Springtime for Stalinism?

Rating: 9/10 (4 April 2018)

"The Death of Stalin" is a marvelous piece of satirical filmmaking whose hideous subject Stalin, one of the great monsters of the 20th century, as well as his fearful but complicit henchmen, are featured in this film; and because the hideous crimes and scale of deaths attributable to this "gang" are so huge, the satirical and scandalously funny treatment of them reminds me of another wonderful satirical film of a very sober subject, nuclear war, as depicted in "Dr. Strangelove." The witty and hilarious screenplay, credited to the director and three others, warrants 10 stars, and the acting at least 9 stars. Michael Palin's Molotov, whose wife Polina has been arrested by Stalin, calls her a parasite and an enemy of "the Party", but when Beria has her released (after Stalin's death), he embraces her with great joy. Stalin's henchmen lived in dread of Stalin, and so as the film depicts, when Stalin has his incapacitating stroke, they take their time summoning doctors, and anyway, most of the experienced doctor have already been arrested. In actuality, Stalin was apparently preparing another great purge at the time of his death, and Molotov and Mikoyan, and perhaps Beria, were marked for liquidation. So we see in this film Stalin's list of enemies marked for liquidation replaced by new lists also marked for execution. (It was indeed a tough work environment. It was said that if you gave Stalin too much direct eye contact, you were over-confident and thus plotting against him, and so you were shot. On the other hand, if you avoided eye contact with Stalin, you were shifty and couldn't be trusted, and were most likely plotting against him, and so he had you shot as well.)
Of course, the humor may be tempered by the realization that were some 200 million people in the 1950s Soviet Union who were at the mercy of this dictator and his gang, as well as his / their unbending ideology. The director Iannucci was apparently appalled that Stalin's portraits were still prevalent in Russia (unlike Germany's treatment of Hitler) and perhaps he thought a wildly funny portrayal of the succession struggle after Stalin's death would be the most damning evisceration of what Stalinism represented. Or maybe he just likes doing comedy. But I'm not sure even he can top the actual "comedy" that emanated from Stalinism. Please forgive me for concluding with this lengthy but crazy anecdote from Joshua Rubenstein's "The Last Days of Stalin": The Moscow radio reporter described the 1939 May Day parade and mentioned the top guys reviewing the parade in alphabetic order. That night he was called before Malenkov and asked why he did not put the leaders in the proper order. He said he put Andreyev first because 'A' comes first in the alphabet, and so forth, to which Malenkov replied: "The Soviet alphabet always begins with 'S,' then comes 'M,' then 'V,' then 'K,' and then 'A.' He meant, of course, Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, and Andreyev. I (the radio reporter) asked him is this alphabet permanent?" "No" he said. "It may be changed tomorrow, but remember that the alphabet is decided here in the Central Committee, and not in the radio station."