A Gentleman in Moscow

[edhopper]

A good show on Showtime/Paramount with Ewan McGregor about a Russian aristocrat who is under house arrest for life after the Revolution at a Moscow hotel. (based on the book by Amor Towles)
But the reason I bring it up is that in the latter episodes is the ever presence of Stalin in the atmosphere of the show. To question Stalin, even as he causes millions to suffer and die, even as the prosperity of Russia is a facade behind a country run into the ground by a immoral, paranoid psychopath, is to forfeit your life. Too many choose to follow Stain's lies at all cost than to attempt to do anything good for their country.

I will leave it here for people to draw their own analogies.

[Lonestarblue]

1. The book on which this program is based is an excellent read.

A Gentleman from Moscow by Amor Towles.

[edhopper]

3. Thanks

added.

[TxGuitar]

4. One of my very favorite books

One of those that you slow down reading as you go along because you don't want it to end.

[Lonestarblue]

5. Exactly! The language is so well crafted.

[RandySF]

2. My best childhood friend's family fled the Ukraine to get away from Stalin and the Communists.

[lindysalsagal]

6. Ewan McGregor. Love him in everything he does.

[Peregrine Took]

9. "The Ghostwriter" one of our "go to" movies. Never get tired of it.

Love the dark tone, the dialogue, the bleak scenery....so many clever little asides like the groundskeeper always sweeping up the leaves that blow right back, the description of his relationship with his girlfriend...."in all romantic history there isn't a word to describe it" LOL -love the little moments along with the major mystery.

[lindysalsagal]

12. Is it streaming?

[brush]

7. What is it with the Russian character that they've never developed anything close to...

Last edited Thu May 2, 2024, 12:39 PM - Edit history (2)

a truly elected, representative government? It's always been czars...then finally a revolution which only devolved into strongman dictatorships.

The Gorbachev regime seemed to be leaning towards representation but he was blamed for the break-up of the USSR and thus, was ousted. Yeltsin? Who knows what his motivation was besides the booze.

Then came Putin and here we are, totalitarian dictatorship again.

Seems it'll be ever thus.

Too bad the brief revolt by the general rolling his armored convoy towards Moscow came to nothing but a bust.

A nation gets the government it deserves.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

8. Essentially the Englightenment

didn't reach Russia.

[brush]

11. It's a shame if it's that simple. Weren't czarist, royal courts in touch with and related to some of the...

European royal courts from time to time? Seems some enlightened knowledge would've touched them.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

13. In touch with, but not really very closely.

Sure, some knowledge would have reached them, but not the full force of the Enlightenment as happened in Western Europe.

The Protestant Reformation is hugely important here. Yeah, terrible, terrible religious wars, but a huge change in thinking, especially about science.

Similarly, Islam has never had the equivalent of a Reformation. Not to say Islam would be better with one, but it would be very different, just as Christianity has many, many versions thanks to the Reformation.

[brush]

15. Good history. Thanks for you insight and for sharing your knowledge.

Explains a lot

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

16. You are welcome.

I am always happy to share what I know.

[Crunchy Frog]

17. Nicholas II, last Tsar, was married to Queen Victoria's granddaughter.

That's why the prince had hemophilia.

Catherine the Great was born a German princess.

[brush]

18. Yes, I vaguely remembered there was a family connection...

between the Russian court and the European ones.

Too much inbreeding. It'll eventually affect family health.

[Crunchy Frog]

20. Not so much inbreeding.

Victoria had a spontaneous mutation in her germ cell line as an embryo, which made her and some of her daughters carriers for hemophilia. It's recessive and carried on the X chromosome, so not the product of inbreeding, but Victoria had a huge number of kids and grandkids, many of whom married into other royal families, spreading the gene around.

I believe it was the Hapsburgs who were seriously inbred.

[brush]

21. OK, OK. So much history. Your mention of the Hapsburgs...

triggered another thought. Didn't the British royal family change their German name... Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor?

And no wonder. What a guttural mouthful that was.

[Crunchy Frog]

22. I think it was changed due to anti German sentiment

In the aftermath of WW1.

I'm not absolutely certain about that. My knowledge of royal family history is quite spotty.

