History Buffs: The Death of Stalin

this episode is sponsored by skillsshare hello and welcome

history

lovers my name is nick hodges and today we will laugh at the

death

of

stalin

based on the french graphic novel of the same name this is a film about the

death

and political consequences of one of the most evil human beings in

history

, the dictator of the soviet union, joseph

stalin

, who suffered a fatal stroke on march 1, 1953. oh yeah, it also happens to be a comedy, seriously, this is one of the movies funniest things I've ever seen, and when I began my research I was surprised to discover how some of their craziest moments turned out to be true.

That's when I knew I had to turn this into an official review, so over the course of this video I'm going to give a brief history of Stalin's claim to power and reveal that this film was entirely accurate. For those of you who haven't seen it, the idea of ​​a comedy like this may seem tacky, but trust me, you should. Really give it a chance, I think it does a great job of being respectful of the era while also being able to authentically satirize it. Life is cruel, violent and depressing, but sometimes a healthy sense of humor can make a difference in the world, even fighting something like Stalin's death on March 6, 1953, the world was stunned by the news he announced. stalin's death marking the end of his 24 year reign of terror that murdered millions and transformed the soviet union into a superpower while some in the west celebrated others were more concerned about what would come next, whether things would change for the better or even possibly for the worse, you are in hell express, sir calm down, death is nothing to celebrate, no matter who it is, you seem to be the only one surprised by your death and it seems like time is finally up for the old, sorry , but if there's one death you could celebrate, it was definitely Stalin.

I know people like to use Hitler as the perfect example of true evil, but Stalin ranks pretty high. There too, so I don't think it should be overlooked and I'm going to explain this chapter exactly why Born in 1878 in the small town of Gory in Georgia, which was then part of the Russian Empire, Joseph Stalin was originally Joseph Visarianovich Georgesville at the time. Throughout his young adult life he assumed many identities, but the one he finally chose was that of Stalin, a Russian who hid his Georgian roots and translated him as a man of steel, it was a title that would undoubtedly live up to the reason of these subsequent name changes.

It was because in 1905 he had joined an underground socialist group called the Bolsheviks founded by Vladimir Lenin they promoted the principles of Marxism through propaganda causing general unrest mainly through strikes and protests. Stalin quickly rose through the ranks raising large sums of money. done through criminal means at this point in his life, Stalin was little more than a common gangster, guilty of extortion, kidnapping, piracy, arson, bank robbery, and protection operations to hide from the authorities. Stalin used aliases and frequently moved from place to place despite these precautions. Often captured and imprisoned for his crimes before eventually escaping from the beginning, Lenin considered him a reliable asset to the cause, this helped bring Stalin into the inner circle and by 1917 the Bolsheviks had taken power in Russia during the Soviet Revolution.

October and Stalin found himself on the central committee of the new communist government, but as the years passed and despite his loyal service, Stalin was passed over for many of its highest positions, the truth is that Stalin's usefulness as an enforcer already It was not necessary; Rightly so, he was seen as a violent and uneducated bully by many of his peers, none other than Leon Trotsky, whom Stalin hated with a constant passion. Stalin was especially bothered by Trotsky's close relationship with Lenin, which made him He became the second most powerful figure in the Soviet Union, this was the reality that Stalin was forced to accept over the next few years that was until 1922, when Lenin assigned Stalin the role of general secretary.

At first glance it seems like just a desk job, but Stalin quickly realized the enormous potential of it. A general secretary was simply meant to keep the books in order. and establish appointments, but this position also gave him the authority to appoint party members to administrative positions, which allowed him to eliminate his rivals and replace them with his loyal followers. He could also decide who he wanted to inform about key appointments and who he didn't. So that the majority presence on these committees would always be pushing their agenda, this political maneuver did not go unnoticed by Lenin, but he suffered a paralyzing stroke on May 25, 1922.

Fearing his imminent death, he wrote a secret will criticizing all members. leaders of the party. and recommended Joseph Stalin's dismissal as general secretary of the communist party when Lenin finally died in 1924. Stalin personally organized a large funeral in his honor by leading the procession. Stalin was seen by the people as an obvious choice for his successor, one of the reasons why many who mattered were not. He did not support Lenin's favorite protégé, Leon Trotsky, because Trotsky was deliberately given the wrong funeral date for the next three years. Stalin's power base continued to grow and in 1927, Stalin was able to expel Trotsky from the party, forcing him to flee to Mexico.

