Titles - Motherland (3/5) | McNabb Connolly - Dedicated to Enriched Learning Through Multi Media

Home / Titles / Motherland (3/5)

Motherland (3/5)

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! This content has not been formatted for this device.

Subjects: Anthropology, Geography, History, Russia, Social Studies, Sociology

Grade Level: SrH-Adult
Producer: BBC
Closed Captioned: No

Running Time: 60 mins
Country of Origin: Great Britain
Study Guide: No

Copyright Date: 2008
Available in French: No

The symbol of Russian patriotism is the River Volga which runs from above Moscow through the heart of Russia to the Caspian Sea. Several great battles have been fought along its length. Not far from the port of Astrakhan is a tiny village that was once the great capital of the Golden Horde. Jonathan Dimbleby arrives there in February when the biting wind chills you to the bone, and is astonished to find how little remains of the western capital of Genghiz Khan's massive empire.

His next stop is Volgograd, more famous under its old name of Stalingrad. It was the heroic defence of this city that turned the tide against the German armies in 1943, and the city still evokes the memory of those battles. He meets Svetlana Argatseva, a woman who thinks Stalin has been misunderstood. She is not alone. Russians tend to value strong leaders more than human rights, and as Jonathan makes his way up the Volga, he finds the Kremlin's new more aggressive mood towards the West is going down well.

In Samara, once a secret armaments city closed to all foreigners, it is Victory Day. Traditionally, families take offerings of food and drink to the graves of their departed loved ones in the city's cemeteries. Jonathan joins them and finds that a stranger is welcome even at this most intimate family occasion. It is also the time when new recruits are called up for military service. Stories about the terrible bullying they regularly suffer make Vitaly's last night as a civilian a tearful occasion for his grandmother. But he is a big confident lad and the party goes on till dawn. Another more sobering meeting is with journalist Sergei Kurt-Adjiev. He works for Novaya Gazeta, one of the few publications that has refused to take the Government line. Sergei is subject to constant harassment by the police. Shortly after we had interviewed him he was hauled in for questioning and had his computer confiscated. Why don't you leave, asks Jonathan. His answer is chillingly simple: I have children here, grandchildren. I don't want them to live in a country of which I cannot be proud. Someone has to stay and fight.

On, past Kazan – the place where Ivan the Terrible finally smashed the rule of the Mongols – towards Perm. Just beyond Perm is the site of one of the last camps for political prisoners. Jonathan meets a former inmate, Sergei Kovalev. He shows him round the solitary confinement block and describes what it was like in the sub-zero winters. Jonathan finds someone has scrawled a date in the concrete – 1986 – Gorbachev's time.

His final stop is in the Ural Mountains, now a place popular with off-roaders and hunters. This is the boundary between Europe and Asia, between ancient Russia and the land empire they conquered stretching to the Pacific. Jonathan stands at the marker point and contemplates his next journey – across Siberia.

Series Titles