Not far from the truth?
Reality was worse, even.
Murder, torture, abductions, blackmailing... they stopped at nothing.
The German "Democratic" Republic (GDR/East Germany) was a good example for that.
The shit their secret police and government pulled is not different from what the Nazis did.
Little fun fact I noticed just last night:
In episode 4, I believe, when Legasov was initially detained, he was lead into an isolated room while escorted by guards.
When he enters the room, he immediately looks behind the door. Why?
Because this was a soviet execution method back then.
The person to be executed was lead under false pretense (or with no information at all) into an "empty" room where the executioner was waiting behind the door, hiding, with a pistol. As soon as the person entered, the executioner would close in silently and shoot the person in the back of the head from close distance before the person turns around/understands what is happening.
The socialists, unsurprisingly, considered this "more humane". Personally, I consider it to be the opposite.
They take everything from you and then they do not even grant you the dignity to know when exactly you will be murdered and thus give you the chance to look back at your life in your final moments.
This was called "unexpected near shot" and was practiced in the GDR after they got rid of the Guillotine in the 60s and I am pretty sure elsewhere across the soviet realm as well. According to what I know, this was done after "soviet example", so it most likely originated in the Soviet Union and would explain why Legasov knows about this and kinda expects it at that moment.
That is my interpretation of this scene at least.
It cannot be coincidence that he looks behind the door immediately, nothing is coincidence in film and I wouldn't know why else he'd check what's behind the door immediately.
reply
share