St Petersburg Brian Cox's Russia

It's 100 years since the Russian Revolution

and it all started here.

And it cut off Russia from the world for nearly 70 years.

But new DNA evidence suggests that one in every 600 Russians

has Scottish ancestry.

I'm discovering Scots who made a massive impact on Russia's history.

Some made the former empire their home

and others fought and died there.

From those who helped to establish Russian football...

..to those like me who came to Russia

at a crucial time in their life,

they found Russia beautiful, captivating

and quite exasperating.

This is from Scotland to Russia, with love.

HE SPEAKS RUSSIAN

Last time, I was in Moscow,

following Scots before me who had made the capital their own.

I marched in the footsteps of the Scot who was

the highest ranking general in the Russian army...

..discovered the spy behind James Bond...

..and the believer that never made it here.

-He was regarded as the most dangerous man in Britain.

-Right.

He was the man who could cause a revolution.

'I even managed to get into the heart of the Kremlin.'

It's...

gobsmackingly beautiful.

Now I'm in St Petersburg, one of the most beautiful cities in the world...

..Venice of the North, and Russia's cultural capital.

For many Scots, this imperial city would become their home.

'I first came here to work in the 1990s.'

Grushko.

How do you know it's ours?

'I was making a series about a melancholic Russian detective

'struggling to cope with the pace of change.'

'It perfectly matched my own state of mind.

'My career had taken off,

'yet I was divorced and in the middle of a midlife crisis.'

I brought my daughter, Margaret, here, aged 12,

probably scared I'd lose her.

It was when he took custody, more or less, or tried to.

You decided to kind of try and bring me,

have time with me and bring me up on your own in your own way.

It was a difficult time. I mean, I'd been in America,

I'd made Manhunter, I'd been a big success,

and her mum, I think, had had enough.

Her mum had just, you know, just given me the red card and said,

"You're off the field."

And, uh...

I sort of went off with my tail in between my legs,

-and it was difficult.

-You said to her,

"I'm a train, you can get on when you like and get off when you like."

-Did I say that?!

-Yeah.

-Oh, God!

"I'm a train, Caroline,

"you can get on whenever you want and get off whenever you like."

She got off the train.

Since then, St Petersburg has become Margaret's second home.

Tell me, what is it, what is it

about this place that gets under your skin?

Well, I studied here, and the summer is incredibly full of lovers.

The city is full of young girls and young boys in love.

Because it's all night long, too. It's 24-hour daylight.

I mean, I didn't want to say this cos you're my father,

but I remember going, I mean,

I would meet boys I knew on Palace Square at

one or two in the morning

and it would just be, like, them on bicycles

and us riding on the handlebars all night long.

A lot of the time, of course, we were drunk,

but we didn't know what time of day it was or anything.

And it's magic, it's a magic hour and it is fairy tale.

Romance runs deep through the Russian soul.

So it's rather fitting that our first story involves an empress

who fell in love with her Scottish architect.

Tsarskoye Selo,

Catherine the Great's Palace.

Absolutely jaw-droppingly stunning, even on a grey day like this.

It's like a...

It's like a wedding cake.

Amazing.

Catherine the Great wanted to update her ancestral palace.

Inspired by ancient Rome,

she combed the world for someone who shared her passion.

The man she found would go on to create a palace

full of exquisite rooms like this,

the Arabesque Hall.

In 1779, Charles Cameron arrived in St Petersburg.

When Catherine the Great introduced him, she said,

"At present I am employing Mr Cameron,

"Scottish of nationality, nobility, practising Jacobite,

"a great draughtsman, nurtured by antiquities,

"known by his book on the Roman baths."

Now Cameron was neither noble nor a Jacobite.

Nevertheless, he would become more dear to her

than she could possibly imagine.

The iconography that they would intimately create together

would become the iconography for the Russian Empire.

Architect Charles Cameron had published a book on Roman bathhouses.

In it, drawings showed classical motifs of the Greek

and Roman emperors, and the empress loved it.

It got him the job and brought him over to Russia.

Appointed the architect of her Imperial Majesty,

Cameron immediately set to work

reimagining a palace fit for the empress.

Cameron needed skilled workers to build these massive structures.

Now, there was a serious problem.

The Russian workers he found just didn't know enough about the materials.

And not only that, he complained that they drank.

So in 1784,

Cameron took out an advert in an Edinburgh paper

looking for specialist craftsmen.

