Elem Klimov was one of the most important filmmakers of the Soviet Union. A survivor of the Battle of Stalingrad, he became a producer and screenwriter. His final film was Come and See, a story of a boy in Belorussia who joins the partisans against the Nazis and witnesses a ‘Special Action’ liquidation. Klimov’s vision would be repeated in villages all over Ukraine in 1941 and 2022.
On Monday, March 20, 2023, I read an article on CNN reporting on war crimes committed in what we seem to be calling “The Ukraine War.” Apparently, Ukranian soldiers rounded up ten or so Russian opponents who had surrendered, bound their hands, and shot them all in the head. A hasty grave was dug somewhere near the eastern border, and they were disposed of and most likely forgotten. Until someone in the Ukrainian army brought the atrocity up the command chain and the culprits of the extra-judicial killings removed from the line, investigated, and now face prosecution for war crimes. This very weird story then stated the ICC, the International Criminal Court, had open access to Ukranian front line behavior, and full access to officers in hotly contested areas where these reports, however few they may be, were making their way to NGO and ICC staff. Ukraine, apparently, is playing the long game. If they expect western money to fight the war, then they have to at least attempt to look like they’re not behaving like, well, Russians. The government and the army have, according to the UN, given open access to such organizations looking for war crimes of any type, and have promised swift justice to anyone involved in such activity. I must admit, I was not prepared for this. The Ukraine War is, of course, a war of national survival. If Russia put down its arms tomorrow, there would still be a Ukraine. If Ukraine put its arms does tomorrow, there would not be a Ukraine. This stark fact can be used to justify all kinds of activity. Zelenskyy has banned opposition parties, unified all press into one national organ, abolished all commerce outside of the war effort, and has been swift to dismiss corrupt officials albeit exposed ones high up in the government and not the causal foot soldiers most do not see. As a whole the government is fighting this fight to make Ukraine better not to just be a more western country but to ensure the money from the west keeps flowing. Though the West is not unknown to corruption, it only takes one American to make a trip to Africa or Asia to recognize there is a gulf of difference between the corruption in the West and corruption in the East. Russia, one could argue, is a government that essentially is a mafia. There is no independent organized crime. The government fulfills that function. It is very much the same in China. Graft, kickbacks, and bribes are the way things are done as unofficial policy. The fact that Ukraine cares to launch such an unexpected effort is enormous, considering they are, like I identified before, in a fight for national survival.
In December of 1941, when the Soviet Union was in a fight for national survival, they didn’t prosecute graft. They shot grafters. They didn’t arrest people fleeing Moscow in the middle of the winter. They shot them. They didn’t reorganize the fleeing troops to fight the Germans. They formed barrier battalions and shot them. The Soviets did a lot of shooting in the Second World War, and as we know the Russians were the spearhead of the Soviet Union. You can justify a lot in a war of national survival. You can shoot a lot of people, and Russia did. We can look back on it as brutal, or we can look back on it and think possibly there would not be a Russia if these measures were not taken. It’s a tough call. Putting that in perspective, the Ukrainians are willing to bet they do not have to murder innocent Russians to preserve their nation. It’s a risky bet, considering the Russian have proved that murdering innocent people works. Whether it’s the only way is debatable.
On Christmas Day, 1991, I watched with surprise as Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as the President of the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics. Thus started a ten-year odyssey in which I watched with earnest amazement at the plight of our former rivals. As soon as Boris Yeltsin seemed to have things in hand, scary fortune would seem to rear a threatening tail. Where were the nukes? Was Chernobyl okay? What was the state of the economy? Of the Communist Party? Of right-wing ultra-nationalist extremists like Vladimir Zhirinovsky? The Federation wasn’t a threat to us, per se, but it seemed to be a threat to itself, and that wasn’t good for us. This genuine concern from Americans who were paying attention was coupled with a growing appreciation for a troubled past.