In exile until his assassination in 1940 at the hands of a Soviet assassin, by 1929 Stalin had overthrown all his political rivals, making him the de facto leader while retaining the title of general secretary and focused his attention on transforming the Soviet Union into a power. industrial. The reason was because the USSR had fallen behind many of the Western powers and most of its people were still working the land as peasants and to solve this problem, Stalin enacted three aggressive five-year plans to increase his nation's productivity in the shortest possible time. The agricultural sector was the first to be radically reformed through collective farming.

All the worldly and most successful peasants were stripped of their land and Stalin labeled them kulaks. Five million of them were exiled to forced labor camps or executed by the local secret police. The remaining peasants were forced to work on huge state farms where the government seized most of their crops and livestock and sent them to big cities to feed factory workers or sold them abroad. This collectivization was expected to increase food production, but instead it did exactly the opposite throughout the Soviet Union, millions of agricultural workers suffered extreme deprivation and consequently died of hunger and disease.

Anyone found stealing food faced jail or a firing squad, forcing some to resort to cannibalism. It is not known how many died in this remembered genocide. today like the holodomor but it is believed to be up to 10 million family news was suppressed in the cities but not even factory workers were safe from Stalin's cruelty in an effort to increase productivity in iron, steel steel, oil, coal and more workers received extremely high quotas, any worker who continued to fail to meet them or made mistakes was also exiled to a labor camp or shot. Now these labor camps also known as gulags provided the communist government with an endless supply of slave labor, from criminals to political prisoners, men, women and in some cases, even children were forced to work at gunpoint in the dire conditions, whether cutting down trees for wood or mining coal.

All of this was done through grueling 14-hour work days and little protection from the elements in which the worst gulags were found. In Siberia or the Arctic Circle, where prisoners were exposed to sub-zero temperatures during the winter, the most notorious and feared gulag was Kalima according to Ann Applebaum in a groundbreaking book Gulag The name Kalimar deserves to be as well known as the name Auschwitz rations Food supplies were strictly controlled and only given to the most productive workers. There was no consideration for those who couldn't keep up as they could always be replaced. This resulted in a million people dying from hunger, disease, or even just exhaustion.

Despite his barbaric methods, Stalin's plans to modernize the Soviet Union were beginning to work. His achievements were often exaggerated by propaganda. Joseph Stalin was always presented as an infallible leader. His portraits were hung in every factory and in every home. In schools. Children were taught that their loyalty was to Stalin first and their family second. This indoctrination was mercilessly enforced by Stalin's secret police of the NKBD and everyone was expected to follow this cult of Stalin and be unwavering in their love and support for Stalin. their great leader or else they would suffer the consequences. An example of this can be seen in one of Stalin's speeches after he had finished, the entire rumor mill erupted into thunderous applause, but as the minutes passed, the applause showed no signs of stopping as no one dared to being the first in 1934.

Stalin further strengthened his hold on power through an even worse act of political repression: it was triggered by the death of Sergey Kirov's loyal friend and colleague Stalin, although this is not confirmed, it is widely believed that Stalin was disturbed by Kirov's growing popularity and ordered his assassination and to use Kirov's death as a pretext to find his alleged murderers in what would become Known as the Great Purge, Stalin ordered the eradication of anyone who was considered a threat. , first targeted other party members, but soon swept through all branches of the government, many high-ranking generals and Soviet army officers were tortured into giving false confessions and then executed. those educated as writers, artists, doctors and scientists, attention eventually turned to the lower classes as well, regardless of their innocence and often at random, it reached a point where mass murders were committed just to fulfill with quotas on Stalin's lists.

It is estimated that up to one million people were killed or sent to gulags. Its consequences paralyzed the Soviet Union with fear and paranoia crushing any preconceived notions of resistance, but as much as these crackdowns secured Stalin's position, they would have disastrous consequences for him later on June 22, 1941. Nazi Germany and their axis allies invaded the soviet union taking its armed forces completely by surprise at first joseph stalin couldn't believe it in august 1939 he and hitler had signed the soviet nazi pact with both invading poland later in september but it was only made Germany responsible for this by having declared war on them by France and Great Britain, in addition to dividing Poland together, the pact was intended to guarantee peace for at least 10 years and Stalin was convinced that Hitler would not be so reckless as to open a second front, not without first taking care of the British, so when news of the attack broke, Stalin was so shocked that he locked himself away for weeks and refused to speak to anyone during that time, the red army and navy were fighting a battle loss that the great purge had eliminated.

