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The Alex Lebed narrative is a strange one. Never heard it described like that before. I thought people liked him.

14:39 was a beautiful speech. And the one at around 54:30

such a beautiful people... so much chaos... dear lord

The two most important events that determined the failure of future “liberal reforms” happened in this period. The director didn’t even mentioned them: the Ryzhkov robbery of 1989 when the state nationalized the money in savings accounts, and the Pavlov robbery when the state changed old bills 50r and 100r to new bills in three days and let change up to 1000r per person. After these robberies, which Gorbachev called “reforms”, the trust on financial institutions crumbled, it was never restored and capitalism was destined to fail in Russia.

I love how you used simulacrum of modern Western politician, not a simulator, because Western politician is a fiction too.

Late Yeltsin is like today Biden

I am very glad our Belarus wasn't mentioned at all after 1991, dictatorship simply worked and no oligarchs were allowed to form.

(((democracy)))

Horse storyline as metaphor was amazing

Yeah, I lived through it. This docu series is very accurate. Vibes are captured perfectly.

I would legit watch one of these for most countries

Deng Xiaoping after meeting Gorbachev: "This man may look smart, but in fact is stupid."

communism so completely destroyed humanity in Russia that democracy, or anything other than brute force authoritarianism was doomed to failure. you can't expect the lion population in Africa to organize itself with egalitarian values and institutions, rule of law, etc. as is the case with Russia.

Finishing the series I have this thinking that the “experiment in democracy” Russia went through in a matter of 9-10 years, is taking 90-100 in western countries, counting since universal suffrage. Democracies in western countries are pretty much dead, just like in Russia we pretend that elections change things, that voting has any power to creat better societies, and in the end most people don’t care anymore. We all live in societies run by criminals, be they in government or private corporations, and the people have absolutely no say or power.

American evangelicals...... LOL......

barbaric culture.

nothing says manliness like a Chechyn dance........

what a brutal, backward country. stuck in the middle ages, still is today.

This footage speaks for itself but kudos to the editing/text_on_screen, and arranging it all in a chronological claustrophobic way. It feels like the tights are closing in and it's only getting worse, (next episodes I must see)and millions of peoples hopeless screams jump off the screen and in to my living room . And when I think about how some of this mirrors todays situation with Ukraine and Israel/Palestine, it terrifies me that it is repeating it self. It's different from the docs where Curtis's Voice tells us the story, but not less effective.

28:20 I wonder how life turned out to be for that little girl.

30:10 Step bro, i seem to be stuck!

gold

9:39 - This guy is the best

43:20 "They would be paid to give their blood" look into the blood plasma situation in the US. The US is a huge, huge supplier of "blood products" such as plasma and components of plasma, because Americans are paid to give plasma. All nice, healthy Americans ..... if by that we mean homeless, drug addicts, etc. There are some good documentaries about it on CZcams here.

I wonder what happened to the lady being freed from prison. (20:55) Her disbelief, her joy. Perhaps oblivious to the collapse of the society she left. So sad.

It is a moving documentary. The stories are well chosen and carefully interwoven for a great dramatic effect. However, I have been increasingly disappointed by the author's commentary. It is overly simplistic, subjective and rather bombastic. It's a shame, as it detracts from the value of this fine documentary. He could have achieved more just by stating uncontroversial facts and letting the audience think for themselves.

Wonderful documentary, makes the tragedy brought about by the economic transformation very vivid without descending into pathos. It has become quite common in the West to blame all the evils of the 90s on the so-called "shock-therapy". It does feel good to have a clear and neatly delimited culprit, especially if you're left-wing and this fits your broader narrative about the evils of neoliberalism. And sure, there is much to dislike about the brutality of the measures taken as well as the new elites' callous disregard for their horrible impact on the population. However, there's no guarantee that other measures would have worked much better. Perestroika had actually been an experiment in controlled transformation of the socialist economy - it had failed spectacularly. Soviet economy was, after 70 years of mismanagment, in such a dismal state that the pain was inevitable. And the shock therapy was happening even without government's intervention, by virtue of gangsterization of the economy - it's no use that the state guarantees prices if you can only buy stuff on the black market. Also, don't think that callousness and criminal methods only came with the new elites. The old communist party nomenklatura may look like a bunch of sorry grandpas, but those were some of the biggest criminals and murderers in the world history. Disregard for human life was not an invention of the 90s.

Thank you Adam Curtis for 7 hours of journey in the past, in my childhood, it's time machine, I'm watching it in the third time? and now more and more clear why democracy way is failed in our countries, countries of former USSR

7:11 This one seemed really eerie

😊

I we need to remember that the UK was pretty bad at that time too - Punk came out of that. Australia had a neo fascist Premier who used the Police to quash any protests about his government.Is Russia today any better? Perestroika may have failed, but perhaps Communism was not the problem. The problems in this film occurred in the West too, the US sent young boys off to foreign wars for them never to return. Poverty existed in many Western countries and still does, so perhaps Capitalism is not the answer.

End credits - Chelsey Chandler at the BBC - Child Handler?

Seeing the Chechen civilians suffering tore my heart apart. The child crying, the woman screaming holding a bloodied body... this documentary is fantastic; displaying the horrors in such a raw and brutal yet true way is so valuable.

The frame of the poor coal miner leaning up against the bust of Lenin at 8:14 is so poetic. Like a renaissance painting... the irony is beautiful.

what's the song playing at 2:35?

В чем-то эти женщины похожи на русских, пока мужик жив, баба терпит его абьюз, а как убьют, так начинают верещать. Разница в том, что по большому счету в России (после революции) монополия на абьюз над женщинами принадлежит государству

Лучшее время в истории, 85-93 Но только для Карелии и Питера)

T R A U M A Z O N E

What a gem this is

"Russian troops attacked Georgian protesters" - after this no need to watch other episodes.

What a BS….

how much from the film was cut out at 22:46?

Я думаю, как же сложилась судьба Человека с 7.26 минуты…. Безымянный Мудрец, канувший в Лету….

Yeltin was a slime bag

motherland was ruined completely and made into a dancing monkey for the globalist's entertainment.

russia is still a dump in 2023.

Song at 2:35?

26:15 - food shortages? What, here?!

The footage of the Abkhazian rebellion at 13:35 is amazing, it's like being right there in a different world. This whole series is a gold mine.

13:50 this is so gross and upsetting. Had that been a nurse in the states she lose her job. Truly awful.