted,

865
01:06:22,810 --> 01:06:26,850
44,500 residents were evacuated
from Pripyat.

866
01:06:26,850 --> 01:06:29,250
Over the following two weeks,

867
01:06:29,250 --> 01:06:34,690
they relocated another 75,000
more people from the surrounding
18-mile area,

868
01:06:34,690 --> 01:06:37,530
labelled the Zone of Alienation.

869
01:06:39,130 --> 01:06:41,330
Those in most danger were moved,

870
01:06:41,330 --> 01:06:45,170
but the radioactive cloud spread
across vast areas of Europe.

871
01:06:47,050 --> 01:06:51,850
The extent of the fire at Chernobyl
and all the radioactive particles
contained in it

872
01:06:51,850 --> 01:06:56,490
was really vast and it went
very high up into the atmosphere.

873
01:06:58,290 --> 01:07:02,890
The wind took the radioactive
particles around Belarus and Ukraine

874
01:07:02,890 --> 01:07:05,810
up to Sweden and Finland.

875
01:07:06,850 --> 01:07:09,530
It then looped down
all the way to Italy

876
01:07:09,530 --> 01:07:13,330
and then back up across the UK
to Sweden and Norway.

877
01:07:14,330 --> 01:07:16,530
This was a global disaster.

878
01:07:20,290 --> 01:07:26,290
And still the Soviet Union
did not warn people to stay indoors
during the emergency.

879
01:07:27,370 --> 01:07:31,650
The fact that the rest of the world
knew about what had happened
at Chernobyl,

880
01:07:31,650 --> 01:07:36,930
that there had been an explosion,
well before the Soviet population
heard about it,

881
01:07:36,930 --> 01:07:41,010
people realised that actually
the state didn't really care

882
01:07:41,010 --> 01:07:44,730
about its own people enough
to protect them.

883
01:07:44,730 --> 01:07:47,850
They were doing as much as possible

884
01:07:47,850 --> 01:07:50,810
in order to keep this
under the carpet.

885
01:07:50,810 --> 01:07:53,810
This was a failure
of the entire state apparatus.

886
01:07:53,810 --> 01:07:57,970
They were trying to do their best
in order to hide everything.

887
01:07:59,690 --> 01:08:02,690
Soviet officials announced
to the world

888
01:08:02,690 --> 01:08:05,530
they had put out the fire
on the 6th of May,

889
01:08:05,530 --> 01:08:10,050
but radioactive gases poured
from the explosion site
for another week,

890
01:08:10,050 --> 01:08:12,810
peaking on the 11th of May.

891
01:08:12,810 --> 01:08:16,010
The Reagan team confirmed
world concern

892
01:08:16,010 --> 01:08:20,010
at what they claim is
the Kremlin's continuing refusal
to come clean on the accident.

893
01:08:20,010 --> 01:08:23,970
We don't think that they have
provided as full and prompt
information

894
01:08:23,970 --> 01:08:25,970
as they should have.

895
01:08:27,010 --> 01:08:30,410
For those in power, admitting
responsibility meant admitting

896
01:08:30,410 --> 01:08:34,570
that the image of the great
Soviet Union was a lie.

897
01:08:36,570 --> 01:08:42,290
The radioactivity released
was 400 times greater
than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

898
01:08:44,010 --> 01:08:47,490
And the long-lasting effects
on the health of the people exposed,

899
01:08:47,490 --> 01:08:51,810
particularly children, is still
being realised over 30 years on.

900
01:08:56,250 --> 01:08:59,850
It could happen
in other parts of the world,

901
01:08:59,850 --> 01:09:04,690
but reaction would be different
and this did manifest

902
01:09:04,690 --> 01:09:11,330
this kind of approach
of authorities of the government
towards ordinary Russians,

903
01:09:11,330 --> 01:09:17,290
and their eagerness to pay any price
in terms of our lives.

904
01:09:17,290 --> 01:09:20,050
The fact that it failed
so catastrophically

905
01:09:20,050 --> 01:09:25,010
and spread radiation
across the entire country, something
that people were very afraid of,

906
01:09:25,010 --> 01:09:27,890
really shattered the illusion
of the Soviet dream.

907
01:09:27,890 --> 01:09:30,890
It brought home how necessary
it was to tell the truth

908
01:09:30,890 --> 01:09:34,130
and to reveal not just
contemporary Soviet problems,

909
01:09:34,130 --> 01:09:38,810
but to delve into all the lies
that had been told
about Soviet history beforehand.

