Original subtitles

This is a balalaika.

It's a standard Russian musical instrument

like the ukulele in Hawaii.

And this is a cinerama camera.

It's three eyes can see far, wide and deep.

Cameras just like this one captured some very unique experiences

that are going to enable us to participate in an adventure together.

A Russian adventure.

You know Russia's a big land.

I guess it's the biggest land in the world and yet,

we know so little about it.

What sort of a country is Russia?

Who are it's people and how do they work?

How do they play?

What is a Russian?

Well of course, we couldn't possibly hope to supply

complete answers to all these questions, but

I think we're going to have a lot of fun trying.

This is Russia.

On the move.

Russia, a giant among nations, a world in itself.

Many countries in one.

A land of contrasts and extremes.

Springtime in the northern regions means

crackling cold in the white wilderness.

In the south, it's a time for a burst of blossoms.

For here is a nation,

extending more than three thousand miles from top to bottom.

Covering a range of climates from arctic to subtropical.

Day break over the water in far eastern Russia,

is night in Moscow.

Because the union of socialist Soviet republics

spans more than six thousand miles.

Many time zones from it's eastern to its western boundaries.

If you went from one to the other you'd reset your watch ten times.

And if you took just a short trip in Russia

why you'd be adjusting your sights often to take in the variety of scenery.

You'd be certain to see a river for,

the Soviet union has about 150 thousand of them.

You look down at farmlands.

You'd gaze across at the high and the mighty.

In Russia, the modern and the medieval,

centuries apart in time, share common ground.

For in moving ahead, the people never forget to look back

on the splendors of the past.

Carefully they preserve the art

and the architecture of other times.

As in our country, the people of many different descents

share citizenship with people of the east and the west,

people of Asia and Europe.

The centers of a population, exceeding 226 million

are in the European part of Russia.

This is one of them.

The city was once Saint Petersburg, then it was petrograd.

It's now Leningrad.

Those are name changes that reflect eventual history

and shifts of power.

That's the admiralty building there fronting the neva river.

This is the fortress of Peter and Paul,

burial place of the emperor.

The monument to Peter the great,

he founded the city in 1703.

Survived the bombs and the shells of the second world war.

The palace that was once a summer residence for the czars was destroyed.

Completely restored, it again stands in stately dignity.

With every fountain making a contribution

to a real display of waterworks.

The neva river runs a short course of about forty miles.

But the volga,

well it's almost as long as our Mississippi.

It makes a majestic move of some 2,325 miles

before losing its identity in the caspian sea.

It's one of the busiest arteries in the system of waterways

natural and manmade that serve the Soviet union.

The barges of the volga boatmen lond ago disappeared

from the river but their song never dies.

Another river, the Moscow,

flows into the capital city that is the heart of Russia.

And past the heart of the city itself:

The kremlin, ahead and on the left.

Kremlin means fortress, and it began as that

back in the middle of the twelfth century.

The compound of palaces and churches that make up

the kremlin are now government buildings and museums.

Moscow is the cultural, political,

economic and scientific center

of the fifteen union republics that make up the u.S.S.R.

It's one of the world's greatest cities,

home to more than six and one half million people.

Every Metropolis I suppose has its own pulse beat,

its rhythm, its tempo.

Moscow's is strong. It's steady, fast.

Everyday about three million muscovites use an

underground transportation system that is quite special.

Some of the tunnels are more than a hundred feet deep.

Some go under the Moscow river.

Generally as we know them subways are functional things

of no genuine beauty, but this is a show place.

Commuters walk through marble halls.

The cars each seat 52 passengers with

standing room for 120 more.

Just occasionally stepping on one another's toes.

Both the place and the personal, very pleasing to the eye.

The system consists of seven lines,

with more than sixty miles of track.

The trains take people where they want to go in a hurry,

up to 56 miles an hour.

But of the seventy stations,

no two are quite alike in architecture or décor.

Moscow's subways are more than a means for getting

from one place to another, its for sightseeing.

You know, it's a place for which you can linger, browse,

if time permitted.

Like you would in an art gallery.

And all of this for five kopeks.

Or about six cents.

When the citizens emerge from the subway

and out into the open, they, depending upon the season,

encounter the bite of the winter.

Russia's pretty much concerned with its weather.

Does a great deal more than talk about it.

For one thing it learns about its climate from going to its source.

Its source is way up at the top of the world.

This is the arctic.

A giant refrigerator.

It's the factory producing the storms

which descend on the northern countries.

The output of the factory can't be halted,

but its operation can at least be studied so,

people can predict and prepare.