The Russians were in the running for having the worst luck in history. Having started the 20th century under the most brutal dictator in Europe, the people of Russia saw their attempt to moderate the Czar’s rule in the February Revolution of 1917 backfire into what would be one of the two most brutal dictatorships in world history. After braving the initial tumult of the First World War and removing the tools of the autocratic Czar, bourgeois dissatisfaction in the result of the revolution meant there was no one to stop a second, more brutal uprising in October of the same year. The Bolsheviks didn’t just take power, they took total power over the cause. And what was the cause? Well, it kept changing. First it was the fight over hunger. Then it was the fight over the Whites. Then it was the fight over ‘foreign’ enemies. Then domestic. Every five to seven years of the history of the Soviet Union was littered with death as the survival of the nation seemed to pivot on surmised threat of disloyal party members, then army officers, then those who had made deals with the Germans, then Jews, then... yes... doctors. After Stalin, the Politburo let off the gas a little bit, but the KGB was still arresting people in the middle of the night. The Gulag Archipelago was releasing prisoners for sure, but it was still taking them in as well. Uprisings in East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia were crushed. To be a Russian and to be under Russian influence meant you led a brutal, fleeting existence in a part of the world where leaders just did not value life all that much.
Center piece to the Russian experience wasn’t so much the Revolution or the harsh memory of trying to preserve Communism when the West wanted to kill the baby in the cradle, but rather the name for the Russians gave to what the West calls The Second World War. The Great Patriotic War was just that, a war which you supported, or you were shot. There were no courts because there was no time. The enemy, as some said, was at the gates. Denouncement took time the Soviets didn’t have in their fight against the Nazis, a fight of National Survival. Some estimates say the Soviet Union lost 35 million citizens during the war. There were Jews, of course, but there were millions of Ukrainians, Russians, Byelorussians... millions of soldiers. Millions of civilians. The West did not fully comprehend this loss until creeping historians of the 1980s like David Glantz started poking the bear for sources. The resurgence of interest in The Second World War in the 1990s under Americans like Stephen Ambrose (Band of Brothers) and ultimately Steven Spielberg was joined with the monumental work of the largest battle of world history: Antony Beevor’s giant book on the Battle of Stalingrad.
If anything encapsulated the Russian experience, it was Stalingrad. Renamed from Volgograd to favor their great leader, the Nazis wanted to cut off the Volga River’s supply line from the Caspian oil fields, destroy the industrial hub north of the city that turned out tanks, and of course it had Stalin’s name. It came to represent the Russian experience. Millions died at the hands of the Germans, the crushing winter of 1942-1943, and let’s not forget the ‘barrier’ troops the Russians deployed to shoot any of their soldiers who fell back from defeat. CNN reported the Russian Federation using these troops in Ukraine on March 31st, 2023. History repeats itself.
Beevor’s Stalingrad was followed by Glantz’ book on Kursk, the largest tank battle in history, and the film “Enemy at the Gates.” Countless other interpretations and studies followed. The Russians themselves were divided on what they should release to the public. Beevor had very smartly used the Commissar Officer’s political report that went to Stalin every day, the “no bullshit” account of what was really going on. The Russians frowned at how this made their army look, misinterpreting the point of objective history. Beevor’s next book “Berlin 1945” appalled not just the West, but the Russians in its description of the largest mass rape in world history. The Russians didn’t just destroy the capitol. They gang raped it to death. The Russian Ambassador to Great Britain protested in Beevor’s presence. “The Victory is Pure,” he told Beevor, and such things, even if they were true, sullied the right of Russian dominance over the Nazis.
Russian suffering during the war was coupled with an offset of Western sacrifice. Historians generally agree the United States lost about 450,000 lives in the war against Germany and Japan. The Brits took slightly fewer military deaths but made up for the numbers in civilian casualties. This did not include the Imperial numbers. France could rival this accounting. So could Italy. As horrible as this sounds, it does not hold a candle to a conservative estimate of 35 million. All future Eastern Bloc countries took a similar hit. One third of Poland Disappeared. Estimates think something similar happened to Ukraine.
