Meskhetian Turks

Death of a Nation

Mon 20 March 2006 9pm
Fifteen years after the fall of Communism, Marcel Theroux goes on a personal journey through Putin's Russia.

He discovers a country that's literally dying.

Facts about Russia:

- In the first six months of 2005, the Russian population fell by half a million;

- By the middle of this century Russia could lose up to half of its people, according to Russian government stats;

- Life expectancy for men is 56 years, the same as Bangladesh;

- Ten years ago, the life expectancy for men in Russia was 63;

- The World Health Organisation says that at a conservative estimate more than a million people will have died because of AIDS in Russia by 2020;

- Every other newborn baby is diagnosed with a disease at birth;

- There are more abortions every year in Russia than babies are born;

- Thanks to ill-health, 10 million Russians are infertile;

- A quarter of the population lives below the poverty line;

- Paradoxically, Moscow has more billionaires than any other city in the world;

- Although Russia's population is in freefall, they're still throwing people out. Thirty thousand Meshket Turks have recently had to seek asylum in America, having been forced from their homes in the south of the country by discriminatory laws and racist attacks.

When the Soviet Empire collapsed in 1991 it was generally assumed that life was going to get better for the average Russian. Sadly, however, as Marcel Theroux's journey through this vast and troubled country graphically demonstrates, most people are actually worse off than they were 15 years ago.

In fact, modern Russia seems to have most of the disadvantages of the old Communist system, but few of the advantages. Putin's uniquely thuggish and dictatorial version of democracy - with his restraints on media criticism and his reliance on police batons and guns to put across his point of view - has meant that Russians don't enjoy much more freedom than they did in the days of the KGB and the gulags. And now their heating bills have rocketed, food costs more, universal health care is a thing of the past and millions of jobs have disappeared.

Meanwhile, the majority of the country's wealth has been siphoned off by a tiny minority of oligarchs and mafia-backed businessmen. So, although the economy has grown rapidly in recent years (largely thanks to the country's vast mineral wealth), most people have grown poorer in real terms.

The country Theroux explores is in serious decline. The population is already falling and threatened further by the very real possibility of a million deaths from AIDS by 2020. Those that survive have given up on life. Picking his way through the blighted ruins of Ivanova, a former powerhouse of the Soviet command economy where two thirds of the population now live below the poverty line, he says "it looks like a bomb hit in 1991 and everyone went away."

Not surprisingly, most of the people he meets are traumatised and defeated - or half mad.

Two homeless alcoholics tell him tearfully "we weren't always like this". A billionaire smiles piously and explains how he plans to build dozens of new churches with his money, but Theroux also shows that this same man used anti-terrorist police armed with sub-machine guns to force people from their homes and is now using his trophy-wife as a puppet front for his own political career. A HIV positive man says that out of his 23 classmates, five are now junkies and 10 alcoholics.

Most shocking of all is his encounter with some racist Cossacks who have been persecuting the Turks in their neighbourhood. They accost the crew, force Theroux to drink their moonshine, whip the film's director until he's bleeding, and sing and dance uproariously while Theroux peruses their preferred reading matter: Mein Kampf.

"The next step is the concentration camp," he says, ashen faced.

Feature by Sam Jordison for More4

Programme credits
Director: Nick Hornby
Written and Presented by: Marcel Theroux