A man yells on the streets of Stalin's Moscow that "The world is being ruined by one man!" The man is detained and interrogated by an officer. "Who did you mean by that" the officer asks "Hitler, of course!" the man answers. "You may go" the officer says The man is about to go but suddenly turns and asks: "Excuse me, officer, who were YOU thinking about?"

The plot of the film takes place in a very short period of time, so it has things that happened at different periods of time and puts them all within this time frame. Honestly it is amazing that the film is as accurate as it is, considering that it is a comedy.

Fun fact, after Russia banned The Death of Stalin it got even more attention after the media started to bash it.

Destalinization is an expensive and energy intensive process but it's becoming more common in populous arid regions.

I think you might need to consider your own clarity here. If you say purges were over for years at the time of the movie, yet there was a current purge in 1953 in reality (The Doctor's Plot), it's not unreasonable for people to criticise that. Plus the Leningrad Affair saw thousands purged. Fleshing out these points is not going into the reeds, they are important considerations to your overall argument. Additionally many Gulags did include large scale executions - at the Serpentinka in Kolyma at the Sevvostlag tens of thousands were executed. Also you seem a little naïvely credulous at times in citing the ban of the death penalty or the full name of the Gulag to support your point. The Chinese constitution also guarantees free speech and various other rights. Orwell's Ministry of Love, you'll be shocked to discover wasn't actually about love. Beyond all that films should have dramatic license and it is entirely fine to condense events to make the film more engaging. "Stalin actually had all these people murdered a few years earlier; saying he did it in 1953 is really besmirching his good name!" - not a strong point. On the fictional massacre, though, I largely agree with you. Bad move and unnecessary for the film's plot. Finally your clarification on your position on Russian censorship still sounds rather like a defence. Moreover, the suggestion Western film classification is in any way akin to Russian censorship or even relevant in a discussion of it is rather... concerning. EDIT: Since I'm critiquing your clarity, I should ensure my own. I know you mention the Doctor's Plot in your original video, but it isn't apparent from your comments that it involved a current, ongoing purge at the time the movie is set. Also I know you mention the Leningrad Affair here - my issue is your trivialisation of this important event seems to be an outcome of its weakening of your overall criticism of the film. Finally, I'm aware even taking into account these events, the film is an exaggeration - at least for 1953, but see above on that point.

My main criticism of your original video is thematic rather than specific. I have issues with some of the details you cite, which I’ll list briefly, but I have more of a problem with the overall message of the video. A couple of specifics: 1. The idea that the absence of a “Purge” (putting aside the Doctor’s Purge) means there were not lists and there were not roundups 2. You uncritically cite Soviet propaganda to make some of your points (“capital punishment was illegal in the Soviet Union from 1947-1950...in the 1950s executions were hardly used”) - even if you argue that there isn’t much information on the numbers of executions, it is naive to just accept the official Communist party line 3. Even you admit that there is some discrepancy to do with the stampede on the edge of Moscow. I agree that if they were going to make up a number, it should have been a much lower number, but I think that incident is less central to the plot than you think it is. In my view it exists to remind us that despite the hilarity of these murderous buffoons jockeying for power, there are real world consequences to their actions- ones they care about only when it is convenient to them. My bigger problem is that you innaccurately criticise the entire atmosphere of the film. You suggest that the constant looming terror everyone has in the movie is innaccurate because there hadn’t been any major purges in Moscow in a decade. This is absolutely false. In fact, it is one of the key things the film gets 100% right. I first watched the movie with my parents, who lived under Soviet communism and were in Moscow during The Fall - their main takeaway was that they found the atmosphere of fear chillingly accurate to their experience, even 30 years after Stalin’s death. What’s more, you imply that people would have settled back into normal behaviour once it had been a decade since a major massacre. What sort of human beings would do that? Seriously, Stalin’s rule was so horrific that anyone who lived under it would carry the scars to their grave. He was a mass murderer of a scope and scale unheard of before or since (hopefully never). Then, you go on to talk about Russia’s theatre ban on the film (which by the way was strictly enforced with police raids). You make it sound as though there is absolutely a justification for the ban. That is plainly wrong. You call the film “disinformation” and “intentionally harmful”. What on earth are you talking about? A country should not suppress a historical comedy because it has minor historical innaccuracies. A country should not supress films because they discuss a topic that is uncomfortable for the government. Being an apologist for that type of totalitarian-style action is wrong. Trying to create a false equivalence between rating agencies in the US and departments of censorship in a illiberal quasi-dictatorship is wrong. And all this criticism is not trivial. Suggesting things weren’t actually so bad back in the 1950s has consequences in the here and now. That is the precise reason Putin’s government suppressed this film. Putin walks a fine line with regards to Stalin’s legacy. He doesn’t outright praise him, but he glosses over the worst parts of his legacy and also actively encourages people to think of him, like Stalin, as the “father of the nation”. Putin has also said "the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the [20th] century”. In reality, in my view, it is one of the best things that has happened in the last century, allowing millions of people from the Soviet Bloc (including my own mother) to have political freedom. The USSR is not old, irrelevant history. Rosier reimaginings of soviet communism are a tangible bolster of Putin’s autocracy. Please don’t engage in it.

