Dear Comrades!/亲爱的同志们

Although released publicly in 2020 and based on true 1962 Novocherkassk strike, this movie is a definitely forbidden one in current Mainland China. The reasons are simple: First, it disclosed the surprising facts about Soviet Union: there was not "communist-style domestic peace" and were definitely workers' strikes from time to time in USSR or any other communist countries. Second, this movie would easily remind Chinese audience the Tian‘anmen Massacre in early June, 1989: how the protests began and developed and soon suppressed by the army. Doubtlessly the introductions of this movie were soon deleted in domestic websites in Mainland China.

The movie focuses the two days' life of Lyudmila the leading female role. She herself is the combination of opposite contradictions and dramatic conflicts, and she changes with the development of the whole event/movie. Lyudmila is a Party executive and devout communist who had fought in WWII for Stalin's ideology. Certain that her work will create a communist society, the woman detests any anti-Soviet sentiment. During a strike at the local electromotive factory, Lyudmila witnesses a laborers' piquet gunned down under orders from the government that seeks to cover up mass labor strikes in USSR. After the bloodbath, when survivors flee from the square, Lyudmila realizes her daughter has disappeared. A gaping rift opens in her worldview. At the last half of the movie, during the course of looking for her missing daughter, Lyudmila finds something different about the Party and the govenment.

This movie would help the audience understand so-called communism more clearly.

Performance impression:
Director: Andrey Konchalovskiy