The River Volga, more than 2,000 miles of glistening water flowing through the heart of Russia.
The very word Volga touches every Russian soul.
It's spawned love songs and laments.
It's seen wars of conquest and struggles for survival.
And it is itself a source of life and wealth.
The Russians themselves call it Mother Volga because it's so rich in resources.
It's a vital artery and the start of this, the next stage of my journey across this vast country.
RUSSIAN SONG PLAYS
As I set out on my Volga trail the noises off were anything but tranquil.
The Kremlin has started talked tough to the west, and the Russian public seems to love it.
Russia's national pride is intense and to understand why
there's no better place to start than the Volga.
The river raises far up in the north of Russia beyond Moscow
and from there snakes its way down to the south and the Caspian sea.
My route was to take me up river past the ancient trading port of Astrakhan
to a spot on the map where a foreign empire had once forced
every Russian prince to bow down before it.
Today, on the outskirts of what had once been a mighty city,
you find yourself in one of the many poor villages strung out along the Volga and its tributaries.
The Volga delta has been much favoured by poachers,
their quarry the sturgeon from which they extract that expensive delicacy black caviar.
A little more than a decade ago Oleg and his friend, also an Oleg, only survived by poaching.
Oleg, Hi! Fantastic.
Nowadays, the Olegs fish merely for pleasure.
One is in business, the other a TV presenter.
And, as producer Teresa and I found out, they're charming and hospitable. Some Vodka, Oleg?
To the success of your fishing, your great catch.
HE SPEAKS RUSSIAN
He says we have a saying here, if your work gets in the way of your fishing,
give up your work. Is it good for fishing to drink Vodka?
No.
TRANSLATION: It's good for your pleasure but not for fishing.
Because your eye isn't quite as sharp or what?
TRANSLATION: Because you need very sensitive feel in your eyes
and your hands, and they work together.
So that means Oleg 2, who hasn't had anything to drink because
he doesn't drink, is going to be victorious this afternoon.
Hmm. No, he says he'll have his turn.
He's just letting him have a good go.
Well, I'm on your side, Oleg. SHE TRANSLATES
Above the river is the site of the ancient city I'd come to see.
Today Sarai seems like a wasteland, but it stirs the imagination
to learn that this step is still inhabited
by the descendants of the Golden Horde,
the Mongol invaders who conquered all Russia more than 700 years ago.
The Mongols colonised these lands as they swept westwards to establish an empire
that covered a huge swathe of territory from China to central Europe.
Sarai was founded by Batu Khan, the grandson of Ghengis Khan.
His armies overran almost every major city in Russia.
The Mongol yoke was not as cruel as is sometimes supposed,
so long as their colonial subjects paid their taxes on time.
But it was a humiliation and it still rankles.
It lasted for 300 years until the invaders were finally ousted by Ivan the Terrible.
Sarai itself was a very cosmopolitan place with people from Egypt, Syria,
Iraq, Turkey, Greece, Persia, not to mention of course the Russians and the Mongols themselves.
They each lived in their own quarters, communities
complete with either their mosques or churches, bazaars and bath houses.
One Arab visitor writing in the middle of the 14th Century
described the city as an immense place and crammed with inhabitants.
He spoke of the fine markets and its broad streets.
It took him no less than half a day to get from one side of the city to the other and back again.
Strange to think, isn't it, that was only just over 500 years ago and now...nothing.
Well, not quite nothing.
I was shown around by a Kazakh descendant of the Mongol invaders, Sacha, Sarai's guardian.
It's much milder than usual here.
This year, yes, it is.
The site is under excavation, but the climate is so harsh that once the archaeologists
have recorded their finds they have to rebury them.
What does it mean to the people of this village to have Sarai here?
HE SPEAKS RUSSIAN
TRANSLATION: I'd say they're proud of it,
in their soul they're quite proud of it.
If the Mongols chose it for their capital, it means it must have been
one of the best places in the world, so they're proud.
Sacha lives nearby.
He dreams that one day his village will be part of a world heritage site
and that his people will make a fortune from tourists.
He took me to see some of Sarai's treasures.
Very... Thank you.
Pottery from over 600 years ago decorated by Mongol craftsman.
So much for the myth that the Mongols were merely a hoard of marauding barbarians.
I was pretty far south but in February the nights close in early.
As it got dark, I set off on a 200 mile journey to a place
where the story of the Volga and Russia's national pride become totally entwined.
The city of Volgograd.