It is a failure as a documentary. It is hugely successful as a comedic film.

I preface this statement by saying that this is the only time thus far where I disagree with your line of thinking, and I only disagree on one minor point. An inaccurate historical film doesn't mean its bad. Braveheart and Apocalypto are both horribly, HORRIBLY inaccurate, but they still tell a good story. I found The Death of Stalin to be extremely funny. However, I am willing to admit that I can enjoy the film because I know the actual truth of the matter and accept the film for the most part as fiction. I think it is good to point out that a historical film is inaccurate, in fact I think everyone should be aware of the inaccuracies of any historical film, but saying its bad because of them is just flat out wrong.

I loved "The Death of Stalin" and when I first watched your video I noticed I became increasingly frustrated that you were critiquing it (Mainly because my thought process was the "It's a satire" idea.) But I took a step back and realized that I can still like the movie even if it isn't accurate or if someone else is critiquing the history behind it. And that's exactly what you were doing. Critiquing the HISTORY not attacking anyone that enjoyed the film. So thank you for educating me on the REAL history of the movie. I'm sure that I would've believed a great deal of the history in the movie without even thinking about it. Keep doing what you're doing man, I respect your drive to find, uncover, and spread the real history in a world were it has started to matter less and less.

You should do a review of Horrible Histories the CBBC show.

The problem with your Labor Camp statement is how you phrased it. You said "It's just a labor camp." It can be inferred that you meant all it was, was a camp for labor, forced or otherwise.

_ignorance comes in many forms......._ i love the "you know youre right when both sides are calling you propaganda" compliment XD

I liked the video, and didn't notice any of the things others were commenting on, but did think it was a pretty satirical film to be analyzing, but I'm glad you did because I wouldn't have known the film existed if you didn't cover it and I love films like this.

Aw, my bad. Your mispronunciation reminds me of John Green's quote: "It is my thing".

I skip ahead just to see if I made the cut. I guess I'm famous now? But yeah, I do agree with you in that there was no massacre involved, rather if anything it was deaths caused by a massive crowd of people, which is quite common. I'll reiterate what I thought was used as justification, in that they wanted to keep the action entirely within the Soviet Union and that's why they didn't talk about East Germany. Whether or not that's right is debatable, and I admit to having some bias in that I absolutely loved this movie, so who knows, I might be trying to justify it post-fact. The more important takeaway here is that you can love a piece of media without getting angry at its criticisms. Also the prequels are the best Star Wars movies.

"Everything from silly little kids to actual intellectual discussion" yeah it's 4chan alright

Well thank you for showing my response to you as well as my initial comment I respect that despite having perhaps differing opinions.

and about the gulags ... you make it sound like the fact they chose a name that wasn't death camp it wasn't ? and the execution scene where showing max 10 people and you use it as an argument it was a lot more so it's not true. My great grand father was in one and he actually got back 11 years later after Stalin died so yeah not every one dies there but there where different kinds of gulags - some where nothing less of a death camp.

