TRL Opium for the People ENPRO

Genre: Thematic Short Film
Format: PAL/SECAM, DV-Cam, DV-AVI
Runtime: 4:12 min
Languages: EN
Series: "Life in the U.S.S.R."

Topic: Once they had taken power in Russia, the Bolsheviks attempted to erase the concept of the Divine Creation from the mass consciousness. "...We must put an end to priests and religions as soon as possible. Priests shall be arrested as counterrevolutionaries and saboteurs, and they shall be shot mercilessly, in all places and as many as possible. It is time to close down the Church”. This was the order that Lenin sent to Dzerzhinsky, the chief of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage, on May 1, 1919. There was a certain logic to this: the moral boundaries set forth by religious commandments hindered the atheistic regime. It is difficult to govern people who do not always blindly carry out their orders.

Plot: A nostalgic old man remembers the peaceful situation of his village in the ‘20s, and the sudden closing of the nice oak church as it was called “a place of deceiving the people”. Priests and parishioners were sneered at by all of Russia, thousands were martyred without a trial or an investigation across the enormous territory of U.S.S.R., and also Roman Catholic priests, Rabbis and Muftis were persecuted and their respective hierarchy destroyed. Only about 100 churches left of the 60,000 in 1917. With the victorious end of the 1941-1945 war, the repressive nature of the government’s politics toward the Church relaxed somewhat, but in the second half of the 1950s, pressure against the Church noticeably began to strengthen. Khrushchev’ aim to build to a “true” communist man and society led again to a widespread closings of churches re-opened in the war period and immediately after. Atheism continued to spread together with the other aspects of communism. The persecution of religious people continued, and people were encouraged to inform on one another.

The Series: By breaking the traditional family and religion, taking control of children’s education, prying into spouses’ bedrooms and even the minds of people with the system of denunciations, refusing people respect and their basic rights, the government corrupted the country’s population. This series wants to shed light on some of these realities using sometimes opposing points of view in the choice of interviews and supporting the explained problematic with corresponding video materials. These short films may be useful as support material in talk-shows or educational programs. Other themes may be developed in future.

Other short films of the series:

• Born in prison
• Communist Ideology
• Happy childhood
• Life and Death
• Soviet Families
• Youth