Friday A/V Club: The People Celebrate Stalin

Stalinist propaganda at its most absurd

Aficionados of totalitarian personality cults will enjoy this excerpt from The Fall of Berlin, a 1950 Soviet film about World War II. If you want to jump to the best part, it starts at 6:22:

The guy playing Stalin seems rather stiff, but can you blame him if he's nervous? The critics could be brutal.

(For past editions of the Friday A/V club, go here.)

Comments

[Hyperion]

I always imagine Tony and Shreek having a life sized statue of Stalin in their house, right between their Obama statue and Mao Statue.

[Krieger's Waifu]

Statues? More like sex dolls.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Shriek's an asshole, but he's not a commie. Now Tony...

[Pro Libertate]

Fascism is different than communism.

[Harold Falcon]

No it's not.

[Hyperion]

Shreek's not a commie? Ok, well, in the strictest form, no, he's a crony. He's a leftist but he likes Obama's particular form of crony leftism. He probably admires China's current regime a great deal also.

I just like to keep it simple though and refer to all lefties as commies.

[Weigel's Cock Ring]

Loved it. Greatest movie ever! Pardon me while I go jerk off to it a couple more times.

[CatoTheElder]

I avoid YouTube comments like the plague, but I couldn't resist this time, and found this gem:

"Comrade Stalin be with you all, comrades! On every battlefield, every forum, and every argument on the Internet, he fights for us all!?"

[SusanM]

He's our only hope...

http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs4....._bachi.jpg

[Hyperion]

Youtube comments are typically pretty senseless drivel. Most comments are usually some variant of:

This video sucks, and you a fagoot!

Only with worse spelling and grammar.

[Robert]

And if you offer serious criticism, you're a "hater".

[John Titor]

I'm kind of interested what the histories will be like five hundred years down the road in regards to people like Stalin, Hitler, Mao, etc. We tend to retroactively excuse bad/murderous behaviour from leaders and instead credit them with things that resulted as a consequence of their actions rather than one of their actual goals (see Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Augustus, Charlemagne, Genghis Khan to some extent, etc.). Wouldn't be surprised if they start talking about 'Stalin's great industrialization of Russia' and Hitler laying the groundwork for the European Union, etc.

[PapayaSF]

I hope not.

[gaoxiaen]

Luckily for us, Hitler fucked him over by reneging on the nonaggression pact, saving the Western Allies from much higher casualties.

[Malkavian]

Eh, that movie got banned in the USSR for being too retarded. Chinese loved it though.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Has anybody else watched The Assets? A little bit too much melodrama, could have been shortened, but fairly interesting.

[Sevo]

I think he's ronrey.

[amberdvirgen]

my roomate's aunt makes $82 /hour on the laptop . She has been fired from work for eight months but last month her income was $21833 just working on the laptop for a few hours. view it......
?????? http://www.netcash50.com

[Paul.]

I remember this one, where the woman give Stalin a hug, then (unintentionally) seems to shrink back in fear.

[Robert]

This just screams for the Downfall treatment.

[aix42]

'They say you grow hair, Look a like Stalin'

[Somalian Road Corporation]

This video contains content from Mosfilm, who has blocked it from display on this website.

Obviously some bourgeois wrecker-hoarder threw up a complaint against the content of this film being redistributed amongst the people.

[gaoxiaen]

Those fucking kulaks. You kill a few million of them and they hold a grudge forever.

[Scarecrow Repair]

My it's getting dusty in this room.