I haven't heard this in either of your videos, and if it was I apologize, but I believe this movie is actually based on a comic called le morte de Stalin which would explain the inaccuracies

Im really hungry for some communism jokes

Mispronounced Brezhnev is not real he can't hurt you Mispronounced Brezhnev: Bretznev

'anything left of hitler and your a commy' my good sir, may the internet gods protect you from the hordes of 4chan. BTW thank you, your video on the death of stalin cleared up a lot of misconceptions for me :)

The wiki page on Russian political jokes is actually hilarious (possibly more so than the Death of Stalin; I liked that film) And yes, I just used a semicolon, I'm not fully certain if it's the correct use

I just saw History Buff's review of this movie that dropped on the day of this comment. After I watched it I went straight to your review to get a better sense of the film. Whereas his was positive and seemed very glowing, your's offered a unique counter that I felt was useful. It makes me want to see this movie all the more and do the research on the actual event.

Willingly or not, a lot the arguments against your video tie into the "Mere Exposure Effect" that just telling people it's possible to defend monstrosities makes those monstrosities seem necessary to defend, and thus encourage doing so.

I think a good segment or piece of his channel would be "resung heros of history" where he would talk about noteable people or heros or villians or whatever that had a big impact but are not well known and also it has a nice ring to it

Have you checked out History Buff's review of The Death of Stalin? Perhaps you two can have a discussion about the movie.

Actually the official death toll at Stalin's funeral was 109 but most accounts have it at least 1,500 or more.

Still one of my favoriete movies. ( i take this movie just as a Comedy and nothing more )

I think "The Death of Stalin" falls into the category "The Lie that Tells the Truth"

Brilliant video. Thank you.

It baffles me that so many people thought that calling gulags labour camps somehow underplays how horrible they were. Do these people think labour camps are a good idea or something? It wouldn't surprise me as some US prisons today could be labelled as labour camps. Obviously US prisons are less horrible than gulags, but the US prison system is still unambiguously barbaric.

well there the problem: those people wer 4chan whitknights

Why is it that I'm having trouble watching this video as it stops every second but any other video I put on, it plays just fine? I even put it on 144p and it chugs like hell. Damn it KZfaq.

Here's the issue I have with the video. You take the fact that it exaggerated and/or misrepresented certain events, and interpret that as being because it's Cold War propaganda. That just isn't a fair conclusion. I think it makes sense to say that events were changed for dramatic effect, because it's a movie and there is the understanding that will be done to some extent. There is really never any reason to suggest that this film is propaganda. It certainly doesn't make any comment on the West, so saying it perpetrates the idea of good v evil in a Cold War effect is absurd. Furthermore, I find your defense of Russia's banning hypocritical. You spend this entire video criticizing Russian history. You're not Russian. If it's ok for you to criticize another country's history, it's ok to criticize another country's politics. It seems to me that you may be dodging responsibility for your sympathizing with Russia simply due to your personal dislike.

Would you ever do The Wind and The loin? Would be fun since its holds Teddy Roosevelt himself in it. :3

Hi Cypher I'm a relatively new sub whose been watching a lot of the old videos on your Chanel and seen that last year you said you hoped to make a video in the near future about the Netflix movie "The Siege Of Jabotville" and was wondering if you still planned to do that video as I really enjoyed the movie (mainly because I am Irish and Hollywood is terrible when it comes to Irish related movies) and I would love to hear your opinion on it. Hope you see this comment :)

didn't got the point of disabling the commentsection of the video

While I tend to agree w/ the majority of your Reviews 99% of the time. I think this might be the exception (though not entirely). As w/ most Historical Films of this nature, you have to go into it knowing that this is a satire and that the film is likely going to be extremely compressed, w/ inaccuracies introduced for dramatic effect. This is likely why they chose to go w/ the slaughter of Russians Mourners (which wasn't entirely based in fiction, since there were Russian mourners that did ultimately end up getting trampled in the stampede that erupted, as a result of the overcrowding in the Kremlin Square), as opposed to introducing the additional complications revolving around the East-German Uprising, into the Plot. I think "History Buffs" summed it up best as far as my personal feelings are, towards this film. Check his Review out, if you haven't yet. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iq1dp6pevNWUdKM.html

