Like any comedy, The Death of Stalin is meant to make you laugh. It portrays the events shortly before and after Stalin’s death in 1953. It has humorous moments, such as Georgy Malenkov (the leader of the Soviet Union after Stalin) waving from the Kremlin and trying to pose with a child too small for the press cameras to see from behind the Kremlin balcony wall. Yet, beneath the film’s comedic aspects, it teaches several key lessons about dictatorships that we can apply to current strongmen. It demonstrates the fear that comes from living under a strongman like Stalin, with his cult of personality, and how Stalin sidelined those he considered threats. And the film depicts the backstabbing that occurs when a strongman dies and the power vacuum it leaves, just as Stalin’s death did.
The Death of Stalin has many historical errors. It condensed events that spanned months to make them seem fluid and connected, to fit the film’s runtime. It also changed historical facts for the audience, such as including the most notable individuals of Soviet History of the period in the film, even though they were not part of the government at the time. Vyacheslav Molotov, for example, was not the foreign minister at the time of Stalin’s death, as he left the post in 1949 and did not return as foreign minister until after Stalin died. However, these historical inaccuracies, although essential to note, also help the viewer understand the dynamics of Stalin’s inner circle. Vyacheslav Molotov is a more recognizable name from the Stalin era than Andrey Vyshinsky. Since Molotov returned as Foreign Minister after Stalin’s death, it is easier to use him consistently throughout the film rather than display the politics of Vyshinsky’s departure and Molotov’s return within the larger context of Stalin’s death, given the film’s hour and 45-minute runtime.
The fear of the strongman Stalin arises multiple times throughout the movie. The film starts with a concert with Stalin listening over radio. Initially, the radio broadcasters did not record the concert, but Stalin called them and requested a vinyl copy. Nobody wanted to tell Stalin or his staff that the concert was not recorded. Scrambling out of fear of what could happen to them, the concert organizers rushed people off the street to serve as the audience and quickly had the concert performed again, this time with a recording. When they hand the recording off to government officials, the radio broadcasters look exhausted and relieved that they avoided the worst. There are other scenes like this as well. When Stalin collapsed on the floor from his cerebral hemorrhage, his guards did not dare go into his chambers with the door closed for fear of interrupting him. Oddly enough, this scene shares characteristics similar to those of other dictators. During the Normandy landings, nobody wanted to wake Adolf Hitler from his sleep, both due to strict orders with fear of reprisal (and a belief the invasion at Normandy was a diversion). It’s a common element of strongman dictatorships, especially those with a cult of personality, to do anything to please the leader and to avoid even the slightest mistakes that may be misinterpreted. The film hits this fear of the strongman in the public element perfectly with its comedic portrayal of concert hall personnel scrambling to get an audience for a recording.
The film also illustrates how dictators use fear within their inner circle. In the film, Stalin planned to have Molotov purged, as Lavrentiy Beria, who was the head of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), said that Stalin had Beria put Molotov on a list of individuals for a planned purge. There’s actually another historical inaccuracy here: the NKVD did not exist at this time either, as it was disbanded in 1946 and merged into other agencies. However, the writers decided to use it in the film anyway, likely because the NKVD is more recognizable and associated with Stalin’s rule. The systematic purges employed by Stalin, from his planned purge of Molotov and the other round-ups of Soviet citizens in the movie, depict how Stalin was able to instill fear not only in the population but also in his inner circle. By targeting Molotov, and though Stalin died before the NKVD could conduct the supposed purge, Stalin created fear that nobody was safe, and that even individuals in his inner circle could be purged at any time.
There was one individual in the Soviet Union whom Stalin actually feared purging, and that individual was General Zhukov. Zhukov had built up a reputation as a Soviet hero during the Second World War, and as such, he was too popular for Stalin to purge. The film portrays Zhukov with an absurd number of medals on his uniform. Yet, in reality, he actually had even more, and writer and director Armando Iannucci chose to display him with fewer medals, as the actual number would appear unbelievable. Zhukov was well respected and seen as a war hero in the Soviet Union for his actions during the Second World War. But Zhukov was not actually the head of the Soviet army at the time of Stalin’s death, as Stalin had sidelined him in positions of little significance due to the threat posed by his growing popularity. While Stalin targeted his own aides, he also made sure to be wary of individuals who could supersede him in popularity and significance, as he did with Zhukov. Executing him would reflect poorly on Stalin with the public and diminish his cult of personality, so he chose to diminish his position instead. But with individuals Stalin could eliminate without tarnishing his cult of personality, Stalin would employ violence to its extreme. As such, the horrifying portrayal of the purges at the movie’s start demonstrates a cunningness used to employ fear and keep challengers in check.
Finally, the movie comedically demonstrates the backstabbing and politicking that follow the death of a dictator who concentrated power around himself. Beria is ousted from his position in a coup and executed to prevent him from gaining too much power in the succession. Zhukov used some witty dialogue to encourage Malenkov to go along with the coup. The coup against Beria highlights a key issue for governments that concentrate power in a single leader. After the strongman is gone, a vacuum remains, with successors lacking the power concentrated around them to maintain the orderly operation of the state. Malenkov, Beria, Zhukov, and Krushchev were all jockeying with each other to a degree throughout the movie. Dictators like Stalin did not like to designate successors, as doing so would have diminished their power while in office. While the Soviet Union still had a party structure from which to select a leader, the lack of a clear succession and the absence of a single individual with concentrated power led to this power struggle. It demonstrates that while there was little risk to the stability of the government and the regime while Stalin was alive, that changed considerably after his death. This is a theme in other dictatorships. In Yugoslavia, after Josip Broz Tito’s death in 1980, the fight over leadership without a central leader over the next decade would be a contributor to the breakup of Yugoslavia (though not the only cause). Ultimately, the portrayal and craziness of the jockeying for power in The Death of Stalin highlight the risks that a government and regime face after power has been concentrated in an individual for so long.
Ultimately, the actions of the characters in the film, and their occasional awkwardness, are amusing and seem absurd. Yet, simultaneously, in the context of the regime they lived under, with suspicion and fear, unhidden desires for power appear less absurd from their perspective. Perhaps that’s the purpose of a dark comedy like The Death of Stalin. While it makes you laugh at times, and the historical accuracy is sometimes off, it effectively portrays the power structures of regimes like Stalin’s Soviet Union. It portrays Stalin’s regime in a way that leads characters in the film to behave in an abnormal manner from an audience’s perspective to make us laugh, especially the actions immediately after Stalin’s death. This is what makes the medium of comedy so effective and important in this case. It can point out the absurdities of strongman dictatorships more bluntly than a drama where the audience would have to do more thinking to really notice the absurdity of the situations. But if an audience member were one of the characters in the film, their actions might seem more justified from their perspective. While the historical inaccuracies do exist, they ultimately do not detract from the film’s message. You could change the characters to the historically accurate members of government and change the names of agencies to match the time period. But doing so does not change the fundamental emotions and ideas conveyed in the film, and makes events harder to follow if including the change in who was the foreign minister during the events of the film. Ultimately, the absurdity of living under a dictatorship from a viewer’s perspective is vastly different from the normalcy and fear of those actually experiencing it.