At first glimpse, Volgograd could almost be mistaken for one of
those great northern cities, like Leeds or Manchester, built on the great wealth of the 19th century.
In fact, this city is quite different, and is famous throughout
the world for quite other reasons because it's name was Stalingrad.
I was starting to feel the force of a real Russian winter.
COMMANDS SHOUTED IN RUSSIAN
The city echoes with the memory of the great battle that halted
the Nazis in their drive east, but cost the lives of more than half a million soviet soldiers.
In the centre of Volgograd, a guard of honour protects the city's eternal flame.
It's a privilege given to teenagers still at school.
And it's the custom for newlyweds to place flowers beside the eternal flame
in memory of those who died to save the motherland.
What do you feel when you see your students doing this?
HE SPEAKS RUSSIAN
TRANSLATION: My feeling is one of pride because it's so important that
these things are passed on from generation to generation.
When I was a school child,
I stood here and did it and now for me as their teacher
to see my own pupils standing here and doing this very honourable task fills me with pride.
It's a double responsibility because there isn't a young person here
who would do this duty who doesn't have somebody in their own family who didn't die during the war.
The battle of Stalingrad began in August 1942 with a devastating bombardment by the Luftwaffe.
Vladislav Mamantov has never forgotten it.
TRANSLATION: Stalingrad was completely bombed to pieces, they carpet bombed it.
And for me as a small child, it was absolutely terrifying and the grown-ups kind of covered me
with their bodies to protect me from all the flying fragments of metal and the noise.
And there was terrible smoke everywhere, that tasted awful in the mouth.
And of course I was crying because my mother wasn't there.
I didn't know where my mother was.
And then there was a kind of break in the bombing and we looked out and there was my mother.
And she began to cry when she saw that I was still alive out of sheer relief.
There were bodies everywhere. We were stumbling over bodies and everything was in smoke.
You remember this very vividly.
How old were you at this time?
I was born in 1936 so I was 6 years old.
I remember it all.
The German onslaught forced the Red Army to fall back through the city to the very edge of the Volga.
Hitler's troops then launched a furious attack against a vital military target -
the factory district.
Even on a bitterly cold February day, it's still hard to imagine that
a little over 60 years ago there was fought, down there among those factories,
the final battle for Stalingrad, arguably the most decisive of the Second World War.
At the Red October Steel Plant, the fighting was at close quarters and often hand to hand.
Vladimir Harchenkov is a veteran of Stalingrad, one of the soldiers who fought over this very ground.
He was 16 years old.
TRANSLATION: It was like a real meat grinder just here at the Red October Factory.
There was no place where you wouldn't be treading on a body.
Germans, ours...
Wherever we killed them more were coming, and what could we do?
We killed them. And there was just bodies everywhere.
Death was hanging right before your eyes all the time.
You didn't know whether you'd
be left living or dead.
That one's for the Defence of Stalingrad.
After the war, Red October was rebuilt.
15,000 workers produced more than 2,000,000 tons of steel a year.
After the collapse of communism though, the plant was brought by
entrepreneurs who downsized the operation but made it profitable.
They did it by specialising in the production of high grade steel.
Today, however, the factory is back in state hands,
bought by an agency of the Defence Ministry to provide steel for armaments.
There's a very special view from the factory,
a massive memorial statue.
Mat' Rodina, mother of the nation.
More than a million Russians, men, women and children died at Stalingrad,
but it was a vital victory, a mortal blow against the Nazis.
After the war, the city was rebuilt.
A symbol of Stalin's triumph, it was showered with resources, favoured above all others.
But when his successor banned the 'cult of personality',
Stalin was banished to the vaults of history.
The city was renamed Volgograd and the special treatment ended.
But today, Stalin is enjoying a renaissance.
There are plenty of people who would like their city to be named after him once again.
Svetlana Argatseva for example.
TRANSLATION: One of the best cities in our country.
She steered me into the city's planetarium.
There she showed me a mosaic which was meant to have been destroyed along with the cult of personality.
Instead the workers concealed it behind a coat of plaster.
As the state became more open, so Stalin worship was no longer taboo
and Uncle Joe was once again allowed to see the light of day.
A hammer and chisel did the business and there he was in all his glory.
Svetlana, for me, this is very disconcerting.
In fact, it's really rather appalling because
for me like many, many other people I think of the deportations,
the gulags, show trials, the terror,
the millions of Russian men and women who died because of him.
And yet you regard him as some kind of hero.