That's why Russia maintains the weather station

at the north pole itself.

And brief summers, during which high noon never comes.

And because the sun swings low along the Southern horizon

its slanting rays are really too weak to alter the frozen features of the arctic,

and so its pressure ridges, cornices and blocks

endure as monuments on a vast white battlefields where

opposing ice sheets meet in colossal conflict.

Winter over much of Russia is long, harsh.

But the people have learned to live with it.

They keep on the move.

When heavy snow blankets Moscow with its special white paralysis.

The residence don't hold in.

They dig out.

Quickly the city resumes its normal tempo.

Muscovites admit, and rather cheerfully that winter means

a nip in the air and a chill in the wind.

Certainly it's cold, but they say it's a dry cold.

It's invigorating, it's good for a person.

Old or young.

Come storm, come freeze, nothing can break up a chess game.

Well, nothing except a kibitzer.

Snow is a magic substance, brings out the creative urge.

The sculpturing of a snowman is a slap-dash art form

that never changes from country to country, really from

generation to generation.

They use stones or chunks of coal for his eyes.

They push in his buttons.

They've go to make him too fat, always, because

it won't be long before the sun cuts him down to size.

Wonderful stuff, snow.

As artists material

or as ammunition.

You know for a sport's minded and outdoors-loving people,

wintertime is a time for action.

Vigorous action suited to a rigorous climate.

The Russian's play hard.

At a tender age, Russians begin making

their marks in the skiing world.

Sitzmarks.

And through the long icy seasons,

skating rinks of course are a busy place.

You know because skating is really an international

past time, this could be in any northern country.

But a fast and frenzied race with reindeer supplying the power,

well that's as Russian as borscht.

Doesn't matter what sport man devises, his best friend

and often his biggest nuisance, manages to get into the game.

Traffic is sticky.

Casualties mount.

Dropouts are frequent, recoveries few.

The going's heavy,

and the shortest course between the starting and

finishing points might be the toughest.

The survivor and the winner.

Neither snow, sub-zero temperatures,

nor hunks of ice in the river can keep a hearty few from

confusing January with June.

It happens every winter throughout the northern hemisphere.

As proof of the... well something or other.

The majority of the people prefer the heated waters

of the Moskva swimming pool.

That's open the year round.

Many Russians follow the sun and the season to part of the

Soviet union that is subtropical in climate.

They gather at sochi,

the Russian riviera and they frolic in the waves.

And here we have a pacific cove off the kamchatka peninsula.

We find a couple divers preparing to find out what lies beneath them.

These scooters are electrically driven.

They're very maneuverable.

The divers invade a world of silence.

It seems dead, deserted.

Just like the ruins of an ancient city.

Little movement here, only the weeds in a submarine garden.

Swaying as if in a soundless wind.

It isn't long before members of a,

sort of a reception committee appear.

Natives are restless, but they're not hostile.

They're curious rather than afraid.

One of the divers beckons,

and a flounder responds.

So does an octopus.

One of the sea's least known and most feared inhabitants.

Seems to be the formula for making friends with the flounder

is apparently, win its confidence first.

Finally comes the feeding.

The unwelcome guest bides it's time here.

Crabs, which rank high on the menu of an octopus

move away from their enemy.

This is the creature Victor Hugo described as the sea vampire:

A glutinous mass endowed with a malignant will.

It looks like one of nature's less successful experiments,

but actually it's an efficient machine for capturing and killing its prey.

This one chooses not the demonstrate its efficiency,

instead it presents the most desirable view

one can get of an octopus.

A going away view as it jet propulsions itself into the gloom

of the kingdom of the sea.

An old calling of the sea lures Russians

far from their homeland.

This wild, expansive water ruled by winds

and guarded by fortresses of ice

is the antarctic ocean.

The latitude is 64 degrees south.

Near the bottom of the world.

And ships carrying the Russian flag are here on business.

Big business.

The crews clear the decks for action against the mightiest game

men have ever hunted.

Whales.

Yes whaling has changed considerable since captain ahab

lost limb then life in his battle against Moby dick.

The white leviathan.

Though the romance remains, the risks have gone down

and the odds have gone up in the favor of the hunters.

Now they search for their quarry from above.

And there it is, it's a school of big ones.

They're broaching and blowing.

The spotter in the helicopter radios the fleet below

and the catch boats move up for the kill.

The modern method of harvesting the depths is speedy, sufficient.

Team work and specialized equipment make it so.

Still the ultimate success rides with just one man.

That's the man behind the gun.

This is that dramatic peek of any hunt when timing

and marksmanship have to pay off.