In May of the same year, 76 masons, smiths,

bricklayers and plasterers travelled from Scotland to St Petersburg.

From the Blue Drawing Room to the Green Dining Room, a snuff room.

From the bedchamber to churches and temples.

The work went on and on here and elsewhere for nearly 30 years.

Taking up the story is the palace's curator.

So...

Our Cameron...

He doesn't look very happy.

TRANSLATED FROM RUSSIAN:

Ah, a little bit in love with him.

A wonderfully ceremonial staircase links the bathhouse to

the empress's personal quarters.

So this was originally white marble, was it?

I've never seen such a staircase.

It's beautiful. And I can see her coming down, you know,

I can visualise Catherine descending.

Yeah.

Catherine the Great's private library was on the top floor

and one of her favourite retreats,

the wing known as the Agate Pavilion.

-Can you give me a hand with these, somebody?

-Ugly shoes.

Ugly, ugly, ugly.

OK, I'm in.

Tell me, Irina, so tell me about this magnificent room,

what was this? Was this a reception hall?

Ah, so this is a Roman room? Of course it is.

Yes.

'This is the Great Hall.'

Cameron painted walls to look like marble

and created a ceiling of frescoes.

He introduced non-native wood to create intricate parquet flooring

and had the room lit by sculptures bearing foliage, candelabras -

a potpourri of styles.

There is a kind of extraordinary aesthetic at work in this room,

and you can see it, it's just magnificent.

So it puts Cameron,

for me it puts Cameron in a completely different light from before,

not just an architect, but actually an interior designer,

with such a magnificent eye.

And it was that,

it was precisely that talent that Catherine recognised

and that Catherine wanted.

She wanted it, that's why they were so close

because his aesthetic matched her own.

Oh! These bloody shoes!

Mind you, the one thing about these shoes,

they're very handy for polishing the parquet.

You can polish the parquet as you go.

Definitely.

Two years later,

Cameron was asked to create a private esplanade

complete with busts of the empress's favourite philosophers.

And in the ultimate complement, it was named the Cameron Gallery.

Cameron spent the rest of his life in Russia, but as tastes changed,

he failed to adapt.

The Scot who came to St Petersburg

to build Catherine the Great's architectural dream

died 33 years later designing a naval barracks.

Yet Catherine the Great's Scottish relationships went far beyond architecture.

It's enough to make any man want to relax.

And Catherine had a special place in her heart for the Scots.

Her private banker, her doctor, her architect, wet-nurse, nannies,

even the military, all were Scots.

In fact, you could say the Scots were becoming quite trendy in her empire.

But since I'm near naked,

I'll tell you a fun story about a canny lad from Scotland

who saw a completely different side of her.

Catherine was what many people might call a sensuous person.

Others have been less kind,

noting that her sexual voracity was notorious.

In other words, she was a wee bit of a goer.

Fitting in nicely to this scene was a Scottish schoolmaster,

William Porter.

Born in 1741,

he was brought over by Catherine the Great to help reform the education system.

What is less known is that he brought over the sex club known as

The Beggar's Benison for local aristocrats.

Members chanted the words of the Highland march as the orgies began.

"In the garb of old Gaul with the fire of old Rome...

"..from the heath-covered mountains of Scotia we come.

"Where the Romans endeavoured our country to gain,

"but our ancestors fought,

"and they fought not in vain."

And it was all in the name of carnal pleasure.

Beat me, beat me, call me a Dundonian.

Porter invented a complex set of phallic rituals and initiations

with members from the British expat community.

Rubbing more than shoulders with merchants and aristocracy,

all using their private sign for uprightedness.

Little else is known about the club or Porter.

Both seem to have disappeared almost as quickly as they appeared,

or perhaps they didn't and perhaps that The Beggar's Benison

continued below the radar. Who knows?

But what is known is that on his death,

Porter's obituary belied the man who, above all else, championed

the Scottish phallus in Russia.

Oh, boy, I could just sleep after all that, I tell you.

In fact, I think I will.

From sex to religion.

Back in Edinburgh,

I'm meeting my friend, Scottish writer and broadcaster Billy Kay.

I'm about to find out about a small group of Scottish missionaries

who set off to Russia armed with the word of God.

So, Billy, what is it we have here?

Well, this is a map of the vast Russian Empire

and you've got Scottish influences right across it, from very early on,

from St Petersburg and the merchant community there

to the Shkot Peninsula near Vladivostok, a place called Shkotova.

