"Run" 
Mosfilm 1970 
Directors: A. Alov, V. Naumov 
185 minutes

Ordinarily we would not expect anything good to 
come out of the Brezhnev era (1970) Soviet Union 
in the matter of political films. However, this 
artistic rendition of the sufferings of the 
Russian counterrevolutionaries (referred to as 
"whites") of 1917 is now in fact progressive. We 
attribute this to the fact that 1917 was distant 
enough and the preoccupation with art itself time-
consuming enough that the many ideological foibles 
of the Brezhnev era popular consciousness did not 
overly contaminate the film.

The premise of the movie is the end of the Russian 
Civil War started by the events of 1917. The 
counterrevolutionaries go through a long process 
of change in the movie, changes forced upon them. 
At the beginning of the movie, we find generals 
executing people in a desperate and hopeless 
rearguard action to defend Russian capitalism and 
the church. Finally, enough white officers realize 
that it is most valiant to protect their men by 
disbanding. The movie's scenes of the desperate 
repressions aimed at something the whites cannot 
contain or fix are actually a metaphor for the 
whole world today, with Bush's desperate running 
about the globe trying to control the inevitable 
proliferation of weapons guaranteed by his own 
beloved capitalist system. As we see in this film, 
the history it depicts and history in general, 
there is no avoiding that some repressive violence 
ends up being pointless. It is this fact that will 
haunt the most hardened counterrevolutionaries the 
rest of their lives and it is also the fact that 
makes being right about violence absolutely 
essential, thus providing a need for a science 
studying violence.

After the civil war's violence, we see people ship 
out to Turkey where their lives undergo a dramatic 
change. Most memorable are the scenes of generals 
selling toy soldiers and running cockroach races 
to make a living.

Also memorable are the moments when doubts enter 
the minds of even the most hardened counter-
revolutionaries. In squabbles amongst themselves, 
one ex-white general says he wishes he were a 
Bolshevik for a day just so he would have the 
reason and authority to shoot his acquaintance he 
viewed as overly corrupted by bourgeois values.

In fact, the movie ends with a return to the 
Soviet Union--the homeland--and a symbolic 
greeting of the future. The reviewer would also 
mention that V. Dvorzhetsky had a most memorable 
character to play as a white general. At the 
moment, the reviewer cannot remember any greater 
acting in any film s/he has seen. The character 
and acting are so well-defined, we are to fear 
that the truly backward will admire the white 
general for all the wrong fascist reasons. The 
directors went through a painstaking and clear 
process to show how the white generals faced a 
tragic end, but without survey data regarding 
viewer reactions to the film, we cannot guarantee 
that the directors' efforts were not in vain. The 
acting may have outdone the script's logic, so we 
cannot say for sure that the emotional and 
backward did not pick up the wrong message. With 
that proviso, and lacking any final evidence, we 
recommend this film for now.

When MIM achieves state power, we will finance 
movies like "Run," and we will include money for 
survey research on the extent to which the public 
comprehends the film. Merely making money or 
winning acting prizes will not be the goal.