Original subtitles

[narrator] Devastating wars.

Pitiless rulers...

in pursuit of power over centuries.

When Russia takes up arms, the world holds its breath.

[foreboding theme music playing]

[narrator] The endless expanse of Russia.

In the 16th Century, the czar's empire is still young.

After defeating the Mongol nomads,

it expands further eastwards, beyond the borders of Europe.

Russian Cossacks subdue the people of Siberia.

By the end of the 17th Century,

Russia stretches all the way to the Pacific.

Seen from Europe, Russia is a rather insignificant, peripheral empire.

Inward-looking, with few contacts with the rest of the continent.

[narrator] This giant country plays no significant role in Europe.

But its rise to a great power is imminent.

[woman] If you're looking over Russian

history of warfare, you're also looking

over the history of warfare,

history of European warfare, global warfare.

[military drum beating]

[narrator] The Kremlin, Moscow.

The centre of Russian power.

In 1682, Peter Romanov has himself crowned czar.

History will know him as Peter the Great.

[man] Pictures give him a certain sort of solid grandeur,

while in fact, he had a twitch.

He had fits.

He was extremely hyperactive, kinetic almost.

[narrator] At two meters tall, he towers over his contemporaries.

And he rules his country with an iron fist.

[Sebag Montefiore] He was probably the most talented man ever to be czar

or ruler of Russia.

He had those brilliant qualities that every politician needs.

He had a vision of what he wanted to do.

He had the acumen, the ability to actually do it.

And he had the resources to achieve what he wanted to.

Everything about him was extraordinary.

[woman 2] Well, he's Peter the Great.

He is considered... He was not the first Russian emperor,

but he is considered "the Russian emperor."

Putin himself recently, and not even so recently,

compared himself to Peter the Great.

[narrator] Czar Peter wants to modernize his country.

He takes an early interest in military and in naval affairs.

His conflict with the Ottoman Empire culminates in his first war.

His goal: to take the fortress of Azov east of Crimea,

still strategically significant today.

[man 2] The campaign to take the fortress of Azov

is a very important trial run for Peter.

He's testing himself, his own strategic, military capabilities...

and the options that he has worked out for himself.

[narrator] The first attempt to take

the fortress from the land-side, fails.

So Peter builds a fleet and blockades Asov from the sea.

It works.

In 1696, the Ottoman fortress falls.

It's Peter's first significant victory.

[man 3]That was the really new thing under Peter I.

He saw the Russian Empire as a maritime power too,

that could and must defend its interests and frontiers at sea.

Prior to that, it hadn't had a fleet.

[narrator] Peter is fascinated by the West:

its culture and its modern technology.

He decides to travel to Western Europe

to seek know-how that will benefit his Empire.

As "Peter Michailyov," he finds work in a shipyard in Holland,

to learn all he can about shipbuilding.

He really is the first to cultivate this fascination for western Europe,

or central Europe, and for European values.

And he's starting a tradition that extends through the czarist empire

and the Soviet Union to contemporary Russia.

If you follow Russian media today, watch Russian talk shows,

one of the most frequently repeated lines is: "We are Europe."

That goes without saying.

That idea goes back to Peter, and still holds today.

[narrator] Peter wants to play in the concert of European powers.

He also wants access to the open sea.

In the year 1700, Peter declares war on the great power of Sweden.

It controls the land between Russia and the Baltic Sea.

Peter wants to break that dominance.

In the autumn, Russian troops march on Narva.

It's the beginning of the Great Northern War.

[faint sounds of battle]

[narrator] But at the end of October, the ground has already frozen hard,

making it difficult to dig trenches.

And Russian gunpowder is substandard.

After a heavy snowfall, the Swedish army

breaks through the Russian defense line.

It's a painful defeat for the czar.

[Stadelmann] Narva, at the beginning of the Northern War,

is a disaster for Peter and Russia.