Scottish influences right over the area,

but the principal area associated with Scottish religion effort

-is down here in the Caucasus.

-Right.

That borderland that's now Chechnya and places like that.

The Tsar decided to give the Edinburgh Missionary Society

18,000 acres in an area called Karas,

near the spa town of Pyatigorsk,

just north of the Caucasus Mountains,

which was hostile to Russia then

and a bit further south is hostile to Russia to this day.

-So the idea of converting...

-And that was Muslim-dominated?

It was Muslim. This was historically a Muslim area.

So the idea of trying to convert Muslims

was quite an outrageous proposition.

These Scots missionaries thought they were up to the task,

they thought, "Here we go."

They were, and they had a religious fervour and zeal

that you could see goes back to the time when this kirk was built.

At the beginning of the 19th century,

the Caucasus were wild and untamed,

and it was here that Henry Brunton set up his Scottish colony.

It lasted only about 30 years,

they only converted approximately nine hardy souls.

But they bought out of slavery a lot of children from

the local Tatar Turkish tribes.

How did they convert the Bible into Tatar?

I mean, because they probably didn't have any knowledge of Tatar,

but they obviously had somebody who was able to speak both languages.

It was Henry Brunton there and the man Swan from Fife,

and apparently Brunton's translation was a mixture of classic Turkish language,

but taking in the local dialects of the Tatar language,

-just creating it himself.

-It's astonishing.

I mean, it's an achievement, it's quite astonishing.

To what end, you go, "What is the point?"

But the actual scholarship is remarkable.

Exactly. That's the remarkable thing.

Henry Brunton's mission failed.

The locals remained resolutely Muslim.

He died in the Caucasus in 1813.

One remarkable thing was although the colony died,

40 years after its failure,

a journalist from The Times, Mackenzie Wallace,

a Scot, went through the area.

And he noticed written on the map, "Shotlandskaya koloniya",

Scottish colony.

-This was here?

-This was here, down here, near Pyatigorsk.

And he decided, "I've got to go and see what this is."

And he went there and he says in Russian, "Are there any Scots here?"

And Mackenzie Wallace says something like,

"Imagine my astonishment when the man replied in broad Scots,

" "Ach, man, I'm a Scot tae!" "

I mean, these links are quite important, aren't they?

They're a bit like Mormons in the '50s.

I remember the Mormons in the '50s coming round the houses in Dundee,

you know, doing big conversions, trying to convert.

Well, I think that zeal has always been at the heart of

everything the Scots do, we do with a passion.

-Yeah.

-And we'll just breenge into things with a heart and soul.

And I think that's, despite what was against them,

that's what these missionaries had.

It's a curious tale that speaks of a very different time.

Like the Scots before me, it was work that brought me here.

But looking back at my career,

I hadn't realised just how many Russian parts I've played over

the last 50 years.

Today, I'm giving a masterclass to Russia's next generation of film-makers.

I always had this strong connection with Russia, and my daughter,

who is here today, blames me for her having to learn Russian.

APPLAUSE

Thank you.

PROJECTOR: They've marched 1,000 miles, but are in excellent shape.

'War and Peace was the BBC adaptation of Tolstoy's epic Russian novel.'

And that's where we'll stop Napoleon in his tracks, God willing.

'I played General Kutuzov,

'the one-eyed defender of Moscow who defeated Napoleon.'

Napoleon has left Russia, your Grace.

We have our victory.

Nothing left to do.

Russia is saved.

Thank the Lord.

'It was an honour to play this hero,

'and it's great to hear the series was so well received here in Russia.'

'Here I play a KGB general with Bruce Willis.'

I have many times dreamed of killing you.

But now...

'Willis is a former CIA adversary

'on the run.'

You are...

..pensioner.

A couple of years now.

'It gave me a chance to say one of my favourite villainous lines.'

I haven't killed anyone in years.

That's sad.

To Igor,

the butcher.

He's not dead.

'Whilst the world looked on with a mixture of happiness and disbelief

'at the end of the Soviet Union...'

HE SPEAKS RUSSIAN

'..I was playing a Russian colonel on an international space station.'

We've had some good fortune at Cruise McKinney number three.

A dead man - accident, whatever.

'There's been a murder.'

The Cold War was ending and here in space,

the film showed the Americans and Russians beginning to work together.

All right, where is he?

Mr Huff is available for Colonel Voronov now.

