Capitalism — save us and forgive us! Russia, 1991
For this ep of The Russians Evgenia and I talk to Russian filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov about his thoughts on the war and what led to it. We wanted to talk to Andrei because of a great essay he wrote about the collapse of the Soviet Union, “The Long Shadow of the Anti-communist Russian Revolution.”
Andrei identifies with being a Russian liberal, while being very critical of them. He explains their mindset during the late Soviet Union and in today’s Russia really well.
As he told us:
“We were not a precariat…we had the minimum without realizing it and we were safe and able to entertain our fantasies about being White Guard officers, about all this conservative paraphernalia…and it did have very long lasting political consequences. Aesthetics of it merged into political conservatism in 1991 and uncritical support of neoliberalism, and that was tragic. We were bombarding the speechless people who were very confused that not only is theft of collective property ok, but it is moral. It’s democracy, guys. And now comes the revenge. History itself and, ironically, the west helps ordinary Russians punish the liberals.”
Listen to the interview and be sure check out Andrei’s great films, including his doc Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case and The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes. His last film caused a huge scandal in America and Europe and was the focus of a long and sleazy and largely successful attempt by Bill Browder to smear Andrei and to censor the film. Watch it online here.
—Yasha Levine
Want to know more? Listen to previous episodes of The Russians.