But he reacts in the same way that he has reacted

to everything else in his life so far.

When something doesn't work, he sits down, thinks it over,

and works out how the situation can be bent to his will.

He reforms the army, he reforms its command structure.

He begins to understand that superiority in numbers

is becoming less and less significant,

and that modern military technology is more and more important.

He does everything he can to modernize the Russian army.

[narrator] And to make it bigger.

The czar raises more and more recruits.

Bells are taken from the churches and smelted into cannon,

an early form of total mobilization.

In the summer of 1701, Peter launches another offensive.

He conquers large parts of Livonia and Estonia, loyal allies of Sweden.

This is a scorched-earth campaign.

Russian troops burn towns and villages,

plunder storehouses, ravage the fields.

Nothing must be left to the enemy.

The scorched-earth policy was a precisely planned strategy

to make it clear to the Swedes and the population of the Baltic, the elites,

that Peter possessed the military power he needed

to take control of the Baltic.

[narrator] It's a tactic that damages Russia's reputation.

[fire crackling, tense music]

[Sebag Montefiore] It's always a strategy of Russian warfare.

It's not unique to Russia, and it's easy to paint the Russians

as complete barbarians at this time.

But in fact, all armies were pretty chaotically supplied.

But the Russians took it to another degree.

I mean, there was a civilized code of warfare in the West.

Peter the Great never subscribed to that,

and repeatedly, he showed incredible ruthlessness at crushing opposition.

[narrator] To gain access to the sea,

Peter captures the fortress of Nyenshanz,

near the mouth of the river Neva in the Gulf of Finland.

He burns down the whole complex.

[fire crackling, tense music]

Close by, in the middle of the Neva Delta,

he builds a new fortress...

with a church, named for the apostles Peter and Paul.

The czar christens this place, which he has chosen for his new capital,

Saint Petersburg.

[Kusber] So, in the Northern War,

which would go on till 1721,

Czar Peter won his first foothold on the Baltic Sea.

[narrator] But the Swedish king is not ready to give up.

He launches a counter-offensive with a well-equipped army, 40,000-strong.

The Russians make tactical withdrawals and carry out guerrilla attacks

on the enemy's supply lines.

Wherever the Swedes advance, they find no food for the army.

Soon, hunger, disease and cold are decimating the Swedish forces.

[somber music playing]

[narrator] Summer 1709 sees the decisive battle

over Ukraine's Poltava fortress.

The Swedish army now has only 22,000 soldiers;

the Russians, 42,000.

[Richie] Peter the Great is victorious.

He's absolutely thrilled.

This immediately becomes part of the myth of Russia.

He does that very much.

He sets up himself as a symbol of the great victor.

So Poltava becomes very, very important in Russian historiography.

And it really is a very important turning

point in the history of Europe, after all,

because this is the moment that Russia

really defeats the Swedes in the Baltic.

This is actually the moment that Russia becomes a great empire.

[narrator] From now on, Russia is a European great power.

Saint Petersburg is its new capital in the west,

and by conquering the Baltic, it has gained ice-free access to the sea.

The ideal basis for the further expansion of the Empire.

[suspenseful music playing]

[narrator] About 50 years later,

Russia's position becomes even stronger.

In 1744, a German princess, Sophie Frederike of Anhalt-Zerbst,

travels to St Petersburg.

She's betrothed to Peter III, heir to the Russian throne.

A grandson of Peter the Great.

But first Sophie takes a Russian name: Ekaterina.

The couple have little in common.

The heir to the throne seems infantile,

and has no interest in his bride.

[Peter III mimics an explosion]

[narrator] He would rather play with his tin soldiers.

Their characters, interests and goals

were completely incompatible.

Part of this was undoubtedly down to the ability and ambition

of the young princess.

From the very start, she was determined to be more than just

some married-in princess stuck in a back room.

[narrator] Soon, Catherine speaks fluent Russian.