If you do not make your company records available immediately,

then your lease to operate in Soviet territory

-will be cancelled immediately.

-What?

You have two hours to comply.

'Some 20 years ago, I played a dodgy Russian with Michael York.'

I'd like you to meet Anatole.

The film explored the sexual possibilities of

the new business order.

I have not had a chance to clean things very much since I... I mean,

since we bought factory.

Relax, nephew. Relax.

Anatole just come look, check investment.

'I think I might have aged a wee bit better than this film has.'

Looks OK.

Da.

The film that launched me was a Hollywood movie about

the fall of the Romanovs, Nicholas and Alexandra.

-I wish we didn't have to go.

-It's Mama's birthday.

'I'm still proud of this one.'

My role was at the very heart of the tragedy.

-PROJECTOR:

-This must be some of your nonsense, Trotsky.

Lenin's theory comes to this.

'I played Leon Trotsky,

'the man who helped ignite the Bolshevik revolution.'

-You will print it.

-I can't.

The style's atrocious.

So that was my start in movies.

And so there was my initial Russian connection.

'One of the most important scenes is when we, the Bolsheviks,

'prepare to launch our attack.'

State bank.

Central telephone exchange.

This is where the revolution started.

The Winter Palace had long been the official residence of

the imperial family.

It also contains one of the world's most important art galleries.

The Hermitage.

And it was here at 2:10am

on October the 25th, 1917,

that Russia became a communist country.

As the Bolsheviks stormed the palace, one eyewitness wrote,

"Like a black river filling all the street,

"without song or cheer, we poured through."

The Bolsheviks came through that archway, they came through here,

up through this area here and then up this staircase.

Seven months before,

a revolt had resulted in the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II.

A provisional government occupied the palace,

but there they were threatened by continual infighting,

chronic food shortages and a collapsing army.

Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky led the Bolsheviks to overthrow them.

Incredibly, a Scottish artist,

Christina Robertson, is part of this story.

To find out more, I am meeting curator Lisa Renne.

All these revolutionary soldiers came, you know,

-and they damaged the painting.

-Oh.

It was cut with a sword.

It was.. They damaged it with rifles.

Of course the revolution was against the Tsars, you know,

and it was an item of one of the Tsars.

So you could never guess it because it was restored with our wonderful restorers.

There was a cut there, yeah.

It's like they deliberately tried to decapitate her.

Poor Alexandra Feodorovna got the full might of the Bolshevik.

This was just one of the many paintings the Bolsheviks targeted

as they stormed the palace.

Christina Robertson was a successful society portrait painter in Paris.

Tsar Nicholas I persuaded her to come to Russia and paint his family.

She moved here aged 43.

It's a very romantic story.

For a woman, coming so far

from Fife, from Edinburgh to St Petersburg.

But she was married, she had children, didn't she?

She married in 1822 and she had eight children,

and just four survived to adulthood.

So she lost four children.

Christina Robertson would never return home, dying here in 1854.

Do we know if she was estranged from her family because her family

-wasn't with her when she died?

-It's a bit of a mystery.

We don't know anything about her husband.

I think she was not very lucky with the marriage.

Dobryy vecher, dobryy vecher.

Dobroye utro!

Dobroye utro, dobroye utro. Sorry! Not dobryy vecher.

Dobryy vecher is goodnight. Sorry. Sorry, Lisa!

My Russian is very rough.

Dobroye utro.

To return to Christina Robertson - I mean, this is astonishing to me -

that the posing of these women,

there's something...

I don't know what it is,

there's something kind of doll-like about them in a way.

-What is it?

-That's right, yes.

I think it's a combination of

the taste of the time and also of the lack of anatomy,

which women artists possibly did not

know about because they had no classes.

Or even encouraged to know about.

Yes. Well, absolutely.

There is another of Christina's paintings I want to see.

Now this is beautiful.

-It is.

-That's exquisite.

I think she developed, of course, a style.

Incredibly. But see the same sort of wistful look on the girl's face,

that same head to one side.

This, I love this painting.

-It's a lovely painting.

-I absolutely love that painting.

-And I love the parrot with the cherries in the mouth.

-Yes.

And it tells the story of a brother and sister,

and we've no idea who these people are, have we?

Well, regretfully we don't know the names, we don't know who they are.

But, of course, the circle was not quite big.

It's aristocracy children, of course.

They came from some aristocracy family.

Whether these children survived the revolution, we will never know.