910
01:09:40,330 --> 01:09:45,930
The disaster would have a profound
effect on the relationship between
the Soviet Union and her people.

911
01:09:45,930 --> 01:09:50,770
It was a loss of faith that still
has a ripple effect today.

912
01:09:52,410 --> 01:09:55,970
70 years on
from Lenin's glorious revolution,

913
01:09:55,970 --> 01:09:59,610
40 years on from Stalin's victory
in the Second World War

914
01:09:59,610 --> 01:10:03,050
and only decades from
the heady heights of the Cold War,

915
01:10:03,050 --> 01:10:09,570
and the first chink in the armour
of the mighty Soviet Union had been
broadcast to the world.

916
01:10:21,090 --> 01:10:26,730
For almost 1,000 years,
from Ivan the Terrible all the way
through to Vladimir Putin,

917
01:10:26,730 --> 01:10:30,410
Russia has had
a complicated relationship
with the concept of freedom.

918
01:10:33,570 --> 01:10:35,890
But at the end of the 1980s,

919
01:10:35,890 --> 01:10:42,810
the arrival of a new leader would
usher in an autonomy the people
had never experienced before

920
01:10:42,810 --> 01:10:45,930
and Russia would never be
the same again.

921
01:10:47,170 --> 01:10:50,210
After years of dormant Soviet rule,

922
01:10:50,210 --> 01:10:53,690
the Russian people were about to
find out what freedom meant

923
01:10:53,690 --> 01:10:56,290
with the arrival
of Mikhail Gorbachev.

924
01:11:01,890 --> 01:11:04,850
Gorbachev was not
very well known at the time,

925
01:11:04,850 --> 01:11:07,370
but he understood
about the need for innovation.

926
01:11:08,410 --> 01:11:13,410
He manages to win
the leadership contest in 1985

927
01:11:13,410 --> 01:11:17,250
and then very quickly
starts to instigate

928
01:11:17,250 --> 01:11:20,970
one of the most radical reform
programmes that the Soviet Union
has ever seen.

929
01:11:20,970 --> 01:11:23,690
After almost 40 years of conflict,

930
01:11:23,690 --> 01:11:27,250
Gorbachev signed a nuclear arms
treaty with the US

931
01:11:27,250 --> 01:11:29,930
that ended the Cold War.

932
01:11:29,930 --> 01:11:33,410
He's exceedingly successful
in international terms

933
01:11:33,410 --> 01:11:37,930
in basically ending this
very, very confrontational era.

934
01:11:37,930 --> 01:11:42,170
But domestically,
he's only beginning to realise

935
01:11:42,170 --> 01:11:45,650
just how massive a challenge
trying to reform

936
01:11:45,650 --> 01:11:49,170
what really proves to be a pretty
unreformable system is going to be.

937
01:11:51,050 --> 01:11:56,050
Gorbachev's road map for change
was packaged around two buzz words -

938
01:11:56,050 --> 01:11:58,770
glasnost, which meant openness,

939
01:11:58,770 --> 01:12:02,930
and perestroika,
which meant a restructuring.

940
01:12:03,810 --> 01:12:09,650
It appeared as if ordinary Russians
had finally been given the right
to use their own voice.

941
01:12:09,650 --> 01:12:12,810
What we're seeing is
throughout the Soviet Union,

942
01:12:12,810 --> 01:12:17,450
different nationality groups
speak out in a way we haven't really
seen since the Revolution itself.

943
01:12:18,450 --> 01:12:20,730
It was a most beautiful time.

944
01:12:20,730 --> 01:12:22,930
This was real freedom
and opportunity

945
01:12:22,930 --> 01:12:26,610
for Russia to be changed. It was
like life might be different.

946
01:12:30,850 --> 01:12:35,570
The problem was that as soon as
Gorbachev loosened restrictions

947
01:12:35,570 --> 01:12:40,770
on what could be said publicly
in Russia, a great deal could be
said and not much of it was good.

948
01:12:43,130 --> 01:12:48,010
And so his newly-empowered citizens
made their feelings known.

949
01:12:50,610 --> 01:12:55,010
He leans into it.
He thinks, "OK, we do need
to have more dramatic change."

950
01:12:55,010 --> 01:12:58,330
Then what we get is
demokratizatsiya. Democratisation.

951
01:12:58,330 --> 01:13:03,130
In 1989, Gorbachev introduced
free elections.

952
01:13:04,170 --> 01:13:07,410
It was a momentous departure
from the old communist system.

