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As I was visiting the other day with the eminent Sovietologist Robert Conquest, our discussion turned to a strange phenomenon: Why doesn’t Hollywood make movies about the Soviet Union or any other Communist country? Why haven’t the Public Broadcasting System and the commercial networks availed themselves of these superb script materials, recording either fictionalized or documentary versions of Russian history since Lenin’s arrival in 1917?

After all, Hollywood has made a number of splendid movies about what life in America is really like: Grapes of Wrath, about the Okies during the Depression; The China Syndrome, which shows how awful money-grubbing capitalism can be; Apocalypse Now, about how Americans feel about gooks and wogs. How to explain that nobody has ever made a film about the material in the Penkovsky Papers?

AB

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Arnold Beichman

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As I was visiting the other day with the eminent Sovietologist Robert Conquest, our discussion turned to a strange phenomenon: Why doesn’t Hollywood make movies about the Soviet Union or any other Communist country? Why haven’t the Public Broadcasting System and the commercial networks availed themselves of these superb script materials, recording either fictionalized or documentary versions of Russian history since Lenin’s arrival in 1917?

After all, Hollywood has made a number of splendid movies about what life in America is really like: Grapes of Wrath, about the Okies during the Depression; The China Syndrome, which shows how awful money-grubbing capitalism can be; Apocalypse Now, about how Americans feel about gooks and wogs. How to explain that nobody has ever made a film about the material in the Penkovsky Papers?