Russia wants to make a film to rehabilitate Stalin
Director and former State Duma deputy Vladimir Bortko has announced the start of production on a film about Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. According to the director, he has been working on the screenplay for 15 years and now aims to portray the leader as “the most slandered figure of the 20th century.”
He spoke about this in a comment to TASS, The Moscow Times reports.
Bortko cites as the film’s main political goal the refutation of the theses of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, at which Nikita Khrushchev denounced the cult of Stalin’s personality and mass repressions. The director claims he wants to portray the dictator as he “really was,” focusing on the building of the state, the creation of the atomic bomb, and the inception of the space program. At the same time, Bortko has advocated for renaming Volgograd to Stalingrad, which fits into the general trend of rehabilitating Stalinism in modern Russia.
The project is effectively aimed at romanticizing the authoritarian past and justifying the actions of the Soviet leadership of that period. Critics note that such initiatives are part of a propaganda campaign to rewrite history and lay the groundwork for strengthening repressive mechanisms within the country. The disregard for the millions of victims of the Gulag and the Holodomor in such “artistic” projects underscores the ideological orientation of the upcoming film.
The film is expected to receive state support, as its narratives align with the Kremlin’s current political course. Work on the film continues amid the general isolation of Russian cinema from the global market.
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The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, who is under sanctions, stated that in 1943, “an entirely new era of Orthodoxy” began. He called Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and his successor Vladimir Putin “a miracle of God.”