953
01:13:07,410 --> 01:13:11,890
Ultimately, it is the people
who will decide the fate
of Gorbachev's revolution.

954
01:13:11,890 --> 01:13:16,290
How much faith do you have in
Gorbachev? He's on the right track.

955
01:13:16,290 --> 01:13:18,690
We just have to make sure
everyone listens to him.

956
01:13:22,890 --> 01:13:25,730
Gorbachev had opened the floodgates.

957
01:13:26,770 --> 01:13:30,930
Across the Soviet Union, a dramatic
wave of revolution spread.

958
01:13:32,450 --> 01:13:35,930
Then, on the 9th of November, 1989,

959
01:13:35,930 --> 01:13:38,850
the Berlin Wall came crashing down.

960
01:13:44,450 --> 01:13:47,130
For the hardliners
of the Communist Party,

961
01:13:47,130 --> 01:13:49,730
this was a leader
who had lost control.

962
01:13:54,090 --> 01:13:57,690
Gorbachev's challenge had always
been how to deal with the hardliners

963
01:13:57,690 --> 01:14:02,570
that he knew still controlled
the so-called power agencies.

964
01:14:02,570 --> 01:14:04,850
The military, the police, the KGB.

965
01:14:04,850 --> 01:14:06,930
Once again, he became more radical.

966
01:14:06,930 --> 01:14:10,130
He said, "What we're going to do is
create a new union treaty,

967
01:14:10,130 --> 01:14:13,250
"which is going to totally reshape
the basis of the Soviet Union."

968
01:14:13,250 --> 01:14:18,770
And this would also mean, frankly,
the end of the unified Communist
Party, the end of the KGB.

969
01:14:18,770 --> 01:14:21,970
This was too much from
the point of view of the hardliners.

970
01:14:21,970 --> 01:14:26,450
They felt that if they allowed
this union treaty to be signed,
there was no going back.

971
01:14:26,450 --> 01:14:31,530
And that's why we had,
in August, 1991, their coup.

972
01:14:34,570 --> 01:14:40,130
A reactionary group, led by the KGB,
locked Gorbachev
in his Crimean estate,

973
01:14:40,130 --> 01:14:46,690
and on the 19th of August, 1991,
sent tanks into Moscow
in a bid to seize power.

974
01:14:47,890 --> 01:14:54,170
They just thought, look, they would
isolate Gorbachev in his palace,
his dacha down in Crimea.

975
01:14:55,450 --> 01:14:58,410
They would have the tanks out
on the streets

976
01:14:58,410 --> 01:15:03,170
and declare a temporary emergency
committee would be in charge.

977
01:15:04,450 --> 01:15:07,650
And they assumed that, frankly,
as soon as they cracked the whip,

978
01:15:07,650 --> 01:15:10,890
the people of the Soviet Union
would basically just settle down,

979
01:15:11,890 --> 01:15:13,890
which they didn't.

980
01:15:15,730 --> 01:15:20,650
The KGB wanted to hold together
the old communist USSR regime,

981
01:15:20,650 --> 01:15:22,850
but the people fought back.

982
01:15:25,290 --> 01:15:28,090
They're beginning to claim Moscow
as their own.

983
01:15:30,610 --> 01:15:34,890
Claiming it back from
the communists, whose credibility
has been destroyed,

984
01:15:34,890 --> 01:15:37,810
whose power has been crushed
by these demonstrators.

985
01:15:37,810 --> 01:15:42,050
The crowds took on
almost the feel of a carnival.

986
01:15:42,050 --> 01:15:44,730
They would put flowers
in tank barrels,

987
01:15:44,730 --> 01:15:47,370
climb up onto the tanks
in the streets of Moscow.

988
01:15:49,050 --> 01:15:53,010
As soon as it became clear
that the protesters could get away
with protesting,

989
01:15:53,010 --> 01:15:57,290
that, yes, there were tanks,
but frankly protesters could clamber
all over them

990
01:15:57,290 --> 01:16:00,730
and no-one was going to shoot them,
then all of a sudden everything
shifted.

991
01:16:03,010 --> 01:16:09,890
It became this symbol
of "the time when they -
the elites, the bosses -

992
01:16:09,890 --> 01:16:13,490
"tried to control us
and for once we said no."
It became a revolution.

993
01:16:16,890 --> 01:16:19,130
This was the defining moment.

994
01:16:19,130 --> 01:16:21,410
The people had spoken.

995
01:16:21,410 --> 01:16:25,250
The coup was over,
but nothing would be the same again.