Many of his best positions and lack of effective leadership and experience helped pave the way for the Axis' advancement. Eventually, Stalin emerged from his depression and in the early days of the fighting took personal control of his armored forces despite having little battle experience and even less. strategic and working knowledge of the personnel, apart from the gigantic casualties that the red army suffered, there was a serious problem with poorly led troops withdrawing and deserting in large numbers to try to fix this. Stalin issued the infamous order 227 to restore discipline and order in the The only way he knew was to order all officers and men not to take even a step back.

Disgraced soldiers and labor camp prisoners were recruited into what were known as penal battalions and centered on the most dangerous part of the line in large numbers, they were thrown against the German defenses. Their sinister purpose was to act as human shields and protect the more experienced and valuable soldiers who followed them and if an assault failed, Order 227 required units at the rear of the line to shoot all who retreated, Stalin thought. That choice between German bullets and Soviet bullets In reality, this cruel tactic did nothing but waste valuable manpower with hundreds of thousands of people dying under his command month after month.

Stalin's generals finally convinced him to rescind order 227 and he resigned as commanderarguing that fighting and winning the war is best left to him and he should instead focus on keeping factories running and being the geostrategic chess player after years of exceptionally bloody fighting that was markedly ruthless. The tide finally turned for the Soviet Union. The red army and navy had fully recovered from the crisis. The first defeats and the Soviet factories were better equipped, they worked around the clock to provide tanks, planes, cannons and ammunition. Stalin's aggressive efforts at industrialization had become the key to winning the war.

The Soviet Union could now outproduce Germany through a war of attrition. Outnumbered and outgunned. the German Vermont and as Axis allies withdrew from Soviet soil from Eastern Europe until the Red Army was at the gates of Berlin only after the capital was left in complete ruins the Germans finally surrendered the Soviet Union had emerged victorious in his great patriotic war but the cost was much greater than that of all other allied nations combined page 4 with more than 25 million Soviet lives this figure did not go unnoticed by Stalin in July 1945 President Harry Truman Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin attended the Potsdam conference to discuss the future of post-war Europe.

The allies expressed their desire to the communist leader to withdraw his troops from the liberated countries of Eastern Europe and return their people to their freedom, but Stalin had no interest in doing so and instead preferred to absorb these countries and turn them into communist satellite states to create a buffer zone between the west and the east and ensured that the Soviet Union would never again be invaded so easily when things came to an end the Allies did not have the courage to be caught in yet another war and reluctantly abandoned 90 million people under Soviet occupation to their fate when Stalin returned to Moscow.

He wasted no time in reasserting his authority. Nearly three million former Soviet prisoners of war had survived the horrific conditions of Nazi and Axis camps only to face interrogations at home on charges of treason after half were convicted and sent to the gulags even in their country. old country Stalin's age softened over time. His reign of terror continued to hold the Soviet people hostage for another eight years in his endless quest to find traitors, but under Stalin's vision, the Soviet Union had been transformed into a superpower and his communist ideology will remain in force. The center stage of world politics for the next half century when the film begins is 1953 and the people of the Soviet Union have endured decades of oppression by Stalin's secret police, who monitored and observed what everyone said or did to survive a strict code.

Silence followed as he never knew who you could trust or who could turn you in, yet this did not guarantee your safety as many innocent people still ended up on Stalin's lists. The terrifying truth was that no one was safe and that's exactly what they were. Stanan liked him, even in his seventies, no one would dare challenge his grip on power or even think of challenging him, but in an ironic twist of fate they would all come back to bite him in the ass on March 1, 1953, General Secretary He went alone in his room and instructed his staff not to disturb him shortly after, the dictator suffered a severe stroke and collapsed violently and what happened next is absolutely true.