SHE SPEAKS RUSSIAN
TRANSLATION: He's a hero not just for me but for many, many other people too.
Even for people throughout the world,
even for people who hated the Soviet Union, who hated communism.
Even Churchill said, "Little people make little mistakes, big people make big mistakes."
And I would like to say that the numbers that you say,
millions and millions is very much exaggerated,
who died in the gulags and so on, and that it wasn't Stalin alone who was
to blame for these things.
There were other people who were in his entourage and
many people went to the gulag only because of one another.
When I look up there at that figure, I'm afraid I see someone who was a monster.
Don't forget that,
if the people he ruled over love him as much as they do, he couldn't have been such a monster.
You would like another Stalin to rule this country?
Stalin, or not Stalin, I don't know.
But I would like to see our country as it was when Stalin ruled over it.
Economically strong, beautiful with people who are happy
and that there is something that they can believe in
and that will continue.
To the northeast of Volgograd is another of the motherland's
great cities standing on the banks of the Volga.
Had Moscow fallen to the Nazis, Samara was earmarked as the wartime capital of the Soviet Union.
I arrived in the spring.
It's hard to imagine that not so very long ago, Samara was a closed city.
In the cold war, no foreigner was permitted to enter its precincts.
The Soviet military establishment depended on Samara for weapons, aircraft and missiles.
The arms race with America consumed a huge proportion of the Soviet Union's budget
and in the end it proved catastrophic.
Samara has changed greatly, but a wander through the city
gives an occasional glimpse of what it used to be like.
Barbed wire on top of the wall to remind you this was once a high security zone.
The factories were an official secret.
To disguise their purpose, they were known only by their numbers, or given false names.
This nondescript building posed as a company making equipment for the film industry.
In fact it made gas masks.
Today, it could hardly be more different.
Meet the new Russia.
It's intensely serious, isn't it?
It costs 1000 a year nearly.
We live longer.
Kin Up is now a very popular leisure centre.
Ten pin bowling is taken seriously in Samara which boasts of breeding champions.
It didn't stop one generous player inviting this hapless foreigner to be his guest.
It looks so damned easy too.
OK, once I've had a drink then I'll be able to score!
I got it!
It was great in there but something very odd happened as I was leaving.
I was talking to the manager and I said, "Who owns this place?"
And he said "I don't think we should talk about that."
I thought he was joking and I said, "Who does own it then?"
He said "We should not talk about that," in the kind of voice that meant you didn't.
This being Russia, that makes you immediately suspicious. Is it the mafia? Is it an oligarch?
An oligarch's wife? Is it drug money?
Not just idle thoughts. Russia is riddled with corruption, but the guilty are rarely called to account
and the media, which is muzzled by the state, is also fearful.
To question or challenge is to risk your job, and even your life.
All the more astonishing to find a journalist who refuses to be browbeaten.
Hi, hello, I didn't see you there.
Sergei Kurt-Adjiev edits the Samara edition of Novaya Gazeta,
virtually the only paper left which still dares to expose Russia's seamy underbelly.
I told him about my little encounter at the leisure centre.
What do you make of that? Is that common is that or is that a very unusual thing to have experienced?
TRANSLATION: It's quite a common conversation for Russia.
Everybody here would know
that if you actually looked into who owned what you'd find that
companies are registered in the passports of dead people,
of tramps and that the real money is somewhere hidden behind it.
Unfortunately in Russia most of the big money is in the shadows.
It's just not out in the open and until that comes out in the open,
we won't have any proper order here.
Of course, Sergei, it's easy for me because I come through, I form my impressions.
You're here all the time, living with the problems.
I suppose you have to be optimistic even if in the meantime,
you're unlucky, you get yourself beaten up or worse.
HE LAUGHS
What am I supposed to do, go to England? Go and live in Germany?
This is my town, this is where I live.
And I want my children to live here and I want my grandchildren to live here.
And it's a question of us or them and this is my job
and my task and I will stay here.
I was invited to visit an aircraft factory where they have good cause
to remember Sergei, the troublemaking editor.
They used to build Tupolev bombers and civilian airliners here, and in huge numbers.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, what had been a great state enterprise fell apart.
And then one of Russia's oligarchs rode to the rescue.
Oleg Deripaska is on one of those tough nuts
who emerged in the anarchy of the 90s to make a killing.
With assets now estimated at some 40 billion dollars, he is by far the richest man in the country.
He's also one of the Kremlin's most trusted allies, a member of the Putin clan.