996
01:16:25,250 --> 01:16:28,530
They not only rejected
the hardliners,

997
01:16:28,530 --> 01:16:33,010
but also the broken communist system
presided over by Gorbachev.

998
01:16:33,010 --> 01:16:35,530
On Christmas Day, 1991,

999
01:16:35,530 --> 01:16:41,010
he stepped down as the eighth
and last ever leader
of the Soviet Union.

1000
01:16:42,370 --> 01:16:47,930
Mikhail Gorbachev,
although he has played great role
in world history,

1001
01:16:47,930 --> 01:16:53,130
did start things
he was not able to control.

1002
01:16:53,130 --> 01:16:59,410
This huge, politically catastrophic
disintegration of the USSR.

1003
01:16:59,410 --> 01:17:04,850
At the end of 1991, as his very last
act as Soviet President,

1004
01:17:04,850 --> 01:17:08,090
Gorbachev signed the Soviet Union
out of existence.

1005
01:17:09,450 --> 01:17:15,370
Mikhail Gorbachev inherited an
empire maintained by the iron fist
of central control.

1006
01:17:15,370 --> 01:17:18,770
He's leaving behind
15 independent states

1007
01:17:18,770 --> 01:17:23,370
which share only a disastrous
economy and an uncertain future.

1008
01:17:25,410 --> 01:17:29,650
Power passed from the Kremlin
to 15 new republics

1009
01:17:29,650 --> 01:17:33,530
and over six decades of communist
rule came to an abrupt end.

1010
01:17:33,530 --> 01:17:37,770
This was a truly astonishing
and momentous event.

1011
01:17:37,770 --> 01:17:41,050
The end of the Soviet Union, the
rise of a new independent Russia.

1012
01:17:42,650 --> 01:17:47,530
The Russian public has decreed
Gorbachev's dissolution
of the Soviet Union

1013
01:17:47,530 --> 01:17:50,210
as a disaster bordering on treason.

1014
01:17:50,210 --> 01:17:55,450
In a recent poll of Russians,
his approval rating stood well below
even that of Stalin.

1015
01:17:57,250 --> 01:18:02,610
For many, the new Russia would bring
with it an era of hardship
and uncertainty,

1016
01:18:02,610 --> 01:18:10,490
but for a select few, the journey
from communism to capitalism
would see them become filthy rich

1017
01:18:10,490 --> 01:18:16,010
and herald in the era of one
Vladimir Putin, the unlikely leader.

1018
01:18:16,010 --> 01:18:20,450
He was a kind of junior officer in
communist East Germany in the 1980s.

1019
01:18:20,450 --> 01:18:24,930
He was never, though, a star.
He was a good B minus.

1020
01:18:24,930 --> 01:18:28,210
He was everybody's
favourite second-in-command.

1021
01:18:28,210 --> 01:18:30,810
So how did he go
from a good number two

1022
01:18:30,810 --> 01:18:34,770
to allegedly one of the richest
and most powerful men on the planet?

1023
01:18:39,900 --> 01:18:42,940
Life for ordinary people
in modern Russia today

1024
01:18:42,940 --> 01:18:47,700
is dominated by one man,
and he's everywhere you look.

1025
01:18:48,780 --> 01:18:55,500
Over the last 1,000 years,
Russia's history has constantly
returned to one of East versus West.

1026
01:18:55,500 --> 01:18:57,740
And today is no different.

1027
01:19:01,420 --> 01:19:04,220
Vladimir Putin is a man
with a mission.

1028
01:19:05,260 --> 01:19:09,660
And bear in mind his background.
He is KGB through and through.

1029
01:19:09,660 --> 01:19:13,180
He is a man who has mastered
two martial arts.

1030
01:19:13,180 --> 01:19:17,940
Putin is kind of Russia's own
Action Man, so there's the judo.
He genuinely likes judo.

1031
01:19:17,940 --> 01:19:20,860
But also there are all sorts
of other crazy stunts.

1032
01:19:20,860 --> 01:19:25,100
He's flown with cranes, he's
scuba dived in the Mediterranean.

1033
01:19:25,100 --> 01:19:29,020
There's that famous shot of him
riding topless on a horse.

1034
01:19:29,020 --> 01:19:33,300
He's believed to secretly be one
of the wealthiest men in the world.

1035
01:19:33,300 --> 01:19:37,620
It's possible to say that Putin is
the richest man in the world,

1036
01:19:37,620 --> 01:19:40,660
probably the richest man
who has ever lived.

