Kamchatka Peninsula: Exploring Siberia's Cold War 'Forbidden Zone' | Timeline

my name is David Adams my work as a photojournalist takes me to simples most remote places on earth this time just to a frozen Wonderland that defies description for years it's been a closed country and now it still remains one of the last unexplored places on earth this frozen waterfall sums up Kamchatka a place of temperate summers and Arctic winters and I'm here on a special mission I've come to meet some remarkable relatives of the first Americans the indians of russia's wild east to find them and this cross a corner of Siberia is so cold that death strikes the unprotected in a few hours and as I go I discover some of the cold war's darkest secrets as I enter the Forbidden Zone [Music] even by Russian standards in Kamchatka is remote it's so far from Moscow that you cross nine time zones to get here it's a land of volcanoes glaciers and permafrost where temperatures of less than minus 50 degrees are commonplace it's a peninsula a thumb-shaped landmass about the size of California thrusting south from Siberia towards Japan my route takes me across this frozen wastes starting in Kamchatka zhh capital Petropavlovsk [Music] there's little to recommend petropavlosk with its dreary factories and ugly Soviet apartment blocks once a sleepy fishing village it was transformed into a cold war awesome [Music] from the end of the Second World War until the fall of the Soviet empire Petropavlovsk was a top secret military base it was here they kept their nuclear submarine fleet [Music] it wasn't just petroglyph laws the whole peninsula was forbidden territory Kamchatka had become an off-limits exclusion zone [Music] in 1983 Korean Airlines flight KL double-oh-seven strayed off course with 269 innocent passengers aboard it was accused of flying a spying mission and shot down in Kamchatka airspace there were no survivors [Music] what's so incredible is that I'm here at all a westerner taking photographs of what was once one of Russia's most secret military areas it's kind of like being in a Cold War spy novel but it really just shows how much things have changed here a few years ago if I was caught doing this would have meant a trip to the gulag so the Cold War was actually good to Petropavlovsk maybe it's why they didn't remove this colossal statue of Lenin but since the collapse of the Soviet empire the city's fallen on hard times gone the huge military infrastructure gone the cash flow to support the Soviet war machine a few years back the city was so broke its electricity supply was cut they had to use a nuclear submarine for emergency power [Music] but there was a time when things could have been very different [Music] the irony is that this bastion of communism almost became part of the United States not once but twice in 1867 when America bought Alaska from Russia Kamchatka was also up for grabs but the Americans didn't want it then in 1920 Lenin was so broke he offered it to an American millionaire on one condition it must remain communist again America refused it but I want to go back to a time long ago long before there was any Russia or America back to a time when humans first roamed the earth [Music] about 16,000 years ago they crossed from Russia to Alaska to become the first humans to enter the Americas later some of them may have wandered back to Kamchatka where their descendants remained to this day [Music] these are the people I want to meet the closest living relatives of Native Americans Siberia's Indians hidden deep in Russia's wild wild East [Music] so I hitch a ride from Petropavlovsk along the road there's only one road in Kamchatka and the further we go the less it looks like a road and at the end is avin guy population less than 500 [Music] it's here that I meet my companions this is my interpreter we're not a former Soviet Submariner with him is Viktor and we'll discover what what problems does victor see and he's something I wasn't expecting grizzly bears about to emerge from winter hibernation it's pretty difficult because of due to the very deep snow and besides of this is just we can meet even the bear really yeah spring bears they usually in spring they're very hungry you know and just very cruel okay well isn't the only thing you've got to worry about bears is you've just got to run faster than the next boy what's this aircraft infringing upon non free flying territory may be fired on without warning once more I'm reminded of Korean Airlines flight KL double-oh-seven this is still a case yeah but I'm not taking to the air quite yet this will be our transport snowmobiles yes that's good yeah at the moment this one seems to be carrying the entire population of Aven go below the age of 10 [Music] hi guys now I've written snowmobiles before but never Russian ones and they don't inspire much confidence but they're anxious to lend me this one so he's happy for us to to use it for a few days we pack with extra care once we leave there's nothing but snow and more snow our lives depend on what we bring at last we're ready or are we and so the journey begins maybe I flooded it maybe I haven't quite got the neck well maybe it's just busted they're suspicious about of wires here hanging around not doing anything but it's probably better happening here than out there before long there's a complete mechanical strip down under way and I hope they know what they're doing because I don't the more they strip it down the more I realize they do know what they're doing because they have to wear a long long way from the spare parts door if there's one at all [Music] the minutes turn to hours then suddenly a real cold war erupts me against the entire Evon guy school-age population [Music] and finally Russian ingenuity overcomes the problem at last we're on our way as we leave Aven guy and head for the tundra I realize I'm going where few Westerners who have dared venture in this forbidden realm soon I'll be lost in an icy wilderness with a sad cold war legacy deer army - dying people slowly being poisoned by nuclear radiation living deep in the Forbidden Zone [Music] it's spring in Kamchatka in the Russian Far East [Music] but even in April temperatures can drop well below zero I'm looking for the Evan reindeer herders a tribe with close links to American Indians [Music] it's hard to accept that parts of this beautiful wilderness were once used by the Soviet Union to test weapons of mass destruction but it was and amazingly people still live here in what was once the Forbidden Zone somewhere out here is a place called tubulin we're a remote tribe called the Evan keep their reindeer verbs we're making good progress and I'm getting the hang of my Russian snowmobile and I'm glad to say it hasn't missed a beat [Applause] [Music] the Evan are nomadic maybe they're in tavern maybe not that's if we can ever find a button it's rather like searching for a snowflake on a glacier and then we see them hundreds of reindeer but life for these reindeer is not easy [Music] out on the tundra wolves wait to pick off the young and the weak day and night the third needs protection it needs this man is called kuryak Korea is a legend among the Evon a child of the tundra he's been a reindeer herd of all his life and as an Evan tribesman he's so closely related to Native Americans that there's even a genetic link in Soviet times the herd was a collective farm now it's a tribal cooperative with private investors but whatever it was or is Curie AK is still the boss how many how many reindeer does he have here there's no shortage of reindeer in Kamchatka but there's a distinct shortage of Evan tribesman with only around 1,500 of them left on the peninsula it makes curie AK a bit of an endangered species himself now this is one way of making yourself popular with reindeer urinating licking urine is their only source of salt but watch out for those antlers it's the mating season and to stag reindeer fight over a female their antlers have become hopelessly locked together this is the downside of having beautiful antlers if squabbling reindeer can't disentangle themselves both may lie there until they die so the antlers have to be broken [Music] once separated it's time for my initiation into one of the final parts of the wild wild East reindeer roping so this how they they catch reindeers kamchatka cowboy Dukakis - you can come Chesky KOCO you may even catch one ah okay we'll see here we go now you might think this is easy toss a less ooh into a forest of antlers and you can't miss surely it must find a hook [Music] but it doesn't work like that not once not twice and I wouldn't get a third chance now it's qtx turn but even legends have off days there's hope for me yet as a reindeer herder in the end it is nephew Sergei who gets the deer and while to us it all may look like a reindeer rodeo to the Evan it's a matter of survival this is what they live off for the next week with speed and efficiency they butcher the reindeer this may all seem a bit gruesome but actually this happens in slaughterhouses around the world every day out here they've been doing it for thousands of years naturally just like this and living off it a reindeer carcass will last for days and out here you don't need a freezer nothing is wasted the skin the entrails are all put to good use and right now Curia kelps himself to a real event delicacy I think you think that's the sweetest part of the mate there as an honored guest I'm not forgotten actually I must accept whether I like it or not this is about the most nutritious thing you can eat out here the marrow of these burns I'm not particularly partial to a raw meat but this is something I figure I have to do doesn't really taste like anything it's just a sort of a fatty meat taste I'm sure it's actually very very good for me but as I soon discovered it's not as good for me as I thought not okay for nearly 50 years the Soviet Union used Kamchatka whatever nuclear testing the resulting fallout still contaminates the soil which contaminates the grass which contaminates the reindeer which in turn are eaten by the herders not surprisingly their cancer rates are 10 times the national average we're told me an obvious new idea thanks to the Cold War reindeer meat is slowly killing the herders [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] that night we stay in key reacts yurt which not surprisingly is similar to an American Indian tepee dinner is reindeer reindeer and more reindeer radioactive or otherwise okay so what what is this here with lots of solvent they worry about nuclear testing that we're scared so your brand new linear unit on you too since this is his diet day in and day out ipad meter 40 would have been a little concerned you react the fact that they may be eating radioactive reindeer is of little consequence besides it's not the Evans only health problem this is which is destroy your teeth only cold kkeok means scurvy disease the rest of the world almost wiped out two centuries ago it's caused by lack of vitamin C because they eat too much meat but it's preventable by eating fresh vegetables or drinking orange juice however fresh vegetables don't grow in this climate an orange juice isn't easy to come by at so as the vodka flows in the sub Arctic Twilight we toast our cares away to the distant howl of the wolves to good health tomorrow an old Soviet armored vehicle comes to my rescue as the forces of nature conspire against me I