Pole to Pole

Oh, Michael! Good morning, my dear friend!

Welcome to my Leningrad.

I think I recognise you.

Let me take your temperature.

You are alive! This is extraordinary.

Thanks for welcoming me to your city.

Alexander Godkov is a Lenin impersonator. Not everyone appreciates this.

But the younger Leningraders don't seem to bat an eyelid.

Imitating Communism's patron saint would recently have been treason.

To add insult to injury, 52% of the city has just voted to change the name back to St Petersburg.

You're trusted to stamp your own ticket.

I'm glad to say technology hasn't taken over from brute forcel

Sit there.

Tickets are ten kopeks each. That's practically a free ride.

- Is this all over Leningrad? - Yes, always.

A tram-rover.

There is money in Leningrad, much of it relieved from tourists ingeniously.

This is one of the most agreeable ways.

Musicians, often from top orchestras, play guests into their hotels.

I get on well with Alexander, or Sasha, as he now insists I call him.

We agree to meet again.

I'm sure he thinks I'm a Michael Palin impersonator!

They're there again next morning,

but I'm so preoccupied with finding my way round, they don't even get a kopek!

Sasha has agreed to give me the Lenin city tour.

He returned to this station from exile to organise the revolution.

30 April 1917.

- April 1917, when you came back. - Yes.

This... Many, many people.

- They are all gathered. - Yes.

Then that was it.

I recognised the "Bolshevik" word.

You had a big coat on. It was very cold.

Among the great man's most enthusiastic supporters

were the sailors on board the cruiser Aurora.

The Aurora survives almost exactly where she was in 0ctober 1917

when a single shot was fired from this cannon.

It was just what the Bolsheviks had been waiting for. Cut to the Winter Palace.

So they heard the gun from the Aurora, the sailors and the army,

they came across the square and stormed these gates.

They couldn't have made it much easier.

The gates are a fine example of a Baroque climbing frame!

A great moment for you.

What a year for you! What a year!

They look easy gates to climb.

Quickly, quickly.

Here's a branch of John Lewis! What's that doing there?

I leave Lenin to savour his triumphs and head further back into history,

to 1703, when Peter the Great ordered a swamp to be turned into this grand European city.

Composers and writers used these canals for inspiration.

Disgruntled aristocrats used them for drowning Rasputin.

Uh-oh. These people have been tipped off that there's a Michael Palin impersonator in town.

We pass on under Nevsky Prospekt,

the street that has always been the heart of this city's life.

I'm heading for a monument to a Russian hero even greater than Lenin

and Peter the already Great.

Alexander Nevsky defeated the Swedes in an epic battle in the year 1240.

Peter ordered this monastery to be built in his name.

Religion in Russia is no longer an undercover activity.

Churches are reopening and attendances booming.

This may look like an obscure Russian party game,

but it is in fact one of the increasingly popular christening ceremonies.

They're not just for babies but people of all ages.

I wasn't aware of all this when, to be respectful,

I simply did what everyone else was doing.

"Michael Palin impersonator!"

I don't know what's going on!

Not wanting to stand out, I achieve precisely the opposite effect!

The service grinds to a halt around me.

The priest is very sympathetic,

but I only just avoid being inducted into the Russian 0rthodox Church!

No, it's all right. No, I understand. Tell him I understand. I will listen.

My reprieve comes not a moment too soon.

The priest dons another outfit

and I can only speculate what my fate might have been.

Exhausted by my near-christening experience,

I take refuge in the Tikhvin cemetery, where lie the greats of Russian culture.

If you're immortal, you'll have been buried here.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Fyodra.

How did you cope with it? All the book signings, press launches?

What did you write?

"Sincerely yours. Sorry about the sad bits.

"Sorry it's a bit gloomy. Yours, Fyodor."

"Pole To Pole" - good title? I thought as much.

"Death At The Poles"?

"Having A Miserable Time At The Pole"?

He wasn't much help!

I went to see Rimsky-Korsakov.

(MUSIC: "FLIGHT OF THE BUMBLE BEE" BY RIMSKY-KORSAKOV)

There's an outstanding concentration of great and defunct tunesmiths here.

Here's Mussorgsky, with his music written on his tombstone.

(MUSIC: "PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION" BY MUSSORGSKY)

Behind Borodin's ear, a few chiselled bars remind us what he bequeathed to the world.

