Stalin (TV series)

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Television broadcast
German title Stalin
Original title Stalin
Country of production Germany , Russia
original language German
Year (s) 1992-1993
Production
company		 CIRCE-FILM Düsseldorf, CFD Moscow, SDR Stuttgart
length 60 minutes
Episodes 4 in 1 season
Director Hartmut Kaminski
script Hartmut Kaminski, Dmitri Wolkogonow
production Elke Kaminski, Thomas Pflüger
music Henning Christiansen
camera Ivan Dvojnikov
cut Elke Jonigkeit
occupation
  • Hans-Peter Bögel: Speaker
  • Peter Schurr: Speaker
  • Jutta Villings: Speaker

The four-part TV series Stalin by Hartmut Kaminski deals with the steep rise of the Georgian shoemaker's son and pupil of the seminary Josef Stalin to the all-powerful General Secretary of the Soviet Union .

action

No other person in contemporary history has shaped the fate of hundreds of millions more than the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

For almost twice as long as his opponent Adolf Hitler , he has determined the fate of a state in which 160 million people lived and which comprised one sixth of the earth. All decisive changes after Lenin's death go back to Stalin: The collectivization of the peasants , “Stalin's revolution from above ”, was the greatest historical intervention in the history of the peoples of the Soviet Union that ever took place. After 1945 Stalin succeeded in exporting his system to the countries of East Central Europe.

Millions of people lost their lives during Stalin's rule in the Soviet Union itself and in the satellite states . The " great terror " of the 1930s, the army of forced laborers , the murder of almost all combatants from the days of the revolution , the shooting of practically all military leaders of the Red Army , are inextricably linked with the name of Stalin. In doing so, Stalin transformed himself into a mythical demigod for his subjects; Most Soviet people only trusted him to save their country from external threats and internal disintegration.

When Stalin died, even the prisoners in the Siberian penal camps wept on March 5, 1953.

Episode 1: The Revolution

When Lenin's new government was presented in newspapers and leaflets at the end of October 1917, the inhabitants of the vast Russian empire saw a photo of the man who was to determine their future for the first time: Yossif Vissarionovich Dschugashvili, known as Stalin, 38 years old, a professional revolutionary. (Photo: Stalin 1929 in Tbilisi.)

Like many politicians today, Stalin owes his post in the “ Council of People's Commissars ”, as the government of the revolution is called, to regional proportional representation rather than to its paramount importance. The Georgian represents the non-Russian nationalities in the multi-ethnic state .

Up until the revolution, Stalin spent most of his adult life in the prisons of the tsarist empire and in exile. Apart from a few youthful portraits of the model student and pupil of a seminary, there is only a stately gallery of police photos of him.

Stalin's steep career began a few years after the revolution: in 1922 he became general secretary of the Bolshevik Party , a less popular post that Stalin would only develop to an immense power. This rise to power takes place against the background of the revolutionary years : from the successful uprising of the Bolsheviks in 1917 to the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922. The early days of Soviet power are marked by hardship, hunger and misery of the civil war, which killed millions. There is even cannibalism in some parts of Russia. For the first time, recordings of the legendary uprising of the Kronstadt sailors can be seen in this film . At the end of the program there is Lenin's funeral.

Episode 2: Village and Factory

"The whole of Russia is one village," said the Russian poet (and Nobel Prize winner for literature) Ivan Bunin at the beginning of the century. Even 20 years later, four out of five inhabitants of the young Soviet Union live in the country, mostly as poor farmers.

Stalin's goal: to turn the poor peasant country into a powerful industrial state. This should be achieved with a big leap, a tremendous show of strength in a short time. Against the advice of almost all experts, the farmers are forced into kolkhozes within a few years . Those who resist will be deported. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of farmers die in the process. At the same time, the development of industry begins, the forced exploitation of the natural resources of the vast country. Gigantic industrial plants such as Magnitogorsk are being raised from the ground under unimaginable deprivations, with enormous setbacks .

For the first time in this film, Stalin's war against the peasants can be documented in detail. Sound recordings of the first show trial in the Soviet Union, the trial against the so-called "industrial party", have never been shown either.

The broadcast ends with pictures of the personality cult around Stalin, who has been called "woschd", ie "Führer", since 1929.

Episode 3: The Great Terror

The bloody climax of Stalin's rule is the period of the " Great Terror " in the second half of the 1930s. Almost all of the old Bolsheviks, Lenin's fellow combatants from the years of exile, fell victim to him, as did prominent scientists and artists and practically all the leading military. Millions of ordinary Soviet citizens are shot with them as "pests", "saboteurs" and "spies" or sent to prison camps.