push still further into the Forbidden Zone as I search for another people of the Siberian tundra dawn on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East my guide Victor stripped to the waist honors the Rising Sun [Music] and in the Frigidaire the youngest herdsmen Alexei returns he's been up all night guarding a reindeer from wolves [Music] this place is taken by the chief herdsmen Curie AK who takes the day shift the herd needs protection all the time his skis are homemade without them he'd sink into the snow the base is aligned with reindeer fur so when he climbs hills he can grip the snow and as I try to give my own skis I run I wish I had Curie axe skins in this world without ski lifts to the Evan climbing hills just to ski down them must seem uh term madness and as it turns out that's just what it was that wasn't quite what I expected looks like a lovely mountain full of powder or spring snow but actually it's full of what's called sugar snow big holes of stuff just like sugar so when you ski down you get a few good turns and then boom straight into a big deep hole so those tracks aren't quite what I intended leaving it was still good fun skiing any times great but right now Sugar's snow is not the problem it's more a case of no snow at all this has been one of the kamchatka warmest winters on record and the thor is arriving early well they did news he said it will be absolutely impossible for us to go for the best normal ones was it business no there is no absolutely no snow just spring in full force in the full-speed there my route is supposed to take me to the west coast and the remote settlement of Colorado though without snow our snowmobiles are useless but we're not defeated yet porosity data today and he's going to make a radio transmission every day the reindeer herders power up their hand-crank radio and contact the tribal office for months on end it's their only link with the outside world maybe there's another way of getting us across the mountains maybe one of the regular supply vehicles can be diverted to pick us up it can though I wasn't quite expecting one like this in Russia old Soviet army vehicles never die they just get sent to Kamchatka where they become an indispensable form of transport in a world without roads [Music] here we've got everything inside yeah they're a cantankerous dirty but cost-effective way of carrying heavy goods inside it's loaded with building materials food and crates and crates of vodka which is why we have to travel on top [Music] with diesel fumes belching in our face were underway literally back on track it was just as well we traded our snowmobiles for this but as we go further into camp checkers wild interior we find the floor is well underway it's already melting the river ice before we cross our driver Sergey checks his track pins some of which have come loose we wouldn't want to be stuck in the middle of this when we plan to go by snowmobile rivers were to be our frozen highways [Music] this river we cross comfortably the others may not be so easy [Applause] further on the thought is even more about Sergei assures me that these vehicles are supposed to flirt but with the rising waters I'm not sure if this is quite the time to find out we manage this river just and is deeper yet to come so with the way ahead once more blocked by the floor we divert the town of SF tomorrow an amazing encounter with magic as I visit another of kamchatka disappearing people still clinging to their culture in Russia's wild wild East we bought another leftover of the Soviet war machine an mi-8 helicopter in this I'll fly across the Kamchatka Peninsula to Co Brown through one of the remotest corners of the Russian Far East as we rise above the town of Esso I'm slightly apprehensive these helicopters haven't got a great safety record recently one crashed killing 19 people but the snow is melting fast [Music] while it's melting on the lowlands it's not melting on the mountains even on those which you'd normally think we're too hot to handle we're on the Pacific Ring of Fire there are more than 200 volcanoes in Kamchatka making it one of the most active volcanic zones in the world at any one time there's usually a volcano erupting somewhere though fortunately not this one [Music] right below me is a perfect slope if I can land on the top I can grab the opportunity to do some serious heli skiing [Music] somehow I don't think these chocolates were designed with heli-skiing in mind suddenly I'm alone on the summit of a dormant volcano well this is about as high as it gets in Kamchatka 4,400 meters it's a fantastic day on the top of this volcano and the snow looks perfect I'll see at the bottom I'm beginning the ski run of a lifetime first I pick my way through the ice encrusted lava flows then it traverse across the collapse crater in its perfect talisman [Music] [Music] I've skied some pretty good slopes in my life but none like this it's the run of my dreams and all alone on a volcano in the middle of this crazy Siberian wilderness thousands of miles from anywhere [Music] it seems to last forever until I reach the bottom where my legs finally give out that was incredible ah feels like you were doing a mountain for the first time when you scared untracked an incredible doesn't describe it back in the chopper and I'm on course for Cove RAM here I hope to meet the Edelman a small Siberian tribe whose origins are still a mystery when strangers land in coverin the whole town seems to turn out being literally at the ends of the earth if you ever come this way fork over an is remote even by Kamchatka standards [Music] coverin is a depressing sight far from being a center of a tlemen culture it seems a showcase for its annihilation