She absorbs Russia's traditions and ways of doing things.

That makes her popular with the people.

She's educated, clever and emancipated.

She's got this connection with the West, with Germany,

but with much of the history of Western Europe or Central Europe.

And she brings some of those values and ideas to play

in her transformation of Russia.

She understands what makes the Netherlands great.

What makes France great. What makes England great.

What makes a great empire. The Spanish.

She's learned all that stuff and she says,

"Okay, I'm going to translate some of this knowledge

into what I can do for Russia."

[narrator] Catharine isn't reluctant to get involved in conspiracy

and political murder.

When Peter becomes czar in 1762,

Catherine plots a risky plan with her lover, Grigory Orlov.

She gets the imperial guard on her side and deposes Peter,

who shortly thereafter dies in mysterious circumstances.

Catherine is declared the new head of state,

and crowns herself czarina.

[tense music playing]

[narrator] The way is now clear to mould Russia after her own ideas.

[Sebag Montefiore] She wanted to complete the work of Peter the Great.

And in fact, every ruler since Peter the Great wanted to emulate him.

Every czar, every general secretary, every president of independent Russia

wanted to be Peter the Great, wants to command in warfare.

And few of them have the ability to do so.

[narrator] In Catherine's time, Russia is an agrarian country.

Around 90 percent of the population are peasant farmers.

Serfs on the estates of aristocrats,

they can be conscripted to fight for the czar.

The rulers can raise an army whenever they want.

Catherine would like to abolish serfdom.

But she can't get her way against the nobles,

and a large, powerful army will help her achieve her aims.

She plans to expand the empire southwards.

She wants to build a fortress on the Black Sea,

as a bastion against the Ottomans.

And of course, Catherine's looking at the south and saying:

"Crimea looks really quite interesting.

What can we do down there?"

The overall aim toward the Black Sea is to get control over the Black Sea,

starting with Asov.

But then, of course, the Crimea, and then with luck

to be able to get control over Constantinople,

or at least be able to control shipping

that goes in and out of the Black Sea.

This is all to do with power, to do with trade,

with economic success as well,

and of course, to do with getting more and more territory,

which makes your country, your empire, even more important.

In context of today, of course, getting Crimea is very important.

[narrator] Catherine's forces move south.

The Russian Baltic Fleet undertakes the long voyage to the Aegean Sea.

Here, in a battle in 1770, most of the Ottoman fleet is destroyed.

And finally, in 1783, the Crimea, the jewel in the crown, is annexed.

[Kusber] Both for its geo-strategic significance dominating the Black Sea,

and in the mental map of the Russian elite,

the Crimea is the pearl of the Empire.

The elite, and the imperial family too,

start building summer residences there.

[narrator] New cities are founded, like Odesa and Sevastopol,

as ports for Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

Catherine now holds the Gateway to the Black Sea, and the North Caucasus.

Her lover and companion, Marshal Potemkin,

starts a major project of colonization and Russification

of today's southern Ukraine.

He brings in thousands of settlers, and christens the region,

"Novorossiya," "New Russia," in a prestige project.

They say he faked the progress of development for the czarina's visit.

By constructing settlements that were no more than painted facades;

so-called "Potemkin Villages."

[Stadelmann] The Potemkin Villages existed.

They were there to give an impression

of the first fruits of the long-term policy of colonization.

Actually it's a really modern idea,

if you look ahead to the 20th and 21st centuries.

The idea of spreading fake news to get people on your side, to impress them.

[narrator] Czarina Catherine died in 1796

without achieving her principal goal:

the complete destruction of the Ottoman Empire.

But her conquests greatly expanded the Russian Empire.

And so in her own lifetime,

she became known as "Catherine the Great."

[Kruschcheva] The importance of her, as with Peter the Great,

Vladimir Putin mentioned, I think twice,

that Catherine the Great is his favorite monarch.

He actually takes lessons from her.