Keripaska has put a fistful of roubles into this factory,
which now reconditions old airliners and is building a new one.
The Antonov 42 was launched in a blitz of publicity.
The media was invited, Sergei among them.
The plane they were told was ready to fly.
But Sergei was more curious than his colleagues.
He climbed into the shiny new fuselage only to discover that the plane had no engine.
An embarrassing fact which he duly reported in the next edition of Novaya Gazeta.
Troublemaker indeed.
The Antonov has now flown and is selling.
Sergei Licharev, who has an American MBA to his name, was hired by Deripaska to make the business pay.
"You can't do business," everyone says in Russia, "without paying under the counter,
"without bribing, without getting your passes and therefore it is a corrupt semi-Third World system."
As a new Russian, what's your comment on that?
Well, very unfortunately...
and very painfully for me it's not without reason.
It used to be like this and in certain cases still like this.
We're trying to avoid this by any means, and sometimes painful,
sometimes we lose business because we're trying to be...
How to say it? More...
Transparent?
More transparent, more honest, more...
straightforward than sometimes Russian environment allows.
Well, somebody should start.
Two days later I was outside the police station.
Not for the first time, the whistle blower from Novaya Gazeta had been arrested.
The ritual harassment of a troublemaker.
But with no evidence against him, they had to let Sergei out, just as I arrived.
You've just been released from here.
How did this happen?
TRANSLATION: I was walking along the street with my daughter
and suddenly a major in the police uniform came and he just grabbed me
without any kind of explanation. And my daughter.
He took us both to the police station.
They kept me here for three hours without any explanation.
Without producing any kind of evidence and then after three hours just said, "Go, go. You're free. Go."
Has this happened to you often?
They can just take anyone off the street and bring them in.
Presumably it's not going to make any difference to you?
I knew what he'd say. Sergei would never give up.
But the harassment has taken its toll.
There is no longer a Samara edition of the paper because they've impounded his computers.
Sadly, most other Russians care more about national resurgence than freedom of speech.
It's May 9th. Victory day.
When all Russia honours the veterans of the Second World War or as they know it, The Great Patriotic War.
In Soviet times, the skies were always clear on victory day,
because the authorities would disperse the clouds with silver oxide.
Actually, the weather made little difference to the spirit of this occasion.
Victory day in Russia is notably difference from Remembrance Day in Britain.
The mood is still reflective but far more overtly patriotic.
The defence of the motherland is now very high on the national agenda.
American plans to install a missile shield close to the Russian border
and the rapid expansion of NATO have fuelled a deep Russian fear of encirclement.
Afterwards, a symbolic handout from a field kitchen.
A moment of nostalgia for the veterans, and then for everyone else.
It's great. Everyone gets this, who shows up.
Sorry. You want that one?
You have that one?
Russia may have lost its status as the other superpower, but its pride in its soldiers is palpable.
And victory day genuinely unites an entire people and all generations.
The day ends touchingly at the cemetery.
I'd no idea there'd be so many people, just coming on Victory Day like this.
It's a really...
Just makes you realise it isn't just a military event, a military memorial.
It's a real human experience for the Russian people.
Everywhere you look, right back as far as you can see that way, right down here as well.
It's just like this on and on and on.
It's the custom on Victory Day for families to share food by the graves of their loved ones.
I'm very, very sorry to interrupt.
We're from England. I just wanted to ask you about... SHE SPEAKS RUSSIAN
TRANSLATION: Let's join them. Thank you.
Explain to me the ritual of having the food and eating
at the cemetery which is very strange if you are English.
Yeah, it's in remembrance.
TRANSLATION: And today in particular it's because it is a holiday that we are eating,
we're thanking them that they created peace for us to live in.
But it's a way of remembrance really.
This lady says that her husband, the men liked to drink
so they would put a little glass on the grave for them.
For that, for the men who died?
Yeah. The hospitality is absolutely extraordinary like this...
All of us have got to have something to eat,
otherwise we really are causing some offence, so let's... Thank you.
David, I must give you something as well.
And Ivor, Ivor. No?
There you are.
And, David, for you... Teresa, you've got something.
May is also spring call-up time, when military conscripts are summoned to barracks.
I'd heard disturbing reports about the tactics
used to encourage the young to turn up for national service.
The evidence was apparently to be found on the internet, so I went online.
This video posted on the web portrays America as a predatory
power seeking to strangle Russia and seize its assets.
It was made by the Russian youth movement Nashi,
which literally means 'ours'. Nashi has the backing of the Kremlin.
