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National Treasures (4/5)

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

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

Siberia is Russia's treasure chest. When the first Cossacks ventured across the Urals in the 16th century, it was the lucrative fur trade they were after. But it wasn't long before other riches were found. Jonathan starts this journey in an emerald mine and then makes his way down to the great city of Ekaterinburg, built to protect and exploit reserves of iron ore found in the mountains. Its heavy industry turned out tanks and armaments during Soviet days – and also spawned a great tradition of heavy metal music. Jonathan Dimbleby stops off at a nightclub to meet Vladimir Shakhrin, an icon of Ekaterinburg rock ‘n' roll.

Alcoholism is a huge problem in Russia, killing thousands every year, often because the only liquor they can afford is home-made poison sold on the estates in the sprawling suburbs of cities like Ekaterinburg. Jonathan goes on a raid with a crime-busting group founded by an ex-alcoholic. They nail one of the small fry – an old lady who sells a few dozen bottles of illicit booze hidden in her kitchen. But perhaps the reason why most outsiders have heard of Ekaterinburg is that this is the place where the last tsar and his family were murdered by the Bolsheviks. In woods near the city Jonathan comes across an archaeologist who has just unearthed what he thinks are the bones of two of the imperial children, thus solving the puzzle of what had become of them.

The modern treasure on which Russia prospers is, of course, oil. Jonathan takes the train far North towards the Arctic Circle to Nizhnevartovsk, where BP is a co-owner of a huge oil field. Some of the workers roar round the town on big motorbikes, but the truth is most people just come for the wages. There's not much to do up here besides drill for oil.

The team then takes one of the great river boats on the next leg of their journey to the beautiful old city of Tomsk. In the absence of roads in the wilderness, river is often the only way to travel. This is underlined when they set out for the logging camps in the taiga north of Tomsk. In the summer months, as now, the frozen topsoil turns to deep mud and the only way to travel is in tank-like tracked carriers. Out in the forest he meets a climate change scientist who warns that vast quantities of methane gas are starting to seep out of the melting bogs – potentially lethal to the world's atmosphere.

Next stop, Akademgorodok. It is a purpose-built city for some of the brainiest people in Russia. Jonathan finds himself trying to master the controls of a computer game designed by scientists whose day job is to design the guidance systems for spacecraft.

Then, in glorious contrast, he heads into the Altai mountains to find the reindeer herdsmen who sell antlers to be ground up as aphrodisiacs. After dinner in their tented kitchen, he says goodbye – only to find that the first snow of winter has fallen overnight, and he needs their help again to get home.

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