The road out of Perm runs along a frozen river dotted with crouching figures. They huddle round small holes drilled through the ice. All around are thick forests of silver birch and fir trees, covered in snow.

Lyubov laughs off mention of the cold as I approach her gingerly, looking for cracks beneath my feet. It’s -17C and the pensioner has been fishing with her husband on the frozen river for hours without gloves.

“It’s fine!” she insists, dipping a finger through the ice hole and swirling it round. “It’s warmer in the water.”

Russians are famed for their hardiness. But ask about politics and there’s one fear that keeps recurring - no-one wants to return to the chaos and criminality of the 1990s. Those who lived through the Soviet collapse still shudder at the memory of the empty shops, the queues and the hardship.

In some places there was conflict - in many places there was organised crime. And everywhere there was bewilderment as an entire ideological system fell apart.