I mean, Peter the Great is a great example, but she is, as he put it,

she was probably a better empress, because,

as he said, she shed less blood, but she took on more territories.

[narrator] At the start of the 19th century,

Napoleon Bonaparte has Europe in his grip.

France controls great swathes of the continent.

It has an alliance with Russia.

But there are tensions between Napoleon

and the Russian czar, Alexander I.

Napoleon gathers a huge army.

Austria and Prussia are forced to provide troops.

The Grande Armee numbers half a million men,

far larger than Russia's forces.

[horses neighing]

Napoleon's invasion of Russia

was one of those crazy, maniacal and stupid moves in history.

I mean, you can chalk it up to really, really dumb.

So, he's really got a treaty with Russia.

It looks as if he can actually, you know, be fine.

But he gets it into his mind that the Russians are going to

come against France, come against him.

So let's launch a pre-emptive strike.

[narrator] The plan is to mount a high-speed campaign

followed by a single decisive battle, to win the war.

On June 14th 1812,

the Grande Armee crosses Russia's border

at the river Memel.

But Russian forces withdraw into the wide expanses,

once again leaving behind scorched earth.

Without supplies, Napoleon's troops begin to starve.

Russian tactics are successful.

More or less without combat, the Grande Armee is shrinking.

[Kusber] Napoleon's idea was to advance deep into the Russian empire,

all the way to its heart, Moscow, to take Moscow.

And he expected that, as in his other European campaigns,

he would not only be offered the keys to the city,

Russia's ancient capital,

but also that a peace offering would follow.

[narrator] At Borodino, just 150 kilometers from Moscow,

the Russians confront the Grande Armee.

Napoleon wins a victory.

But Russia fights stubbornly, with no concern for losses.

The Grande Armee suffers almost 30,000 dead or wounded.

The Russians lose around 40,000 men

in one of the 19th century's bloodiest battles.

Borodino was the most intense butchery,

the most intense massacre in a battle

until the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

It was absolutely a brutal stalemate

in which the Russian and French armies just blew each other to smithereens

in very close quarters for a whole day.

[narrator] Napoleon's forces enter Moscow with no further fighting.

But the evening of their arrival, the city is in flames.

Once again, it's the Russians' scorched-earth policy,

denying the invaders any means of supplying themselves.

Napoleon could only look on.

Not only did the Governor of Moscow set fire to the city,

but no delegation came to meet him to negotiate.

[narrator] Napoleon decides to withdraw.

But the winter causes enormous losses in his army

through cold and hunger.

[dramatic music playing]

[narrator]The Battle of the River Beresina

is the fatal blow for the Grande Armee.

By the end, just 18,000 of the original 450,000 are still alive.

[water rushing]

[narrator] In the annals of Russian imperial history,

Napoleon's failed campaign will become known as the "Patriotic War."

It's over.

They've swept the interloper out of the country.

Hardly anything is left of the French army.

Survival has turned into triumph.

[Richie] And so this is something that gives a sense of...

indomitability of the Russians,

the fact that that no army can really defeat them,

that they are secure and safe within their geographical boundaries.

And "Look what we did to Napoleon."

And later, of course, "Look what we did to Hitler."

[narrator] Decades later,

Leo Tolstoy publishes his world-famous novel "War and Peace."

Before the background of the war of 1812,

he tells the story of three families,

an epic that both defines and celebrates the Russian nation.

The novel becomes a bestseller, frequently adapted for the cinema.

[Sebag Montefiore] Tolstoy was fascinated by Russian nationhood.

He was fascinated by the history and the relationship in history

between great forces: nations, empires, economies, cultures...

and also the effect that single men, individuals, had on history.

And he's humanizing the Russian nation through his heroes.

And he's looking back, adding, in a way

to the mythology of Russian resistance,

the people's resistance, but it is also deliberately, in a way,

canonizing the creation of Russian nationhood.

