“The ends justify the means” is a phrase incorrectly attributed to Machiavelli. Regardless the phrase’s coinage, it was certainly minted by totalitarian despots of the past century. Walter Duranty, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter (ponder the proximity of those two facts, if only briefly), summed up the credo thusly: “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.”
Duranty was referring to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and its tyrannical leader, Joseph Stalin, in a whitewashing of, among other atrocities, the Holodomor. For the unaware, the Holodomor was an event that took place only 80-some years ago in the Ukraine. While the exact number is disputed, it can be reasonably asserted that millions of Ukrainians needlessly and cruelly died of starvation due to vindictive policies implemented at the behest of Stalin.
Holodomor translates as “death by starvation,” and the Ukrainian event claimed between an estimated 2.5 million and 12 million individuals. The manmade famine has been granted scant attention compared to other 20th century horrors as the Holocaust and the Cambodian Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge. Films abound about nearly every aspect of the Nazis’ Final Solution and a whole film was named and based on the Cambodian genocide.
The Holodomor, on the other hand, served only as the premise for the original story and subsequent film adaptation of Tom Rob Smith’s detective novel, “Child 44,” and the backdrop of the recently released “Bitter Harvest.” Other examples may exist, but none immediately spring to mind.
Whereas “Child 44” was buoyed by an excellent cast (Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, Gary Oldman, Joel Kinnaman), director (Daniel Espinosa) and screenplay (Richard Price), “Bitter Harvest” boasts only British actor Terence Stamp as a known entity, although Jeremy Irons’ son, Max, assumes the lead role. While the film itself is uneven dramatically whether due to a lackluster script and/or limited budget, its performances are admirable.
What’s most important is the subject matter undergirding an uninspired love story that serves as the plot. No, readers might have guessed, “Bitter Harvest” is not “Doctor Zhivago” (or even Warren Beatty’s “Reds”). But, then, the David Lean film adapted from Boris Pasternak’s novel set during and after the Bolshevik Revolution also possesses moments that strain credulity as characters coincidentally bump into each other at critical junctures in the story.
Gaping plot holes feature prominently in “Bitter Harvest.” For example, a woman poisons but does not kill a Soviet officer, and yet she is spared execution for no apparent reason. The details of the poisoning are equally absurd; suffice it to say one doesn’t immediately succumb to hallucinations upon ingesting psilocybin mushrooms (or so your writer has been informed). Additionally, a battle scene between insurgents and the Soviet Army seems perfunctory and adds little if anything to the story.
What precipitated Stalin’s wrath against the Ukrainians was, in part, their resistance to forced collectivization while at the same time possessing a national pride that threatened the ideal of the Soviet Man. Those peasants that fought against the government takings of their lands were referred to derogatively as “kulaks” or tight-fisted, selfish individuals who became enemies of not only their fellow Ukrainian countrymen but of the entire Soviet Union as well. Soviet propaganda of the early 1930s depicted kulaks as hoarders of potatoes and wheat in a manner that is, in part, blatantly anti-Semitic (not all kulaks were Jewish, nor were all Jews kulaks).
Aside from its several shortcomings, however, “Bitter Harvest” is to be commended for its cinematic depiction of one of the 20th century’s darkest chapters and personalizing the history of a persecuted country that is too often ignored or forgotten. Or simply unknown thanks to the Soviet penchant for propaganda and the useful idiots, as Vladimir Lenin used to call them, such as Walter Duranty who helped cover up the Holodomor.
Bruce Edward Walker (walker.editorial@gmail.com) is a Morning Sun columnist and freelance writer.