In its crude way, that video offers
a riveting insight into changing Russian attitudes.
Not so long ago, a few months ago, when I was starting my journey there was the summit in Petersburg.
Putin filled with warm words and bonhomie.
Now there is a distinct chill in the air as if America is not so much a partner as a threat.
Of course, it's not the Cold War all over again, it's not communism versus capitalism.
It's about nationalism, the feeling here that
America is putting pressure on Russia, that the motherland
is in some way under siege from the United States and its allies.
This is not a very encouraging omen.
The video's appeal to patriotism is to combat a widespread aversion to national service.
Although it lasts 18 months,
soon to be only a year, it's a notoriously harsh regime.
Sometimes, as we bounce and grind our way through this long journey through Russia,
I find myself going into a kind of reverie, a sort of bubble in which I feel slightly lonely.
A bit sort of homesick, and long for the soft valleys and low hills of England.
The roads in Russia can seem endless.
They look nothing on the map but we drive for hour after hour.
Sometimes the landscape never changes.
And yet there's always something to raise the spirits.
This truck stop boasted a fish market.
Which one would you like? Which one do you want me to have?
It's a sea fish. She'll make a reduction for you, it's 40.
Only 40? That's less than 50 pence. It's like a trout.
She'll make it ready. Great.
It all looks juicy. That's what she was saying.
She's very nervous doing it.
That's very good.
It's completely heaven. Really, really good.
So I'll have, we'll have two of them please.
Our route had taken us into Tatarstan which is
part of the Russian federation but is permitted a degree of autonomy.
The capital, Kazan, lies on the banks of the Volga.
It's an elegant and prosperous city.
More than half the population of Tatarstan is descended from a tribe
that formed the shook troops of the Mongol invasion almost 800 years ago.
Today Tatars and Russians mingle freely in the capital.
But the city's past was horribly bloody.
By the 16th century, the Mongols were losing their grip.
Kazan, the most important of their remaining strongholds,
was about to face the full wrath of Russia's injured pride.
Ivan the Terrible fell upon the city with all the cruelty for which he later became notorious.
The year was 1552, the destruction, unspeakable.
Ivan the Terrible fully lived up to his name.
The slaughter was just as you'd imagine.
Bodies hacked to pieces.
Corpses left to rot in the street.
Blood flowing down the gutters.
The city, the centre of the city razed to the ground.
No vestige of the Golden Horde was allowed to remain.
No reminder of the humiliation suffered by Imperial Russia
at the hands of the descendants of Ghengis Khan.
DRAMATIC MARTIAL MUSIC PLAYS
The Russians have been the masters ever since.
CHANTING
Today, the former Christian fortress is dominated by a new mosque.
The first on this site since the original mosque was obliterated by Ivan the Terrible.
Most of the population of Tatarstan is Muslim, but though Tatars
outnumber Russians and their population is growing faster,
there is refreshing little evidence of tension between them.
In a state which has the unofficial motto "We can,"
business and pleasure clearly come first.
SOULFUL RUSSIAN SINGING
I wanted to get to the top of the Urals and you can only do that by walking.
It's not the Himalayas but...
up here it is a pretty spectacular view.
The Urals were once regarded as the dividing line between western
civilisation on this side, and a barbarian wasteland on the other.
But they aren't quite the physical barrier I'd fondly imagined, just a little too gentle.
For the last bit of this trip, I joined a group of off-roaders
who had suggested that one of them should accompany me to the edge of Siberia.
Hi. Hello.
They are an off-road kind of club and they are laying the route for a new competition,
that they're going to be entering.
It's really nice to come across your group,
so I don't want to spoil your day but I quite like the look of your machines.
Which is the best of the vehicles here?
LAUGHTER
Yeah, each team reckons his is the best.
Would it be possible to go out in one of the vehicles?
Of course they will. No problem.
LAUGHTER
Yeah, this is serious.
Forgetting all about my carbon footprint, I'm ashamed to say I felt nothing but exhilaration.
Oh, good lord. OK! LAUGHTER
How was that? Oh, David!
Sorry.
In due course we arrived more or less safely at my destination,
the monument that celebrates the place of the Urals in Russian history.
The Urals, if they haven't been a physical division between
East and West, they've always been an extremely important psychological barrier between Europe
and, as I cross across...Asia.
So, for me, I may not exactly be at the top of Everest but it feels
a pretty significant staging post on my journey through Russia. Next stop...
Siberia.
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