In the last 27 years, Russia has failed to discuss an extremely important topic...
Mourners Crushed at Stalin’s Funeral
http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1954-2/succession-to-stalin/succession-to-stalin-texts/mourners-crushed-at-stalins-funeral/
I think what bothers the authorities, is that you are just one step away (if you accept this movie) from some lampoon of Putin and team.
In fact, you could easily go right now and lampoon just about every single democracy in the EU.
The Moscow Times
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moscow_Times#Notable_events
[Excerpt:]
In the aftermath of the Ukrainian crisis, The Moscow Times was criticized by a number of journalists including Izvestia columnist Israel Shamir, who in December 2014 called it a “militant anti-Putin paper, a digest of the Western press with extreme bias in covering events in Russia”.[3]...In January 2014, malicious ads on the newspaper’s website redirected visitors to an exploit kit landing page.[21] In December 2014, The Moscow Times was forced offline for two days by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. It was forced offline a second time in February 2015 for unknown reasons.[3]
Sad that the Russians still pretending that Communism isn’t just as evil as what they crow about having defeated.
Most the rulers of Russia remain defiantly Soviet in their heart of hearts. This is beyond logic and reason.
Bkmrk.
Everyone should read this book: The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia
A history of the migration of thousands of Americans to Soviet Russia in the years prior to World War II recounts how Depression-era Americans from all walks of life pursued what they believed would be better opportunities in Russia only to be targeted, incarcerated, and executed by the Stalin regime.
“In their appeal to Culture Minister Medinsky, cultural figures accused the film of “lampooning the history of our country” and “blackening the memory of our citizens who conquered fascism.” The action of the film, however, takes place in 1953 and makes no mention of the war — “
Technically, it does in fact mention the war at one point: When conspiring to off Beria, Zhukov says “I ****ed Germany, I think I can handle a flesh lump in a ****ing waistcoat”, which was obviously referring to his driving out the Nazis on the Eastern Front of World War II.
However, it’s still a valid point overall, as Grigory Zhukov is actually one of the better characters in the film, not just in characterization, but also in terms of morality as well, which means that, far from blackening the memories of the Eastern Front veterans as the Culture Minister claimed, it if anything treated them positively.
And quite frankly, this film is needed to expose the horrors of Communism, especially to younger generations. What’s Vladimir Putin going to do next? Ban Animal Farm and 1984 due to it apparently mocking Stalin’s Russia? For goodness sakes, not only are Communists still running around in Russia (with Putin actually giving a speech that has him acting in solidarity to them), but they still have up Karl Marx’s statue in Teatralyana Square (funny how they tore down Lenin and Stalin’s statues in the various areas of the Soviet Union after it collapsed, yet they kept up the statue of the guy who started the whole Communist disaster, and at the center of the capital of Russia, no less). If they really want to end Communism, they should do what Germany did to the Nazi Party after World War II and especially bring down Marx’s statue.
Something like Veep, a show created by the same producer/writer/director, would have been very unwelcome in the early days of the American republic (if we'd had television back then).
That's not to excuse or justify the censorship, but the fear that things will all fall apart again if somebody doesn't keep a lid on things is very real in Russia.