Should we investigate? Should I keep my mouth shut before they kill both of us despite hearing the suspicious noise of the guards? They were too scared to control the riot, leaving their great communist leader lining a pathetic puddle of urine for an entire day, when his staff finally gathered the courage, found Stalin unconscious, and debated what to do instead of calling a doctor. call the politburo the executive committee of the communist party with the general secretary incapacitated it was up to them to take charge in his absence now the reason a doctor was not called first for help is thanks to another of stalin's brilliant policies we should We should get a doctor, yes, yes, if only we hadn't left all those highly competent doctors in the trees just a year earlier, in 1952, Stalin had begun planning another purge that would specifically target the Jews, known as the Plot. of the doctor of whom Jewish doctors were accused.

Plotting to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders ostracized by an aggressive propaganda campaign, hundreds of Moscow doctors lost their jobs and were detained, tortured, and awaiting exile in a new series of gulags that Stalin was planning to build just for them. and seeing how the doctors conspired was something that Stalin firmly believed, this of course presented a dilemma for the committee, if they got the help of a highly qualified doctor, as many of the Jewish doctors were, and Stalin recovered. After much delay, a group of doctors finally met, but there was little they could do. The dictator had suffered a brain hemorrhage and died a few days later, on March 5, 1953.

For the first time in decades, the Polar Office found itself without Stalin's guidance. A reality that made some party members nervous. While others saw an opportunity in the executive committee, three would emerge in the power struggle that followed Stalin's death. The first was deputy general secretary Georgie Malenkov, and his position within the party made him next in line for succession, a role he did not play. I didn't hesitate to move on, but I was also aware that holding him was no guarantee that he was irreplaceable, how could we possibly be okay? Let me think about the people, as acting secretary general, I must step forward, I must, I must, I must take his place while he is on the ground but you just said that he is irreplaceable Malinkov knew that his claim meant very little without the support of the other party members unless he had some serious muscle behind him the second person was former nkvd chief lavrenti beria who had been largely responsible for murdering millions in Stalin's purges and oversaw many of the names of that dreaded list, shoot him before he does, but make sure he sees it in this one, um, kill him, take him to his church, throw him in the pulpit, I'll leave the Rest, Berrier was a total psychopath and enjoyed the power that came with his previous role as Stalin's personal executioner, who once referred to Barrera as my Himmler.

Beria also sadistically enjoys beating and raping hundreds of women and girls. This reputation made him the second. The most feared man in the Soviet Union and the most hated but no longer under Stalin's protection. The crimes he had committed in his name had become a burden and if he wanted to survive, Beria had to immediately take charge of this power vacuum and ally himself. himself with Malinkov and finally the third person was the head of the Moscow party, Nikita Khrushchev, the last man who was suspected of making a power move until now had never been particularly ambitious or seen as anything special, some members of the party They thought the only reason Khrushchev was even part of the inner circle was simply because Stalin thought he was funny, he always makes me laugh despite appearing like the party clown.

Khrushchev treated every joke he told with absolute seriousness and, as we see in the film, he would ask his wife at the end of the day to write down all the jokes he could remember telling Stalin I made a joke about farmers stagnant love uh Yes, he made a joke about the navy no less, no more jokes about the navy. Khrushchev's joking behavior had always been a strategic move and as long as he kept his head down and remained pro-Stalin, then he had a good chance of surviving, but Without Stalin that was no longer a guarantee, especially if his rival barrier assumed power through the weak Malinkov while the three men plotted. and they planned that there was another matter they had to deal with with Stalin's children, specifically Svetlana and Vasily, from Stalin's second marriage, getting their support would be paramount to winning over the public, it was just a matter of who could get to them first, Svetlana It's here, I am. here i am by lana svetlana the races are on lana they are trying to isolate you it is obvious of all stalin's children his favorite was his only daughter svetlana she was the only thing in his life that showed an ounce of affection towards and despite being a strict father , his reasons for being so controlling are probably due to Svetlana's mother, Nadia, who died in 1932.

What happened was that Nadia found out about the famine that was ravaging Ukraine and southern Russia and on November 8, 1932. she confronted Stalin at a dinner and publicly accused him of betraying the Soviet people in response, he mocked and humiliated her by hitting her with his cigarette butts in a sign of devastation. Nadia left the banquet furious, locked herself in her room and shot herself in the head. She would inherit her mother's kind character and as a result the Soviet people loved her very much, unlike her brother Vasili, he was considered a great shame to the Stalin family, he was a spoiled selfish drunk who beat his wife and ruined everyone. his father's works. did he ever get bacilly also he was unpredictable with his behavior and acted violently out there to find out what they are doing to my father they are murderous jackals they kill him basically for being stupid his father is dead they are dividing the loot leave your brain alone how old are you ?