the Edelman really are an endangered species only 1400 of them are left in Kamchatka [Music] in 1917 the Soviet government forced them to leave their traditional grounds and settle here in ramshackle huts in effect culverin became an edelman gulag and the fall of the Soviet Union has done little to help them nothing much seems to happen in cover and the surface they seemed a broken people yet another minority group crushed under the iron fist of Soviet domination but persecution didn't kill their culture it just drove it underground and now with the Soviet Union gone edelman culture is reimagining in coverin in a small heart I meet Boris zurakov a Shaymin with his drum he communicates with the spirit world and like all great shaman's Boris is famous for his healing which is why I've come to see an old shoulder injury of mine has been acting up my doctor said that I'll just have to live with the pain but I would have try some edelman alternative medicine or not maybe he knows something my doctors don't no one's ever tried treating my shoulder by squeezing my foot what I said that when Indians are greeting each other they touch visitors feet and probably because that there are a lot of pressure points which are responsible for different parts of your body so under Soviet rule shamans were banned if their artifacts were found they were burnt somehow Boris has hung on to the tools of his trade yes that's right and also to fill you up with new energy which I definitely made they're almost I'm getting so uh I don't know if it's the power of suggestion or positive thinking but my shoulder is definitely feeling better surely but Boris is more than just a medicine man he's also the driving force behind the resurgence of Edelman culture [Applause] this is an ancient dance and while it has Russian overtones there are distinct similarities to Native American rhythms yet the element culture is so lost in time that it's hard to say where the American influence came from [Applause] on the floor sits a bear skull a reminder of the day is when they dance - born of the spirit of a slain bear but this is just a rehearsal outside they wear traditional costumes similar to 94th America dress and it's not just culture they're preserving it's also their language only 350 Edmund speakers are left in Siberia but according to Baris the powerful guardians of their culture live in the forest so if I really want to understand how Evelyn's culture has survived that's where I must go [Music] tomorrow I take a journey by dogsled as I delve deeper into their sacred mysteries and visit the ghosts of the a tlemen past [Music] next morning I set out to complete my crossing of the Kamchatka Peninsula but it's also a mystical journey if I'm to visit the appleman Guardian spirits there's only one way to get there another thing about sled dogs because you'd probably expect to see Huskies out here but they're this mixed breed of what I guess we'd call mongrels but they're the fastest and the leanest dogs for all the running that they do out here and as you can see from their face there's quite a bit of wolf in them as well it doesn't matter where you are put a number of dogs together signal the concept of a walk and they all start barking [Music] we're off on a six dog pound Slayer with one puppy in hot pursuit [Applause] [Applause] there is another famous for making strong and extremely light dog sleds unlike snowmobiles dogs don't need spare parts before long our dogs settle down to a steady trot [Music] borås told me that if I wanted to find the spirits of the Adelman I must spend a night in the forest and that means camping during the summer months the edelman pitched their tents on top of platforms Bala Gans they call them and sleeping on one of these can save your life with spring arriving early the Grizzlies are stirring from their winter hibernation and we don't want to be on the menu of any more rewarding Hungry Bear so I suppose I'm taking a bit of a risk wandering off alone like this Kamchatka has one of the world's highest concentrations of grizzly bears so I hope the forest spirits will protect me [Music] [Music] and then I see them the hantai Edelman's spirit poles they look similar to North American Indian totem poles but because of the mystery surrounding Edelman origins no one can be sure of their connection [Music] there's an agreement between the a tlemen and their hand time if the admin look after the hand tie the hand side will look after the etymon but during the years of Soviet persecution the hand-tied didn't seem to be keeping their side of the bargain [Music] but now the godless state has fallen edelman culture is emerging from its Gulen and the hantai are back in favor I leave the forest and there's my journey's end the sea of a Cusk on Kamchatka is western shore it's a coast that faces Mother Russia the past and memories of cultural repression to the east by as American and distant cousins now not so distant it will take more than just a cold war to keep the oven in the Edelman down for centuries they've cook with earthquakes volcanoes arctic snows and wheels [Music] empires come and empires go but somehow the people of the Forbidden Zone always seemed to survive in Kamchatka in their icy wilderness at the ends of the earth [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 392,991

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, david adams documentary, david adams journeys to the ends of the earth, siberian documentary, russian documentary, travelling documentary, kamchatka, kamchatka russia, kamchatka documentary, kamchatka peninsula, survival documentary

Id: hD84SfkPmFU

Length: 50min 22sec (3022 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 08 2019