The really shocking thing to me is you supporting the censorship of the present day Russians. It's a great film, and your criticisms certainly don't justify censorship. I think the way its' presented indicates you shouldn't take it as fake value. As a history nerd, a lot of people have asked me if it's accurate. No one I've met assumes it is. Yes, the purges weren't happening as displayed at that time, but do they misrepresent a Stalinist society? No, people lived in fear of the state, of the gulags, of being denounced. Then you complain about misrepresenting the number of people killed attending the funeral. It was, by Khrushev's estimate, over a hundred, obviously it's hard for us to know the truth. If he'd said "100" instead of "1500", would that have changed the story? Not at all. One hundred is still a horrific tragedy. So it's good of you to point these out, that's interesting. But they aren't that important it the wider scheme of things, and considering this is a film where Stalin has a cockney accent, certainly within creative liberties. Your conclusion that the film is "garbage" and deserves censorship is absolutely ridiculous.

Read Anna Strongs memoirs. She lived in the USSR, North Korea and the Eastern Bloc for most of her life and she's a really great source about the Soviet Union.

I'm going to watch that review of those "Magnificent Men ..." as soon as I get home from work. That's one of my faves since I was a kid. So much good stuff in that one. I'm pretty sure you know the sequel as well. "Those Daring Young Men and their Jaunty Jalopies". Also a less factual film from about the same time called "The Amazing Race". Sort of the origins of steampunk in that one.

Will you also review a Russian historical movie?

Have A Nice Break , Keep up The Good Work ....

I'm curious if you have seen History Buff's review of The Death of Stalin? Do you have any comments on that?

Here's some better criticism of your video on _The Death of Stalin_ . I am very aware of the goal of your "History Buffs" videos. They analyse the historical value of so-called historical movies. And I did learn some things thanks to your episode on this film. However, director Armando Iannucci himself admited he wasn't doing a biopic. He was fully aware of the shortcommings and errors inside the script. Which is something he tends to do through his entire filmography (just look at his movie on Dreyfus). It doesn't diminish any of these "goofs" mind you, but I do think he was pretty honest with the whole thing... :/

I still say death of Stalin is one of my favourite movies

I'm very conflicted on this, both as a layman who really likes learning about history in greater depth to understand the context for any specificpoint of curiousity, and as someone whose family lived through that era in east Berlin & Moscow...who himself was born on the far side of the wall, when it still stood...albeit for only a couple of years. So I can't (and have no desire to) even begin to defend any of the historical inaccuracies or how much more enjoyable historical films are that require fewer creative liberties...but films with historical settings aren't made for professional historians or even enthusiastic amateurs, they are meant to capture a feeling for the general audience. At their absolute best these types of films can be a jumping off point, and usually not even that. And I can't say that this film failed to capture the way the early soviet era felt to my relatives who lived through it and whom I have talked to about their experiences...which is a far smaller number than it should be, despite recent efforts to the contrary...even with all of the inaccuracies. I didn't feel compelled to dive into too much correction after watching it with my american fiance; whose understanding of russian history is much more in line with the average movie-goer; the way I sometimes can't help myself from doing after we watch a film set in an era I've done enough reading about to think I have some understanding of. Anyways, love what you do on here and hope to be able to contribute to your patreon soon! PS why do I feel compelled to write like such a pretentious twat when talking to someone with more expertise? lol

You know, just because someone made up shit to make someone look even eviler than they actually were, doesn't take away from the fact that the person their smearing was already a bad person to begin with.

Could you maybe do a video on "Big Eyes"?

