The Death of Stalin

0:00:04.2 Landry Ayres: Welcome to Pop & Locke, I’m Landry Ayres.

0:00:06.7 Natalie Dowzicky: And I’m Natalie Dowzicky.

0:00:09.0 Landry Ayres: Comrades, as the fall approaches with all of us wrapped in our coats, little hands outstretched asking for treats and dreams of cozying up inside with a warm beverage, I’m reminded of another fall, the fall of the Soviet Union.

[laughter]

0:00:27.6 Landry Ayres: I hereby propose a motion to discuss Armando Iannucci’s 2017 black comedy, The Death of Stalin, with the hopefully unanimous support of our three returning guests and members of the Pop & Locke politburo. Resident senior fellow with the New American Engagement Initiative at The Atlantic Council, Emma Ashford. Cato Institute adjunct scholar and host of the podcast Power Problems, John Glaser.

0:00:51.3 John Glaser: Good to be here.

0:00:53.6 Landry Ayres: And Cato Institute Director of Defense Policy Studies, Eric Gomez.

0:01:00.0 Eric Gomez: Hello, comrades.

0:01:00.2 Natalie Dowzicky: Alright, before we jump into the nonsense of this movie, I think it’s really important that we have someone set like the historical context for us so that we can get a little bit better of an idea of what is actually going on in the world. In March of 1953, it’s post-​World War II in the USSR, what is going on? What is Stalin doing? Kind of set the scene for us so we can understand what nonsense unfolds later.

0:01:26.7 Emma Ashford: Yeah, so I like to think of this movie as it’s a pivot point, Stalin’s death is basically an inflection point for the Soviet Union, between the sort of early USSR and the type of USSR that we are more familiar with when we talk about the Cold War. So you’re right, this is post-​World War II, but this is the generation… All these leaders, they’re the generation that plotted and overthrew the Czar, that fought the revolution, that fought the Russian civil war, took power, set up the Soviet Union, and then they got swindled by the Germans, turned, joined the allies during World War II. Fought this just devastating war, 27 million dead. And now by 1953, they have fully consolidated power. So this is the period in which Stalin dies, it’s the period in which the Cold War is starting, the Soviet Union is figuring out where it’s gonna go from here, and Stalin’s death is a big part of that decision.

0:02:28.6 Natalie Dowzicky: So who are the characters in this? And who are they representing? Like, who are the members of the politburo? Let’s dissect whether or not their characters were accurate depictions of the real people or if they were a little bit more exaggerated or intense perhaps than the real people. So why don’t we start off with Chief Beria?

0:02:54.0 Eric Gomez: So Beria was the head of the NKVD, although it changed names before the events of this movie, but it’s sort of like the popularly known as the NKVD, and it’s the internal security services. So the forces that do secret policing, espionage against other Soviet people, the inward looking part of the security service. And by all accounts, yeah, Beria was a pretty bad guy, the things in the movie about him sexually assaulting young girls was true, and I think they did a great job of portraying him as a very devious plotter who had a lot of enemies within the system and wanted to assert his control via the internal security services. So they did a good job based off what I’ve read about him as a real life figure.

0:03:57.1 Emma Ashford: Yeah, Lavrentiy Beria was, as Eric says, a terrible horrible human being, one of the worst human beings that’s ever lived probably. But also like a very classic head of like a secret police organization. He kept files on everyone and it comes up in the movie, he says, I know what you all did. I know all your secrets. And that is Beria. He did, he kept all the secrets, he didn’t even tell Stalin everything, sometimes he hid people away to keep them for later because that was the kind of plotter he was, and nobody trusted him for obvious reasons.

0:04:30.7 Eric Gomez: In this political system, like this, control of information and control of guns is very, very important when the leader dies and it’s time for internal power struggle, and Beria had a lot of both. And I think in the movie, the moment where he’s… Where Emma said, where he’s talking about, I have files on all of you, I have information on all of the bad stuff that you guys have done, I think that’s the moment in the movie where they decide, Khrushchev and Molotov kind of decide, “Alright, we need to get rid of this guy, because he could threaten all of us.”

0:05:03.5 John Glaser: By no means am I any expert on post-​war Soviet governance or anything like that, or the folks that were in charge, but one of the things I appreciate about the movie is the flexibility that the actors have in not trying to be exact and depict… The approach that Buscemi has towards Khrushchev is very different than the approach that Daniel Day Lewis had in portraying Lincoln.

0:05:29.2 Natalie Dowzicky: Right.

0:05:31.1 John Glaser: He’s not going for an exact depiction, he’s allowing his own inner comedic sense to be able to flow out of the character quite nicely and less committed to the history.

0:05:42.3 Landry Ayres: Speaking of people who are less committed to the history, like for instance, the character that I read about that everyone is kind of mentions as probably the least accurate depiction of what their role was in the Central Committee was Jeffrey Tambor’s character Malenkov, who is definitely portrayed as like a pushover, he’s trying to assert himself as the general secretary and step up and be the person that everyone looks to. And he really does, he takes moves to assert himself, but immediately turns and acquiesces everything to the people who are actually apparently doing things behind the scenes, Beria and Khrushchev and stuff. Is that accurate? And if not, or even if it was, what is the point do you think in portraying Malenkov in that way?

0:06:33.5 Emma Ashford: Malenkov is definitely one of the lesser known characters from this period. He climbed the ranks like the rest of them, right? All of these catheters are vicious people, very talented political climbers, they have built themselves this empire. So Malenkov fits into that mold. But I think what we saw in history was that he basically expected to succeed Stalin the way Stalin did Lenin in this formal process. And then what Malenkov later finds himself subject to basically is people just work around him.

