According to Curtis, the series of seven films, entitled Russia 1985-1999 TraumaZone: What It Felt Like to Live Through the Collapse of Communism and Democracy, is an "immersive history that takes you through Russian society as it lived through a cataclysm that wrecked the lives of millions of people and tore apart the foundations of the whole society.

"Because what the Russians lived through in the 1990s was not just the end of communism, but the failure of democracy too. They experienced the collapse of the two great ideologies of our time in a period of less than ten years," he explained.

"By 1999 the word democracy was used as a curse. A curse against your enemies."

The series comes as Russia continues its atrocious invasion of Ukraine, an invasion that most people have rightly condemned but failed to understand. It is this gap that Curtis aims to fill: "to understand Russia now - and what might happen in the future - you have to understand what happened back then.

He added: "For it is out of that rage, the violence, the desperation and the overwhelming corruption that Vladimir Putin emerged.”

Curtis has once more dived deep into the BBC archives to dig through the thousands of hours of raw footage recorded in Russia since the late 1980s. This extraordinary footage documents the lives and experiences of Russians at every level of society, from the Kremlin to the frozen mining cities in the Arctic circle and the tiny villages of the Russian steppes.

The resulting seven hour-long films create a vivid record of everyday life in the collapsing empire.

Russia 1985-1999 TraumaZone: What It Felt Like to Live Through the Collapse of Communism and Democracy will premiere on BBC iPlayer on 13 October 2022.