You’re aware that the Director of the film explained that the inaccuracies as ‘streamlining the plot’ and making it more plausible, considering most of the actual things that happened were more of political maneuvers that anything else. It’s much easier for the average American to follow this plot, and they even have disclaimers that they took creative liberties in the making of the film.

I saw a piece of this video and then watched your previous video on the movie. I haven't seen the movie but I don't get the anger from your presentation. I am an uber-anti-communist and other than the low numbers, your presentation seemed accurate. There weren't a lot of purges after the Soviet power had positioned itself for a few generations. The people in the USSR were fearful but knew how to fall in line. The tyranny moved into the Eastern-bloc countries and proxy wars and revolutions. I didn't hear you advocate for communism or 'Soviet Russia wasn't that bad', etc. Haters will hate, I reckon

You had mentioned in your original video about "The Death of Stalin" that Russia had banned the movie due to "misinformation". Maybe there is a kernel of truth in that but isn't it more likely that Russia banned the movie because it did not show a sugar coated depiction of its history? There are western countries that have had "historical" movies made about real events but were not banned due to grossly inaccurate depictions (think The Patriot and Braveheart). The Soviet Union was an authoritarian police state and in many respects, Russia still retains some of those repressive traits. Hence, Russia bans movies that shed light on a horrific past.

1. I really like "the death of Stalin". A good movie, and there's spoken little about what happened on "the other side of the Iron Curtain", or even Stalin at all. The movie made me laugh so many times, and was educational. 2. I really enjoyed your review (the original video on "the death of Stalin", not the comments-review.) of the movie as well. It learnt me to see the movie from different sides, and why Russia would censor it. 3. In Conclusion. The movie made many minor changes (like how Beria just gave Molotov back his wife as a gift, and Molotov didn't ask for it), but this was mainly done to make their personalities even clearer, so I mostly agree with this. Also, most of the "violent" scenes I agree with as well, to show how terrible Stalin (and "the commitee") was. There's two things I think they really should've cahnged in the movie. 1, showing the crushing of the uprising in East-Germany, instead of the made up massacring by Berias secret police in Moscow. 2, not removing that one deleted scene, ahen they have trapped Beria at the toilet and they are mentioning about how they all have killed hundred of tousands of people! And maybe tackle how Beria was a child-rapist even more, but it's commedy so it may make the movie too dark? Something I forgot, or you're disagree with?

A primary source? Decide for myself? Pah, I listen to Alex Jones and let him tell me what to think! /sarcasm

Just a minor linguistic correction: in my opinion it should translate : Main administration of camps, not main camp administration. This way it is clear that "main" concerns the administration, not the camps. Otherwise great channel, great content, awful chin hair :)

If I have to be truthful, hearing the main issue being the massacre scene, while I knew even going in was inaccurate, I took some time to think and after a while determine "maybe it wasn't showing this being what happened to spark it, but more was a generalization of how Beria acted with the public in all of the areas the soviets controlled". You mentioned it briefly with the event in East Germany being one of the few things that played into Beria's downfall. However, even if we take that away, I still find it hard to see how this would cause any harm. if anything, I'd go as far to say that, again, while the actual event never took place, showed a fictionalized example of how the Soviets from all across the SU and eastern block under Stalin and in this film's case Beria were treated. Where they wouldn't hesitate to iron fist anyone to keep the populist down. This in term allows us to get behind Kruschev more when he did stage the coup to finally remove the last of Stalin's brutal regime in power. I think the biggest point to get across is how the film still showed everyone, even Kruschev as being just terrible people when you get down to it. Even when in "good" light, it's always cause there's someone else in comparison to make them seem better, but lets not forget, this was the same person who would later nearly bring the world to an end not once, but twice. IDK, maybe to you I sound like a right wing commentor, but maybe if you want another perspective on the film that maybe shows why this film should be watched despite that major inaccuracy, watch History buff's video talking about the film. While I usually try to keep my thoughts as my own, I'll admit that he was the reason, I watched the film. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iq1dp6pevNWUdKM.html Here is the link to the review. Hopefully I helped at least offer some more better articulated opinions than the ones you've seen.

