What might be keeping Putin from a good nights sleep? Watch this film
By Stephen Sestanovich March 17 at 3:22 PM
Stephen Sestanovich is a professor of international diplomacy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
If you want to know what might keep Vladimir Putin from a good night’s sleep after his expected landslide reelection as president of Russia on Sunday, there’s no better place to start than Armando Iannucci’s satirical film, “The Death of Stalin,” which has just opened in Washington. It was banned in Russia for what the minister of culture called “insulting mockery of the Soviet past.” But don’t be misled. If you were president of Russia you’d want this movie banned not for its ideas about Joseph Stalin but for the ideas it may give people about you. It’s an inventory of Putin’s nightmares as he embarks on a new term.
Imagine Putin’s staff nervously summarizing “The Death of Stalin” for him. The movie’s chief villain is the head of the secret police, who seeks to become the new dictator through a combination of semi-liberal rhetoric and brutal repression. (Does this sound familiar?) It seems to be working for a while, but before long others unite against him. After a mock trial for his many offenses, he’s executed on the spot.
There are, of course, vast differences between the real-life Lavrenti Beria, who failed in his bid to succeed Stalin, and Vladimir Putin. But no Russian leader who is a former head of the security services (and wears his past proudly), who is said to have been horrified by the Panama Papers’ revelations of his ill-gotten wealth and who has reportedly watched videos of the killing of Moammar Gaddafi over and over is going to think a story like this should be coming to a theater near you.
Its villain’s fate is just one part of the movie’s contemporary resonance. Putin won’t like the way “The Death of Stalin” shows the coercive instruments of the state at war with each other. Russian officials have complained that Iannucci treats Marshal Georgy Zhukov — the great World War II hero — as a buffoon. But what surely makes them even more uneasy is the role — accurately described by Iannucci — that Zhukov played in the Stalin succession. The marshal aligned the army against the secret police and facilitated Beria’s arrest. Without him, the thugs, spies and killers might have stayed on top.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/what-might-be-keeping-putin-from-a-good-nights-sleep-watch-this-film/2018/03/17/61524ffe-2963-11e8-874b-d517e912f125_story.html?utm_term=.d530c1a71b66