0:07:11.3 Emma Ashford: So he technically legally succeeds Stalin and they just build up other positions to be more powerful, and so Malenkov finds himself shuffled off to the side after this period in history. Even once, I think had an unsuccessful half-​hearted coup later on and it’s so half-​hearted, they don’t even execute him. [chuckle] So I think… [chuckle] I’m sure that the way Jeffrey Tambor is doing Malenkov here is an exaggeration. I’m sure he wasn’t nearly that much of a buffoon in real life, but there’s a certain element of truth to it that he does eventually just find himself overcome by the forces of people that are just better at this than he is.

0:07:53.4 Emma Ashford: And I kind of feel like Khrushchev is that way too. Buscemi, as John says, he’s obviously not playing Khrushchev like a photo realistic drama trying to portray Khrushchev, that would be ridiculous in this case. But there’s elements of truth there. There’s a lot of truth there. Khrushchev was a very methodical kind of schemer. He had built his reputation as a really good manager, a really good organizer. That’s sort of where he came from, and you can see that coming out in the film, and you can see just all these little details of… He knows who everybody is, he remembers the jokes, he has his wife write down what he says so he knows to do it again tomorrow if it was a good idea. [chuckle] And so I think…

0:08:37.7 Natalie Dowzicky: He shows up in his pajamas, for one.

0:08:38.5 Emma Ashford: Right. Yeah, and so I think there’s a lot of elements of truth there about these characters, which I really appreciated.

0:08:46.0 Natalie Dowzicky: I was just giggling basically the entire film, just ’cause I thought it was ridiculous. But the time when Khrushchev came in his pajamas and they were all making fun of him and he was like, “Well, I had to get here as fast as possible.” And then they’re all just staring at Stalin on the floor, not doing anything, so I went down this rabbit hole a little bit that… ‘Cause when Stalin is suffering from… I guess it was in the movie I believe it’s a stroke or a hemorrhage of some sort…

0:09:12.1 Emma Ashford: I think it’s a cerebral hemorrhage, but that is a stroke, I think. Isn’t it?

0:09:17.1 Natalie Dowzicky: Yeah, not a medical doctor. And then they’re arguing about bringing in a doctor, whether or not they should bring in a doctor, and then they were like, “Well, there aren’t any good doctors left because they’re all dead or in the Gulag.” And I was like, “That is such a dark joke.” Because wasn’t this the time… ‘Cause I was reading up on this thing called “the doctors plot” where Stalin had a group of doctors that I guess either were plotting against him or he believed were plotting to kill him, and then he let them all go into the… Either killed them or into the Gulag, and then he had a new group of doctors prior to dying that he didn’t… Weren’t as familiar with him to begin with, but I think they really played up that element in the movie, and I think in a fun way, ’cause they’re like, “Who are you? Where did you come from? You’re not a doctor.” Which was poking fun at obviously a messed up situation, but I thought it was a good way of portraying how ridiculous those decisions were being made at the time.

0:10:26.2 Natalie Dowzicky: Which I think they showed throughout the film quite a few times about there’s this sentiment that every decision has to be made by the Committee, which they start making fun of is like, “Well, let’s make a decision, but with the Committee, the whole Committee has to make it.” ‘Cause no one wanted to be the person to blame if something went wrong, ’cause then they’d know they’d die. And I think that was an interesting way to show the dynamics of this time period and what they were gonna transition after Stalin, but I think at the same time it has that dark comedy aspect, you’re like, “Should this really be funny or is this kind of just sad?” I feel like the whole movie treads that line of, “Is this comedy and should I be laughing?” Or is it like, “Man, these people are super incompetent and this is kind of upsetting.”

0:11:21.5 John Glaser: Absolutely, that’s another thing I appreciate about the film is they keep the ugly details in there while not breaking from the comedic posture ever, and so it adds to… It creates some hilarious moments, but this whole reference to, we’ve killed all the good doctors that’s playing up the element that happens in authoritarian command and control systems where you have to get rid of the intelligentsia because they’re smart enough to take the rug out from under the established rulers. It’s like in the cultural revolution in China, they put the doctors with the farmers, etcetera, and that kind of creates the atmosphere for what kind of country these people are living in and how shifted everything is in favor of and in service of the top, the dictator.

0:12:17.5 Landry Ayres: And it’s interesting, specifically because I was listening to an interview with Iannucci and he specifically was talking about the feedback, and he had instructed the cast and crew on the film, “We have to be very respectful of the people that actually were victims of this terrible violence during this era, because it’s still obviously a very tender subject for a lot of people who were affected by it.” And so threading that needle was very challenging for them in production, but I think it does manifest, or at least it was attempted to be shown because all of the comedy is generally a result of the buffoon-​ish, croniest, bumbling aspects of the people at the top. That’s where the laughs are.

0:13:10.6 Landry Ayres: All of the violence that’s enacted on the people, the sort of shooting when people are trying to get into Moscow, which is in and of itself, kind of a reference to a stampede that happens at Stalin’s funeral, but isn’t 100% accurate in the way it’s portrayed. But those moments are not played for jokes, it’s a sort of Menippean satire in that way, and that there is moments of levity and mockery and there are moments of very, very serious satirization at the same time, and I like that, but I don’t know if…

0:13:51.0 Landry Ayres: For instance, we were all talking before, I think we all really, really enjoyed this movie, it’s very funny. I had a great time laughing at these just bumbling fools as they’re portrayed, but they really were, like Emma said, very calculating, practiced, extremely methodical people, but they were enforcing these measures in what were seemingly banal ways as well, like… Sure, Beria was, as head of the secret police, giving a lot of orders and being like, “This person needs to be killed”, “This person needs to be taken away.” But a lot of this was done by memo, or telling people and other people were getting their hands dirty, which is really interesting.

