Exposing the Soviet lie; the divergence between misguided theory and visible results of attempted realization; between promise and reality. As the old peasant Russian proverb goes: "Bad crops are from God, hunger comes from men." While Communist party members were enjoying a buffet with caviar, veal, and butter, they were practicing forced food extraction from peasants for their picture-perfect display window in the select urban centers. Shops, restaurants, and villas were limited to a particular circle of people with status privileges. They lived in desirable neighborhoods, some were given Western cars with a chauffeur, had access to special resorts, and separate superior health-care facilities.
This was true of all communist societies. The privileges which came with power deepened the spell of power. They were removed from the daily life of the population, from standing in line for various scarce commodities, from the world of low incomes and standards of living. These privileges made them deaf and blind about the cares of the nation. Idealistic motivation, elevation to high office, and privileges that confirmed their importance together provided strong defenses against disaffection.
Why replace capitalists with another elite hierarchy endowed with special privileges? Some arbitrary, uninformed, party apparatus, making all of the decisions? That's a recipe for corruption on a mass scale. Before 1942, and after 1945, nowhere in the world was there such a fearsome concentration of suffering and political despotism, nowhere else was misery so disguised with advanced slogans. Even the NKVD (political police) had been known to hand over German anti-fascists to the Nazi Gestapo.
True, during de-Stalinization (1953-1970) mass purges had ceased, the population of the Gulag was reduced, and the worldwide Communist monolith gradually split apart and slowly faded over 30 years until its collapse. But the ideology had not changed, the state party still had a monopoly of political power, the KGB was still operating without fear of competition, and the economy was still centrally planned and directed. The regime had not become more liberal, unless one regarded the interpretation of party, KGB, army, and the state's commanding position in the economy a form of pluralism. The idea that it could reform itself and become more liberal and democratic was far-fetched.
I watched this film twice, and recommend it to everyone. Calling it "exaggerated" sounds like an Holocaust denier with their eye glued to an ideological key hole. Some apologists don't want to be disillusioned of their utopian ideals. True, the quality of good books is better than films or online information; especially the books published in the 1990s, after the opening of the secret Soviet archives.. As far as other commenters, no, Stalin is not the same as Putin in Ukraine. One can draw parallels between the two, but this does not make them the same. Putin is quasi-authoritarian with a wounded nationalism, but not totalitarian like Stalin. Russia has had conflict with Ukraine for ages.
We get anti-Nazi movies obsessively, but rarely do we get anti-communist movies. No atrocities maybe? The Nazis were vicious, but some apologists see communists as simply "intellectually misguided," which is implausible. Stalin's terror famine in Ukraine, the Gulag, the deportation of the Kulaks, the Katyn Forest massacre, Mao's Cultural Revolution, the Hungarian revolution, Che Guevara's executions in Havana, the flight of the boat people from Vietnam, Pol Pot's mass slaughter; material enough for dozens of movies. Furthermore, great villains make for great drama, and communism's central casting department is crowded: Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hönecker, Ceaucescu, Pol Pot, Col. Mengistu, all of cosmic megalomania-along with their squads of hacks, sycophants, and stooges, foreign and domestic. The victims of communism, and its heroic resisters, deserve to have their stories remembered.
This was true of all communist societies. The privileges which came with power deepened the spell of power. They were removed from the daily life of the population, from standing in line for various scarce commodities, from the world of low incomes and standards of living. These privileges made them deaf and blind about the cares of the nation. Idealistic motivation, elevation to high office, and privileges that confirmed their importance together provided strong defenses against disaffection.
Why replace capitalists with another elite hierarchy endowed with special privileges? Some arbitrary, uninformed, party apparatus, making all of the decisions? That's a recipe for corruption on a mass scale. Before 1942, and after 1945, nowhere in the world was there such a fearsome concentration of suffering and political despotism, nowhere else was misery so disguised with advanced slogans. Even the NKVD (political police) had been known to hand over German anti-fascists to the Nazi Gestapo.
True, during de-Stalinization (1953-1970) mass purges had ceased, the population of the Gulag was reduced, and the worldwide Communist monolith gradually split apart and slowly faded over 30 years until its collapse. But the ideology had not changed, the state party still had a monopoly of political power, the KGB was still operating without fear of competition, and the economy was still centrally planned and directed. The regime had not become more liberal, unless one regarded the interpretation of party, KGB, army, and the state's commanding position in the economy a form of pluralism. The idea that it could reform itself and become more liberal and democratic was far-fetched.
I watched this film twice, and recommend it to everyone. Calling it "exaggerated" sounds like an Holocaust denier with their eye glued to an ideological key hole. Some apologists don't want to be disillusioned of their utopian ideals. True, the quality of good books is better than films or online information; especially the books published in the 1990s, after the opening of the secret Soviet archives.. As far as other commenters, no, Stalin is not the same as Putin in Ukraine. One can draw parallels between the two, but this does not make them the same. Putin is quasi-authoritarian with a wounded nationalism, but not totalitarian like Stalin. Russia has had conflict with Ukraine for ages.
We get anti-Nazi movies obsessively, but rarely do we get anti-communist movies. No atrocities maybe? The Nazis were vicious, but some apologists see communists as simply "intellectually misguided," which is implausible. Stalin's terror famine in Ukraine, the Gulag, the deportation of the Kulaks, the Katyn Forest massacre, Mao's Cultural Revolution, the Hungarian revolution, Che Guevara's executions in Havana, the flight of the boat people from Vietnam, Pol Pot's mass slaughter; material enough for dozens of movies. Furthermore, great villains make for great drama, and communism's central casting department is crowded: Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hönecker, Ceaucescu, Pol Pot, Col. Mengistu, all of cosmic megalomania-along with their squads of hacks, sycophants, and stooges, foreign and domestic. The victims of communism, and its heroic resisters, deserve to have their stories remembered.