BITTER
HARVEST
All the contemporary interest in
Russian imperialism, that nation’s interference in the presidential election,
and the right wing’s pathetic adoration of powerful dictators combine to make a
movie about a horrible tragedy in the 1930s surprisingly relevant today. Bitter
Harvest shows, through the experience of one family, the Soviet oppression
of Ukraine under the rule of Joseph Stalin, that rough draft (very rough draft)
for the current Republican darling, Vladimir Putin. The picture provides a valuable chapter in
twentieth-century history and a distressing lesson in human suffering.
Narrated in part by its protagonist Yuri (Max Irons), Bitter Harvest recounts yet another instance of the sort of butchery
that too often results when one society attempts to dominate or even ultimately
exterminate another; history, alas, offers numerous examples, like the
systematic attempts at wiping out Native Americans, the Turkish slaughter of
Armenians, and of course, the Holocaust.
The movie’s story nicely previews
and in a sense, parallels the contemporary Russian incursion into Ukraine, so
loudly cheered by the right wing in America, including all the crypto-Russians
in the administration. Back in the 1930s
Stalin ordered the forced collectivization of Ukrainian farms and the seizure
of their harvest; as the brutal occupation progressed, his troops
systematically starved to death an estimated seven to ten million people in an
act that in later years came to be known as Holodomor, a kind of pre-Holocaust
Holocaust.
Within the framework of Yuri’s narrative and history the picture shows
the particular suffering of his family and his beloved, Natalka (Samantha
Banks), which reflects the steady progress of Stalin’s program. Yuri and his friends, even the devoted
Bolsheviks among them, discover that familiar truth of Stalinism, borne out by
the notorious purge trials of the decade, that even the dictator’s supporters
risk imprisonment, torture, or execution if he thinks they are disloyal. (Come to think of it, he behaves like an
extreme version of several of the bosses I have toiled under). The rest of the film deals with Yuri’s own
victimization and his later involvement with the Ukrainian resistance to the
Soviet occupation.
Bitter Harvest perhaps works
best as an instructive lesson in the history of Eastern Europe, the history of
the Soviet Union, and as something of a background to the present Russian
occupation of Ukraine. It also nicely
demonstrates how history indeed repeats itself, providing a commentary on
contemporary foreign affairs and the actions of that Republican favorite
dictator of the month, Vladimir Putin.
Their spokesmen, the lackeys and lickspittles of hate media, notably
that passionate sycophant Sean Hannity, have spoken stridently of their
admiration for his iron fist; Bitter
Harvest suggests that the fist is larger, heavier, and older than most of
us realized.