0:14:38.1 Landry Ayres: And I read one criticism of the film that I thought was very interesting that I would really be interested in what people, sort of, thought of it and whether they think it’s correct, but Samuel Goff for the Calvert Journal wrote that, “The film is fundamentally ill-​equipped to locate the comedy inherent to Stalinism, they seem determined at turning Beria into a throbbing nucleus of evil, an avatar of the obscenities of the Stalin estate, that they miss the point of and the comedy in the system of abuse and privilege. It loses itself in the reveries of dictatorship, and forgets to say anything about the faceless mechanisms of power, these pencil pushers that could enact mass death, that the memo is a more potent symbol of the system than the rifle, there’s not enough banality in it. We see horror and satire, but never in conjunction.” What do you make of that take? Do you think that’s accurate? And if so, why or why not?

0:15:41.5 Emma Ashford: I don’t think that’s accurate at all, and in fact, if anything, I think this movie really does reinforce, for me, the notion of the banality of evil, that Hannah Arendt suggested. The idea that, the people within these systems are cogs, and they are doing terrible, terrible things. But, it’s just very banal, it’s just like, “Here’s tonight’s list, go arrest the people, go shoot them.” The casual wave throughout the film that we just repeatedly see people draw a gun, shoot someone, walk off. It’s just banal, that’s what you do, it’s a Tuesday.

0:16:14.4 Emma Ashford: And so I actually think the film does that really well, and the other thing that I think that it does really well is highlighting how everybody in this movie is a cog in this system, right? So this is not that these are people on top who are exempt from the fear from the horror of it all, you know? We see this, there’s this scene pretty early on in the movie where they’re all joking around and trying to impress Stalin and everybody gets really quiet because somebody says, “Hey, whatever happened to Polnikov?” And the answer is Polnikov used to be really important and then he offended Stalin and now he’s totally dead, and nobody talks about him. And the same with Trotsky and the same with lots of others. Molotov ends up on a list right before Stalin dies and if Stalin didn’t die, he’d probably be dead. So I feel like it really captures, at the same time, the banality of this system where this is just how things are and the fact that everybody is incorporated in it, even the people who ostensibly have the power.

0:17:20.2 John Glaser: I was gonna say, it sort of sounds like this reviewer has his own knowledge of the history of the period, and is upset that his particular preference for a comedic satire wasn’t what was on the screen. But it’s exactly what we’ve been talking about. I think this is why satire is almost as important as history itself. If you really, really dig into the history, sometimes what happens to these personalities is their humanity kind of dissolves into the historical narrative, and what satires remind us is that these are just idiot humans, you know? There’s six of them sitting around the table, watching social-​cues to know whether their hand should go up, arguing over petty mundanities, and falling into chaos, and one kind of decision or another, and the satire really does depict that quite well. These are normal, ordinary people who are doing terrible things and their ordinary-​ness is hilarious in the context of the movie.

0:18:23.0 Eric Gomez: Yeah, I agree with John. It is equal-​parts, sort of, petty familiar, but then also remembering the power that these people have in such a political system, and I really like how the movie shows both of those at the same time, so it’s a great piece of satire.

[music]

0:18:46.0 Natalie Dowzicky: I think another good example of what Emma was saying, and we were all just piggy-​backing off of them being normal people and they’re in the system too, is like the Polina character? I think she is the wife of… I’m blanking on which one of them…

0:19:04.3 Landry Ayres: Molotov.

0:19:06.2 Natalie Dowzicky: Molotov, yeah. So she was imprisoned by Stalin, and then once Stalin is lying on the ground, half-​dead, they release her. And it struck me ’cause there’s like, this guy is in Stalin’s inner circle, and I put that in air quotes because Stalin can decide whoever he wants to kill at any time, but in his inner circle, and even he was affected by it because his wife was in prison. And then it was also just kind like, “Oh, now that Stalin’s gone, we’re just gonna let out whoever we wanna let out”, that like, “Oh, he’s gone, he’s not gonna enforce this”, like, “Okay, you’re my friend, you can come out” or… That seems like, kind of, arbitrary? I don’t know if that’s actually what happened, but I do know Polina was released, but I looked up something, it was like a little suspect whether or not it was actually because Stalin died that she was released. Apparently, she was also released on her husband’s birthday. [chuckle] Which I thought was funny.

0:20:06.8 Emma Ashford: The movie kinda uses it as this plot device, it’s like Beria… In fact I think says that she was meant to have been executed, and so her husband actually thinks she’s dead when she’s released. That’s not entirely historically accurate, but I think the movie does a good job of using it as this little sub-​plot that like Beria knew she might be useful at some point, so he just kept her hidden in a cellar and told Stalin she was dead. And then Stalin’s dying and he can just bring her out to bolster his case with Molotov, and it’s funny because it comes back to bite him a little later in the film, because Stalin’s daughter says, “Hey, where’s my boyfriend? You killed him too, where is he?” And it turns out, no, he’s actually dead because Beria didn’t think to save him, and so he can’t make the boyfriend reappear the way he made Polina reappear.