1037
01:19:40,660 --> 01:19:46,940
And has dominated Russian politics
since he was first elected
20 years ago.

1038
01:19:46,940 --> 01:19:50,020
You know,
here's this virile, strong guy.

1039
01:19:50,020 --> 01:19:55,980
It was a symbol of personal
virility, but also of Russia
as a strong, virile state.

1040
01:19:55,980 --> 01:19:58,820
Who is he? What does he want?

1041
01:19:58,820 --> 01:20:02,140
And what is the real story
of Russia today?

1042
01:20:09,900 --> 01:20:12,820
After the collapse
of the Soviet Union in 1991,

1043
01:20:12,820 --> 01:20:18,220
Boris Yeltsin had come to power
as Russia's first president,

1044
01:20:18,220 --> 01:20:23,260
but his attempts to bring in
democracy and a capitalist
market economy

1045
01:20:23,260 --> 01:20:26,900
had resulted in huge economic
hardship for the Russian people.

1046
01:20:28,180 --> 01:20:33,220
Prices have jumped even more than
the three, four or five times
they'd expected.

1047
01:20:33,220 --> 01:20:37,540
This butter was selling for
eight times the price it could have
been bought for yesterday.

1048
01:20:37,540 --> 01:20:41,860
These are the sort of sums
that make nonsense of the incomes
of most Russians.

1049
01:20:43,020 --> 01:20:46,500
The weakness of the rouble meant
your pension meant almost nothing,

1050
01:20:46,500 --> 01:20:49,580
where you had no idea
what your job was going to be.

1051
01:20:49,580 --> 01:20:52,740
The struggle for day-to-day survival
was extraordinary.

1052
01:20:52,740 --> 01:20:56,420
"I simply can't survive
on a pension," declared one man.

1053
01:20:56,420 --> 01:21:00,180
"It's daylight robbery,
stealing from the honest,"
complained another.

1054
01:21:01,220 --> 01:21:04,900
By the late 1990s, he had suffered
a string of heart attacks.

1055
01:21:04,900 --> 01:21:09,300
He withdrew from public life
and Russia was left
spinning out of control.

1056
01:21:11,540 --> 01:21:16,820
And lurking in the shadows
was an obscure politician
called Vladimir Putin.

1057
01:21:18,220 --> 01:21:22,740
He comes to Moscow
and becomes Director of the Federal
Security Service, the FSB,

1058
01:21:22,740 --> 01:21:26,100
which is the closest thing there is
to a successor to the KGB.

1059
01:21:26,100 --> 01:21:29,380
And then he becomes, in due course,
Deputy Prime Minister
and Prime Minister.

1060
01:21:29,380 --> 01:21:31,580
By this point,
he's clearly been picked,

1061
01:21:31,580 --> 01:21:35,780
but he's picked because
he's seen as efficient, young,

1062
01:21:35,780 --> 01:21:38,820
unlike Boris Yeltsin, sober,

1063
01:21:38,820 --> 01:21:43,980
but also, more to the point,
reliable. He's a safe pair of hands,
someone who you can trust.

1064
01:21:46,700 --> 01:21:53,300
On December 31st, 1999,
with the dawn of a new millennium,
Putin came into power.

1065
01:21:56,220 --> 01:22:01,740
Putin looked fit, looked healthy,
sober and competent.

1066
01:22:01,740 --> 01:22:06,540
Putin has always based his claim
to authority on being able
to establish order,

1067
01:22:06,540 --> 01:22:10,260
some kind of regularity,
some kind of predictability.

1068
01:22:10,260 --> 01:22:13,980
And he's very much made his name
on being able to maintain order

1069
01:22:13,980 --> 01:22:17,780
both within Russia and in Russia's
relations with the outside world.

1070
01:22:20,140 --> 01:22:24,420
During the 2000s, Russia began
to change dramatically.

1071
01:22:25,460 --> 01:22:29,460
If you were lucky and had the right
connections or the right muscle,

1072
01:22:29,460 --> 01:22:32,420
you could become a millionaire,
a billionaire.

1073
01:22:32,420 --> 01:22:36,180
The economy boomed,
the rich became richer

1074
01:22:36,180 --> 01:22:38,380
and Putin's popularity soared.

1075
01:22:38,380 --> 01:22:43,380
Russia is rife with oil, selling
up to 11 million barrels a day.

1076
01:22:44,860 --> 01:22:47,140
Russia has been more prosperous,

1077
01:22:47,140 --> 01:22:50,540
the standard of living in Russia has
been better than it's ever been.

