The crowning triumph of a career cut tragically short, the final film from Larisa Shepitko won the Golden Bear at the 1977 Berlin Film Festival and went on to be hailed as one of the finest works of late Soviet cinema. In the darkest days of World War II, two partisans set out for supplies to sustain their beleaguered outfit, braving the blizzard-swept landscape of Nazi-occupied Belorussia. When they fall into the hands of German forces and come face-to-face with death, each must choose between martyrdom and betrayal, in a spiritual ordeal that lifts the film’s earthy drama to the plane of religious allegory.
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Khrushchev’s rise to power, and the revisionism he instituted, was built on many lies and the demonisation of Stalin. His actions effectively destroyed the global communist movement, invigorated the enemies of revolution everywhere, generated a great ideological split with China, and paved the road for America’s ascendancy to sole superpower status after the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991.
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CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Replacing capitalism and imperialism with equality, justice, peace and harmony is what our world needs if our species is to survive into the future, but the agenda to make that transition sets us directly at odds with the largest power structures in the history of civilization. For this reason there’s been a generations-long campaign of psyops, infiltration and propaganda to keep the left down which surely continues to this day in online circles, but even if it didn’t the chaos, paranoia and confusion created on the left over the years by programs like COINTELPRO would be enough to significantly hinder our efforts to organize and overturn the status quo.
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MATT EHRET—In this week’s episode of the Great Game, we discuss the good, the bad and the ugly developments of world history and modern events. The discussion unpacks the positive developments surrounding Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum (Sept 2-4) which is unleashing a new multipolar development dynamic onto the world in total synergy with China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
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PEPE ESCOBAR—Beijing for its part is focused on increasing its connectivity with Iran via what could be described as a Persian-colored corridor incorporating Tajikistan and Afghanistan. That will depend, once again, on the degree of Taliban control.
But Beijing can count on an embarrassment of riches: Plan A, after all, is an extended China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), with Afghanistan annexed, whoever is in power in Kabul.
What’s clear is that the extended troika will not be shaping the most intricate details of the future of Eurasia integration. That will be up to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which includes Russia, China, Pakistan, India, the Central Asian “stans” and Iran and Afghanistan as current observers and future full-members.