0:20:54.4 Eric Gomez: Welcome to the Game of Thrones real life version that is [chuckle] powerful people in personalist dictatorships, right? Like Stalin before the events of this movie purged the Red Army, at one point after they had started combat with the Nazis. These are not decisions made… Getting high up doesn’t save you when the whims of one person have so much sway. And I study East Asia a lot and see the same thing in communist China under Mao or North Korea. Kim Jong-​un had famously assassinated his brother and his uncle Jang Song-​thaek because the uncle was seen as too close and too friendly with the Chinese, and in a system like North Korea’s where it’s both very communist and also hereditary, essentially, like hereditary monarchy type system, offing uncles for getting too friendly with the Chinese, despite years and year… Despite them being family, despite years and years of service to previous leaders, it doesn’t matter, and it can change for reasons that appear arbitrary or just not make sense to most people because it’s whatever one person thinks in their head.

0:22:18.3 John Glaser: This is a little off topic, but since we’ve mentioned Molotov, he’s played by the great Michael Palin, which is just excellent, he’s probably one of the best characters. And I think this one defining thing that sticks in my head about his portrayal of Molotov is they’ve beaten Beria and they’ve handcuffed him to the urinal in the bathroom, and they’re about to kill him, and Michael Palin’s Molotov announces that he’s got to evacuate, while they’re in the bathroom he might as well take a seat because it must be all the excitement. And I just love… He’s so clueless, not only about what’s going on, but about his own body, and he’s just like, “Oh, must be the excitement, I’ve got to take a seat on the can.” I don’t know, just hilarious.

[chuckle]

0:23:02.6 Natalie Dowzicky: That was funny.

0:23:02.9 Emma Ashford: There’s also a real element I think throughout the film of just the violence is just so expected and normal, and again, to bring this back to just the historical context, in 1953, most of these people have been going through violent upheaval for much of their adult lives. We are talking about revolutions that go back to 1906 with brief periods of calm, the second Revolution, 1917, followed by a five-​year civil war that was just incredibly brutal, then we start to get the purges and the consolidation and the lists, and then it’s World War II, and there’s 27 or 28 million Russians dead, and we’re only about six, seven years past that at this point. So for these people this just constant violence and death around them is a way of life. And I think the film, again, because it’s a satire you can watch it without that really getting to you in the same way, but I cannot imagine what it must have been like to have had that life. That must be just horrifying.

0:24:10.8 John Glaser: It’s all they know, they’re shaped by it.

0:24:12.5 Emma Ashford: Yeah.

0:24:13.1 Natalie Dowzicky: Yeah, exactly, and a good way they’ve portrayed that is using the piano player, so I think… So the piano player, they’re like… And again, a ridiculous scene, this piano player does the entire… It’s like an entire concert, I think it’s like a piano concerto or… And they go through a whole thing, the audience claps, stands up, and then Stalin calls the radio that was hosting this concert and was like, “Oh, can I have a recording of the concert? And they didn’t record it, and since it was already over, so the guy ran out and was like, “Oh, everyone sit down, we have to do it again.”

0:24:50.1 Natalie Dowzicky: And then they start bringing in people off the street, and then they’re like, “We gotta bring in more people so that it fills the space so that it sounds the same,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and this ridiculous scene, but then it cuts to the piano player and the piano player’s like, “Well, I’m not gonna play it again,” and he was like, “Well then we need to find another piano player,” and then she explained that she didn’t wanna play it again because Stalin, I believe Stalin had killed her brother or a family member of some sort.

0:25:14.8 Natalie Dowzicky: So there was like showing the connection even to people not necessarily in the political sphere, and she’s like, “Well, I’m not doing it again for him,” and then she gets paid off and then she… I think that was an interesting way to show that Stalin affects… Stalin’s actions affected everyone from his inner circle down to just random people on the street, or a piano player. And then it was obvious that she knew she was gonna get some type of deal if she did play again. So it was almost like that concept of violence, like you were saying Emma, is just normalized in the society almost at this point, that that’s like what they expect, like, “Oh, Stalin wants this? Okay, if I don’t do it, you’re gonna die, but if I do… I’ll do it for 20K,” or whatever. So it just becomes kind of this toxic cycle of violence.

0:26:13.1 Landry Ayres: As the person who has failed to hit record many, many times, I can tell you…

[laughter]

0:26:18.9 Landry Ayres: Now, I don’t wanna compare anybody that I work with to Stalin [laughter] as obviously threatening me in any way, but that’s… When you’re running around and you’re like… When he comes into the room and says, “Was it recorded?” I’ve been there, I’ve been there, and it’s like, “Please.” [laughter] And then you have to stop everybody and be like, “Nope, everybody sit down, sit down and listen to me. We’re gonna record this again.”

0:26:42.3 Landry Ayres: But what you were mentioning, Natalie, specifically about the way that she is paid off by the radio head with Radio Moscow at that time, it reminds me of… I mean, there is specifically a name for this informal, heavily prevalent system of favours exchange between people at all levels of Soviet society, and it’s called blat, which basically is just the assumption that everybody at every level of society is in need of something that because of lack of power or goods or ability or whatever that is. And there is a sort of intrinsic understanding that outside of the legal mechanisms and the sort of normal ways that we go about and make exchanges in a free market sense, rather, that there is this below-​the-​radar favour trading that goes between all people. Like, you have a cousin that gets sent to prison, I have a brother who is a police officer, so you come to me and ask if you can put in a word with someone to see if you can get him a lighter sentence, and I would say, “Well, what can you do for me?” And that instead of… While it is corrupt, it is just assumed at all levels of society that that is what people had to do to get by. And like you said, it just… It’s violence all the way down to an aspect or people having to use whatever power they had in order to get by.