I'm old You're not old You're not even a person You're a testicle This is your heartbeat So, with Stala now dead, the first thing the committee did was organize a state funeral like Lenin's. Stalin's body was to be embalmed for display in the columned hall for the next three days before his coffin was carried to its final resting place in Lenin's mausoleum. While all this was going on, the barrier wasted no time in gathering power, first, Berry crafted a deal with Malinkov to reappoint him head of the MBD, which he then merged with the MGB, which would later be replaced by the KGB in 1954, Regardless, this gave him power over the Soviet Union's secret police, which he restaffed with his followers shortly after his move. two divisions of the mbd in Moscow and replaced the red army soldiers standing guard, this alarmed the executive committee, who interpreted it as the planning stages of a possible coup d'état.

It also didn't help when Beria began proposing some rather controversial reforms, such as stopping mass arrests and reducing long prison sentences and even the release of a million political prisoners, this proposal was adopted even though Barrera was responsible for the majority of these victims. It seemed that this kind act was only so that Barrera could distance himself from Stalin's regime and the crimes he committed in its name. The politburo became even more suspicious after an uprising occurred in East Germany in June 1953. It was when Beria proposed the idea of ​​reuniting East and West Germany in exchange for American compensation in Khrushchev's eyes, even to suggest that This idea was anti-communist and he felt that unless something was done.

Soon everyone was in danger from this, he began to hatch a plot to succeed, he knew he had to get help from the army, running a great risk. Khrushchev relied on his old friend, Marshal Zhukov, a highly decorated war hero whose great name would provide him with the legitimacy he desperately needed. I'm going to have to report this conversation by threatening to harm or obstruct any member of the Presidium in the process of looking you in the face. He's serious. the red army in germany i think i can handle a lump of meat in a vest over time khrushchev gathered the support of all party members he was even able to recruit barry malenkov's ally on june 26, 1953 the politburo met for a meeting unknown to beria zhukov and a group of armed men were waiting nearby to arrest him.

Khrushchev then proposed a motion for Barreras to dismiss the party as anti-communist and Western collaborator. Beria was stunned by the accusation and very quickly things escalated before votes could be taken. Malinkov panicked and frantically rang the bell hidden under his desk at Zhukov's signal and his men burst into the room and arrested Barrera a few months later he was brought before a special court without representation or the right to appeal he was charged and sentenced. to death for treason so many times before beria had been on the other side and condemned countless innocents to death now that the tables are turned the barrierHe fell to his knees crying and begging for his life.

There would be no ceremony for Stalin's Himmler. His remains were cremated and buried in the woods near Moscow. After having eliminated his greatest rival, Khrushchev was left virtually unchallenged and in a few years he overthrew Malenkov and demoted the other leaders of the party and in 1956 Khrushchev emerged as the new leader of the Soviet Union and one of his first acts as leader was to publicly condemn Stalin in what would become known as the secret speech of February 25, 1956. , Khrushchev appeared before the 20th congress of the communist party and officially revealed the full scale of Stalin's crimes, information on how many died in his The purges had been suppressed for decades leaving only rumors and speculation, but no one imagined that it could ever be so high that tens of millions would have perished at the hands of the same man everyone had been conditioned to revere even after one speech.

Khrushchev knew that the path to total de-Stalinization was an arduous task the man of steel had cast a long shadow during his life some are still under his influence to this day the main reason is that the ussr did not collapse in flames like the The third reich simply vanished, so now that I've covered the historical background to Stalin's death, let's find out how accurate it really is. The main thing you'll notice is that while most of the film is based on the true story, a lot of creative liberties are also taken. With the timeline, sometimes real events that were months or even years apart seem to take place in just a few days.

I'll talk more about this a little later, but for now here are the most interesting things I found in my research. We get rid of the concept we see at the beginning, although this is based on a real event, it did not occur on the same night of Stalin's stroke in 1953, but back in 1944, the story goes that Stalin was listening to the radio and heard a concert playing Mozart's 23rd piano concerto and enjoyed it so much that he called radio Moscow to send him a recorded copy the only problem was that there was a live broadcast and nothing had been recorded leaving everyone in the studio absolutely terrified because if you value The last thing you want to do in your life is disappoint Stalin, so the director decided that the only thing he could do was play the entire concert, record it and just pray that Stalin didn't notice, but that meant more than just re-cutting it. the original orchestra for the acoustics to sound the same you would also need an audience of similar size, okay, no one leaves, don't believe it, close the doors, close those doors, if you wouldn't mind taking your seat again, please, it would be fantastic, have a seat, have a seat.