The thrust of a harpoon into the immense body of a whale

isn't enough to really immobilize it.

So in the head of the weapon is a time bomb

set to go off when and where it will do the most damage.

It must be shot again if it's necessary.

This is certainly a far cry from the sport

of playing a fish on light tackle but,

whalers don't invade the antarctic for the sport of it.

And it isn't easy, you know, to play games

with opponents this big.

Having done it's job in the pursuit of the capture,

the catch boat turns it's prize over to the mother ship.

This is the Ukraine.

She's now on her 142nd day at sea.

She's a floating factory.

A processing plant for converting whales

into marketable products.

Into the gaping maw of the Ukraine go a hundred tons

in eighty-five feet.

Bone, blubber and meat.

Now this looks like a mammoth mustache, but this is really

the whale bone, which serves as sort of a sieve.

Through which the animal strains the water for the

tiny creatures that make up its diet.

Mainly because of woman's eternal struggle to

preserve the status quo of her figure.

Because whale bone was used for stays in the corsets

that she once wore as armor against age and avoirdupois.

Well today its commercial value is much less than that of meat

and of the oil obtained from the blubber.

Oil that once lit the lamps of the civilized world

now goes into the making of soaps.

People drift into strange and specialized professions.

An envied few become wine tasters.

But others must sample whale oll.

The hunt goes on.

Far away Moscow, the gloom of the night is broken by

a celebrating citizenry.

Because it's carnival time in the capital.

There are pyrotechnics, pageantry and parades.

There's dancing in the streets.

In a nearby theater the pyatnitsky folk choir presents

the robust dancing of the country people.

Moscow offers a wide choice in entertainment.

You can go to the ballet to the breathtaking circus.

Here's a demonstration of what is known as dzhigitovka.

The acrobatics of riding a horse and visa versa.

Star of the circus is Oleg Popov, he's a world famous clown.

This fella's talent goes far beyond making a funny face

or falling on it.

Circus performing is really an established profession in the Soviet.

The government runs a school for training the artists.

The band strikes up,

and progressive jazz goes backwards.

In a Moscow theater, the world famous moiseyev company

offers folk dancing which can sum up in a single dance

the spirit of an entire people.

The river is the tisza.

Makes a twisting and tumbling descent from the

carpathian mountains in southwestern Russian.

Logs of course are hauled down out of the mountains

the modern way in a truck, but the gutzuls

those are the sturdy loggers of the region,

continue to get the job done in the old and efficient manner.

This thing develops into a race between machines and men

who skillfully exploit the power of the tisza to reach their goal.

Here's the hometown of one of the loggers.

Just a fella who insists on home-cooked meals.

He gets them on the run.

The race is now between train and raft,

with the truck, with its load of logs is falling behind.

Suddenly the contest is over.

Machines get tired, they break down, stop for water,

but the river rolls on forever through time and space.

While logs are ridden down the tisza,

a train rumbles along the banks of the ural river,

the eastern part of European Russia.

It carries iron ore to the steel mills at magnitogorsk

this is a big, busy center of heavy industry.

Throughout the Soviet union, so rich in natural resources,

growth, expansion, building and development are in evidence.

It's happening in Siberia where tall trees bow before the bulldozer.

The taiga, which Russians call the vast forest of the north

gives way to progress.

The trees topple, but rise again.

In the form of buildings as another town emerges

from the shows of Siberia.

Well if a new and growing town is typical of Russia today,

so is the shimmering sweep of a grain field.

It's land that's used only for sowing, reaping.

The wheat is heavy-headed with gold in it.

Russian farming of course,

fields are aflame with the bold red of poppies.

Pork is an important product.

So is milk and beef.

And over the green pastures, the Shepherds tend their flocks.

Here we have a pastural picture that's unchanged

throughout the centuries.

The sightseer takes to the air.

For an eagle's eye view of forested hills

and the blue of mountain lakes.

This is lake ritsa.

It's steep, it's clear.

A genuine gem in the Georgian hinterland.

From a plane you can best marvel at such scenic splendors as

mount elbrus, that's off to the right there.

This is the crown of the caucasus.

Tallest peak in Europe.

Rising 18,481 feet above sea level.

This is the way to see the larger, more obvious aspects of nature.

But to know nature intimately, to meet her furred and feathered creatures,

this means walking.

Walk deep into the heart of the hidden places.

That is the way of the hunter.

The prowler in the woods moves softly and slowly.

Always alert and ready to shoot.

He stops, he looks, listens.

To the watcher in the wilderness the tableaux of nature unfold.

This is it.