0:28:29.3 Emma Ashford: It’s actually just to sort of shift away from the film for just a second, that corruption part of it is something we commonly see in communist systems, and in the Soviet Union in particular, the reason that system developed was basically because the command economy that was put in place… So again… So the ’50s and the ’40s, this is the period of most centralised economic control in the Soviet Union. So this is the period when everything is collectivized, everything, farms, factories and command systems don’t work very well because they… You end up with a factory that’s missing a part, but you have to put in a requisition order for it, and that takes two years, and so the whole factory comes to a halt, and you know… So that’s the kind of thing that happens in a command economy. And the reason this informal black market system builds up in a lot of communist countries is because not just you have to do this to survive, but because you have to do this to fulfil your job, right?

0:29:26.5 Emma Ashford: So the factory manager, he can put in a requisition and he can watch his factory sit idle for two years and perhaps get executed for not meeting his quotas, or as you say, he can call his cousin who knows a guy who makes widgets, and he just sources one on the black market. And so you get this whole secondary economy that builds up, and you can call it corruption, you can call it a black market, but it is really just like a little free market that operates underneath the collectivized system.

0:29:57.2 Emma Ashford: And it’s the only thing that stops the whole system from grinding to a halt. And most of the reforms that we see in communist countries… I mean everywhere, everything from like Gorbachev’s Perestroika in the ’80s, what the Chinese did under Deng Xiaoping in the ’70s and ’80s, Vietnam after the war. That’s all attempts by communist systems to leverage these little black markets into something that can actually bolster the full economy. So they basically legitimate them, and I’m sure Eric probably knows better than me, North Korea has been experimenting with this over the last decade or so. The attempt to capture the benefits of the free market and sort of plug them into the holes in this collectivized communist economy, probably doesn’t work as well as actual free-​market economies, but it’s interesting that it ends up being so important.

0:30:48.2 Eric Gomez: You just gotta be careful because if you… Because what is tolerated one year can become the new corruption later. I think we’re seeing that in Xi Jinping’s China, where he… A famous thing that she’s been doing is cracking down on corrupt behaviour and I’m putting that in air quotes, but it’s primarily going after potential internal political rivals, not necessarily applying it equally to everyone because yeah, there are some people in his patronage network that are probably doing the same things but aren’t getting caught or persecuted as hard for it. So yeah, that’s like the dark side of those sort of networks is that they’re fine as long as the centre tolerates it, but if you run afoul of them, then it becomes easy to kind of say, “Well, you were doing this illegal thing because I don’t like you anymore, for whatever reason.”

0:31:50.9 Natalie Dowzicky: Getting back to like the film, What I… I saw Emma had written something down about that there was a plan for when Stalin dies, and I was genuinely wondering that throughout the film. I was like, “I wonder if they like just thought they were trying to be optimistic and be like, ‘Oh, he’s gonna live so long that we don’t need to worry about it or whatever’ ” but what was the plan for a transition of power? What had they thought of before he actually keeled over?

0:32:19.2 Emma Ashford: Well, so you know how during the movie, every so often, there’s these little flashcards that come up and it says like Clause 3…

0:32:26.9 Natalie Dowzicky: Yeah.

0:32:27.3 Emma Ashford: Article 2 and the body will lie in the hall of columns for three days. So that was the plan, right? The plan was that the actual structure. So the Soviets always had a constitution, right? And they had these legal mechanisms, and in fact at the highly formal institutional system, so Stalin would be succeeded by Malenkov and he would take over his position as chairman of the party and of the general secretariat, and he would run the politburo bureau. And that’s the plan, but what happens in the USSR and in a lot of these systems is that position stuff ends up being very much secondary to the real politics of the situation. And so what the film basically is is the power struggle.

0:33:13.8 Emma Ashford: Malenkov thinks he’s succeeding with Stalin, and he’s so busy burnishing his legacy, but he doesn’t bother to notice that the others, but particularly Khrushchev and Beria are basically locked in this struggle to see who’s gonna come out on top because they know that whichever one of them triumphs in the small period, they’re gonna be the real leader, even if they don’t have the title. And that is in fact what plays out after the film is Malenkov is the leader in name, but he never really actually runs the country, and it ends up… Khrushchev ends up consolidating power after this, and by about five years after this, Malenkov has basically just been edge out entirely.

0:33:53.4 Natalie Dowzicky: I don’t know, I knew it was like… I knew that Malenkov had been edged out, but I didn’t realize that this power struggle was as real as it was as it was portrayed in the movie.

0:34:07.1 Emma Ashford: Oh yeah, power struggles in the… In the early Soviet Union, these power struggles were absolutely vicious. Trotsky much earlier than this a rival to Lenin ends up exiled to Mexico and ends up with an ice axe embedded in his skull as a result of the power struggle. So these were terrible, terrible power struggles, and the fact that Death of Stalin by this point were much more into sort of plotting behind the scenes on who can win over the army. It’s almost an improvement.

0:34:37.8 Landry Ayres: Yeah, and then there’s that little hint towards the end with that slight pan up to Brezhnev when they’re all in the balcony, and there’s just that little sub-​title that talks about him sort of edging him out of the party and gaining power. I thought that was, it was a really interesting way, a nice little tag on the end of the movie that could have just ended with Khrushchev, but sort of goes on to show that this is really not the end of any of these problems that they’ve introduced with this movie here.

0:35:07.9 John Glaser: I had a slight tinge that that ending sort of sets us up for a sequel, which I think would probably destroy the value of the movie as most sequels do, but it did…

0:35:18.7 Natalie Dowzicky: Definitely.

0:35:20.0 John Glaser: Give that sense, didn’t it?