[narrator] After the patriotic war,

Napoleon's power is shaken throughout Europe.

In 1813, Russia, with Prussia, Austria and Sweden,

march against Napoleon's newly constituted army.

The Battle of the Nations at Leipzig

is one of the greatest battles in world history.

It marks the end of Napoleon's domination of Europe.

Along with Prussia and Austria, Russia is now setting the tone in Europe.

[distant gunfire]

[narrator] Since the time of Peter the Great,

Russian czars expanded their empire at sea.

In the first half of the 19th century, Sevastopol in the Crimea

becomes the most modern naval base of its time.

[Sebag Montefiore] Sebastopol became one incredibly proud,

heroic city for Russia.

And that's partly why Sebastopol,

the Crimea, is so important today to Putin.

But secondly, it had hugely practical importance, and it still does today,

because the Crimea controls the entire Black Sea and in effect,

the approaches to Constantinople, to Istanbul in today's Turkey.

As Russia became the breadbasket of Europe, growing much of the grain

that was exported in the 19th century through Odesa;

then Crimea and its navy were the guards,

the sentinels of that trade.

[narrator] There's one last obstacle

between the Russian navy and the world's oceans:

In 1850, the Ottomans still control the bottleneck of the Bosphorus

and the Dardanelles.

Russia's czar sees the Bosphorus as "the keys to his house."

Nicholas I has a list of demands.

He wants a treaty recognizing Russian protection of the orthodox Christians

in the Ottoman Empire, about a third of the population.

The Sultan refuses.

The czar now has an excuse for military escalation.

The Ottoman Empire was becoming weaker and weaker.

And in the mid-19th century, Czar Nicholas I saw an opportunity.

He could finally win control over the Black Sea,

and the vital access to the Mediterranean.

[narrator] In autumn 1853,

the Russian Black Sea Fleet attacks the Ottoman port of Sinope,

setting all the enemy ships on fire.

3,000 Ottoman sailors perish in a matter of hours.

Just one enemy ship can flee to Constantinople.

But the battle at Sinope changes opinions in France and Britain.

For the British, it was quite clear

that Russia must not be allowed to take control of the Bosporus.

The British, and the British fleet,

had a huge interest in keeping the Dardanelles open,

both for naval forces, and also for British merchant ships,

which played a dominant role in wheat exports,

for example, out of Odesa.

[narrator] England and France support the Ottoman Empire,

and declare war against Russia.

They seek a long-term reduction of Russian power in the Black Sea.

The plan is to take and destroy Sevastopol.

The world has never seen a war like this.

[Richie] What's happening is, you're going into the modern world.

You're going into the world of the industrial revolution.

You're going to the world of modern armaments, of trains,

of all these other new technological developments, the telegraph and so on,

which changed the concept and the makeup of warfare.

[narrator] The Crimea becomes the first European media war.

British reporters like William H. Russell send dispatches

direct from the front lines.

And for the first time, there are photographs of a campaign.

Because of the long exposure times, military action can't be shown.

But the photos still give a brand new insight into war.

The public in Britain and France,

getting their information from war reporting,

followed the war with great interest

and a good deal of patriotism for their own armies.

But they were also shown the reality of trench and siege warfare.

[narrator] The Russians build up Sevastopol

into an apparently impregnable fortress.

An integrated defense system combining artillery batteries

and trench networks.

Industrialization makes the Crimean War a conflict of technology

with new and deadly weapons.

The British Lee-Enfield rifle, for example, has a range of 1000 meters.

This muzzle-loader is far superior to Russian muskets

with their 200-meter range.

Actually, they now commanded mass armies,

huge armies that were heavily armed with new rifles and new artillery.

[narrator] The siege of Sevastopol is conducted under appalling conditions.

Cholera and dysentery kill thousands

of soldiers, including senior officers.

But the battle for the port continues.

The young Leo Tolstoy volunteers to defend the city.

