Chekist / The Chekist

Produced shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, this film offers a damning critique of the Bolshevik Revolution. CHEKA, the Bolshevik secret police, round up and execute opponets, political dissidents, and ordinary people to impose absolute powe during the Red Terror. Srubov, a young man from an intelligentsia family, philosophically talks of the historical necessity of extermination in the service of the Bolshevik Revolution. The mental toll on Srubov eventually proves unbearable; he experiences a nervous breakdown and is committed to a mental asylum.