1078
01:22:51,700 --> 01:22:54,740
Today it has
more than 70 billionaires.

1079
01:22:54,740 --> 01:22:59,380
There was a new, flashy breed of
oligarch who had cashed in
under Yeltsin.

1080
01:23:01,460 --> 01:23:04,420
They had a whole series of auctions

1081
01:23:04,420 --> 01:23:09,820
and people were buying whole
industries for pence on the pound.

1082
01:23:11,220 --> 01:23:15,220
They control oil, they control gas,
they control minerals,

1083
01:23:15,220 --> 01:23:19,140
they control railways,
natural resources...

1084
01:23:19,140 --> 01:23:22,820
And they have grown
stupendously rich.

1085
01:23:22,820 --> 01:23:26,740
But the oligarchs were
in for a shock with Putin.

1086
01:23:31,020 --> 01:23:35,620
What he was worried about
when he came into power in 2000 was

1087
01:23:35,620 --> 01:23:40,300
that oligarchs had
large amounts of money,
which he didn't really control.

1088
01:23:40,300 --> 01:23:43,980
And so what he did
in his first presidential term

1089
01:23:43,980 --> 01:23:47,460
was rein in some of the oligarchs
and essentially say,

1090
01:23:49,060 --> 01:23:52,540
"Stay out of politics,
obey the state,

1091
01:23:52,540 --> 01:23:55,820
"or I will take your fortune away."

1092
01:23:55,820 --> 01:23:59,060
Now, some of them ran away,

1093
01:23:59,060 --> 01:24:04,100
some of them were jailed -
Mikhail Khodorkovsky,
once Russia's richest man,

1094
01:24:04,100 --> 01:24:06,020
who spent ten years
in a Siberian jail.

1095
01:24:06,020 --> 01:24:10,340
And others said, "OK, that's fine.
What is mine is yours."

1096
01:24:10,340 --> 01:24:14,860
And if you look at the people
who are now billionaires
in today's Russia,

1097
01:24:14,860 --> 01:24:17,260
they are some of the wealthiest
people on the planet.

1098
01:24:17,260 --> 01:24:20,100
They're not just billionaires,
they're multi-billionaires.

1099
01:24:20,100 --> 01:24:24,020
And it's Kremlin Inc,
it's corporatist.

1100
01:24:24,020 --> 01:24:26,620
And actually these days
it's all KGB.

1101
01:24:28,100 --> 01:24:33,980
The big question is does the power
and money really sit with Putin
or with the KGB?

1102
01:24:37,540 --> 01:24:39,660
You can't be ex-KGB.

1103
01:24:40,620 --> 01:24:45,580
You can't because it's a system
that keeps you forever.

1104
01:24:45,580 --> 01:24:48,180
And, of course, Putin can't be ex.

1105
01:24:49,580 --> 01:24:53,900
When Putin became Prime Minister,
his first meeting was

1106
01:24:53,900 --> 01:24:58,660
with very high-ranked KGB officers.

1107
01:24:58,660 --> 01:25:03,700
And as a joke, he said,
"Operation was successful."

1108
01:25:03,700 --> 01:25:08,540
We have, in Russia, an exceedingly
sophisticated and well-funded

1109
01:25:08,540 --> 01:25:11,780
and, frankly, very powerful range
of intelligence agencies,

1110
01:25:11,780 --> 01:25:16,340
which are both suppressing people
within the country,
but also, as we all know,

1111
01:25:16,340 --> 01:25:18,660
carry out all kinds of missions
around the world.

1112
01:25:18,660 --> 01:25:24,580
In 2006, Russia passed new laws
permitting the special forces

1113
01:25:24,580 --> 01:25:29,140
to carry out extra-judicial killings
of extremists abroad.

1114
01:25:30,180 --> 01:25:32,100
And there was one mission
in particular

1115
01:25:32,100 --> 01:25:35,620
that would define this next chilling
chapter of Putin's reign.

1116
01:25:37,380 --> 01:25:41,900
An assassination that would leave
a grieving widow demanding answers.

1117
01:25:42,940 --> 01:25:46,340
In Russia, it's very common
to use different names.

1118
01:25:47,740 --> 01:25:51,580
Normally, I called him Sasha,
of course, and old friends
knew him as Sasha,

1119
01:25:51,580 --> 01:25:56,900
because it's more softer,
it's...more lovely.

