A History of Communism: End Without End (1954-1993)

The death of Stalin reveals the turpitudes of the regime hitherto hidden. In 1956, the Khrushchev report is overwhelming on the practice of power of his predecessor. The Hungarian uprisings in 1956 and the Prague Spring in 1968 demonstrate the will of peoples to free themselves from enslavement. In the 1970s, revolutionary messianism suffered a serious setback with the failure of Third World revolutions, the boat-people phenomenon and the Cambodian genocide. Henceforth, the communist parties had to fight to make an alternative credible, but the working class was to deal the fatal blow to the ideology of Marxist progress with the events in Gdansk in the summer of 1980. The fall of the Wall of Berlin ratifies only one state of fact, the end of the dreams of power of the Soviet Union, until its decay and its bursting.

0:00 The documentary
1:06 The rise of communism and the revelation of Stalin's crimes
8:48 The Khrushchev Report and its aftermath led to political upheaval in Eastern Europe and a new era of thaw and reform in the Soviet Union.
16:50 The achievements of Yuri Gagarin, the break between China and the Soviet Union and the Cuban revolution.
24:48 The political landscape of the 1960s, the rise and fall of Khrushchev, the Prague Spring insurrection and the emergence of new communist leaders.
32:23 The collapse of the Third World Revolution and the disorientation of Western communist parties in the 1970s.
51:37 Glasnost and the revelation of truth led to the fall of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

A film by Patrick Rotman, Patrick Barberis
Produced by Michel Rotman
Written by Patrice Chereau
Series of documentaries Faith of the Century

All episodes:

Utopia in Power (1917-1928)
This volume covers 1900 to 1928, a period which saw the death of Lenin, the creation of the KGB and the coming to power of Stalin.

The Two Faces of Communism (1929-1939)
This episode includes Stalin's purge, Communism the defender of democracy, the great famine of the Ukraine and the Spanish civil war.

The Peak Years (1940-1953)
This episode includes the defeat of Germany, the take over of Eastern Europe, the Korean War and the Cold War.

End Without End (1953-1999)
This episode includes Stalin's death and Krushchev taking power, uprisings crushed in East Germany and Hungary, the propaganda of the space race, Castro taking over Cuba, Vietnam, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unleashing of freedom, the remnants of a discredited philosophy.