Determined to overthrow the bourgeoisie,

the Bolshevik leaders orchestrated looting of all symbols of power.

Russia faced cultural upheaval, violence and turmoil,

as a civil war erupted.

In 1924, Josef Stalin became the new leader of the Soviet Union.

He brought rapid industrialisation,

created massive state farms and eventually a reign of terror.

But in Stalin's Russia,

a Scottish poet became a poster boy for the workers' struggle.

And where better to pick up on that

than St Petersburg's most famous book shop, Dom Knigi,

where they make the finest latte this side of the Neva.

During the 19th century,

Robert Burns was admired in Russian intellectual circles as

the people's champion. Post-Revolutionary Russia,

interest in our national bard rocketed,

and it's all thanks to one man.

In 1924,

the Russian poet Samuil Marshak translated Burns

and in over a year he sold 600,000 copies.

It was a mammoth feat,

but one that cemented Burns into the psyche of every Russian.

But Marshak was a shrewd operator.

Burns' writing was endorsed by successive Soviet regimes

and only because something was missing.

Sex.

Now Stalin was known to be quite prudish

and had an aversion to raunchy western writers.

Marshak pushed Burns the people's poet as an idea,

and one of peasant virtue, which Stalin...

..seemed to buy into.

Burns would never make it over to Russia, but his writing has,

and it shows no signs of fading away.

Even today in schools throughout Russia,

children can recite the poems of Robert Burns.

Every year in June there is a Scottish delegation celebrates

the birthday of Robert Burns in St Petersburg.

We are getting ready for the performance called

For The Immortal Memory Of Robert Burns.

"Gin a body meet a body, Comin thro' the rye,

"Gin a body kiss a body, Need a body cry?"

"O, Jenny's a' weet, poor body, Jenny's seldom dry:

"She draigl't a' her petticoatie, Comin thro' the rye!"

THEY SPEAK RUSSIAN

THEY SPEAK RUSSIAN

SHE SPEAKS RUSSIAN

"As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in luve am I:

"And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a' the seas gang dry:

"Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear."

As for Marshak, as he was dying,

he requested that his badge as honorary president of

the Burns Federation be laid with him.

Under Stalin, this beautiful city had its name changed to Leningrad

in honour of the man who led the Bolshevik revolution.

But during World War II, its very existence was under threat.

Partly due to its historical significance

and industrial importance,

on the 8th of July, 1941, German troops began surrounding the city.

Held at bay by fortifications,

Hitler decided to strangle the city to death.

Aerial bombardment set fire to warehouses...

..which held food supplies.

Around three million citizens were now trapped in

the middle of a blockade.

The Siege of Leningrad had begun.

Around the world the news of the siege spread.

In the Scottish mining heartlands of Airdrie, a communist collective,

the Russia Today Society, met in the front room of a council flat.

One member, Harry Walker, recorded what happened.

This is what he said. "All the women were deeply affected

"by what they'd been hearing about Leningrad.

"They were desperately anxious to do something,

"to feel part of the vast struggle that was taking place."

Within weeks of the siege beginning,

they would send an extraordinary gift in comradely support.

That gift is kept here, in the Peter and Paul Fortress,

in the heart of Leningrad, now St Petersburg.

So in the steel manufacturing towns of Airdrie and Coatbridge,

the ordinary working men and women started raising funds,

and on top of that they created this...

magnificent book.

"To the heroic women of Leningrad.

"Our hearts go out to you in this,

"your hour of supreme agony and trial.

"Your fight is our fight and we shall fight with you."

It says here,

"Women from all sections of the community have signed this letter,

"the Provost's wife, wives of the councillors,

"business and professional men, housewives,

"professional and businesswomen, industrial workers.

"We realise humanity's debt of gratitude to the women of Russia."

And then the book has all the names of the women who signed.

"Jean Lockhart,

"Agnes Graham, Margaret Drummond, AN Fleming,

"A Kirkland.

"Betty Wright, Agnes Clark,

"Cecilia Beattie."

This is really, really astonishing.

And incredibly heartening that these women,

you know, these were simple women from Airdrie, from Coatbridge, who

didn't even know probably what St Petersburg looks like,

then it was Leningrad.

And they even put pictures of the town, the Royal Burgh.

Oh, this is beautiful.

Something like this defies words.

It's beyond language because it's so incredibly expressive in itself.

They've even gone to the trouble to have something translated into Russian,

and this is from the Albert Street Congregational Church in Coatbridge

and it just says, you know,

"We are with you in your epic struggle.

