Most of us reading on the blue lived through at least a portion of it. Forty-plus years of tension between the world's two superpowers and their allies. That's right: The Cold War.
Then, they
made a documentary. Aired on CNN in 1998, and never released on DVD,
the 24 episode, 20 hour series features tons of archival footage, along with many interviews with individuals directly involved at some of the highest levels.
You might not be able to see it on DVD, but you can watch the full series on Youtube, starting with
Part 1: Comrades (1917-1945).
posted by symbioid
on Mar 27, 2012 -
78 comments
Человек с киноаппаратом ("Man with a Movie Camera") is a classic experimental documentary film that was released in 1929. Directed by pioneer Soviet filmmaker
Dziga Vertov, this classic, silent documentary film has no story and no actors, and is actually three documentaries in one. Ostensibly it documents 24 hours of life in a single city in the Soviet Union. But it is also a documentary of the filming of that documentary and a depiction of an audience watching that documentary and their responses. "We see the cameraman and the editing of the film, but what we don't see is any of the film itself."
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posted by zarq
on Feb 13, 2012 -
26 comments
Atlas Obscura provides a Guide to Communist Mummies, and there's plenty more online. Visit
Lenin's Mausoleum, where he has been
kept since 1924, defying his wishes to be buried next to his mother in St. Petersburg. He wasn't alone forever, as
Stalin's body was kept in the mausoleum after his death in 1953, until
his body was quietly removed in October, 1961. Just under eight years later,
Hồ Chí Minh died, and against his wishes to be cremated, a
very large state funeral was held and
Uncle Ho's embalmed remains were placed in a mausoleum. Chairman Mao Zedong made
A Proposal that all Central Leaders be Cremated after Death in 1956, but his wishes were overlooked when
he died in 1976, and he joined the growing ranks of the preserved communist leaders in
his own crystal casket, housed in a grand mausoleum.
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posted by filthy light thief
on Nov 21, 2011 -
30 comments
Lenin Statues around the World. Reason 1: It is a tribute to cool propaganda statues and the work of the sculptors. Reason 2: Very likely the typical tourist picture taken by a westerner visiting mother Russia would be: To make that touristic one standing beneath Lenin and imitating him pointing out the way to the perfect society with his giant hand while the other hand is holding his ridicolous but cute cap. When shooting your picture the locals laugh and laugh and some drunkards might even yell at you for taking this, in their mind, very stupid picture. (sic)
posted by three blind mice
on Oct 21, 2005 -
30 comments
"When I read his work, I forgive him all his sins". Edmund Wilson
disliked being called a critic. He thought of himself as a journalist, and
nearly all his work was done for commercial magazines, principally Vanity Fair, in the nineteen-twenties; The New Republic, in the nineteen-twenties and thirties; The
New Yorker, beginning in the nineteen-forties; and The New York Review of Books, in the nineteen-sixties. He was
exceptionally well read: he had had a first-class education in English, French, and Italian literature,
and he kept adding languages all his life. He learned to read German, Russian, and Hebrew; when he died, in 1972, he was working on Hungarian.
Edmund Wilson and American culture.
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posted by matteo
on Aug 25, 2005 -
12 comments
The Passport: the next step in its evolution may include
invisible information encoded into your mug shot, but if you are wondering where it all began, the Canadian
passport office identifies one Nehemiah of Persia, ca. 450 BC, as candidate for very first passport holder.
Some think that it was all downhill from there. Regardless, there might be very good
reasons for getting more than one passport, which you can do
legally, or
less so.
Lenin had a fake passport. So did
Hitler, though he didn't know it. (More inside.)
posted by taz
on Aug 10, 2002 -
5 comments