In his "Sevastopol Sketches," he writes:

"Above their heads was the lofty, starry sky,

across which flashed the fiery streaks of artillery shells."

[threatening music playing]

Tolstoy's "Sevastopol Sketches" gave Russian readers

the first realistic picture of what went on there.

It was no exaggeratedly patriotic,

romanticizing portrait of Russian heroism,

of soldiers happy to throw themselves into battle and sacrifice themselves,

but rather it showed the suffering, the groaning, the screaming and dying.

[narrator] The siege of Sevastopol lasts almost a year.

Finally, after bitter fighting, French forces breach the defensive ring.

The defeated Russians blow up their positions and leave the city.

Sebastopol is reduced to rubble.

In Russia, it becomes a symbol of Russian resistance.

Leo Tolstoy writes:

"As they left Sevastopol,

almost every soldier looked back, sighing,

inexpressible bitterness in his heart, and shaking his fist at the enemy."

Sebastopol was so important.

It was Catherine and Potemkin's City.

It was the naval base of the Russian empire.

And it still has that prestige today.

Hence, Putin was so keen...

You know, the Crimea, for Putin, is Sebastopol.

[narrator] For the time being, the end of the war

halts Russia's plans for expansion.

The czar is forced to recognize the independence of the Ottoman Empire.

[Kusber] In the Treaty of Paris at the end of the Crimean War

Russia has to accept the demilitarization of the Black Sea,

so it can no longer have a Black Sea Fleet.

But what was more devastating for Russia's self-respect

was the humiliation of being defeated in the Crimea, their own territory,

by France and Britain, and above all, by the Ottoman Empire,

that they had considered militarily and culturally inferior.

[narrator] The Crimean War may have marked the birth of modern sanitation.

But by the time it was over, an estimated 70,000 Russian soldiers

and 90,000 British and French had lost their lives.

Because of the new technology and high losses,

the Crimean War is considered the first modern war.

But in the coming decades, the toll of armed conflicts

would dramatically increase.

At the end of the 19th century, Czar Nicholas II ascends to the throne.

Imperialism is reaching its peak.

Unlike other European Great Powers, Russia has no overseas colonies,

but it has central Asia.

The czar rules the largest continuous land-mass on Earth.

And he wants to extend his empire.

Especially in the Far East.

And then they start building the trans-Siberian railway

and see that as the real colonial empire.

Other states, the British, the French, the Germans, start taking over Africa.

The Russians, so to speak, see their Africa in Asia.

[narrator] The czar occupies Manchuria and leases Port Arthur from China.

It is to be the main base for Russia's Pacific Fleet.

Korea, too, has opened its borders to Russian troops,

and is trading with Russia.

Japan views Russian expansion as a threat.

[Sebag Montefiore] What Nicholas II didn't understand

was that there was a dynamic new power in the east: Japan.

That, with British naval know-how and the latest weaponry and technology,

was more than a match for the Russians.

And that clash was to be disastrous for the Russians.

[narrator] In February 1904

the Japanese fleet attacks Russian ships at Port Arthur with torpedoes,

unleashing the Russo-Japanese War.

The Japanese attacked without declaring war,

setting a precedent they would repeat

at Pearl Harbor in the Second World War.

To that extent, it was a surprise.

But it was clear that war was coming.

Russia had embraced the possibility of a Far Eastern war,

and was prepared to risk it.

[narrator] Japanese forces approach Port Arthur over land.

For more than 150 days, they besiege the city.

When the Russians realize they have no chance of breaking out,

the czar scuttles his Pacific Fleet in the harbor.

Then, the diverted Russian Baltic Fleet is tracked down by the Japanese,

and almost entirely destroyed.

This prestige fleet, so miserably, so hopelessly destroyed, sunk.

By the end, all the vessels of two great fleets

lie at the bottom of the sea.

