Breaking the Ice (1/5)
This is also part of this series: Russia - A Journey with Jonathan Dimbleby (5)
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| Subjects: Anthropology, Geography, History, Russia, Social Studies, Sociology | ||||
Vladimir Putin was hosting the G8 summit in St Petersburg; there was an air of optimism about relations between Russia and the West. After the long years of the Cold War through which Jonathan had lived, he was keen to make his first stop in the city of Murmansk, which stands as a reminder to the years when England and Russia were close allies in a war of survival against the Nazis. But soon he was on the move, away from the Russia we normally see or read about and into the strange and remote world of Karelia. He crosses a great lake in a replica 17th schooner, and we get a first taste of the extraordinary contrasts that Russia provides. In Karelia, we meet people who still believe in the good and evil spirits of the forest; but just a short train ride away (by Russian standards!) we come to the sophisticated elegance of St Petersburg, with its canals and palaces and extraordinary history. On the surface St Petersburg must count as one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Jonathan runs into the great conductor Valery Gergiev as he comes slightly breathless out of a concert at the Mariinsky Theatre. He meets some of the cool new rich of the city at a party overlooking one of the cities beautiful canals, who try to convince him that there is a massive difference between democracy and freedom. They know they don't have much of the first, but they still reckon they are freer than in the West. He gets a different insight into this when Ilya Utekhin takes him to visit a communal flat. It was built in imperial Russia as a grand apartment for a rich merchant but after the revolution was occupied by as many as fifty impoverished families at once. Utekhin was brought up there in one small room. It wasn't so bad, he says: we Russians live in two worlds – personal life, which is our thoughts, our aspirations, our friends and relationships; and everyday life – sleeping, eating, washing clothes. This was just everyday life and it didn't matter. Jonathan then sets out to track the origins of this Russian nation, following the course of the very first Viking settlements along the River Volkhov until he comes to Velikii Novgorod. This was a great city when Moscow was no more than a trading post in the woods, and the cathedral is one of the very oldest in Russia, copied from the great churches of Constantinople when the Slavs converted to Christianity in the 10th Century. Journey's end for this film is Moscow, and a couple of hours in the gloriously ornate Sandunovsky Baths. The banya is a quintessential institution in Russian society. Without clothes on, it is hard to tell the rich from the not-so-rich, the good from the not-so-good. Jonathan joins in and gets a good pummeling from the hefty masseur, while reflecting on the nature of Russian society he has so far encountered. |
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