The Lives of Others will probably endure, alongside ArthurKoestler’s Darkness at Noon andGeorge Orwell’s 1984, as one of thegreat depictions of totalitarianism. It might be the best film ever made onlife under Soviet-style Communism. However, some of the essayists contributingto Totalitarianism on Screen: The Art andPolitics of The Lives of Others (University Press of Kentucky), prefer theterm “post-totalitarianism,” a distinction that begs many questions but might havefelt right to people who endured Stalinism and survived into the long aftermathof the Soviet Bloc. Stalin’s death ended mass arrests and murder on a scale rivalingHitler, but the specter of totalitarianism haunted Eastern Europe until theBerlin Wall fell. Dissidents could still be arrested, deprived of theirprofessions or forced to live in remote districts; they could be discreditedand shunned.
Edited by Skidmore’sCarl Eric Scott and F. Flagg Taylor IV, Totalitarianismon Screen uses The Lives of Othersas a way to explore Marxism’s faulty assumptions about human nature, thedestructive violence inherent in Leninism and the East Bloc’s perversion ofsocialism’s humane ideals—albeit some of the contributors seem to feel thatsocialism is inherently soul destroying. The historical accuracy of the EastGermany depicted in the film is examined in several essays, especially Britishhistorian Peter Grieder’s “East German Totalitarianism: A Warning fromHistory.” Grieder finds the film fundamentally accurate, true to the mood ofthe place and time—East Berlin 1984, the Wall five years from falling but noend to the regime in sight.
Grieder deconstructs thecharge that the central plot pivot—a Stasi officer covering up for thedissident under his surveillance—was impossible. He found cases of Stasi agentsexecuted for treason and finds the notion that all East German secret policemenwere “true believers” in the system to be hopelessly naïve. Good history isbased on empathy, not a priori assumptions.
East Germany was theultimate old school surveillance state with informers at every keyhole and atangle of wiretaps and bugs feeding miles of file cabinets crammed withdossiers. As Grieder concludes, one can only imagine the uses the Stasi wouldhave made of the technology available today.
