Russia's great betrayal

The elderly play the waiting game on Kegostrof Island, where deaths outnumber births 8 to 1

Sue Lloyd-Roberts reports on the plight of Russia's elderly

To be old and living in Russia today is a misfortune. To be old and living in the northern Polar regions is to feel betrayed. Two thirds of the population are over 50. For every eight deaths, there is one birth.

The once proud timber industry in the region has collapsed and the young have fled south, to richer and more prosperous areas of Russia.

The old are abandoned and, for the most part, bitter. Was it for this that they survived the Great Patriotic War and the madness of the communist years?

Only the old are left to watch Archangel rust

Valery and Elena live in Archangel, a city recently made famous by Robert Harris' book of the same name. Between them they worked for nearly one hundred years for the Soviet State. Elena was 14 when she was ordered to dig trenches during the war. Her health was destroyed and she has never been able to have children. Their two roomed apartment is bare.

Valery and Elena in younger and happier times

They have sold anything of value long ago. "All I have left are these old trinkets", says Valery reaching for a jacket from the cupboard. They are the medals which the state has rewarded him hard labour through the years. He laughs and says, "they mean nothing to me now".

When the rouble crashed in 1998, so did all savings

The couple can't believe the cruel trick the state has played on them. Without children, for decades they carefully saved their money to secure a comfortable old age and a respectable funeral. Valery will never forget going to the bank the day the rouble crashed in 1998. "They told me the money had gone.

Archangel, once a cornerstone of the Soviet Union's economy, is left to rust

There was nothing." Today they survive on food from the Red Cross soup kitchen and pray that the State, which they served for so long, will bury the one who dies last.

The cruel irony is that if you have endured the deprivations of the war, a cruel environment and a climate which records temperatures of 20 degrees below freezing in the winter, then you are a survivor and the "living hell" of old age in northern Russia continues well beyond your appetite for life.

Death is seen as a privilege to those most deserving

In the kitchen of a timber framed house, 77 year old Elena and 99 year old Natasha, exchange their dismal dialogue at shouting pitch. "Should be dead", says one. "No, I should be dead", replies the other, "I have had it much harder than you!".

In a small house several miles from the city of Archangel, 76 year old Galina has no one to shout with. The war left millions of women without men. Galina's husband died when the children were small and she is used to coping alone which is just as well because no one ever comes to see her.

For Galina loneliness is as harsh as the sub-zero conditions

She worked as a nurse for 36 years but cannot even afford drugs to treat the chest infection which makes her cough painfully as she talks to us, her only visitors for as long as she can remember. "I have given up all hope", she says, "there is nothing to look forward to, nothing." At the state institution for the old on Kegostrof island, local children are brought in twice a year to sing to the inmates.

"Granny, I love you. You are not old. You are my best friend." The audience look on in disbelief, barely reacting. Their nonplussed stares appear to say, "please, don't mock us."

Producer: Ewa Ewart

Reporter: Sue Lloyd-Roberts

This story is part of Correspondent, 'Our Aged', shown on BBC2 at 18:00 on Saturday 10th June