“Russia 2017: Countdown to Revolution” on BBC 2…. I.Am.Not.A.Happy.Bunny….
Loved the concept – a mixture of historians and commentators set against some reconstructions of events, but the execution was completely off, as far as I was concerned.
Problems:
- I didn’t like any of the actors portraying the three main protagonists, which may sound superficial but if they’re going to be giving a decent rendition of important historical figures they should be convincing. They weren’t. Frankly, the communist cooking sketch from Rutland Weekend TV had better acting (and was funnier…)
- The acted sequences were pretty over-dramatised and over the top, to the point of caricature – come on, chaps, this was BBC2 not Channel 5 so credit your audience with a little intelligence…
- I felt that Stalin’s role in the revolution was a tad overplayed (although I *was* happy that Trotsky got due credit).
- The historians and commentators – ah yes, this was where things fell apart for me. I got remarkably vexed about the lack of balance in the programme with right-wingers like Orlando Figes and Simon Sebag Montefiore being given much more air time than China Mieville and Tariq Ali. The latter two came across much more rationally and reasonably than Figes in particular, who was pretty worked up. I ended up getting very worked up myself and shouting at the TV, which rather upset OH…
- Martin Amis – why was he there? (apart from the fact he wrote a book called “Koba the Dread” about Stalin, with whom he has a problem). Another wasted potentially erudite commentator.
- Efforts to ramp up the tension by making the programme into a dramatic countdown to the actual October revolution just added to the sense of attempted style over content; hard facts were sacrificed for sensationalism; and what was one of the cataclysmic events of the 20th century was actually undersold.
I was disappointed and angry; the latter mostly because of the bias, and the former because the opportunity for a sensible programme on the Revolution was lost. Mieville and Ali were so underused and yet their contributions were for me the most interesting. The whole thing came across as a comic-book style rendering of Big Events, and probably not aimed at someone who’s been reading about the RR since their early teens – I did find myself wondering what the casual viewer would have made of the show…
Obviously, one failed documentary doesn’t spoil the rest I’ve been watching, and there are a shed-load of Radio 4 programmes I can explore this week covering the subject (though I’m a little nervous about the bias I may find). Alas, it’ll have to be back to books – off to the Verso website to check out the books by Mieville and Ali … :((
Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings 
Oct 12, 2017 @ 17:51:52
I thought it was a bit crap as well but then I usually dislike it when they try to dramatise events. I was surprised they try to cover it in a single hour.
Oct 12, 2017 @ 18:36:38
Exactly – it felt like a token gesture, as if they didn’t actually want to invest any time and money in producing something of substance.
Oct 12, 2017 @ 20:10:35
I’m really not keen on dramatised documentaries – I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one that did it well, it’s always a bit wooden and lots of weird exposition-type conversations 😀 Definitely will give this a miss!
Oct 12, 2017 @ 20:36:12
No, I can’t say I can recall anything recently in this style that worked, alas. Not for me – I prefer my factual progs with a little more substance…
Oct 12, 2017 @ 20:50:40
Oh, dear, doesn’t seem to have been a resounding success. Why oh why dramatise documentaries, unless you don’t have much to say in the first place…
Oct 13, 2017 @ 06:45:15
Exactly – I reckon this would have been a bit of an insult to schoolchildren…..
Oct 12, 2017 @ 22:04:55
I didnt watch this but your comment about badly performed dramatisations resonated with me from my experience of watching anything involving Lucy Worsley. I dont question her academic credentials but why does she insist on dressing up all the time as an historic figure. She can’t act so why does the Beeb let her do it???
Oct 13, 2017 @ 09:32:30
Agreed – I have no doubt about her academic credentials, but she does come across as a bit of a twit which is a great shame…
Oct 13, 2017 @ 23:24:38
I saw a trailer tonight for another programme that is about to start and she dresses up in that too. Ugh
Oct 14, 2017 @ 07:26:12
I know -I saw that too…☹️
Oct 12, 2017 @ 23:36:21
“Orlando Figes and Simon Sebag Montefiore being given much more air time than China Mieville and Tariq Ali.”
Not a matter of “right and left”. Figes and Montefiore have written whopping big books based on original research, Mieville and Ali have relied on secondary sources and aren’t historians. They’re comparable with Martin Amis in that respect. Stephen Kotkin or J. Arch Getty would have provided more academically respectable historical opposition to Figes and Montefiore.
That said, it’s curious that Figes, who attacked his fellow/rival historians under false names, is once more considered an acceptable historical authority. It seems that lying is a mere foible in modern academia.
“he [Amis] wrote a book called “Koba the Dread” about Stalin, with whom he has a problem”
Everybody has a problem about Stalin. Even Stalinists. Especially Stalinists.
Oct 13, 2017 @ 06:43:20
I think it was right and left. Whether or not Figes and Montefiore have written whopping books, they have a particular slant towards the subject, as do Ali and Miéville who were surely there simply to counter accusations of bias. Figes has done some weird things and I wonder why he’s given any credibility, and I doubt the programme, with its somewhat populist presentation, would ever have gone down the more sensible route of having some academic content.
As for Amis – yes, of course every sensible person has an issue with Stalin (though it seems many ordinary Russian folk nowadays don’t…) I should have made the point that Amis’s attitude is filtered through his issues with his father and Amis senior’s communism, so it’s not exactly high scholarship either.
Big books on the subject? I plan to read the Miéville one, as I *am* a bit sick of right wing history.
