Paul Goble
Staunton, Nov. 14 – Russia’s culture ministry has banned the showing of a new film about the famine that swept through Soviet Russia in the early 1920s, almost certainly because it shows the incompetence of Moscow in dealing with it and the massive role Western countries, including the US, played in saving millions of Russian lives.
The ministry itself says it took this action only because of the complaints of numerous citizens, but it seems clear that it did objected to the film because it undercuts Putin’s claims that the West has always sought to destroy Russia (interfax.ru/russia/872361 and meduza.io/news/2022/11/14/minkultury-otozvalo-prokatnoe-udostoverenie-u-filma-o-golode-1920-h-godov-v-sssr-vedomstvo-zayavilo-chto-kartina-neumestna-dlya-pokaza).
Under Russian law, the film can still be show in universities and other venues that are not part of the country’s movie theater network; and the producers of the film, which was financed by crowd sourcing, pledge to so that and put it on YouTube. It remains to be seen whether the Russian authorities will take additional steps to block the truth about the famine in the 1920s.
No comments:
Post a Comment