Take a seat, don't worry, no one is going to die, I promise you that you will sit down, don't challenge me, sit down despite what you see here. Stalin's real request did not occur right after the performance, but much later, when everyone had already gone home and the entire orchestra had to be woken up in the middle of the night and rushed back to the studio to replace the audience, they brought out at random civilians on the street and told them to sit down, however, this was not the only problem the director faced. for example, in the movie we see that the director gets so scared that he faints and passes out, forcing the studio to find a second replacement as soon as possible, which is true, but not exactly what really happened was that the first director was too scared. to act, so they had to find another one, the second couldn't act either because he was too drunk, leaving the third and last director, who worked well and, as you see here, they came to his house in the middle of the night and they brought to the studio still in pajamas the concert was successfully recorded and sent to stalin without him realizing i would also like to point out that the pianist maria eudina is based on a real person and it was specifically her solo that caught the dictator's attention called the attention and it moved him so much that he had to listen to it again, although it is true that Maria really hated Stalin.

I criticized him publicly. There are some discrepancies with her character, for example, she did not have to be bribed. for the conductor to play again for twenty thousand rubles just because that would be an idiotic move and would selfishly endanger the lives of other musicians the real story was that the 20,000 rubles were actually a gift that Stalin gave him when he received the record along with a personal letter singing her praises and instead of showing gratitude, Maria decided to stick to her principles and responded with the most shocking letter we see to Stalin in the movie, read Joseph Stalin, you have betrayed our nation and destroyed its people, I pray for your end and ask the Lord to forgive you tyrant now this is not exactly what Maria wrote but it is pretty close the actual letter was not as provocative with its language but it had the same connotations this is what Maria really said I thank you for your help I will pray for you day and night and I will ask the Lord to forgive your great sins before the people and the country the Lord is merciful and will forgive you I gave the money to the church I attend although this is more docile than what I We see in the movie, it still took a lot of guts to say that it would certainly be more than enough to have a chance in the movie.

Stalin doesn't get that chance because he immediately collapses from a stroke, but the real Stalin had plenty of time to react to this challenge at first, he read the letter aloud to his inner circle, who were more than willing to arrest this pianist, but what happened was that Stalin decided to put the letter aside and the issue was simply dropped. The thing was that Maria Eudina was Stalin's favorite pianist and he simply couldn't bring himself to kill her and it is said that years later Maria's concert was heard on Stalin's record player while she lay dying.

Next, let's talk about the dinner scene with Stalin. inner circle and I am pleased to say that this is absolutely true: the party elite met regularly at Stalin's dacha estate in the early hours of the morning to discuss politics and state affairs, but even after they finished, Stalin encouraged to stay. and they continued drinking, which of course they always did because you never said no to Stalin and they were completely criticized for the dictator's amusement, then Stalin would end the day by seating everyone together in the cinema at his house and, as we see here, the man was a big movie buff, his favorites were John Ford westerns, but he also loves gangster movies and no matter how drunk or exhausted his companions were, they wouldn't leave until the movie was over, another interesting scene I thought I'd mention is when we are introduced to Vasily Stalin.

He is shown looking drunk and quite pathetic coaching what appears to be an amateur ice hockey team and the reason given is quite amusing. When we play against Hungary, we are allowed to use weapons. Overall, these are the best. i was able to find out from the plane crash what plane crash there was never a plane crash there was a plane crash soviet planes don't crash and stalin's son doesn't get up yes he certainly did this little story is also pretty accurate vasily stalin was president of the The Soviet sports club BVS of Moscow, which represented the Soviet air force, on July 7, 1950, a plane carrying its ice hockey team crashed in a severe snow storm and, except for three players who were not On board, everyone else died terrified of how Stalin would react. everything replaced the entire team and she prayed that his father wouldn't notice and strangely enough, she never did.