Most likely, I think the funeral stampede and the East German massacre were likely combined into one event for the sake of being able to better compresses months of history into a couple of hours of movie, something a lot of historical films do.

i don't know why historical accuracy is so important to a historical satire movie... i think i can forgive historical inaccuracies, even one as glaring as that massacre, it fits in the movie's themes, narrative flow and structure, so what exactly is the issue?

Hey cynical historian what do you feel about the review of the death of Stalin by historybuff?

I enjoyed the movie. I thought it was funny. I don't like some of the inaccuracies but in perspective, its better done than a lot of historical movies. The thing I took away is how a power vacuum is very interesting and unpredictable.

Can we get a review for Argo (the movie about the iran hostage crisis)?

That video was one of the first of yours I saw.

At 5:29 that is the best line ever.

I'm fairly new to your vids. I have to say that your scholarship is impressive. That said, I'm surprised you didn't go off on Beria.

The Comment section of the original Video sounds like Tschernobyl I hope you guys used your Hazmat Suits But I still love the Movie and it didn't change

I personally love this film. It's one of my favorite comedies of all time. Though I fully agree that they got a lot of this stuff wrong. Yet, at the same time, their dedication to highlighting the things they got right. Was fantastic and deserves a lot of credit. Personally, I feel like this movie was a push for you, the viewer. To do more research into stuff like this.

13:00 Okay, if that's true then how do you know that the purges depicted in the film aren't from the eastern block? Just curious, I'm not a historian.

Did you messed up the bit rate or something? The video keep laging for no reason.

If it's an itemized list of all of Stalin's post WWII "deportations that are totally not purges" to change your mind here's a good place to start. But Soviet activity in the Baltic and Ukraine saw hundreds of thousands of people "deported" between 1947-50. Also talk about playing a game of semantics about deportation vs. purge. If your definition of a purge is purely a political one you're way out on your own there compared to the scholarship on that one. www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/fr/node/2653

I really liked the video the video about The Death of Stalin. But maybe my only objection is that it is based not on real events but on the French graphic novel La mort de Staline, where many of the events that you disapproved of in the film appear, especially the massacre in Moscow, which in reality did not happen as in the novel.

0:49, there one actually good comment, can you find it?

I'm more than a year late to this but here it goes. I just watched the video where you talked about the film and then this one, and I gotta say I agree with a lot of what you said. Bu in this one when you said,"Inaccuracy hurts films" made me realize that's a debate that goes on for quite a while, since it's a tug war between history and art, the directors have to make a choice between historical accuracy or artistic choices to make the movie more accessible to a broader audience. I agree that some of the changes were really silly and unnecessary, like the massacre scene where from 100 casualties in East Germany, it goes to 1500 people in Russia. But other details like the renaming of the MVD to the NKVD, I see it as the director appealing to a more known name, so I think it's a passible change. Or the pacing where the movie makes it seems like it all happened in a few days instead of several months, I can understand that such change could help them in the pacing of the movie itself. All in all, I think it's a decent comedy, and worth watching, and despite the subject it covers, I don't think it'd be much better if it stuck mostly to historical accuracy all the time. Also about the purges, I think they made the purges seem to happen more often since it's the image that most average people have of the USSR. About Russia banning the film as them stopping misinformation, I think that's a kind of controversial topic, since russian propaganda these days is still very misleading and they still use a bit of misinformation to push a lot of their agenda, like the ban of homossexuals, trying to close off the internet in the country, banning Telegram and the "cult of personality" of Putin. Loved your video, the criticism you brought up was valid, and it raises important points.

What do you think about the argument that Hitler is less bad than Stalin because the latter killed more people than him? Personally I find it to be oversimplified, since it ignores key factors as to why Hitler had less people on his bloody hands stain like the fact that Hitler was stopped before he could have killed more people( he even prophesied that he would kill more people than he did already) and that Stalin ruled longer than Hitler.