"You have our total support."

I wonder what the people of Leningrad made of this.

From people that they didn't know,

from a place they'd probably never even heard of,

Airdrie and Coatbridge.

The coldest winter in decades began.

Daily rations reduced to a thick slice of bread a day,

and people began to starve.

Within the first year alone, 600,000 people died,

and still there was no end in sight.

Today, my daughter, Margaret, and I are meeting three veterans

who were young children during the siege.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I would just like to start by saying this is an incredible honour

to be speaking to you,

who have survived probably one of the most horrendous acts of

the 20th century. And what I want to know is,

what is it like for you to look at those memories?

You know, because most people have memories of childhood.

Nobody has such unique memories as you people here from Leningrad have,

during that blockade.

Valentina said that she remember everything.

They go to the shop, to the bakery, to get bread.

Only 125g per day.

Sergei?

-Four out of 15 people survived?

-Yes.

-In one winter.

She was dead. She was dead for two weeks.

-Throw it out the window?

-Yes.

So, Tamara.

Valentina?

But looking back on that time...

..you must think, "How did I survive?"

That's astonishing.

Wow!

So they took the table apart and took the glue off the table

and melted the glue off the table,

-boiled the glue and ate the glue.

-Yes.

This is your mother.

My mother after the war.

This is Valentina. Very beautiful.

This has been such an honour and such a privilege to listen to you,

and very humbling, really.

I'm incredibly moved

and incredibly humbled by this extraordinary experience you've had.

Thank you so much for sharing it with me,

and sharing it with, hopefully, the people in Scotland.

I mean, above all,

talking to these three extraordinary human beings

who do not see themselves in any way as extraordinary

but, really, as rather ordinary.

And the thing that comes out is, I don't know if you agree with this,

Margaret, is a tremendous affirmation of the human spirit.

As the war raged, one Russian journalist wrote,

"The city is dead, no streetcars.

"Almost the only transport is sleds carrying corpses covered with rags,

"or half clothed."

Daily, 6,000 to 8,000 die.

Against all that,

just seven months after the book from the ladies of Airdrie

and Coatbridge arrived here, an album was smuggled to Scotland.

The album contained watercolours by the Soviet artist

Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva.

And despite the blockade circling the city...

..over 6,000 women signed this...

..still suffering from hunger and weakness.

And the book now sits in the Mitchell Library in Glasgow.

This is the actual book that the women of Leningrad sent,

and this is what they said.

"To our dear friends, the women of Airdrie and Coatbridge...

"..we have been moved to the depth of our soul by the words of love

"and greeting from those of you in far off Scotland.

"We thank you for the help you've given us in the struggle with Hitler's Germany.

"Our husbands and brothers are cut off from us,

"our homes are in danger,

"our children doomed to destruction and bondage."

And it is equally remarkable that 6,000 women sent this book.

It's so beautifully put together, this book.

And these...

That's Leningrad,

and this, with these wonderful, wonderful watercolours,

if you can see here, beautiful.

Absolutely beautiful.

And this is Vera Milyutina, who put the whole thing together.

It's very potent.

And the care, I mean,

these are an example of the signatures of the women.

That's their signatures,

and these are professions, secretaries, nurses.

And that's them.

Incredible testament, it really is.

So the women at work - nurses.

And, of course, the one thing we don't know,

with all these signatures,

we don't know how many, if any,

made it through to the end of the blockade.

On the 20th of January, 1944...

..the siege of Leningrad finally came to an end

after nearly 900 days.

It remains the deadliest blockade of a city in human history,

causing the death of more than a million citizens.

People in the streets wept for joy, life had become valuable once again.

Our last story is a subject about which both Russians

and Scots care passionately, and even sometimes obsessively.

Football.

Next year, Russia will host the World Cup.

Thousands of fans will flock into 11 cities,

hoping to see their country win.

Behind me is the Zenit Arena,

currently in the midst of a 1 billion construction programme.

When it is finished,

it will be one of the most expensive football stadiums ever.

Football first came to Russia with Scottish and English workers.

They were encouraged to play on their day off by their bosses

as it stopped them drinking vodka.

It took another Scot, Arthur MacPherson,

hailed by many as the father of Russian football,

to recognise its potential as a national sport.

But who was Arthur?

And how did he end up dying at the hands of the Bolsheviks in prison?

Well, the answer lies not far from here,

in a cemetery on Vasilyevsky Island,

one of the most historic parts of the city.