0:35:23.3 Landry Ayres: The Soviet Cinematic Universe, I guess it would be like the Iannucci Soviet Cinematic Universe, ’cause there’s probably already a Soviet Cinematic Universe. They made lots of movies.

0:35:29.9 John Glaser: Yeah, the Soviet cinematic universe of British humor.

0:35:34.1 Natalie Dowzicky: Something else that was… Kinda struck me throughout the film was that… I think Landry had ran something down about this, all of the actors are like… Seemed British, in my opinion.

0:35:48.9 Landry Ayres: Well most of them are British but there’s several Americans too in there as well. Yeah, obviously like Buscemi.

0:35:54.2 Natalie Dowzicky: And they didn’t try and hide that.

0:35:57.7 Landry Ayres: Yeah, and I had heard… I think Iannucci did this on purpose because he was just like, people doing Russian accents is too distracting and not believable, it just becomes a bad caricatured Russian accent, and apparently the few audiences in Russia that saw it before it was banned, shortly after it was released ’cause it did gain approval and had a license to premiere there. But apparently some audiences came to him and were like, “Thank you for not having them do Russian accents because they always sound so bad.” So…

0:36:29.3 John Glaser: Yeah, it would have sounded so mean.

0:36:31.5 Landry Ayres: So I think it’s maybe to reflect the diversity of the Soviet Union. Like Beria himself is from Georgia, Khrushchev is from Ukraine, I think isn’t Stalin I think from Georgia as well, originally, it’s a very varied place, so I did think it was an interesting choice. At first I thought it was like Chernobyl, the HBO, Sky News mini series where everyone just has like… They’re not even trying at all. And I was kinda like, I feel like I’m losing something here, but I kind of like… Especially Steve Buscemi’s character, he’s just… They are not trying to put on anything at all with that accent, and I think it sort of adds something to maybe… Maybe it makes everyone kind of look at American or British politics in a sort of similar way, just as a sort of meta-​layer on top subconsciously, I don’t know, but I was curious what everyone had sort of thought about that choice.

0:37:33.4 John Glaser: Well, I also read what you read that Iannucci basically said, “Well, this also kind of represents… It works out cleanly ’cause it represents the fact that these people would have had different accents and so on.” That’s sort of a post-​hoc explanation, I think the real reason is because… If you know the rest of his work, what he’s doing here, what he’s really good at, is this British humor and political satire, which if you check, there’s so much in the humor, there’s so much humor in their accents and in their intonation and in their colloquialisms that if he would have really try to make them have Russian accents or make it more… Make it less a British comedy because it’s happening in Moscow, I think it would have ruined his… The very mission he was on to in this film.

0:38:23.8 Eric Gomez: I love Becky Yorkshire accent. General Zhukov too. [chuckle] Yeah, yeah, it does a great job with that. And I think for a movie like this, you either have to have it done entirely in the Russian language, which most audiences probably wouldn’t get the terms or phrases or the particular intonations or that sort of subtle stuff, or you do it like Iannucci did do it and have it just say, Alright, we’re not gonna try and do the stupid accent, we’re not gonna try and do Russian, we’ll just do it in English so that way the most audiences can get it and pick up on some…

0:39:03.3 John Glaser: Prioritize the last.

0:39:03.4 Eric Gomez: Yeah.

0:39:04.1 Emma Ashford: And maybe it was post-​hoc, but it really does work well and some will be able to agree on this call, the accents are perfect. You said Zhukov has a Yorkshire accent, he doesn’t. He has a Geordie accent, which means he has a working class Newcastle accent, which means he sounds like he came from nothing. He sounds like he’s got this crappy poor accent, working class, and it’s the perfect fit for Zhukov, because that is who Zhukov was, came from nothing, war hero, commands the Red Army. He deserves every one of those medals that are pinned on him, but the accent is still there and it really… Maybe it is post hoc, but it worked absolutely perfectly, at least from… If you’re British and you get where the accents are coming from.

0:39:48.9 Eric Gomez: Sorry for getting the region wrong.

0:39:50.4 Landry Ayres: Shame!

[laughter]

0:39:53.5 Natalie Dowzicky: How dare you, Eric, how dare you?

0:39:57.2 Eric Gomez: Aw man, I was trying to flex up my accent knowledge and I totally failed.

0:39:57.4 Emma Ashford: Close. Very close.

[laughter]

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0:40:01.1 Landry Ayres: One of the quotations of this movie that really stuck out to me as the most telling, and I think to me seemed like it was trying to act like a thesis to the entire movie, is at the very end after Beria has been killed and Khrushchev is talking to Svetlana, Stalin’s daughter, and trying to convince her to go to Vienna and not to stay in Russia and try and take care of her brother and all of this stuff, and he says to her, “This is how people get killed, when their stories don’t fit.” How does that play into what the film is trying to say and how did that manifest in the Soviet Union?

0:40:46.3 John Glaser: Well, leaving the history aside for just a second, I think what this film does have in common with the other political satires that Iannucci has done is that, yes, we’re in the Soviet Union, yes, it’s extremely authoritarian, and the stakes are much more dire than in In the Loop or in Veep, but, what’s still true, what unites all these features of political power, is that there’s a story of what actually occurs, and then there’s the story that elites project out to the public. And that’s true here in this film, and that’s true in Veep, and that’s true in all of his work, and it’s true in political systems like ours, which are largely Democratic, but are faltering on some of those key factors. And it’s also true in authoritarian command-​and-​control economy, so I think you’re right that that’s probably a through line and a kind of thesis of the film.

