Road trip to the heart of Russia

BBC correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes takes a road trip following the River Volga, braving freezing temperatures to connect with Russia's Soviet past.

Below you can watch video highlights of his epic journey.

ON THE ROAD IN RUSSIA

My voyage begins in Nizhny Novgorod, the starting point for a 1,000 mile (1,600km) journey through the heart of Russia in the middle of winter.

It's been snowing hard for days, and the evidence is banked up more than three feet on either side of the road.

My transport for a trip in such conditions? An eight-year-old black Russian Volga saloon, which I picked up second hand for a little over US$2000.

A classic of the Soviet car industry, they started making these here in 1970 and are still bashing them out in an ageing factory on the grim southern outskirts of the city.

What have I got myself into?

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CONCORDSKI: A SUPERSONIC SOVIET RELIC

After a 300 mile (500km) drive south on some pretty awful Russian back-country roads I enter Ulyanovsk, the home town of a certain Vladimir Lenin.

On the outskirts my eye is suddenly caught by a striking site. In a field next to the road, faded and covered in snow, is the unmistakable shape of the world's first supersonic airliner.

Concord may be famous around the globe but it was Russia that won the race to break the sound barrier.

When it first flew in 1968 the Tupolev Tu144 was an engineering marvel. But in every other way it was entirely preposterous.

The Kremlin ordered its construction for one purpose only, to show that the Soviet Union could make a bigger, faster supersonic jet than the West.

They succeeded, but at what cost? And in a communist country who was going to pay to fly in a supersonic jet?

In the end it only made 60 passenger flights, before being relegated to carrying freight.

Only Soviet central planning could have come up with such a hugely expensive way to deliver post!

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BEAR BOMBERS BACK IN ACTION

Engels airbase near Saratov is a place straight out of the Cold War. Just down the road is a town called Marx - no kidding!

Finding my way to the home of Russia's strategic nuclear bomber force proves to be somewhat tricky. It still doesn't appear on any maps, and Satnav is completely useless.

Fortunately, some kindly locals willingly point the foreigner in the right direction. Now that wouldn't have happened during the Cold War would it?

Neither did I expect the glamorous 27-year-old beauty from the Russian defence ministry as a guide!

But my real reason for being here is the Bears - huge silver TU-95 bombers, known in the west by their Nato codename.

Suddenly last year the Bears began appearing on radar screens across northern Europe.

After 15 years in hibernation President Putin had ordered the big bombers back on patrol.

Headlines in Britain screamed of a "New Cold War!".

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SOLEMN REFLECTIONS ON STALINGRAD

Stalingrad is a name that resonates through 20th century history.

The battle that raged here was probably the most cruel and bloody of any conflict in the Second World War, leaving more than three million people dead.

The city now known as Volgograd was entirely destroyed.

In the desperate fighting in the winter of 1942 the Soviet commissars brought in "blocking battalions". Special troops were assigned to machine gun their brother soldiers if they dared to retreat.

You will not hear much about such cruelty at the Stalingrad war memorial. Instead I find a vast shrine to the suffering of Russia at the hands of foreign invaders.

Much of it is very moving. An immense mosaic spells out the names of more than 7,000 of the dead.

But something about the place that makes me feel uneasy.

Atop a small hill stands an 85 metre colossus, a vast concrete figure of Mother Russia. She is brandishing an equally immense sword. Her face is contorted with rage.

It is not an image of solemn remembrance; it is an image of anger and hatred.

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