1120
01:25:56,900 --> 01:25:59,500
It's a very interesting connection

1121
01:25:59,500 --> 01:26:03,300
between Putin
and my husband, Sasha.

1122
01:26:03,300 --> 01:26:08,620
Her husband was ex-KGB officer
Alexander Litvinenko,

1123
01:26:09,700 --> 01:26:13,300
who had fled Russia with his family
after becoming an enemy
of the Kremlin

1124
01:26:13,300 --> 01:26:15,300
for speaking out against corruption.

1125
01:26:16,340 --> 01:26:22,020
Maybe he's...what they call
betraying of the system,

1126
01:26:22,020 --> 01:26:25,260
maybe because he was very close
to some truths.

1127
01:26:29,300 --> 01:26:35,540
On the 1st of November, 2006,
Litvinenko met two men
at the Millennium Hotel in London,

1128
01:26:35,540 --> 01:26:38,020
where he enjoyed a pot of green tea.

1129
01:26:40,140 --> 01:26:43,940
Little did he know, his tea had been
deliberately contaminated

1130
01:26:43,940 --> 01:26:47,740
with a deadly poison - polonium-210.

1131
01:26:50,060 --> 01:26:52,980
The story is gruesome
and yet darkly funny.

1132
01:26:52,980 --> 01:26:57,460
The two assassins sent by Moscow
were not very good killers.

1133
01:26:57,460 --> 01:27:00,900
They left this billowing trail
of radiation all across London.

1134
01:27:00,900 --> 01:27:03,860
They'd go on to contaminate
restaurants, bedrooms,
a pole-dancing club,

1135
01:27:03,860 --> 01:27:06,900
even Arsenal's Emirates Stadium.

1136
01:27:06,900 --> 01:27:12,340
Scotland Yard is convinced
that Andrei Lugovoy, a former
Russian security services officer,

1137
01:27:12,340 --> 01:27:14,340
murdered Litvinenko.

1138
01:27:14,340 --> 01:27:21,660
It was my right to call for inquest
and try to find who behind.
This is right for public inquiry.

1139
01:27:22,660 --> 01:27:24,460
But I'm very disappointed.

1140
01:27:24,460 --> 01:27:28,260
The killers of Alexander Litvinenko
are both back in Russia,

1141
01:27:28,260 --> 01:27:34,780
Andrei Lugovoy, who co-poisoned
Litvinenko, is a Duma Deputy,
he's like an MP.

1142
01:27:34,780 --> 01:27:40,300
He's very rich. He appears
on state TV chat shows all the time,
he protests his innocence.

1143
01:27:40,300 --> 01:27:42,420
It's clear that they enjoy
state protection.

1144
01:27:43,980 --> 01:27:48,380
I'm not in a political case.
I'm a woman who lost her husband.

1145
01:27:48,380 --> 01:27:51,540
And I want to know what happened.

1146
01:27:52,580 --> 01:27:57,020
Litvinenko's death
and the Salisbury poisonings in 2018

1147
01:27:57,020 --> 01:28:03,620
demonstrated to the world
Russia will use extra-judicial force
overseas to protect its interests.

1148
01:28:05,140 --> 01:28:09,820
But to what end? What does Putin
want his new Russia to become?

1149
01:28:09,820 --> 01:28:14,980
For his people, the message is...
he's making Russia great again.

1150
01:28:17,020 --> 01:28:20,580
In his speeches, Putin was saying
Russia is a great power

1151
01:28:20,580 --> 01:28:24,500
and the West are not treating Russia
as if it's a great power,
the way he understands it,

1152
01:28:24,500 --> 01:28:29,020
which means they get away with
the odd little war or invasion.
That's what a great power does.

1153
01:28:29,020 --> 01:28:33,500
If one of these countries looks like
it's getting out of hand, then
something has to be done about it.

1154
01:28:35,220 --> 01:28:38,620
The world has seen Russia deploy
its military strength and might

1155
01:28:38,620 --> 01:28:42,620
in the Ukraine, Crimea and in Syria.

1156
01:28:44,260 --> 01:28:49,220
But to understand Russia today
is to understand
a different kind of war,

1157
01:28:49,220 --> 01:28:51,420
a war by stealth.

1158
01:28:53,180 --> 01:28:58,740
What the digital world has done is
allowed Putin and his spies to reach
millions of people,

1159
01:28:58,740 --> 01:29:04,220
Americans, Brits, with fake stories,
with polarising stories,

1160
01:29:04,220 --> 01:29:06,620
with all sorts of divisive stuff.