Today, Margaret and I are meeting Russian football historian

and fanatic Yuri Lukosyak and his friend, Slava.

Yet our story doesn't start where you expect.

This grave is of Yuri's footballing hero, Sergei Chirtsov,

a prodigy of Arthur MacPherson.

HE SPEAKS RUSSIAN

So Chirtsov,

he learnt from MacPherson and his fellow Scotsman

how to play the game as a family game.

And they began the tradition, doing it with Russian families.

And they started the beautiful game here?

MAN SPEAKS RUSSIAN

And he was one of the first Russians who played with

the immigrant football players,

and brought the Russians to the game.

Those immigrants were us.

Teams of British expats who had come over to work in Vasilyevsky's many textile mills.

HE SPEAKS RUSSIAN

First of all we're very proud that we created the first football club in Russia.

HE SPEAKS RUSSIAN

And here we created the Russian Football Association,

of whom the president was Arthur MacPherson.

The first team under MacPherson was Victoria, formed in 1894.

It was made up of Scottish, English and German expats,

but the Russians weren't happy.

HE SPEAKS RUSSIAN

They wanted the expats to understand

that... Rossiyskiy futbol?

That Russian football was in the Russian territory.

Yeah.

And there was only one man with authority in Petersburg,

Arthur MacPherson.

MacPherson, he is a legendary figure.

He is the first sportsman in Russia...

..who Nicholas II...

..in 1914...

..gave the Order of Stanislaus.

So this is the highest honour from Nicholas II.

OK, so he may not have been the father of Russian football,

but he may have been the godfather of Russian football.

He's not having it. He's simply not having it!

I think what we find is that this is very typical of football, really.

The kind of difficulties that football...

The difficulties that football get themselves into.

So we have the vodka.

Because it's cold.

Just as we Scots took our sport with us,

we also brought our rivalry.

In 1901,

English industrialist Thomas Aston

proposed Russia's first-ever Scotland versus England game.

To Mark the occasion, he had a cup made.

He hoped...

that the first winning team would be the English team.

He hoped that Nevsky would beat Nevka, the Scottish team.

So Nevsky, let me just clarify this, Nevsky was the English team.

And Nevka was the Scottish team wearing the red blouses.

Yes, yes, yes. In fact...

..in the press...

..it was written in the press it was the Scottish versus the English,

-not Nevsky versus Nevka.

-Oh, I see!

And they separated them immediately in the Russian sports press.

And then...

The Scots won.

But Aston didn't write on the cup that it was the Scottish that won.

Typical! Typical!

The Scots do not get their desserts. Typical!

I think this is the vodka speaking.

OK, I just want to say...

HE SPEAKS RUSSIAN

SHE SPEAKS RUSSIAN

-To world football, Dad.

-To world football.

-Denis Law.

-Denis Law.

-And Matt Busby.

-And Matt Busby.

THEY SPEAK RUSSIAN

Wow! That's a genuine wow.

It's a fitting end to my fascinating

and sometimes bonkers Russian odyssey.

Na Zdorovie!

Oh, God.

What a journey!

Before I leave,

I want to pay tribute to this great man

whose honour from the Tsar would haunt him.

Arthur MacPherson was accused of being a British spy.

He was thrown into jail by the Bolsheviks.

It is believed that he had fought on behalf of the Tsar.

This gravestone was erected by Yuri, who we spoke to minutes earlier.

He's not buried here

because his body was riddled with typhus.

When word of his death reached the UK in March, 1920,

it was thought MacPherson had been murdered

and his body had disappeared.

Some weeks later,

three British soldiers who'd got permission to look for his body,

discovered it in one of the prison cells,

buried beneath 40 others.

They recognised it, as before his death,

Mr MacPherson had pasted a piece of paper around his wrist

with his name on it.

It's a tragic end to the man who helped shape

the world's most popular sport here in Russia.

Most of us have heard about the Scots in America, Canada, Australia,

but the story of our folk here in

the world's largest country spans centuries.

In making this film, I have seen an aspect of

the Scottish diaspora that until now I never really knew about.

It's only now I realise that I had unwittingly followed

in their footsteps.

Many came in search of a better life, and in doing so,

left our Celtic footprint.

But I also think we brought a willingness to work

and a desire to get to the very,

very essence of our being, and existence.

And at times, to reinvent ourselves.

And sometimes...

..sometimes, our influence remains.