Arena — Season 1, Episode 538: Stalin - the Red God
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
Joseph Stalin is seen outside his native land as one of history's most deplorable tyrants, but throughout the former Soviet states a cult of Stalin still exists. This film documents Stalin's development from would-be provincial priest to ruthless autocrat, and shows how he exploited the repression of the Russian Orthodox Church, using visual propaganda, to reinvent himself as a quasi-religious idol.
About Arena
Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.