This damage, and the damage of the Cold War, was topped off by the fear in the west of the emergence of the Russian Mafia. Long suppressed by the Communists, the mafia just didn’t spring to action in the years after the founding of the Federation, they integrated with the former political hacks that lost power and position under the new regime. The owner or the largest car dealership in Russia, Logovaz, led one of the largest real estate money laundering operations in Asia. Name the industry and you have an equal measure, and where there is corruption, there are enforcers. The spread of these former criminals (or former KGB agents) all over the globe could be seen even on the silver screen. Think of Boris the Blade in Snatch, the ‘Cowboy’ mastermind in Running Scared (2006), the Russian Oligarch in The Bourne Supremacy (2006) even Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises. Most of the actors who played these corrupt and bloody characters were not Russians but Czechs, Slovaks, or other Eastern Europeans. The real Russians or Ukrainians who came to Hollywood were not about to take on such roles. These were people were first like Yul Brunner. Kirk Douglas. Later they were Mila Kunis. Milla Jovovich. Most of them were Ashkenazi Jews. The Russian immigrant as mafioso or former spy had a sinister, cunning bent to the character. It was understood these people were damaged from years under Communism and failed democracy.
Recognition of the rolling sacrifices of the Russian people for the previous century began to show itself especially in the podcast era after 2005. Several podcasters from normal average joes describing their positive experiences in the Soviet Union, to academics discussing the intricate details of political history, even journalists were found talking about czarist or Communist life among the people. Russian langauge, literature, history, culture, seemed to bloom out into the mainstream in the new century. This was coupled with Putin’s new stability, bolstered by a Ruble floating on energy exports to the EU. Though there were signs of the new boss acting like the old boss (the Kursk sinking, the killing of a journalist, the gagging of the opposition, Pussy Riot, etc.) the Federation seemed not to be the threat it once was. When pressed over the danger the Federation caused the world during the Syrian Civil War, US President Barack Obama derisively called Russia “a regional power,” no doubt infuriating Putin as he read his daily intelligence briefs.
Putin’s rise, parallel to the New Appreciation, saw a brutal invasion of Russian Georgia, strikes in Armenia, outright murder in South Ossetia, and a badly planned response to a hostage situation in a movie theatre in Moscow (re-enacted in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet). This was topped by the staged vote in Ukraine whereby Putin claimed the right to return the Crimea Oblasts, almost a quarter of the country, to the Federation. Knowing the history was important. Modern day Russia was formed on the banks of the Dnieper. Kiiv was the original duchy of the Rus. The Duchy of Moscow as an extension east formed at the bold military conquest of the Mongols. The Rus had saved Christianity, you could say, from being exterminated like communities in central Asia or amalgamated like Tang China. Ukraine was made independent from Russia under its own government under Stalin to create a Union of Socialist Republics, a new Communist Empire that on paper would be the world’s popular front against the capitalists and their nefarious plan of exploitation. In the 1950’s Khrushchev decided to redraw the Ukranian border, giving Crimea to Ukraine as a matter of convenience. It looked better on a map. No one foresaw the problems such a move would cause. No one could conceive of the Soviet Union ceasing one day to even exist. In 2014, Putin pulled off a military occupation of Crimea (after the sham vote) that was the envy of the autocratic world. Almost without organized resistance, Russia occupied what they wanted. I saw a map on CNN that showed the dominance of Russian or Ukranian language in the country. With no surprise more people spoke Russian the further east you go. I was working with a man from Kazan at the time, who admitted his stance on Crimea would be unpopular. He was for it returning to Russia. “It would be like the President giving New England to Canada, and then being upset when America wanted it back fifty years later.” I found this argument compelling, and like a lot of Americans I had to temper my hatred for what Putin was doing with what the desire of the populace was. Like a Wilsonian or Roosevelt democrat, I believed in self-determination, and I rejected the neo-con idea of conquer-and-take it diplomacy that had so far led to America’s highest profile failures. It was like Chris Patton, the last English governor of Hong Kong, complaining to the world press about how the Communists were getting rid of elections after the takeover. Hong Kong was a colony for the previous century and a half. Did the world really expect the Brits to be honest when they banged the drum of democracy? They owned a third of the planet in 1945 and two thirds of it left in the twenty years after the Victory. Russia was a similar situation, excepting that as everyone expected, Putin wanted more.
