Episode One, St. Petersburg, begins over 300 years ago. With newly seized Swedish territory near the Baltic, Peter the Great sets out to create a city in the marshes of the River Neva. Peter fosters strategic ties to Europe – but is also keen to explore the Russian East. He sends Danish-born Vitus Bering on the expedition that discovers what is now known as the Bering Strait. Peter’s city grows to become a Venice of the North. A flamboyant high society entertains itself with lavish balls in the city’s fabled palaces during Russia’s Belle Epoque. When an assault on the Winter Palace launches the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, the city’s elite, along with two million inhabitants, flee to the West. The film follows Lenin’s voyage from Zurich to Petrograd, which is sponsored by German military. Generous financial German support also helps to keep the Bolsheviks in power. A mere 24 years later, the Wehrmacht tries to topple that same regime in order to conquer the Soviet Union. The newly named Leningrad endures one of the most brutal operations of WWII: a two-and-a-half-year siege. In the Post-WW II era, a vibrant intelligentsia springs up in the city in the 1970s – while one particular Leningrad boy rises to power through the ranks of the KGB: Vladimir Putin. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the city assumes its old name – and to this day is Russia’s most European city.