Oct 13, 2017 @ 11:56:57
Figes and Montefiore are both academic historians; what they say is backed by deep knowledge. That’s why I suggested Kotkin and Arch Getty – also academic historians, but with different views – as more appropriate opponents than Ali and Miéville, who are amateurs like Amis. That said, I don’t think television – especially in a single “dramatized documentary” can have a deep or nuanced examination of anything. It isn’t possible in the medium. It’s just people saying “I think…” without having time to give detailed reasons. It’s quite likely that Ali, Amis and Miéville are more televisual than Figes and Montefiore.
Oct 13, 2017 @ 13:22:24
I wouldn’t say that Ali, Amis and Mieville are any more televisual than Figes and Montefiore as the latter certainly have plenty of TV experience. But I agree that in a programme of this length and structure there was never going to be any deep debate – it’s just a shame that no-one seems to have wanted to approach a serious programme on the subject, particularly as BBC4, in particular, are prone to doing 3 parters with much more substance.
Oct 13, 2017 @ 08:34:18
Oh dear, 😒 sorry this was such a disappointment.
Oct 13, 2017 @ 09:27:39
It was rather….
Oct 13, 2017 @ 21:11:14
Many ordinary Russian folk nowadays don’t have an issue with Stalin ? Good grief ! So I suppose it’s ok for extreme-right Germans to not have an issue with Hitler either !
Oct 13, 2017 @ 21:41:17
Apparently so – I’ve seen reports of a resurgance in his popularity and a nostalgia for Soviet times. And also reports that Putin models himself more on Stalin than anyone else – which is fairly alarming……. 😦
Oct 14, 2017 @ 16:32:22
What a shame! I can’t imagine you shouting at the telly, so hope you can regain your balance with some nice, good reading now!
Oct 14, 2017 @ 17:05:40
I don’t usually snarl at the TV, but I got a bit vexed I can tell you! Crime and Punishment is helping, but it does seem to be taking me a looooong time to read…
Oct 15, 2017 @ 16:25:33
I tend to avoid this kind of programme, so I missed this! Sounds to me like you need to go see Armando Ianucci’s new comedy film The Death of Stalin – it sounds an absolute hoot (with an all-star cast too).
Oct 15, 2017 @ 16:35:18
Sounds like it definitely might be more fun than this…… 🙂
Oct 15, 2017 @ 23:59:10
Re Izzy’s comment about Stalin: I’m no apologist for the man, he was an evil brute. But ordinary Russians quite rightly credit him with having turned the tide against Hitler (see Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad or if hundreds of pages of human misery defeats you, just my review: https://anzlitlovers.com/2012/09/13/stalingrad-by-antony-beevor/). When a ruthless dictator says he wants hundreds of tanks and he wants them yesterday, he gets them because the factories work 24/7. When he says I don’t care how many men die, the Nazis are not going to take Stalingrad, the men fight to the death, preferring to die in the service of their country than in the gulags, but not having any choice about it anyway. It’s an appalling irony but it might well be the case that Europe owes its freedom to Stalin and the turnback of the Nazis at Stalingrad: if Hitler had taken the USSR with all its resources, the outcome of the war would have been entirely different. Certainly what the Germans did to cities they had taken is part of the collective memory of Russia today and the Soviet victory is inextricably linked to Stalin because he was the leader.
I read a bio of Lenin recently (by British author Victor Sebestyen, and I got the impression that the Soviet experiment would have been very different if Lenin had lived longer and/or the succession had been managed well. I haven’t seen this BBC program but if the BBC has any useful educational function left, it ought to be analysing which parts of the Soviet system were effective and why some people are nostalgic for it rather than judging it through a simplistic Cold War lens
I read a lot of books for my trip to Russia in 2012 and one of the most interesting was called A Russian Journal by John Steinbeck which https://anzlitlovers.com/2011/06/15/a-russian-journal-by-john-steinbeck/. I recommend it!
Oct 16, 2017 @ 09:39:03
You make a very good point there, Lisa. I’m no apologist for Stalin either, but it’s undeniable that the second world war would not have been won without his Russian troops. In fact, I was watching (another!) documentary by Richard Clay, on graffiti, and one of the most moving parts was when he visited the Reichstag in Berlin – on the walls they’ve preserved the writings etched there by the men and the women of the Russian army who’d fought their way there. It reminded me that I’ve read that the numbers of Russian fighters lost in that war was immense and it shouldn’t be forgotten which three world leaders sat round the table at Yalta. I have the Stalingrad book, but I’ve never felt strong enough to read it – the incredible sacrifices made are unimaginable.
And I agree – the general attitude towards what you might call the Soviet experiment is pathetically one-dimensional, almost refusing to discuss it seriously. Had Lenin survived I agree that things might well have been very different, as he had recognised the problems with Stalin and would hopefully have dealt with him. Who knows – such are the vagaries of history.
As for Steinbeck, I read and loved that book pre-blog – perhaps time for a revisit! 🙂
Oct 17, 2017 @ 11:26:53
I’ve never forgotten Steinbeck’s image of the women of Kiev rising up from the cellars into the scorched earth devastation of their city, the women clean and neat and tidy and setting off to get on with the job of reconstruction.
Oct 17, 2017 @ 11:35:35
Oh, I *must* re-read the book!!!!
Nov 17, 2017 @ 07:08:11
Apr 06, 2022 @ 07:00:11