It's propaganda but it's useful because when it was shown, in 1978, during the Cold War, nobody in the West was paying much attention to the Great Patriotic War that had been waged in the Soviet Union. Even today's high school kids are all confused about it. A poll a few years ago showed that a substantial number thought that we and the Germans had fought the Soviet Union. I swear.
Americans and the rest of the world really deserves to know more about the war in Russia than they do. Russia suffered the most in terms of human casualties in the Second World War. More than 27 million Russians, about 14% of the country's population, died fighting for their motherland. Britain lost 0.6% of its population. U.S. casualties were even lower - about 0.3% of its population. The Soviet war dead account for 40 per cent of all those killed in the War. In all, 8,66,800 Red Army officers and soldiers were killed in action. (The film doesn't tell us that Stalin was responsible for the deaths of more Soviet officers than Hitler was.)
A recent opinion poll showed that 60% of the Russian people attributed the victory to Stalin's military genius. Those Russian people are wrong about that. Stalin was an utterly ruthless dictator but an ignoramus about the military. I can't run through the entire list of his blunders but he purged the military of its best officers in 1937 and treated the partisan leaders and other popular military figures as rivals after the war. When the fêtes died down and the decorations had been handed around, they wound up in the salt mines or disappeared altogether.
That's neither here nor there. The documentary doesn't mention Stalin very often. He'd been dead for more than twenty years and was out of favor in 1978. We see more of Brezhnev and a little bit of Khrushchev. Burt Lancaster, as the host, stands at famous Russian landmarks and makes laudatory comments. He's also the narrator.
The script, for my taste, is too general in its coverage of the war. Lancaster will tell us, for instance, that the Russians blocked the Nazi's escape routes (we watch Russian bombers flying and big explosions) but there is no map, so we don't know what escape routes are being blocked, or where they are. The script also overstates things. I get indignant when I'm watching a heartbreaking scene -- an old lady wailing over some dead bodies, or the decaying corpses of children -- and the narration tells me, "This is a heartbreaking scene of an old lady wailing over some dead bodies...."
It's always interesting to see how propaganda movies handle information that would be discordant with the message being purveyed. In Frank Capra's wartime series, "Why We Fight," the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact (in which the two nations agreed not to fight one another while Hitler was attacking the West, though both cooperated in carving up Poland) is described something like this: "When the Nazis invaded Poland they ran into the Russians and said, 'We don't want to start any business with these tough guys.'" That's misleading at best, and an outright lie at worst. In "The Unknown War," however, it's not even mentioned. Needless to say, there was never any Katyn Forest Massacre in which 25,000 Poles were exterminated by the NKVD -- at least not until Gorbachev admitted it in 1989. I only mention this because propaganda is an interesting subject to someone like me, who minored in social psychology. "Why We Fight" lied. "The Unknown War" simply deletes in from history, like the government in Orwell's "1984."
I'm getting all riled up and I don't want to run out of space. The music is truly awful, though there are some listenable excerpts from folk songs and Shostakovitch. Most of the score, evidently, and a lovey theme song was written by the composer and poet Rod McKuen. Perhaps his best-known poem is "Listen to the Warm." Does any more need to be said? Much of the footage will be unfamiliar. Some of it is pretty raw. A Soviet soldier steps on a mine and is blown to bit while the camera rolls. Decaying corpses, like melting mannequins, abound.
Well, I've pretty much thrown slop all over this series. Yet I'm extremely glad that it was made. Behind all the lousy music and the repetitive scenes of old ladies crying and happy peasant dancing, there lies the stark fact that in 1978 the USSR was a bitter enemy and no one was giving them much credit for having fought against Hitler and the Japanese in World War II. And too many of us didn't know -- and still don't -- that Russia suffered terrible losses. We knew less in 1978 than we do now. That may or may not be saying much.
Some extremely valuable and dispassionate points about the film are made by Willard Sunderland, an expert on Russian affairs.
Americans and the rest of the world really deserves to know more about the war in Russia than they do. Russia suffered the most in terms of human casualties in the Second World War. More than 27 million Russians, about 14% of the country's population, died fighting for their motherland. Britain lost 0.6% of its population. U.S. casualties were even lower - about 0.3% of its population. The Soviet war dead account for 40 per cent of all those killed in the War. In all, 8,66,800 Red Army officers and soldiers were killed in action. (The film doesn't tell us that Stalin was responsible for the deaths of more Soviet officers than Hitler was.)
A recent opinion poll showed that 60% of the Russian people attributed the victory to Stalin's military genius. Those Russian people are wrong about that. Stalin was an utterly ruthless dictator but an ignoramus about the military. I can't run through the entire list of his blunders but he purged the military of its best officers in 1937 and treated the partisan leaders and other popular military figures as rivals after the war. When the fêtes died down and the decorations had been handed around, they wound up in the salt mines or disappeared altogether.
That's neither here nor there. The documentary doesn't mention Stalin very often. He'd been dead for more than twenty years and was out of favor in 1978. We see more of Brezhnev and a little bit of Khrushchev. Burt Lancaster, as the host, stands at famous Russian landmarks and makes laudatory comments. He's also the narrator.
The script, for my taste, is too general in its coverage of the war. Lancaster will tell us, for instance, that the Russians blocked the Nazi's escape routes (we watch Russian bombers flying and big explosions) but there is no map, so we don't know what escape routes are being blocked, or where they are. The script also overstates things. I get indignant when I'm watching a heartbreaking scene -- an old lady wailing over some dead bodies, or the decaying corpses of children -- and the narration tells me, "This is a heartbreaking scene of an old lady wailing over some dead bodies...."
It's always interesting to see how propaganda movies handle information that would be discordant with the message being purveyed. In Frank Capra's wartime series, "Why We Fight," the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact (in which the two nations agreed not to fight one another while Hitler was attacking the West, though both cooperated in carving up Poland) is described something like this: "When the Nazis invaded Poland they ran into the Russians and said, 'We don't want to start any business with these tough guys.'" That's misleading at best, and an outright lie at worst. In "The Unknown War," however, it's not even mentioned. Needless to say, there was never any Katyn Forest Massacre in which 25,000 Poles were exterminated by the NKVD -- at least not until Gorbachev admitted it in 1989. I only mention this because propaganda is an interesting subject to someone like me, who minored in social psychology. "Why We Fight" lied. "The Unknown War" simply deletes in from history, like the government in Orwell's "1984."
I'm getting all riled up and I don't want to run out of space. The music is truly awful, though there are some listenable excerpts from folk songs and Shostakovitch. Most of the score, evidently, and a lovey theme song was written by the composer and poet Rod McKuen. Perhaps his best-known poem is "Listen to the Warm." Does any more need to be said? Much of the footage will be unfamiliar. Some of it is pretty raw. A Soviet soldier steps on a mine and is blown to bit while the camera rolls. Decaying corpses, like melting mannequins, abound.
Well, I've pretty much thrown slop all over this series. Yet I'm extremely glad that it was made. Behind all the lousy music and the repetitive scenes of old ladies crying and happy peasant dancing, there lies the stark fact that in 1978 the USSR was a bitter enemy and no one was giving them much credit for having fought against Hitler and the Japanese in World War II. And too many of us didn't know -- and still don't -- that Russia suffered terrible losses. We knew less in 1978 than we do now. That may or may not be saying much.
Some extremely valuable and dispassionate points about the film are made by Willard Sunderland, an expert on Russian affairs.