A moment to be recorded and remembered.

This is a moment in the afternoon of a Fawn.

There's a lot of room in Russia for wildlife, but

even so conditions become crowded when there's a bear around.

Mishka, the people call him.

Mishka the mischief maker.

He has a capacity for confusion and chaos.

Has a sweet tooth too.

His weakness for honey leads to a conflict of interest

between him and the beekeepers.

He strikes by night, raiding the hives.

And almost anytime, mishka can turn a peaceful catnap

into a nightmare.

Hibernating bear, that's a good bear.

He's out of circulation, but when arrowed from his winter sleep,

he immediately becomes trouble on the loose.

Mishka is a catalytic agent.

Always alert to the opportunity of deliberately causing

incidents or accidents.

Sometimes he simply falls into them.

All wonder that the bear contributes so much to

the legend of the land because he's that kind of a creature.

He's got just what it takes to turn things inside out and upside down.

Like the perfect catalyst that he is,

mishka emerges unscathed from every adventure,

and ready for more.

Peaceful coexistence between man and beast,

that's a delicate relationship, it's easily broken.

Like here when wolves in hot pursuit of their prey

invade the forbidden territory of humans.

Their intended victim is an elk.

I guess in north America we'd call this a moose.

Hunger drives the wolves to unusual boldness,

dulls their inherent respect for man himself.

But he still can't face this fearsome weapon

he uses against them.

Over the sands of the muyunkum desert in Southern Russia

moves a party of hunters.

They're on a peace mission.

Cause in this area, two wild boars have been battling

savagely for territorial rights and herd mastery.

This things got to end in the death of either the ruler or the challenger.

Unless of course the hunters can capture one of them alive

and transport it to another place.

Boars are deadly fighters, they're always ready to

defend or attack with their razor sharp tusks.

A dangerous undertaking for both men and dogs.

What now?

It's one thing to overtake a boar,

another to capture it alive without somebody getting hurt.

Solution: Wrestle and hog-tie them.

Another troubled spot in the Southern part of the Soviet

is an island in the sea of aral.

Because it's overrun there with a species of antelope which are

eating themselves out of house and home.

Again, men must step in to solve a problem of nature's making.

Somehow, a part of the antelope herd has to be rounded up,

driven into the net, and then taken off the island

and moved into fresher and greener pastures.

But corralling the antelope will be a chore demanding teamwork,

you've got to have some good riders and fast horses.

The antelope are fleet footed and they have a top speed

of more than forty miles an hour.

The starting signal

and the big roundup begins.

Even the best of horsemen hit the dirt sometimes.

There's a wild donkey getting into the action.

Assuming the task of catching the runaway horse of the fallen rider.

Finally horsemen, motorcyclists, accomplish their mission.

The donkey does too.

Over a wild and watery stage in Russia,

the birds weave the patterns of an aerial dance.

When you think of Russia, you must think of the ballet.

And here in the heart of Moscow is one of its cathedrals

and cradles.

The bolshoi theatre and school.

Its history goes back to 1776.

Out of the hundreds of children who apply each year

for admission to the school, only thirty to forty are accepted.

Beginning at age seven they learn the basics of the ballet.

Practice, practice, practice.

The moment the teacher arrives.

They'll come that night when the student will perform

before audiences at home and abroad.

Meanwhile theres is the privilege of knowing

the very special magic of backstage.

Sharing in its excitement and watching the stars

in who's intricate footsteps they hope to follow.

It's opening night at the bolshoi.

We are there.

So is galina ulanova, one of the greatest of ballerinas.

She's now retired but she's still teaching her art.

She and her escorts occupy what was once the tsar's box.

The ballerina is raisa struchkova.

She's dancing the gavotte, the ballet flames of Paris.

Another night, before us is Maya plisetskaya.

The star maiden in the ballet the humpback horse.

Vladimir vasiliev, acclaimed by many as the world's premiere

male dancers in the role of Ivan, the peasant youth.

With him in this ballet, based on a Russian fairy tale

is alla shcherbinina as the horse who favors Ivan

with her magic powers.

And the touchstone of her art.

Ekaterina maximova stars as the spirit of the peasant girl

who rises from her grave to dance her lover into his own.

Next, the familiar nutcracker suite with vasiliev

and Yelena riabinkina.

Finally, vakhtang chabukiani as othello

doing the mad and frenzied dance that ends in death.

The dancing is over

and dawn comes to the city of Moscow.

About eleven hours earlier the light of this new day

first fell on Soviet soil.

On the pacific coast, far to the east.

That is the scope, the sweep, and the size of Russia.