The Rise And Fall Of The Soviet Union

Peter Graves (Mission Impossible) is the host and narrator for this uninspired quickie on the history of the Soviet Union. Roughly covering the period from the Bolshevik Revolution up to the recent collapse of the Soviet Union, the film appears to be built around available film clips. We may be watching newsreel footage of Lenin at one moment, while the narration describes his rise to power. In the next, we may see a group of Russian minor dignitaries attending a party-each referred to by name. It's this awkward imbalance between the weighty and the utterly trivial that makes this double-cassette frustrating to watch. As might be expected, a fair amount of attention is given to Russia's role in WWII, but the footage of Nazi death camps in Germany seems to be utterly gratuitous to the telling of the Russian story. Ditto for the extensive section on the Gulf War. Not a necessary purchase. A better choice is the identically titled The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union from Library Distributors of America (reviewed in our July-August issue). (Available from most distributors.)