The only difference here is that the plane crash in the movie seems to have happened recently, while the real one was only a few years earlier. From there we have former Vichy Foreign Minister Slough Molotov, despite being a loyal friend and supporter of Stalin. We are told that years before the dictator arrested Paulina, Molotov's wife, on false charges of treason, this is also quite accurate and happened in 1949, just like her husband Paulina was also a politician and became friends with the mayor of gold who arrived in Moscow in November 1948 as the first Israeli envoy to the USSR as Paulina was Jewish she herself took her role very seriously and for that reason alone Stalin distrusted Paulina even so she was such a fanatical communist that her first question upon leaving the gulag was what Stalin was like and when they told her that he had died only a few days before she fainted and she and her husband remained fervent communists until their last days, so anyway one of the few things that What Stalin had in common with his former enemy, Adolf Hitler, was his abiding hatred of Jews and no matter how many years Paulina had dedicated to the Communist Party, her Israeli affiliation had her first marriage at the hands of Crimean Soviet Jews. it was enough to convince stalin of an elaborate zionist conspiracy sentence for exile paulina would spend the next five years without contact with her husband molotov was devastated of course but there was little he could do about it to defend paulina or put pressure on stalin ran the risk. risk of certain death so she let go of the bush and continued serving at the party there is a scene where Molotov loudly denounces her as a traitor and criminal without knowing that she is in the next room he immediately leaves the act when they meet again at least it seems like an act because after on molotov he still continues to criticize polina behind her back, giving the impression that he is so blinded by his loyalty to the party that he cannot accept his wife's innocence, which is simply not true, the real molotov never He stopped loving his wife and neither did he. forgetting about her during Paulina's exile, he regularly asked Barrier for any news about her well-being, and it may not have been Barry's idea to free Paulina in the first place either, according to journalist Douglas France on March 9, the day of death of stalin funeral it happened to be Molotov's birthday when Malakoff and Khrushchev wished him a happy birthday they asked him if there was anything he would like to which Molotov coldly replied give me back Paulina and a week later she was returned and the last things I will do that we are covering have to to do with lavrenti's barrier, since some of the film's biggest inaccuracies seem to revolve around him, i should first point out that by 1953 he was no longer head of stalin's secret police (the nkvd he had been for many years) , but resigned just before the The ministry was dissolved in 1946 and became the Ministry of the Interior.

MBD Beria seemed to have a new role as vice president and some had a say in national security, but nothing compared to what he used to do. That's why, when Stalin died, one of the first things he wanted to do. was to bring that back, I think the reason it's never mentioned in the movie is because they wanted to condense a lot of complex history to keep the plot moving. The same goes for the timeline of the film, we get the impression that everything happens between Stalin's death. up to Berry's execution, everything happened in a short period of time rather than months apart, so in order to set the pace, a lot of creative liberties are taken.

Some of them are harmless, like when Berry steals Stalin's personal files. There's no record of him doing this, but it's perfectly plausible, unlike the other things we see him do like the part where Barrera orders his secret police to arrest all of Stalin's staff and clean everything out of his dacha. , apparently to get rid of the evidence he witnesses and is taken to such an extreme that even agents who do so are executed by other agents. Now I'm not saying that things like this have never happened, but I haven't been able to find any evidence of this specifically and to be honest, I'm a little confused as to what the point of all this is.

Could it not be to cover up Stalin's death because it was publicly announced the next day? If it was just to steal things, I'm also not convinced why Barrera would take such an unnecessary risk when he arguably had bigger fish to fry. That was because the real barrier made no secret of his hatred for Stalin when he died and was not worried about the consequences, which is certainly true and we get a glimpse of this in the film when we see the barrier lean over the dictator's bed. . when everyone is gone and whispering in his ear to have a nice long sleepover, I'll take it from here, but you'll be surprised to find out that the real barrier wasn't so subtle while Stalin was unconscious, Beria started taunting him in front of all and only stopped when Stalin briefly regained consciousness, causing Barrera to fall to his knees and kiss his hands asking for forgiveness, but apparently when Stalin fainted again, Barrera stood up, spat and argued if this is true, then shows with what confidence Barrera believed.

That Stalin would die and it could explain why he ransacked the dacha again in the film. I am not convinced that this istrue and I couldn't find any evidence, but if you guys can, I'd love to read your comments on this. I should also point out that in recent years some people believe that Stalin may have been poisoned by Barrera. The theory goes that Berry had been informed that Stalin was secretly planning to kill him so he acted first and although this conspiracy theory doesn't appear on Stalin's death I thought you might find it interesting anyway so what else could be said over the barrier?

