RUSSIA IS A COUNTRY about which we hear a great deal but still know so little. When I tell people that Russia is not only the largest country in the world but that Siberia alone is bigger than the United States (including Alaska) and Western Europe combined, they gasp. They wonder at the scale and diversity of Russia's landscape. They are entranced by reports of witches who communicate with forest sprites, shamans who worship their ancestors, and at mountain horsemen who believe that the campfire over which they heat a kettle of tea is sacred and who therefore rebuked me for kicking at a stray log. It all seems so very unRussian.

And in a way it is. In a 10,000-mile journey from Murmansk to Vladivostok to explore what Churchill described as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” I was at first astonished and then touched that so much individuality of faith and culture had survived - and now flourishes - despite the long repressive years of Soviet communism.

My first experience of Russia was in the dark days of the Cold War when, like all Western reporters, I was watched closely by the KGB and strong-armed by minders. Moscow was dingy and downtrodden, its citizens asphyxiated by a corrupted ideology, a city where the closest you could get to the truth was the propaganda pumped out by Pravda.

On this trip, through Putin's Russia, though the FSB (the successor to the KGB) doubtless watched us closely all the way - we were filming the BBC series, Russia: A Journey with Jonathan Dimbleby - we were free to go very much where we wanted and people spoke to me without inhibition. Initially I found the experience a touch intimidating. Russians tend to look at you with suspicion, they don't smile readily and they can be brusque to the point of rudeness.

But once I delved below the surface - helped by downing gargantuan quantities of vodka - I discovered warmth and honesty in abundance. That may sound as though I felt myself to have landed on another planet and, in truth, that is how I sometimes felt. The Russians are different, which was why the opportunity to discover their attitudes - towards the past, present, and future - was such an exhilarating though sometimes daunting experience. In my book (Russia: A Journey to the Heart of a Country and its People) I explore the past because it is so crucial to understanding the present and the future. A tormented and tragic history has eaten deep into the national psyche. It has nurtured a remarkable resilience but also a deep cynicism about all things except the Motherland. After half a millennium of autocracy or dictatorship, it is hardly surprising that a thread of fatalism has been woven into the Russian soul. “Live today because tomorrow you might die” could be selected as the national motto - but only just in preference to its obverse, “Die today because tomorrow you might live”.

I met Russians of all types and was enriched by the experience. No one was ever boring or self-pitying and they always had a tale to tell. Yet, the farther I went and the more I understood, the more disconcerted I became. Yes, Russians are a diverse people in origin and ethnicity. But in attitude they are remarkably uniform. Two tendencies in this capitalist autocracy cross the deep gulf between the haves and the have nots: an aversion to core principles of liberal democracy and a passion for the Motherland. Both help to explain the vicissitudes of Putinism.

Democracy in Russia is synonymous with the insecurity and anarchy of the Yeltsin years and is contrasted nostalgically with the security and order of the Soviet era, especially under Stalin's benign dictatorship. (That the author of the Terror and the architect of the Gulag was also a mass murderer is conveniently written out of the script.) The effect of this popular sentiment has been profoundly corrosive. The media is muzzled, parliament is a sham, elections are rigged, and the courts are mere servants of the Kremlin. Putin calls this charade “sovereign democracy”. In truth Russia is now a kleptocracy, owned and run by the oligarchs and the security services, a crypto-fascist state. And there has been hardly a murmur of protest. On the contrary, Putin enjoys approval ratings that would keep Gordon Brown in office even after the next election.

The Prime Minister is also wired into Russia's passion for the Motherland. Born of past conflicts and the sacrifices endured to expel a succession of foreign invaders, this translates into a fierce nationalism that borders on xenophobia. Russians felt humiliated when Nato rebuffed the Kremlin's application for membership in the Nineties. When the Kremlin now tells them that national security is threatened by Nato encirclement and the proposed deployment of an anti-ballistic misile system a few hundred kilometres from their western front, they do not doubt it for a moment.

Putin's energy-fuelled assertiveness on the world stage delights his “electorate”. Tsar? Autocrat? The label matters not because, in the eyes of the Russian people, he has restored the Motherland to its proper place in the firmament. From the perspective of the Russian people, the invasion of Georgia and the recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent republics was not only righteous but it also gave Nato a bloody nose into the bargain.

None of this means that another Cold War is upon us or that Ukraine is the next domino. The world has moved on and is infinitely more complex. Russia belongs to the dysfunctional family of “great powers” that flex their muscles as they jostle for survival in the New World Disorder bequeathed by the end of the Cold War. They would all do well to put the diplomatic megaphone to one side and remember that “jaw-jaw” is a lot better for all than “war-war”. Meanwhile, fasten your seatbelts; we are in for a bumpy ride.

Russia: A Journey to the Heart of a Land and its People by Jonathan Dimbleby
BBC Books, £25; 576pp Buy the book

The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival: Jonathan Dimbleby presents a portrait of modern Russia: October 16, 6.30pm
cheltenhamfestivals.com

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