A huge camp complex is created, the " Gulag Archipelago ". Forced laborers toil in the mines of Eastern Siberia under grueling conditions, building roads and dams. But normal workers are also integrated into a strict coercive system: draconian penalties for poor work performance, absence from work and drunkenness are introduced. On the other hand, “top workers” who exceed all standards receive up to twelve times more wages than their colleagues. Stalin thinks that whoever works better should also live better.

So far unknown footage of the camps of the "Gulag Archipelago", of the trial of the famous Bolshevik politician Nikolaj Bukharin and of Stalin himself can be seen in this episode.

Episode 4: Superpower Soviet Union

By defeating Hitler's Germany , the Soviet Union becomes a superpower . Stalin exports his system to all countries that have been occupied by the Red Army . He says, “ Communism fits the Poles like the saddle fits a cow”, but that doesn't prevent him from overthrowing the democratic governments in all of Eastern Central Europe. In the years before, Stalin's state had to pass its toughest test: despite the shameful Hitler-Stalin pact , the Germans invaded the Soviet Union.

The Red Army succeeds in pushing back the enemy with enormous sacrifices. In Leningrad alone, more people die than the American, British and French armies suffered in the whole of World War II. The liquidation of the "enemies" of Soviet power continues even during war. A particularly sad chapter is the shooting of 20,000 Polish officers in Katyn and other camps. The film shows for the first time the original document with which Stalin ordered the mass shooting in Katyn .

When Stalin died in 1953, the worship of his subjects reached its final climax; even prisoners in the penal camps cry for the “great leader” and “wise father” of humanity. This fourth and final installment in the Stalin series ends with the consequences of Stalinism for Russia today.

production

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

The film was produced on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the death of Josef Stalin.

Of course, it was not just this “memorial day” that prompted the Süddeutscher Rundfunk to commission a Stalin series. Another reason was just as important: it was only since the end of the Soviet Union that it became possible to see film material about the suppression of the legendary Kronstadt sailors' uprising in March 1921. The inhumane conditions for the forced laborers on the “major construction sites of communism” such as the Moscow-Volga Canal can also be documented in detail.

With the cooperation of the Russian Stalin biographer and Yeltsin adviser, Colonel General ret. D. Dmitri Wolkogonow , the author has also got access to the "top secret" holdings of the Russian presidential archive. So could u. a. the original document in which Stalin ordered the murder of thousands of Polish officers in Katyn and other camps in western Russia can be used. Comments by the former Soviet historian Volkogonov and a few contemporary witnesses complete the historical material. In these statements, Volkogonov also shows how little Stalin's successors, including Mikhail Gorbachev , could break free from the legacy of the red dictator.

criticism

Representing many reviews here is a short excerpt from the Neue Zürcher Zeitung , February 25, 1993: Egon Wolff: The model of " Homo Sovieticus "

“'When Hartmut Kaminski began preparing for his 1991 documentary series“ Stand up, it's war ”about Hitler's attack on Russia, almost five years ago , he was the first film writer from the West who was allowed to join the Krasnogorsk State Archives Moscow to work. While viewing the films, he also got an insight into the material from the Stalin era stored here . The archives in Minsk, in which many films are kept that have not been found worth keeping in Krasnogorsk, and the archive in Vilnius turned out to be further treasure troves. Here you can find documents from the time of the Hitler-Stalin Pact and the war years. In total, the author has collected nearly 150 hours of footage. Since a lot was not labeled, it often took laborious research to classify the films correctly in terms of time and subject. Most of the productions are completely unknown; they were never allowed to be shown on Stalin's orders. This includes reports from the show trials and the uprising of the sailors in Kronstadt , but also scenes of a private nature. As a co-author of the documentation on the Russian side, Dmitri A. Wolkogonow , Colonel General a. D. of the Red Army, currently advisor to Boris Yeltsin and, as historian, chief commissioner of all Russian archives, including the holdings created by the party and the KGB . Even in Soviet times he wrote the first Stalin biography, which was also published in German in 1989, entitled "Triumph und Tragödie". "

- Egon Wolff : Neue Zürcher Zeitung, February 28, 1993

Web links

Commons : Stalin film  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

Telemanuscript - Manuscript for the broadcast series of the Süddeutscher Rundfunk: Stalin, order no. 30261

  1. ↑ Telemanuscript - manuscript for the broadcast series of the Süddeutscher Rundfunk: Stalin, order no. 30261