soviet union history

32 movies and shows

Mirror

Fri, 07 Mar 1975

A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.

Spain, 1937. Ramón Mercader, a young communist combatant, is recruited and trained by the Soviet intelligence service to participate in a top secret mission ordered by the ruthless dictator Joseph Stalin: the assassination of his former political rival, Leon Trotsky, who is living in exile in Mexico.

Strike

Tue, 28 Apr 1925

Workers in a factory in pre-revolutionary Russia go on strike and are met by violent suppression.

The Long Breakup

Sat, 24 Oct 2020

Ukrainian journalist Katya Soldak, currently living in New York City and working for Forbes magazine, chronicles Ukraine's history: its strong ties to Russia for centuries; how it broke away from the USSR and began to walk alone; the Orange Revolution, the Maidan Revolution, the Crimea annexation, the Donbass War; all through the eyes of her family and friends settled in Kharkiv, a large Ukrainian city located just eighteen miles from the Russian border.

Rasputin: Murder in the Tsar's Court

Sat, 10 Dec 2016

St. Petersburg, Russia, December 30th, 1916. Grigori Rasputin is assassinated. The story of the humble peasant who became the most influential adviser to czarina Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of the last czar, Nicholas II Romanov.

Katyn

Fri, 21 Sep 2007

On September 1st, 1939, Nazi Germany invades Poland, unleashing World War II. On September 17th, the Soviet Red Army crosses the border. The Polish army, unable to fight on two fronts, is defeated. Thousands of Polish men, both military and government officials, are captured by the invaders. Their fate will only be known several years later.

P.K.P.

Tue, 28 Sep 1926

The defeated remnants of vile Ukrainian nationalists, headed by the leader of the Ukrainian liberation movement, Symon Petliura, cannot accept their historical fate and are plotting an insurrection against the Soviet regime in Ukraine. There is nothing Petliura and his cohorts would not do to win back control over Ukraine, including selling it to the highest bidder, in this case, the Polish dictator Jozef Pilsudski. A group of plotters are coordinating an insurrection in Kyiv with an attack from Poland headed by Petliura’s general Yurko Tiutiunnyk. Predictably, the invincible Red Army defeats the nationalist plotters and proves that the Soviet borders are impregnable.

Chapayev

Wed, 07 Nov 1934

An account of the peasant turned mythical military hero Vasily Chapayev, charting his campaign in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War.

Anniversary of the Revolution

Thu, 07 Nov 1918

A chronicle of the Russian Revolution of 1917, from the bourgeois democratic February Revolution to the great socialist October Revolution and the final triumph.

Two Prosecutors

Fri, 03 Oct 2025

In 1937, amidst Stalin's Great Terror, a newly appointed prosecutor for the USSR is made aware of alleged corruption in the Secret Police, and takes it upon himself to investigate.

Kasparov: Chess Rebel

Sun, 18 Aug 2024

The extraordinary life and career of the Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, a brilliant and charismatic, but also rebellious, favorite son of the Soviet Union.

Stalin and the Katyn Massacre

Tue, 18 Feb 2020

The Katyn massacre, carried out by the Soviet NKVD in 1940, was only one of many unspeakable crimes committed by Stalin's ruthless executioners over three decades. The mass murder of thousands of Polish officers was part of a relentless purge, the secrets and details of which have only recently been partially revealed.

Reds

Fri, 25 Dec 1981

An account of the revolutionary years of the legendary American journalist John Reed, who shared his adventurous professional life with his radical commitment to the socialist revolution in Russia, his dream of spreading its principles among the members of the American working class, and his troubled romantic relationship with the writer Louise Bryant.

This Ain't California

Wed, 15 Aug 2012

A retrospective look at the youth cultures born in the German Democratic Republic. A celebration of the lust for life, a contemporary trip into the world of skate, a tale on three heroes and their boards, from their childhood in the seventies, through their teenage rebellion in the eighties and the summer of 1989, when their life changed forever, to 2011.

The History of the Civil War

Wed, 01 Jun 1921

The epic story of the Russian Civil War (1918-21): the White Terror, the counterrevolutionary uprisings, the guerrilla war, the Kolchak front, the Wrangel front and the Kronstadt rebellion. Chaos and violence, devastation and death.

The Conscience

Tue, 15 Jun 2021

Petrograd, Soviet Union, 1920s. Boris Letush, devastated by a personal tragedy, feels the need to put his conscience and his principles before the demands of the cruel system he serves, where law and justice are systematically ignored.

The Restless Garden

Fri, 15 Jan 1993

Summer 1991. The last days of the Soviet Empire. Dark clouds gathered over Moscow as the Soviet government prepared to turn back the clock of history. While the world focused on the crashing Soviet Empire, this film focuses on the people who would've been among the first to suffer repression - the women and men who have broken sexual taboos in a consummate act of liberation against a rigid, crippled world. This is a view from their vantage point, unveiling the shadow-side of Soviet culture in the wake of the revolution, where the real provocative nudity is the nakedness of the soul.

The Gulag Archipelago: The Book That Changed Russian History

Fri, 24 Nov 2023

The story of Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) and his masterpiece, The Gulag Archipelago, published in Paris in 1973, which forever shook the very foundations of communist ideology.

The Fire and the Rose

Mon, 01 Jan 1990

A documentary on the life and work of the composer Sofia Gubaidulina.

Gulag

Fri, 03 Feb 2006

This excellent and breathtaking documentary is the result of a long study on the Gulag to try to understand why more than 60 million Soviet citizens were sent to the camps from 1918 to 1956, how such a massive confinement could take place during two generations. From the Solovki in the north-west to the Kolima in Siberia, from Lenine to Kroutchev, a polar geography is erected into the Gulag system. One does not escape from camps. After ten years of imprisonment, one dies. Some survived, some left traces; they witness: organisation, work and discipline, but also resistance, repression and revolt.