Hey kids, want to hear about the darkest, most coal black comedy ever made? Well you’re in luck, because today Super and Myles are talking about the 2017 movie The Death of Stalin…which actually understated the absurdity and over-the-top evil of Soviet Russia.
Direct Download: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/thegodcast/Popcorn_N_Soda_death_of_stalin.mp3
The Death of Stalin: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4686844/
Spandrell’s article: https://spandrell.ch/2024/3/3/a-post-mortem-on-neoreaction
If you’d like to support the Godcast, Popcorn N’ Soda and/or The Very Lutheran Project, you can do so here: https://verylutheran.gumroad.com/
Before listening, it is important to distinguish that although the Americans view Stalin as a Russian, this was not always so.
Joseph Man-of-Steel was a stage name, like Elton John.
He was a Georgian, although it is hard to rule out Ossetian roots. Listening to movies of Soviet veterans speaking in early 1990s, they let slip very occasionally “his Russian was not all that fluent”.
He was truly a successful politician, and his instincts were usually correct in management of challenges to his leadership position. (Not that the demise of his predecessor, Mr. Lenin {also an assumed nom de guerre} was entirely, shall we say, organic).
I am still after all these years 100% convinced that he’d be squished like a bug by late 1943, were it not for the lifeline from the US.
Massive American investment into USSR poured in despite Cold, Korean, Vietnam Wars. Anthony Sutton’s scholarship on the topic is impeccable.
I remember watching the movie when it came out, Buscemi, Palin, revolting Tambor. As a grizzled citizen, my verisimilitude meter pinged hard and often (that’s not a praise).