And to add insult to injury,

the Japanese then raise the ships and integrate them into their own fleet.

That is a humiliation on an almost unimaginable scale.

[narrator] The defeat has serious consequences for Russia.

Broad strata of the population begin to question the autocratic authority

of the czar.

Internal resistance is growing, with calls for political participation,

civil rights, and a better food supply.

The czar responds with defiance. His troops fire on demonstrators.

[Sebag Montefiore] When he repressed the revolutions in 1905,

when he retook Russia from the rebels,

he did so with absolute brutality.

And that made him extremely unpopular with many people.

He already had a bad reputation for being a loser.

But now he also added the reputation for being a butcher.

[Stadelmann] The czar's basic failure to understand

is underlined by the fact

that he showed not the slightest regret or remorse.

Instead he didn't try to conceal his anger

at the insubordination of these impudent workers,

who had the temerity to trouble him over something like this.

And it is at this point, at the latest,

that even his closest advisors at court realize how far their ruler

has lost contact with reality.

[exciting music playing]

[narrator] Resistance is growing, even in military circles.

In the summer of 1905,

sailors on the cruiser Potemkin mutiny in the Black Sea,

events recreated in the silent film "Battleship Potemkin."

When the ship arrives in Odesa, in the middle of a general strike,

czarist troops wreak a bloodbath among the civilian population.

[Stadelmann] Subsequently, of course,

this mutiny won special prominence

through Sergei Eisenstein's masterful film.

A mutiny, the workers' march in January, the peasants' uprisings.

All that together worked to create the impression

that things couldn't go on like this.

[narrator] As the pressure on the streets grows,

the czar seems to give in.

In his October Manifesto in 1905, the czar promises civil rights

and an elected legislative assembly: the Duma.

We can see what Czar Nicholas thought of the Duma

by the fact that he never visited it.

But In April 1906, when it first met,

he summoned the Duma to the throne room of the Winter Palace.

And he addressed them, from the throne,

and told them what they could and couldn't do.

[narrator] The 1905 revolution fails.

Conservative and nationalist circles around the czar block real reform.

Nicholas has formed an alliance with France,

and also an arrangement with Britain,

an informal pact known as the Triple Entente,

facing the Triple Alliance of Germany, Italy and Austria-Hungary.

June 28th, 1914.

A fateful day for Europe.

The heir to the Austrian throne, Franz Ferdinand, and his wife,

are on an official visit to the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.

They are assassinated in their open car by a young Bosnian Serb.

Austria-Hungary plans its response: a lightning-fast victory over Serbia.

But Russia declares itself Serbia's protector.

The czar orders a general mobilization.

We historians have argued for a century

how to explain the outbreak of the First World War,

and we've still haven't got an explanation everyone can agree on.

So, it seems to be very complex.

My own conclusion is that all of the Great Powers,

there were five of them,

could have prevented the war.

And to a different extent, all of them bear responsibility

for the outbreak of war, including Russia.

After all, the Russians were prepared to risk a great war over Serbia,

and the same was true of the Austrians, and the Germans,

and finally also the French and British.

[narrator] In the First World War, Russia fights

alongside its allies France and Britain, against Germany and Austria.

The czar's army is the world's largest.

But his troops are badly trained and poorly equipped,

and the command structure is outdated.

Nevertheless, in 1914,

the Russians advance to Tannenberg in East Prussia.

The Russians mobilize,

and they advance much faster than the Germans expected,

and they march into East Prussia on two fronts.

At first, the Germans panic

and transfer troops from the Western Front.

But then superior German tactics encircle and destroy

one of the two Russian armies at Tannenberg,

taking more than 90,000 prisoners.

[narrator] On the eastern front, the Russian and German empires

reach a stalemate.

In the first year of war, the Russians lose 1.4 million dead and wounded.

The Germans take around 980,000 Russian soldiers prisoner.

[Neitzel] In fact the czar's army isn't equipped for this modern war.

