By Matthew Dunn
2019 marks 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the symbolic end of communism in Eastern Europe. Within three years the communist governments of Eastern Europe which were dominated by the Soviet Union in the postwar era, were overthrown and collapsed in a rapid span of time. With the breakup of the Soviet Union several years later, this marked as Francis Fukayama put it, “the end of history”. In the belief of Fukayama, the belief was that the failure of the Soviet Union showed that there was no alternative to the capitalist democracies of the west. Perhaps because of the time that has passed, the Soviet Union has become the topic of several television and film productions which analyze different aspects of why the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
The first is a dark comedy about the Soviet Union under Stalin, entitled The Death of Stalin. This comedy tries to take a humorous look at the kind of Soviet Union which was created under Joseph Stalin, who created a totalitarian system of government complete with repression and murder of those deemed political enemies. In the film, the members of the Soviet Central Committee (Major Soviet governing committee) are all in competition to take over after Stalin’s death. There are lots of jokes about people being murdered and plotting to take over the government.
What the film effectively shows though, is the kind of system that was set up by Stalin. As the main ruler of the Soviet Union from 1924-1953, Stalin set up a system of government which couldn’t be maintained after his death. There was a tremendous cult of personality set up around Stalin, which shows in how the Central Committee members all try to outdo one another to make Stalin’s funeral grand. There was also a system set up, whereby members of the Central Committee were put into competition with one another in order to try and gain power through favor with Stalin. Khrushchev, played by Steve Buscemi, is a master of this game and reviews his conversations with Stalin with his wife every evening in order to find which topics and jokes went over well in order to better position himself. What is perhaps most shown through the film, is that the original goals of the Soviet Union were so completely compromised that they did not seem to be concerns of the Central Committee at all. There are no mentions of workers or peasants who were supposedly who communism was supposed to bring out of oppression. The film generally gives a good presentation of how the Soviet Union evolved into a degenerated worker’s state which essentially gave no power or rights to its working classes.
The next work takes place much later but shows one of the most traumatic events of the later Soviet Union. Chernobyl a five part mini-series, shows the causes and effects of the nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in 1986. Chernobyl first shows the meltdown occurring and how the party leaders are completely clueless to the scope of the disaster and how they refuse to take much responsibility for it. Eventually through the work of nuclear scientist Valery Lagasov, played by Jared Harris, the Soviet government works to prevent further damage from occurring, and attempting to limit the casualties caused by the radiation of the nuclear explosion.
This mini-series graphically depicts the illnesses and conditions that people exposed to the radiation develop. One of the most tragic stories shown in the film is of a fire fighter who was one of the first to respond to the disaster, and the horrible and painful death he experiences because of radiation poisoning. The town of Pripyat, which was the location of Chernobyl in Belarus, is completed evacuated never to be settled again.
However, although the story is a tragedy, the series does an excellent job of showing the heroic acts of ordinary Soviet citizens. One in particular, is of a group of Soviet coal miners who are asked to come to dig tunnels so radioactive material can be removed. Without almost any knowledge or concern for their well-being, the miners dig tunnels quickly and complete the necessary work. This contrasts greatly with the party leaders, who consistently dragged their feet and insisted that nothing was wrong, while trying to cover up the true effects of the disaster to the Soviet public as well as the rest of the world. The film shows effectively that the working classes, considered paramount to communism, were often just used for their labor, while party leaders ignored the needs of the population.
The last film was a documentary about the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, entitled Meeting Gorbachev directed by Werner Herzog and Andre Singer. In this film, Herzog meets with to discuss his life and his impact on the Soviet Union. The film goes back and forth between historical clips of Gorbachev as well as getting his perspective on what he tried to accomplish as the last leader of the Soviet Union. Much attention is paid to Gorbachev’s policies of Perestroika and Glasnost which aimed to make the political and economic system of the Soviet Union more open. This is shown to have had a major impact on the communist block as a few years after Gorbachev took power, the communist nations of Eastern Europe rebelled and Gorbachev in contrast to previous Soviet leaders did not try to suppress the rebellions. This then culminated in the various revolutions of 1989, where the nations of Eastern Europe overthrew their communist governments.
Gorbachev is shown as true believer in communism, who truly wanted to reform the system and make it more democratic. He believed in demilitarizing the Soviet Union and focusing more on the needs of the people. In some ways though, Gorbachev’s policies paved the way for the destruction of the Soviet Union, because nationalist elements could now freely express their desire for independence. These factors coupled with communist hardliners opposed to reform, led to Gorbachev’s removal from power and the breakup of the Soviet Union. In one particularly ominous scene Herzog shows us Vladimir Putin meeting with Gorbachev at the funeral of his wife, signaling how Russian independence from the Soviet Union did not bring democracy but a different type of dictatorship.
These three films together show us some aspects of why the Soviet Union collapsed so rapidly in 1991. Too much power in the hands of the central committee proved to be a disaster for people of the Soviet Union. A party dictatorship, which claimed to represent the people, without really meeting their needs, could only survive for so long. With the rise of authoritarian regimes throughout the former communist block and the rest of the world, it feels as though Fukayama’s prediction that history had ended is incorrect. History has not ended but shown us something very different. History has not ended but continued, and nations have not learned about the dangers of dictatorship.