0:41:42.9 Emma Ashford: I was just gonna say, actually the central character of Iannucci’s first series, which is called In The Thick of It, which is a British political satire, it’s what Veep was based on but it’s in the British political system. The main character is actually what’s known colloquially as a spin doctor, so he’s the person that basically takes what’s happening and turns it into this story for the public. And so I think John is absolutely right that there is this real dichotomy between what actually happens and what the public sees. And throughout the film we see all these little bits like people are genuinely mourning Stalin, this terrible, horrible person because they think he’s the father of the country. They can’t figure out how to stop Vasily, Stalin’s idiot son, from giving a speech at the funeral because he has to, they can’t actually bar him. And even though Stalin’s daughter has no political power, they’re all trying to get to her because they know she’s valuable for this portraying, that they are Stalin’s legacy, part of it. And so you do see those little hints that they are concerned with how the story looks to the outside, as much as they are with clawing their way to power.

0:42:48.3 Eric Gomez: Yeah. The story and information is very important in it. That quote reminded me of Nineteen Eighty-​Four, which isn’t satire, but one of the key themes of Nineteen Eighty-​Four is that you control the past via propaganda and information, and whatever the truth is becomes what the party says it is. And I think that came to mind when I heard that quote. And, like John said, this isn’t just true of authoritarian systems, but I think it’s especially important in authoritarian systems. And as we deal with fake news and misinformation in a democratic modern society, I think those types of things might become more important, right? Of trying to ascertain what is truth from lies, what is the signal from the noise. And I hope the consequences won’t be as dire in the near-​future US as they were for people in Stalin’s Russia. And I don’t think they will be, but information and how narratives and how stories about power get told are a very important part of governing and government systems, probably even more so than what actually happens in some cases.

0:44:17.6 Emma Ashford: So actually, it’s funny because this film really does, if you talk about… If you’re gonna talk about Nineteen Eighty-​Four, I think it puts into context just how ridiculous a lot of the indications of Nineteen Eighty-​Four are today. Because this period, this film, this period in Soviet history, that was where the novel Nineteen Eighty-​Four came from, right? George Orwell was this British socialist, and he was absolutely appalled at what Stalin was doing, right? And so his books, his early books are about the virtues of socialism, and his later books about how it all goes wrong, right? So Animal Farm, “Some animals are more equal than others,” that was 100% about what Stalin was doing in the Soviet Union. And then Nineteen Eighty-​Four, which comes out, I think about four or five years before Stalin died, but actually references the people that disappeared from photos… That is actually a thing that Stalin did in the Soviet Union. So this is the period in history that Nineteen Eighty-​Four is based on with all its bleak horror. And so for me, I guess it kind of confirms that, yeah, this is something we really should worry about, but a lot of the indications of Nineteen Eighty-​Four are really overblown today, because Death of Stalin, this film, that’s what Nineteen Eighty-​Four was talking about, is that how it bad can get.

0:45:26.8 Landry Ayres: Right. And the photos in particular, that’s the credits of the film, is they’re scratching people’s faces out, but they’re also removing them sort of in post, which literally happened during the Soviet Union, and there’s famous staged photos, like when they’re raising the flag over the Reichstag after the Battle of Berlin and all of this stuff. So it’s really interesting that they decided to just full-​throatedly, wholeheartedly, just portray that in the credits of the film, instead of as a way of highlighting who the cast was, it was very interesting. By removing them at times it highlights who they were, which makes me wonder about… While it was effective at the time to remove people from photos, is there a long-​term, a long-​term a long-​arc Streisand effect that’s going on with some of these people being disappeared and they are just elevated?

0:46:26.0 Emma Ashford: Well, I was gonna say the character of the pianist, whose name completely escapes me right now, but she was a real life character, or a real life person. She didn’t… So in the movie, she sends Stalin this note saying, “You’re a murderer and I hope you die,” and then he has a stroke and dies. But in real life, Stalin was a huge fan of hers, and she sent him a note saying, “I will pray for you and your sins,” which, in the context of this totalitarian system where you can be killed for whatever, that is just… She could have been killed for that very easily, and she knew it. And after her death she was treated by a lot of Russians as this person who stood up to evil, particularly religious Russians, because that was sort of her thing was she was quite religious. And so, as you say, Landry, with the long arc of history, she had an impact. She inspired people to push back on the system.

0:47:29.3 Natalie Dowzicky: I was just gonna say, out of curiosity, did anyone find anything about how… This movie went to a Russian audience as… At least I think it did. Did anyone see any reviews or… What was their reaction to this? Do you think… I’m wondering, watching it as someone that was alive when the USSR was still a thing, or when they were living in the USSR, what their reaction would have been to it? Would they have thought it was funny? How was it received? ‘Cause I can’t imagine it was received all that well.

0:48:05.8 John Glaser: I think I read that it did open in Russia to some audiences and the government subsequently banned it, so… Some things don’t change.

0:48:15.7 Natalie Dowzicky: That tracks.

0:48:15.9 Emma Ashford: It was banned for extremist content. That’s what they said, but actually what it was banned for is, because the Russian government under Vladimir Putin has had a campaign for about 20 years now to rehabilitate Stalin, so, again, the long arc of history, right, here? After Stalin dies Khrushchev gets up at the party congress, and I think it was 1964, and he says, “Stalin made mistakes, and we should acknowledge those mistakes,” and this was a huge change. And so Stalin sort of becomes progressively viewed more negatively for his crimes throughout the Soviet period, but in the post-​Soviet period, Putin has gone back and tried to rehabilitate Stalin as he was this great war leader, he kept us safe… He made Russia great. And so, this film really pushes against that, and that’s the reason that it was ultimately banned, was because it gave This portrayal of Stalin as somebody who you shouldn’t venerate.

