BITTER HARVEST

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.