For instance they have no heavy artillery, unlike the Germans.

The Russians have some success fighting

the Austrians but not against the Germans.

[narrator] In 1915, Czar Nicholas takes over

supreme command of the armed forces

and takes himself to the front line.

[Neitzel] That was certainly a bad idea.

His generals advised against it,

because Nicholas had no military experience.

Some sovereigns have been effective

war leaders, but he wasn't one of them.

Then he did let the generals have their way,

but he had to take the blame for Russian defeats.

[narrator] By the beginning of 1917,

with the morale of the troops at rock bottom,

Russia is a tinder-box.

The lack of reform and food shortages at home

are stoking resentment against the czar's regime.

There are almost daily mass protests, hunger marches and strikes.

When police and soldiers begin to mutiny and join the protesters,

Czar Nicholas follows the advice of his generals and abdicates.

350 years of absolute rule have come to an end.

A provisional government puts the czar and his retinue under house arrest.

The crisis grows.

In April 1917,

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin returns to St Petersburg from exile in Switzerland.

The leader of the Bolsheviks urges the takeover of the country

by workers, soldiers and peasants.

[Sebag Montefiore] And he promised the three things

that the Russians most wanted: bread, land and peace.

[narrator] He positions himself openly against the provisional government.

Now we have chaos, crisis, complete revolution.

The czar has been overthrown, that was unimaginable.

Lenin must privately have admitted that

he could never believe that possible.

And now he has the chance to act.

[narrator] The real strategist of revolution is Leon Trotsky.

In October 1917, he sets up a military organization:

the military-revolutionary committee, the MRK.

Right across the country Bolsheviks seize power violently.

Actually, Leon Trotsky's great achievement

was knowing which bridges, post offices

and train stations in St Petersburg

had to be occupied,

so that they could surround the remains

of the collapsing provisional government

inside the Winter Palace

and take it quietly, and without bloodshed.

[narrator] After the revolution, Lenin

and Trotsky must consolidate their power,

over the whole country, as quickly as possible.

And so they end the unpopular war without consulting their allies.

At Brest-Litovsk, they sign a separate treaty with the Germans.

With this treaty, Russia loses everything

it has gained since Peter the Great.

They lose all the non-Russian parts of the empire.

They're forced back to the core of purely Russian territory.

And of course, all this is a terrible defeat for Russia.

Losing their European lands means losing a very large amount of industry

and a big part of their population.

And the Bolsheviks are clear that they're doing this

because their priority is to win the civil war.

But this is a peace they won't accept in the long run.

[narrator] In the coming years,

Russia's new rulers will do all they can to reverse these losses.

But first they have to fight for power inside the country.

"White" forces, loyal to the czar, rise up against the Bolsheviks.

By 1918, Russia is in the grip of a terrible civil war.

The Bolsheviks have imprisoned Czar Nicholas and his family

in Yekaterinburg, 2000 kilometers from St Petersburg.

They spend their days locked up in a modest villa, under constant guard.

[Sebag Montefiore] Nicholas had already been overthrown.

He lost power.

He was discredited politically, but in an autocratic system,

the czar, the autocrat, always had the potential to return.

He was the sacred monarch.

He was potentially more significant than he was in actuality.

Lenin understood that Nicholas II

could be a rallying banner for the opposition.

[narrator] The Bolsheviks must at all costs

prevent the czar falling into the hands of the "White Armies."

They are afraid that the "Whites" could use the czar

as the figurehead of a counter-revolution.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks decide to murder the czar and his entire family.

He wasn't a great czar, but because he was killed, he became a martyr.

I think it was important for world history, in a sense that it showed...

Not that we needed more evidence, but it showed the brutality

of the new incoming Soviet state, the state of dictatorship of proletariat.

[narrator] More than 350 years of czarist rule have come to an end.

In the wake of the civil war

a new Russian empire arises, that will become a global power.