# Hold my hand, I'm a stranger in paradise #

Surrounded by begonias and wrought iron is the greatest of them all -

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

If he'd lived as long as his music, he'd be 151.

It's one of the city's greatest honours to fire the noonday gun.

I waited for a revolution to start... but nothing happened!

This is the Harrods food hall of Leningrad.

Food has come direct from private farms.

It's expensive, as I find when I buy some pears.

- Kilogram? - Kilogram?

Er, I want about um... six.

Six bits. Good. Sem.

Sem is actually "seven".

They cost me 15 roubles.

At the time, the average weekly wage was 70 roubles,

which is why there were so many people outside trying to raise some kopeks.

Compared to "Harrods Food Hall", the state supermarket is cheaper and more hygienic,

but largely uncontaminated by food.

However, today there's a bustle.

A consignment of Buffalo Brown vodka has arrived.

Since the anti-alcohol laws, a bottle is a prized possession.

I have money, but it's not that simple.

"Vodka by coupon."

Maybe I could buy a coupon?

- How much? - I not sell.

No? How am I going to get some coupons?

If I have a coupon I can get some.

Well, the problem is that you have to buy a coupon first.

I've got to find a coupon. I'll find that man and offer him my pears.

I'll try.

This is becoming like a sketch I was once in.

For coupon, read parrot.

Miss?

Hello? Miss?

Miss seems to be absent, so I think that's the end of the vodka hunt.

I can do without it. I d-d-don't n-n-need it!

About to give up, I meet someone who'll risk the wrath of the law

by selling me a coupon in public.

Vosem is eight.

A coupon for one bottle costs eight roubles,

about half the cost of my rapidly disintegrating bag of pears.

She sounds happy, anyway. I now can get my vodka.

Hello, miss.

What?

- Kassir. - Cash?

Kassir. Kassir.

I now have a coupon, but I still can't buy the vodka.

A kind gentlemen explains I have to pay elsewhere.

I join another queue at the cashier's.

Cash.

Right. There we are.

Ten...

Can I have a bag?

Yeah? That's right?

Ah, that's it.

- (SPEAKS RUSSIAN) - Thank you.

Can I have a bag?

40 kopeks for a bag.

There we are.

No, keep the change. It's for you.

It's a mistake to offer a shop assistant money!

My retail therapist goes to the cashier for me.

40 kopeks is about a quarter of a penny.

There's my bottle. I'll put those in there.

There we are.

What a man needs after a long day buying vodka is a bottle of vodka!

Er, have you a bottle opener? Only joking!

Unable to face more shopping, I climb to the top of St Isaac's Cathedral,

where the sound of street orchestras and a fine view can be obtained without coupons.

I like Leningrad. It's a proud survivor of a city.

Now that communism is slackening off,

you can't help feeling things must improve.

But things haven't improved for everyone.

In a Leningrad studio, a theatre has been assembled from pieces of scrap.

Elaborate machines and figures animate to tell satirical and subversive stories.

But since glasnost, the audience for this sort of thing has dwindled.

The machines now make their protest to empty rooms.

Stalin wields his axe amongst a crowd of goblins and hobgoblins

whilst Lenin rants and raves from his pulpit.

This was once very strong stuff.

It's fascinating, but it's time to be moving on.

The morning bus to Novgorod, 120 miles to the south.

I'm touched that Lenin has taken time off to come and say goodbye.

Then off he goes, probably to brush up his Yeltsin!

We head south along major highways and major tests of suspension.

This is the main road between Leningrad and Moscow, Russia's M1.

We have an important deadline to meet.

The last sailing of the season across the Black Sea.

Ahead of us we still have Kiev and 0dessa, but first, Novgorod.

Novgorod, which means "new town", is the oldest city in Russia.

It's twinned with Watford. It even has its own gap!

Watford and Novgorod have been together for eight years.

Novgorod has not been faithful. She's twinned up with at least six other cities!

I've been told there's a film industry here.

As we don't have one in England any more, I go and see the Russian recipe for success.

There's certainly no over-manning!

I can't quite work out what sort of film it is. A remake of "From Here To Eternity"?

"20,000 Millimetres Under The Sea"?

It turns out to be a film about crayfish.

They're still doing the auditions!

The director is Edward Ranenko.