Country Matters (2/5)
This is also part of this series: Russia - A Journey with Jonathan Dimbleby (5)
|
Please install the latest version of Adobe Flash Player to view this content!
|
||||
| Subjects: Anthropology, Geography, History, Russia, Social Studies, Sociology | ||||
Yasnaya Polyana is set in lush countryside south of Moscow. The manor house where he lived most of his life has been preserved pretty much as he left it – his favorite clothes still hang in the cupboard. Tolstoy believed you could find the soul of Russia in the simple peasant, and today his great-great-grandson, Count Vladimir Tolstoy, is trying to revive the whole estate as a working farm. It is, of course, an idealized dream. Further South, you come to the reality of farming in Russia today where families struggle to survive after the ending of State subsidies. Voronezh is in the middle of Black Earth country, named after the rich soil that surrounds it. This part of Russia bore the brunt of Stalin's brutal project to bring all farms under State control. Millions died in the famine that followed, and in the purges he later inflicted on the survivors. In the woods nearby, Jonathan comes across a moving memorial to some of the victims. The other formative influence on Tolstoy was his time as an army officer in the Caucasus. Pyatigorsk, on the northern edge of the mountains, was then a place where soldiers relaxed. It's still a spa town today, and Jonathan decides to sample the warm sulphur springs. A woman welder from the far north takes rather a shine to him. Just above them are the great mountains of the Caucasus, the scene then and now of fierce fighting between Russian armies and the local tribesmen. Jonathan – himself a skilled horseman – gets a chance to ride one of the famous Kabardin horses whose bloodline is prized by breeders all over the world. Later he goes to a wedding where the ancient rituals of wife stealing and repentance are played out. You cannot get through the Caucacus without confronting the harsh reality of the Chechen war. Jonathan's route takes him past Beslan where 331 people died, over half of them children. He visits the ruins of School Number One, preserved as a memorial to them. Further on he comes across another side of the story, a Chechen village whose entire population was deported to Central Asia in 1944 on Stalin's orders. Many of the old men and women remember the night they were herded into cattle trucks on a freezing February night, many dying in transit before they arrived. Nearby is the river Terek, which in imperial days was the wild frontier, defended by Orthodox Cossacks against the infidels. There are still Cossacks here – Jonathan goes on a hunting expedition with them – but they are now a minority in Muslim Daghestan. He goes into the mountains where they still revere the great warriors who fought the Tsar's armies for 30 years, guided by Magomedkhan Magomedkhanov, leader of one of the mountain tribes (and a graduate of Havard). Finally he reaches the Caspian Sea, under the massive walls of Derbent, an ancient city built by the Persians to defend themselves from the peoples of the North. |
||||
Breaking the Ice (1/5)
The film opens with Jonathan Dimbleby driving over the tundra inside...
Country Matters (2/5)
If the action in today's Russia is in the cities, the eternal spirit...
Motherland (3/5)
The symbol of Russian patriotism is the River Volga which runs from...
National Treasures (4/5)
Siberia is Russia's treasure chest. When the first Cossacks ventured...
Far from Moscow (5/5)
It is a warmish winter's day by Siberian standards (just 18º below)...