From the great North’s snows to the Bering Strait, the Russian territory’s borders blend in with the continent’s. Numerous Russian provinces are hard to reach. In those harsh environments, geographical isolation amounts to being culturally and socially on the fringe. Elena Anosova is a photographer from a remote village at the border with Mongolia. Her geographical origin resonates deeply with her work—centered on the question of isolation....

On the last leg of her train journey, Joanna crosses Siberia, visits Yekaterinburg, where the last tsar was murdered, and arrives in Moscow for her first visit since the 1960s.

Racism, unemployment, aggression, excess-the USSR's animation studios frequently took aim at these aspects of American culture. Representing five decades of animated Soviet propaganda, this program features short films that blast the United States and its perceived evils. Black and White and Mister Twister extol the absence of bigotry in Soviet society, while Someone Else's Voice portrays jazz as an enemy of the people. Ave Maria condemns America's...

The Cultural Revolution, which started in 1966, had less to do with culture than with a violent attempt to control the minds of the Chinese people. Yet it was a play, which slyly criticized Chairman Mao, that raised the curtain on this horrendous period in China's history, acting as a catalyst for the brutal reforms. Beginning with an excerpt from The Dismissal of Hai Rui, this program presents the details of the movement that led to the deaths of...

Illustrations and text follow the story of a six-room Moscow apartment throughout the twentieth century and the family living there, as their personal upheavals and accomplishments reflect events in Russia and the wider world.

"Putin's Wars is a timely overview of the conflicts in which Russia has been involved since Vladimir Putin became prime minister and then president of Russia, from the First Chechen War to the two military incursions into Georgia, the annexation of Crimea and the eventual invasion of Ukraine itself. But it also looks more broadly at Putin's recreation of Russian military power and its expansion to include a range of new capabilities, from mercenaries...

A dramatic and intimate look inside the Russian assault on Kharkiv. An updated account through a year of war, told by civilians surviving underground and first responders risking their lives in Ukraine’s second largest city.

Robert MacNeil interviews American diplomat George Kennan about the failed coup in the Soviet Union to overthrow Gorbachev.

Four days after Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Panorama reports on the conflict. With Paul Kenyon in Kyiv and Jane Corbin in London, the programme asks what lies behind Putin's invasion, and how Ukraine and the rest of the world have responded.