1161
01:29:06,620 --> 01:29:10,660
The playbook is the same, but
the reach now is so much greater,

1162
01:29:10,660 --> 01:29:17,300
which in some ways makes Putin's
regime and Putin's efforts
be more scary than the KGB.

1163
01:29:17,300 --> 01:29:20,460
I's clever. And it's brutal.

1164
01:29:20,460 --> 01:29:23,780
And I don't think
we have got to grips with it yet.

1165
01:29:23,780 --> 01:29:29,500
It is alleged
special intelligence centres
infiltrate the internet,

1166
01:29:29,500 --> 01:29:33,460
hack information systems
and churn out fake news.

1167
01:29:36,460 --> 01:29:40,740
What they do, what they are
very good at is identifying
the existing fault lines

1168
01:29:40,740 --> 01:29:43,940
that are thrown up between
communities or people who feel
they've been left out.

1169
01:29:43,940 --> 01:29:47,580
In some ways, we give them
the ammunition they use against us.

1170
01:29:47,580 --> 01:29:51,860
We generally hear about information
warfare as something that comes
from Russia

1171
01:29:51,860 --> 01:29:53,740
and is directed at us.

1172
01:29:53,740 --> 01:29:58,060
The funny thing is in Russia
information warfare is taken to be
what the West does

1173
01:29:58,060 --> 01:30:00,580
to undermine Russia
in the international environment.

1174
01:30:00,580 --> 01:30:06,540
And today accusations
of election meddling are just one
of the latest iterations

1175
01:30:06,540 --> 01:30:08,940
of information warfare.

1176
01:30:12,740 --> 01:30:16,740
Recent disclosures
of alleged hacked emails

1177
01:30:16,740 --> 01:30:19,980
are consistent with
the methods and motivations of
Russian-directed efforts.

1178
01:30:19,980 --> 01:30:24,700
The intelligence community has
concluded that they are almost
certainly directed

1179
01:30:24,700 --> 01:30:26,940
by senior Russian
government officials,

1180
01:30:26,940 --> 01:30:30,700
that Russia was interested
in destabilising
the US political system.

1181
01:30:32,020 --> 01:30:35,940
But for now
there is a new story to be spun.

1182
01:30:35,940 --> 01:30:39,740
He has brought Russia up
from its knees.

1183
01:30:39,740 --> 01:30:41,620
He's kind of brought pride back.

1184
01:30:44,020 --> 01:30:49,620
Over time, he has become more
and more isolated and more insulated
from the realities on the ground.

1185
01:30:49,620 --> 01:30:54,020
It remains true that, you know,
for many ordinary Russians

1186
01:30:54,020 --> 01:30:58,020
other leadership is
difficult to imagine.

1187
01:30:59,780 --> 01:31:03,380
The big problem for Putin is,
ironically enough, the same problem

1188
01:31:03,380 --> 01:31:05,860
that other dictators
and, indeed, Mafia bosses have.

1189
01:31:05,860 --> 01:31:08,540
It's how do you retire

1190
01:31:08,540 --> 01:31:12,700
when everything you are, everything
you have is based on power?

1191
01:31:21,460 --> 01:31:26,660
And it looks neatly
as if the history of Russia
over the last thousand years

1192
01:31:26,660 --> 01:31:28,660
almost comes full circle.

1193
01:31:31,420 --> 01:31:35,500
From its founding father,
Prince Vladimir,

1194
01:31:35,500 --> 01:31:39,220
to the father of Russia today,
Vladimir Putin.

1195
01:31:47,300 --> 01:31:54,380
Its size and power makes Russia
a baffling place,
full of contradictions,

1196
01:31:57,900 --> 01:32:03,300
but the truth is this is a country
with a rich, vivid history

1197
01:32:05,820 --> 01:32:10,660
and a people who have
a unique connection and belief
in their motherland,

1198
01:32:10,660 --> 01:32:17,060
one that has been tested to
the extreme by its earliest rulers
to its mighty Soviet ambitions.

1199
01:32:17,060 --> 01:32:21,300
And now with Putin securing
new amendments

1200
01:32:21,300 --> 01:32:23,780
that could keep him in power
until 2036,

1201
01:32:23,780 --> 01:32:27,420
the next chapter
in the rollercoaster history
of the Russian people

1202
01:32:27,420 --> 01:32:30,700
looks set to be just as dramatic.

1203
01:32:30,700 --> 01:32:31,980
Spasibo!

1204
01:32:54,980 --> 01:32:57,380
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