0:49:14.4 John Glaser: We’re back to stories again and how important it is in political systems to have the right one.

0:49:21.1 Eric Gomez: Yeah, similar phenomenon happening in China with Mao, and the cultural revolution and after that’s over and Deng Xiaoping takes power, and the terrible things that Mao did come to light and get talked about more in the party. But then as you get further away and time passes and the people who experienced it first hand get old and pass away, then now Xi Jinping is doing certain things, probably not everything, but certain things that make himself more of that kind of cult-​of-​personality type figure that Mao had. Yeah, it’s like, what’s old is new again. And these narratives and stories really matter.

0:50:09.0 Emma Ashford: Well, so here’s a fun one for you right? Now, we’re talking about all these authoritarian systems. How do you think people would react if Iannucci made one about the American founding fathers? I mean, obviously, they’re not terrible people the way that a lot of these people are, but I imagine an Iannucci comedy in which Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings is satirized and it’s like, “Oh, he writes all these things, but he’s off with Sally Hemings.” Imagine that it could actually be a… I don’t think people would react particularly well to it because it would push against the mythology of perfect people, and we don’t want to… Without getting overly political here, there are these debates right now, about whether students should be taught negative things about American history… True negative things about American history. And so again, it makes me wonder, how a film that did this kind of thing for American political figures would actually be greeted here. I don’t think it would be all that favorable.

0:51:03.9 Natalie Dowzicky: Actually, Iannucci was asked… Iannucci? Or was it the original… ‘Cause this was a comic before it became a film. I might have been… The comic author was asked if he would do this about Trump, and his first response said that it was that it was too soon, it was too recent memory in order to satirize someone like Trump, but also that he didn’t know… He was already getting push back, that he didn’t do Stalin well enough, so the idea of doing Trump was even more daunting, but it was this whole idea of your proximity to when it happened, it’s harder to satirize. And the reception from the audience is harder to please if it’s still recent memory. So he was asked about doing someone in the American political system, but I didn’t think about… I didn’t see anything about asking about doing the founding fathers, that would be interesting, at least to me.

0:52:02.4 Landry Ayres: Yeah, I think he had said particularly that everyone was waiting for the last tweet in particular, what he called the “My kingdom for a horse” tweet, which to me just makes me think like the January 6th episode would be like… Can you imagine the Iannucci version of what was going on behind the scenes while all of that was going on at the Capitol?

0:52:32.1 Natalie Dowzicky: No.

0:52:32.2 Landry Ayres: It could be, but it’s that kind of thing where you can see the conversations going on at the White House would be a hilarious… Set of scenes in Iannucci’s hands juxtaposed with the reality of what’s going on at the Capital, just like what was going on on The Death of Stalin, between the people being shot in the street and the bumbling fools that were going on in the politburo.

0:52:57.2 John Glaser: I think the point about satirizing, very recent events is important and real. On the other hand, I think there’s another disincentive when it comes to Trump or the Trump years, and that’s because they were pretty surreal. There’s… Trump’s real personhood. If you just tick the dial like one or two points left or right, he actually just is one of these hilarious buffoon characters in a satire.

0:53:25.7 Natalie Dowzicky: Yeah like we lived through the satire.

0:53:28.7 Landry Ayres: For sure.

0:53:29.8 John Glaser: Right. And so it becomes a little tricky to satirize something that’s so completely ridiculous, and that was actually… That’s a through line, I think throughout the Trump years, is that things would become so absurd and sort of weirdly dangerous to have what is essentially a not mentally well person up at the top of the federal government and all his minions scrambling around to protect that story from really getting out too loudly, it becomes tricky, I think, to satirize what appears to us as a satire in real life.

0:54:08.0 Emma Ashford: Although remember that Death of Stalin, almost everything in it is true up to and including the opening scene where they re-​record the concerto for Stalin. So I think maybe more recently history would be difficult.

0:54:21.7 John Glaser: Yeah, but he did In The Loop, which was about the Iraq war, which is not so long after it came out in 2009. I think that if we were able to have a peephole into Stalin’s room or whatever, he probably wouldn’t come across terribly buffoon-​ish, I don’t know. He’s sort of an ordinary dude with an evil slant, and Trump is a very un-​ordinary dude with an evil slant that you can easily laugh at because of how absurd his existence in the political system is, you know.

0:54:56.0 Eric Gomez: And John just got us all on the enemies list for when Trump returns to the White House.

0:55:01.5 John Glaser: I know Emma said that this was banned as a result of extremist content, I was trying to think of how much material I have produced that could be so described.

0:55:10.2 Eric Gomez: Alright, you’re our Counter-​revolutionary to the MAGA-​ing end. Well, that might be another thing too, right? It’s kind of tricky to satirize Trump when he’s still kind of around. Right. Yeah, I don’t know. I get worried about that sometimes.

0:55:27.3 John Glaser: Sometimes if he’s in the headlines I have double-​check that it’s not from The Onion, you know.

0:55:32.7 Eric Gomez: Yeah.

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0:55:37.6 Landry Ayres: Thanks for listening. As always, the best way to keep in touch with us and get more Pop & Locke content is to follow us on Twitter, you can find us at the handle @PopnLockePod, that’s pop the letter N lock with an E, like the philosopher pod. Make sure to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. And we look forward to unravelling your favorite show or movie next time. Pop & Locke is produced by me, Landry Ayres. And is co-​hosted by Natalie Dowzicky. We’re a project of lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org, to learn more, visit us on the web at www​.lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org.

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