Back in the U.S.S.R. BY SKOT ARMSTRONG
B U N K E R
Revolting workers in Dear Comrades, 2020.
50
V I S I O N
If you’re under 40 years old, it might be hard to understand the passion some boomers have about the evils of socialism. Scandinavia seems like a cool place to live. For all of its socialism, Cuba has a higher life expectancy than the United States, and even attracts medical tourists. So, how did the idea that socialism is awful gain such a foothold? The short answer is the Soviet Union and the Cold War. Before it collapsed 30 years ago, Ronald Reagan (who had released an LP about the socialist evils of Medicare) dubbed it “The Evil Empire.” Dear Comrades (2020) gives us a peek inside of this forbidden world. The movie is set in 1962, and uses an actual event—the Novocherkassk massacre—as the jumping-off point, to explore a world where private property was taboo. The story hits the ground running (literally) as a woman is rushing to dress for the store “before everything sells out.” When she arrives at the crowded and meagerly supplied shop, she is whisked to the back. She is a party official and she gets special treatment. After the harried clerk provides everything on her extensive list, she rewards her with a pair of pantyhose, smuggled from the west. These are received with the enthusiasm that an inmate in prison might offer for a carton of cigarettes. Her daughter doesn’t qualify for this special treatment, and joins a crowd that is protesting lowered wages, higher prices and shortages of goods. During this protest, shots are fired into the crowd, and the protest becomes a riot. Things get especially surreal when the authorities deny that the demonstration itself ever happened, much less the killings. When it proves to be impossible to remove the bloodstains from the pavement, a crew is brought in to lay a new layer of asphalt. When the party official’s daughter doesn’t return home, her mother assumes the worst. Much of what follows involves searching for unmarked graves with the mother’s boyfriend (a married KGB agent with a talent for getting them past checkpoints). Throughout all of this, Lyuda (the party official) keeps exclaiming that things have gone to Hell since Stalin died. Using these perspectives, the film presents a dystopian overview of what existence in the Soviet Union was like for the people in all strata of life. The party official’s apartment is definitely nicer than a room in a subdivided house. The KGB agent’s apartment is noticeably nicer than hers. We get a tour of lives further down the food chain, as she searches for her daughter. This isn’t the genteel socialism of northern Europe. But this is what Boomers were taught that the word socialism means. If you’re planning to engage one in an argument about socialism, it’s probably good to understand that they’ll be focused on Soviet-era communism. And private property. It always come back to that.
