Dear Comrades! is a 2020 historical drama from Russia, directed by Andrei Konchalovsky. It returns to 1962 and the small factory town of Novocherkassk, where a strike by workers ended in bloodshed, and it follows those days from the viewpoint of a devout party activist.
What is Dear Comrades! about?
The year is 1962. The communist government raises the cost of food, and in Novocherkassk, a small town built around industry, the workers respond by rebelling. They stop work and go on strike. What begins as a labour dispute grows into a confrontation between the townspeople and the authorities, and it ends in a massacre. The film does not tell this story from the side of the strikers. Its point of view belongs to a devout party activist, someone who believes in the system. The audience sees the strike and the violence that follows through that person's eyes. The page stops there, so that the rest of the story stays for the viewer to discover.
About the cast
Yuliya Vysotskaya leads the cast. Alongside her appear Vladislav Komarov, Andrei Gusev, Yulia Burova, Sergei Erlish, Dmitry Kostyaev, Alexander Maskelyne and Ivan Martynov. Andrei Konchalovsky is the director.
Context & significance
The film belongs to two genres at once, drama and historical film. Its setting is a specific place and moment: Novocherkassk in 1962, during a workers' strike that followed a rise in the cost of food. The production is Russian and was released in 2020, close to six decades after the events it depicts. The running time is 121 minutes, a little over two hours. Because the viewpoint is that of a party activist and not a striker, the film shows how the events looked from inside the party's own ranks. The political setting is presented here as historical background to a personal story; this page describes the film and takes no position on the events themselves.
Watching Dear Comrades! on Ktime
Dear Comrades! is available to stream on K-Time. Reading this page is free; playing the film requires signing in to a K-Time account. K-Time is a Persian-focused streaming service built for the Iranian diaspora, with a Farsi interface for browsing and playback.