more here:
and here: closeupculture interview with the filmmaker.
Q: I find it troubling that far too many people in the West have a lack – or complete absence – of knowledge about the horrors of the Gulags, but your documentary shows this is also the case for many Russians. Why do you believe this is the case as well as the continued cult of Stalin?
A: Something like half of Russia’s youth have not even heard of the Gulag and Stalin’s Great Terror. Older Russians know because few families were spared. Millions have a grandparent or great grandparent among those “repressed” to use the Soviet term.
For Russians who experienced the collapse of the USSR, they look back on the Soviet period as one of stability and order, but they are thinking of the post-Stalin years, which were characterised by “lesser terror.” Although the Yeltsin government intended to have a “trial of the communist party” – this never happened. The Russian people were therefore deprived of their “Nuremberg.”....
But I think absolutely the understanding of the Gulag is crucial also for the West. Contemporary North Korea has camps which are actually carbon copies of the Stalin camps. In order to understand the mentality of North Korea, it is absolutely crucial and important to understand the mentality of the Soviet camp guards and the Soviet prison system. China is another obvious example: we know from documents and other sources that there were Soviet advisors who went to China in the 1950s and helped the Chinese set up these prison camps.
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