It is hard as an American to enter into the moral fray that is the Russo-Ukranian War. I voted for George W. Bush twice, the second time knowing he sent American forces to Iraq to stop the proliferation of WMDs which I knew at the time were highly unlikely to be found. Like a lot of Americans, I disregarded the paltry evidence of the WMDs and the absence of their discovery as almost irrelevant. You didn’t need WMDs to tell me or the world that Saddam was a threat. I was perfectly fine with spending the lives of our troops and couple trillion dollars of my tax dollars so long as he was removed, and Iraqis given a full-bore chance at self-governance. I did not expect them to develop 200 years of Jeffersonian Democracy overnight. I understood there would be more bloodshed. I did not expect the State Department and the Pentagon to completely fuck up a legitimately positive situation by banning the Ba’ath party and pursue an occupation under rules of engagement that just didn’t seem to be working. That wasn’t what I voted for. Bush’s second term saw even worse bloodshed, including the Second Battle of Fallujah, which by all accounts was quite possibly the worst thing to happen to Iraqis since the Middle Ages. It had the desired political effect, but the cost in human lives made it revolting. There are arguments, but Wikipedia cites sources that say about three hundred thousand Iraqi civilians died in The Second Gulf War. There are no words to convey this tragedy, so often framed in race hatred, religious hatred, technological advances, and a general willing of Americans to close their eyes at the truth. If you had told me in February of 2003 “we can free Iraq and get rid of Saddam, but three hundred thousand innocent people will die,” I would have replied with “let Saddam kill his own people. I’d rather our soldiers not do it.” It has colored our reputation all over the world. It has sullied our image in the Middle East. It has forever changed our relationship with a free and struggling Iraq, and it had made it almost impossible to point the finger at Vladimir Putin.
Out of frustration, Russia is deliberately trying to soften the levels of civilian organization in Ukraine by targeting civilians with military equipment. Apartment blocks have been hit with guided missiles in cities far from the front lines. Thousands of children have been deported to Russia. Mass civilian executions have been organized and an attempt has been made to cover them up. On September 14th, 2022, the Ukrainians discovered a mass grave in the town of Izium after Russian forces evacuated. More than 400 corpses were found. The UN, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, the International Red Cross, and the Organization for Secuity and Cooperation in Europe have all documented the organized murder of hundreds of civilians at a time all across occupied Ukraine. Within a year, the UN estimates more than eight thousand civilians were targeted and killed in the war. When the President of the United States points to the hospital airstrike in Mariupol, or the elementary school in Zhytomyr, or apartment blocks in Zaporizhzhia, I am sure Arabs around the world, especially in Palestine, nod with a smile and silence. They are sure the Russians are doing it. They did it in Syria. But who are the Americans to be displaying outrage. We have lost our bitching rights.
Despite losing our standing in the world after Iraq, most of the world moved on. Eight years under Obama, four years under Trump, we are now twenty years from the initial invasion of Iraq and most people (excepting most Arabs) have moved on because memories and empathy is usually pretty short lived – especially after elections. Russia, though, does not have that luxury. Putin is not going anywhere. He is not due for an election, and he wouldn’t lose it even if he had one. If he didn’t want to be President, he would just ask his senior boot licker Dimitri Medvedev to stand in and keep the seat warm for a while. Russia is not a democracy anymore, and since the invasion of Ukraine it has fast slipped down the slope of open dictatorship. Putin has attempted to kill opposition leaders overseas. He has jailed opposition leaders at home. He has taken control over the economy, and he has instituted the first draft in the Federation since the end of the Soviet Union. Where he wil go with this is unclear, but he cannot go far and at his age he cannot go long.
Soviet filmmaking in the 1910’s and 1920’s was with Weimar Germany the envy of the world. The agricultural development in the 1930s in Russia was nothing short of Revolutionary. Without such strong-armed methods historians aren’t sure if the Soviets could have successfully fought off the Nazis in the 40s. In the 1950’s, under the height of internal oppression, the Russian people had the highest rate of literacy in their history. The sixties saw the first human in space speak Russian at fifty times the speed of sound. The state of stasis the Soviets reached with us under Brezhnev coupled with their collective sacrifices earned from us begrudging respect. Gorbachev, their universal pariah, is a respected leader in the West. The struggle of the Federation and the former satellites to survive the breakup and chase an independent reality was viewed by a world audience with sympathy and hope. There is much to admire about the Soviet and Russian experience. From art and culture to the politics of hope, they managed to forge a century of unusual if bloody progress. Other than what is happening to the Ukranian people, the sacrifice of Russian empathy in the west is the biggest tragedy. With the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government is negating sympathy for their people. I think of Eisenstein and Gorky, Zhukov and Gorby and I think to myself: “they blew it.”