OH we learn about hegels dialectic in highschool :D They teach us to do our essays like that and same with our oral exams or class debates as part of the mandatory philosophy classes but we have to use that dialectic in most subjects that aren't mathematical

i wanted to say something on your original vid i dont think ak47s were widely used at that point i believe they still used SKSs at that point

I see what you are trying to say with unrated movies but in the States you can still see an unrated movies if you want. Unlike in Russia where they can ban movies willy nilly.

Review Raggamuffin. Or The Great Locomotive Chase.

its hard for me to imagine anyone not loving this movie

Well to be fair you practically defended the banning of the film in Russia

You do a great job keep it up. Watch a old tv show called ANZAC’s

How about a review about "The greatest Showman"? I guess the real P.T. Barnum will come much more sinister out of it than sunny boy Hugh Jackman was showing him.

If you want a criticism thats mostly unrelated to soviet historiography and only in relation to this video in question, then the portrayal of Hegel’s dialectic is largely inaccurate. The thesis-antithesis-synthesis triad was never used by Hegel (I think it was used disparagingly by Hegel in his critique of Fichte however), and rather poorly describes the dialectic since there is no internal relation between the different part of that triad so that the movement of the dialectic looks entirely external. (Otherwise a solid clip).

dude you should have left the comment section open a lot of comment mean a lot of view and better rating.

There an angry face on your statue arm can't stop seeing it

Person from a country that used to be a part of the USSR here. Thanks for humanizing and sympathizing with the shitstains that were the Soviet government. Really makes me feel better about the lost family members and thousands of deported fellow citizens. If your objective was to portray the objectively true version of history, boy, you sure managed to also sneak in lots and lots of positivity towards the regime. It's a comedy movie, not a documentary. Fake massacres are meant to evoke the image of the real massacres from the past as a story telling tool. It was clear from watching the movie that many of the "inaccuracies" were meant to show the viewer what Stalin and the Soviet government was like during the *entirety* of his reign, not just during the exact timeframe shown in the movie, because, again, it's a comedy marketed towards the masses who will likely at most only know that Stalin was the leader of the USSR.

Hollywood never allows anything to get in the way of the story they want to tell; not history or science or even the novel that the film is ostensibly based on. Movies just shouldn’t be held to the same standards as documentaries when it comes to accuracy. But a movie based on a true story can be a great starting point for a discussion on the real history.

It kinda sucks that you blocked the comments on the Stalin video. I mean was looking forward to seeing stupid comments

are you shure its a complete fabrication ? a read something about death mourners, but seems its blown out of proportion about the gulag, in czechoslovakia, prisoners were called mukl. its acronym for man destined for liquidation. and given, it depends wich camp and so on, but deaths were frequent and somewhere prisoners were murdered right a way.

I really enjoy your videos. I’m a big fan of world war 2 and more videos covering this would be great. Keep up the good work.

@cebenify 5 years ago To take it from Stalin himself: One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. I think Erich 'All Quiet on the Western Front' Maria Remarque would have a problem with that, since its a quote from his book, The Black Obelisk, that for some reason or another, maybe by some satirist not concerned with historical accuracy, got attributed to Stalin...

I think alot of ppl have hard time lisening. Sometimes when i watch TV with my mother and she reacts to what we watch i often have to corect her.

Also adapted from a comic

There were also some purges/deportations in the central asian SSRs and in the asian part of Russia, where Koreans were forcibly moved to the Sakhalin Oblast, but that ended in the late 40's and early 50's, with extra issues coming during the Chinese Civil War and the Sino-Soviet split. Also there was significant repression in the Ukrainian SSR. "waves of arrests and repressions of Ukrainian cultural and political activists. The first wave of trials, in 1965-6, coincided more or less with similar trials in Moscow. The trials aroused protests in Moscow and Kyiv and failed to stop the growth of the dissident movement. The second wave of repressions, in 1972, was far more extensive and cruel. Widespread arrests of national and human rights activists began in January. After Petro Shelest’s dismissal from the Communist Party of Ukraine leadership, in May, thousands of arrests and searches were carried out, educational and academic institutions were thoroughly purged, some writers and journalists were forbidden to publish, and several journals were discontinued. By October the purge had reached the Party, and several Shelest supporters were removed." That's from www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CP%5CU%5CPurges.htm

I basically cannpt watch this on my smartphone. It loads like a slug. I've been watching it for half an hour and am not even at half. Get your tinfoil hats off, cause i almost think youtube is screwing it because of the title.