[SocialDemocrat61]

23. True, not as inbred as the Hapsburgs

but Victoria and Albert were 1st cousins which is really creepy.

[Crunchy Frog]

24. I think it was pretty common in Europe at the time.

At least that's what I've gathered from reading Jane Austin novels.

Were Elizabeth II and Prince Philip 1st cousins? I know they were both descendants of Victoria.

[SocialDemocrat61]

25. No they weren't 1st cousins

I think they were 5th cousins, but so were the Roosevelts.

[SocialDemocrat61]

14. They never had a tradition of

Representative government. Same was true of Germany after WWI. The only reason that Germany is a democracy today is that it was imposed on them by the allies after WWII.

[brush]

19. Interesting nugget of history on Germany.

Seems many of those European nations were just collections of warring tribes...thus all the wars before even WWl and WWll.

Putin is just continuing it.

[Retrograde]

29. Smooth transition of power was a rarity

Peter the Great was almost killed (along with his half-brother and co-ruler) by a revolt to the boyars, the Russian nobility. His sister Sophia was regent for a while, but when Peter took over he had her locked in a convent. Peter's wife Catherine I took over with the help of the army, IIRC. Peter's daughter, Elizabeth, became empress by overthrowing the infant emperor, her cousin Ivan VI - who was only 2 - and locking him up in prison for the rest of his life (he was killed when he was in his 20s, supposedly by order of Catherine II). Elizabeth's heir, Peter III, was usurped and killed by his wife Catherine II and some army officers. Peter and Catherine's son Paul (well, he may have been Peter's) was overthrown and killed in another army coup. The next two transitions were mostly straightforward (although the next in line to Alexander I didn't want the job and it went to the next in line), but the Alexander II got blown up in the mid-1800s. His son Alexander III was a reactionary who came down hard on the burgeoning liberal movement. Then there was Nicholas II, who inherited the throne suddenly and unprepared - and it didn't help that he was dominated by his wife, who decided that they had to keep their son's hemophilia secret, which led to Rasputin. Then came the Revolution and things went from bad to horrendous.

Re A Gentleman in Moscow: I've read too much Russian history to buy the premise of the book, well-written prose notwithstanding.

[brush]

31. Whoa, horror after horror, overthrows, killings, ambition...

who can blame the one guy who didn't want the job.

That history is just a hellscape...and it explains Stalin and all the rest between him and Putin.

Not much hope for them since they just put up with it, dictator after dictator.

[Charging Triceratops]

26. Russia was on a fragile track toward parliamentary democracy in 1917

Lenin and his fascist thugs changed that. Even in the elections held after the October "revolution," the communists did poorly. But the Constitutional Assembly was erased by Lenin's dictatorship, and the rest is ... history.

[Elessar Zappa]

28. Lenin wasn't a fascist.

Fascist has a certain meaning. Lenin was an authoritarian communist (and a tyrannical asshole) but he wasn’t a fascist. Fascism is an ideology of the extreme right.

[brush]

32. Yes, fascism is extreme right as opposed to socialism to the left...

but Lenin's authoritarianism descended into communism which is an extreme form of socialism...and once one gets so far left the ideological circle completes and meets with the dictators on the far right.

What's to distinguish them?

[Charging Triceratops]

34. Lenin was a dictator and, thus, a fascist, albeit from the left

The masses were fooled by the Bolshevik slogan of "all power to the Soviets." Problem was, any localized control outside of Lenin's party thugs was only a ruse.

[brush]

30. Thanks. I didn't know this history. Was the Assembly violently deposed of...

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a foreshadowing of the horrid blood-letting to come in future decades under Stalin and Beria.

[Charging Triceratops]

33. The Bolsheviks did not stop the election

But they ignored its result as they took control of the country under the Lenin dictatorship.

[Tommy Carcetti]

10. Read the novel and have seen the show.

Both are great.

There’s an implied reference to the Holodomor, Stalin’s intentional famine of Ukraine.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

27. Just watched episode 7 "The Fall".

It's harrowing. Why? Because the lives of innocent people are in the hands of the worst people. And I can't stop thinking of Stephen Miller and his wanabes.

Interesting take by Glebnikov on why Americans didn't revolt during the Great Depression.