How about the part where he orders the NKVD to close all trains to Moscow to prevent Soviet citizens from attending the funeral, prompting Khrushchev to counter these orders and allow thousands of mourners to enter the city without realizing it? After this, the NKVD opens fire on the crowd and kills 1,500 civilians, causing serious damage to Berry's popularity. The massacre you see here never happened. The only thing certain is that it was inspired by a tragic accident that occurred on March 8, 1953, crowds of mourners were waiting outside the mausoleum to see Stalin and the Red Square was so crowded that people were struggling to breathe.

The panic soon followed with hundreds of deaths crushed in the chaos, so basically Beria had nothing to do with this terrible accident, but it is rewritten so that he is to blame from a historical perspective. This is wrong, but from a story point of view I understand it, although Barrera did not massacre civilians in this circumstance and was not the head of the NKVD as shown. at the beginning of the film, he did all of these things and more in the past to understand how much of a monstrous barrier the audience needs to see for themselves, and while the examples given may be inaccurate, they are at least historically authentic to this last chapter.

I am going to talk about how Stalin's death was received by the general public and also about the warning message from him. It's first and foremost a comedy, of course, and yet, despite its dark subject matter, it draws you in completely. There are so many moments where I not only burst out laughing, but I was struck by how historically authentic the jokes were. My absolute favorite part is at the funeral, where all the main characters stand in front of Stalin's coffin, where they try to maintain a proper funeral. tag but they refuse to stop complaining to each other ask mikita why the hell he invited the bishops no I already explained my time tell him it doesn't matter trade no just trade with me I said no we can make It seems like part of the ceremony, what are you doing?

You can see that the writing and performances complement each other perfectly and this may sound strange but I love the fact that no one tries to rush the accent, most actors can't pull it off convincingly, not even some of the best ones tend to. to exaggerate too much, like I know a lot of you love Gary Oldman's Russian accent in Call of Duty World of War, but even he'll admit it's pretty dumb, shoot him, the fact that almost everyone keeps the native accent in It actually makes sense to me. After all, the Soviet Union was a huge landmass with hundreds of unique regional accents, so depicting them with a variety of English-speaking accents is quite appropriate.

I mean, for example, I thought it was funny that Joseph Stalin was portrayed as a cockney. It's quite appropriate given that he spoke Russian with a thick Georgian accent, taking you so long to walk here and now delivering comedy is one thing, but the film also needed to reveal precisely how repressive life was under communism and, in that measure, he achieved it. The fact that Stalin's death ended up being banned in Russia. The Stalin issue still appears to be a controversial topic and has left some Russians feeling divided. An example of this could be seen when two Russian journalists discussed Stalin's death.

First they started talking about the movie, but then the topic changed to whether the victory in the Second World War should be attributed to Stalin or the Soviet people and see for yourself what that conversation went like abroad. Now it is curious to know that the Kremlin used this small fragment to justify the president's press ban. Secretary Dmitry Peskov said and I quote: if these dinosaurs can't control their emotions, then what can be said about everyone else? This idea that Russians cannot bear to see Stalin's death was shared by the Ministry of Culture, who banned it as they felt it was an insulting mockery of the Soviet past, but that did not appear to be the case for at least one cinema in Moscow. who defied the ban and screened the film to a full audience, most of whom didn't seem to care.

You know what's really nice to hear, I mean I hope this reassures the Russian government that they just overreacted and there's nothing to worry about. A Moscow cinema has been raided by police after it screened the newly released British film, The Death of Stalin. the cinema went ahead despite Thinking about it, the film is banned in Russia, it doesn't matter, I would just like to thank a sponsor for today's video. Skillshare Skillshare is an online learning platform with thousands of classes, from how to run a business, photography, music production, interior design and much more to the curtains in the front comrade want to hurry no bruce it's good that it's pucker not pucker roosh could you stop with this?

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That sums it up. My name is Nick Hodges and thanks for watching history buffs and remember if. you like the show help the channel grow if you want to support history buffs you can now add patreon and as always let me know in the comments section what you think about Stalin's death and of course what historical movie should i review. In the meantime, check out the history buffs' Twitter and Facebook pages for new updates until then. See you next time.