August 21, 1968: "Wake up honey we are occupied." "What!? Occupied? Soviets would never allowed it!"

Never meant the apologist side that you pointed out. But you should look into White Sea-Baltic Canal project, number vary but it costed from 12 thousand (mostly russian goverment scholars) to 240 thousand (scholars from countries that were affected by the gulag and this project in general like mine for example lithuania), suffice to say i do not know which number to beleive but i would go to the middle and say 100 thousand. And the funny part this canal was pretty much abbandoned after it was finnished,. What I'm trying to say with this example (also I do realize I am biased to this topic due to the historical sence on how it affected the baltics and personal history of how it affected my family) gulags technically were labour camps but the conditions and disregard to human life there cannot be ignored by just say oh it was JUST a labour camp, that would be ignoring deaths of thousands of people who were sent to these labour camps just cause of their race ideology or origin. Which is why I made that comment that USSR type of gulags are not the same as prison camps like we see in movies of american ones where they hit some socks and clean up roads (using this just as an examle of how quite a few people imagine these camps) but these were camps where people regurally ate bark, stew made from shoes, froze to their beds, were left in the harsh wildernesss if they weren't able to keep up or were just shot if they tried to escape or even talked about escape. This is the problem i saw in your reference to them, yes this was not aushwitz but the thing is most of the time the idea was that why would kill these people when you can work them to death. I would to discuss and maybe provide material (even historical movies made here during the fall of ussr about this topic) to show what I mean and why it might be more of a complex issue which would be interesting to discuss even in video format since it is not very well explored in the western educational or cultural society

I so sympathise with you. I often get frustrated with peoples intolerance for nuance. Good people and events can have a dark side, bad events and people can have good sides, some are hard to decern because nobody knew what they where doing or it is not well recorded. You are not a Stalinist apologist (if you argue in good faith and with evidence) if you point out he was not maas purging people his entire reign. You are not a Hitler apologist (by arguing he is 100% incompetent) (if you argue in good faith and with evidence) if you argue he made some good or necessary tactical decisions such as striking south into Ukraine in operation Barbarossa. You are not a colonialist apologist (if you argue in good faith and with evidence) if you point out that, some events like the Rwandan genocide were influenced by pre-colonial power dynamics and the agency of one group to maintain power. You can agree or disagree but if someone I would argue that being an apologist and arguing in bad faith is when you intentionally try to bend the events of history into a good vs. evil paradigm and attack anyone who disagrees with you, not their arguments. Nationalists, racists, feminists, socialists, liberals, nazis, communists, theologists, everyone is guilty of this. This is why reasoned argument and counter-argument while all trying to act in good faith is important. Callin someone a shit head, not so much. Apologies for the length, as someone intrested in the 'grey' of history not its use as a moral weapon this is important to me.

I feel that History Buffs summed it up best as to why the movie took a lot of liberties: 1. Compress the history into a narrative structure to fit the movie's overall plot 2. Flesh out the main characters, since many of their traits, deeds and motivations are established much earlier in history, outside of the story... This includes Stalin himself. The movie has to hyperbolize and ramp up the purges to reinforce Stalin and Berya's history and reputation. But hey, I'm just a nerdy guy who likes history, not a historian... I still loved your takedown of it, and anyone who can't take criticisms for a movie that they love doesn't really get it.

For my part I think you were clear and honnest (never thought you were and authoritarian a..hole). That is why I follow your work and I hope you continue for a long time. All the best