00:001945, Nazi Germany surrenders. Europe is in ruins.
00:05But one country, against all odds, stands out among the winners.
00:08The Soviet Union, nearly 27 million dead,
00:12entire towns razed, families decimated.
00:16And yet the Soviet people are jubilant.
00:19He survived hell. He crushed Hitler.
00:23And at its head, one man, Joseph Stalin.
00:25The whole world celebrates his name.
00:27In Moscow, the crowd shouts its glory.
00:30The statues stand.
00:32History textbooks only talk about one man.
00:35Worship becomes religion.
00:37Stalin is the architect of victory.
00:40And no one dares to recall that this victory,
00:43he built it on the blood of his own people.
00:45But this glory does not calm him.
00:48She intoxicates him. She strengthens him.
00:50Behind the winner's smile,
00:53the tyrant never disappeared.
00:54He waits. He watches.
00:56He is preparing the sequel.
00:59After the war,
01:00The Soviet army is not going home.
01:02She stays.
01:03In Poland.
01:04In Hungary.
01:04In Czechoslovakia.
01:06Officially to guarantee peace.
01:08In reality, to impose a new power.
01:11Local communist parties,
01:12often marginal,
01:13receive help from Moscow.
01:15Propaganda, repression, targeted assassination.
01:18In a few years,
01:19All of Eastern Europe falls under Soviet control.
01:21In Budapest,
01:23Boucarest,
01:24Sofia or Warsaw,
01:25history repeats itself.
01:27Democracies are collapsing,
01:28one by one.
01:29People no longer choose.
01:31They obey or disappear.
01:33The political police changes its name,
01:35but no method.
01:36Torture becomes a tool of governance.
01:39Fear,
01:40a common language.
01:41The world is discovering a new reality.
01:44The USSR did not liberate Europe.
01:46She won her back.
01:47And between East and West,
01:49a curtain falls.
01:50A curtain of silence,
01:52of censorship
01:52and barbed wire.
01:54The Iron Curtain.
01:56The war is over,
01:57but Stalin continues his.
01:59He no longer fights Hitler.
02:01Now he is fighting his own people.
02:03Soldiers returned from the front
02:04hoped for honors.
02:06They find the surveillance.
02:07Intellectuals were waiting for freedom.
02:10They discover censorship.
02:12Even war heroes become suspect.
02:14A medal no longer protects.
02:16A misinterpreted idea,
02:17little condemned.
02:18In 1946,
02:20The NKVD changes its name.
02:22It becomes the MGB.
02:24Ministry of State Security.
02:26New acronym.
02:27Same method.
02:28Night arrest.
02:30Endless interrogation.
02:31Silent deportation.
02:33Terror is no longer so loud
02:35than in 1937.
02:37She became colder,
02:39more invisible
02:40and just as relentless.
02:42And then,
02:42a new type of enemy appears,
02:44the cosmopolitan intellectual.
02:46In 1948,
02:48The Soviet Union recognizes the State of Israel.
02:51Stalin saw this as a political blow against the West.
02:54But very quickly,
02:55the situation is turning around.
02:56He begins to suspect dual loyalty
02:58among Soviet Jews.
03:00The party never talks about anti-Semitism.
03:03He prefers to talk about
03:04intellectual parasites,
03:06of citizens without roots,
03:08of dubious loyalties.
03:09But everyone understands.
03:11Writers are censored.
03:13Theaters are closed.
03:14Jewish leaders
03:16are discreetly eliminated.
03:18Power is being prepared.
03:19He shapes a narrative.
03:21A tale of fear,
03:22of treason,
03:23of purification.
03:25State anti-Semitism
03:26is just beginning.
03:28His time will come soon.
03:29The population,
03:30She,
03:31keep silent.
03:32She hoped for a freer future.
03:34She finds oppression
03:35more sneaky.
03:36less visible than purges
03:38from 1937.
03:40But just as paralyzing,
03:42the war is over,
03:44but the nightmare,
03:45him,
03:45continue.
03:47Stalin is getting old,
03:49but his paranoia,
03:50She,
03:50does not weaken.
03:51He no longer trusts
03:52to no one,
03:53not even to its oldest
03:55companions,
03:56Molotov,
03:56Malenkov,
03:57Kaganovich.
03:58All are monitored,
03:59humiliated,
04:00tested.
04:01Politburo meetings
04:02become trials.
04:03The endless dinners,
04:05scenes of domination.
04:07A wrong word,
04:08one silence too many.
04:09And the fall can be immediate.
04:12In October 1952,
04:14Stalin summons
04:15the 19th party congress.
04:17This is the first one
04:17for 13 years.
04:19He takes advantage of it
04:19to remodel
04:20the apparatus of power
04:21as he pleases.
04:22He weakens the old ones,
04:24promotes the obscure,
04:26confuses alliances.
04:27Some see it
04:28a tactical maneuver.
04:30Others,
04:30the prelude
04:31of a new purge.
04:32A final purge,
04:34definitive.
04:35And a few months later,
04:36things are speeding up.
04:38In January 1953,
04:41the Soviet press
04:42reveals a state scandal.
04:44Several doctors,
04:45mostly Jewish,
04:46are accused
04:47to have tried
04:47to murder
04:48the highest leaders
04:49of the country.
04:50This is the plot
04:50white coats.
04:52The confessions were obtained
04:53under torture.
04:54The evidence is fabricated.
04:56But in the press,
04:57in the street,
04:58in speeches,
04:59hatred grows.
05:00Hangings are demanded,
05:02public trials,
05:04examples.
05:05In secret,
05:06Stalin goes even further.
05:07He validates a plan
05:08of mass deportation
05:10Jews from Moscow.
05:11Train,
05:12camp,
05:12list,
05:13everything is ready.
05:14The operation must begin.
05:16In March 19153.
05:19But it will never happen.
05:21Stalin spends the evening
05:22in his dacha
05:23as often.
05:24He dines with his loved ones.
05:25Beria,
05:26Malenkov,
05:27Khrushchev,
05:27Bulganin.
05:28He laughs,
05:29he drinks,
05:30he insults.
05:31Then he withdraws
05:31in his apartments
05:32and does not reappear.
05:34For hours,
05:35no one dares to enter.
05:36The guards are waiting,
05:38terrified.
05:39It's only the next day
05:40that we find him on the ground.
05:41Unconscious,
05:42paralyzed,
05:43soaked in urine,
05:44but still alive.
05:46And yet,
05:47he receives no care.
05:48No doctor is called
05:49before the next evening.
05:51Those who could save him
05:52are in prison.
05:53The famous conspiracy doctors,
05:55arrested on the orders of the same man
05:57that he should be treating today.
05:59For four days,
06:00Stalin is dying.
06:01He is breastfeeding,
06:02drool,
06:02delirium,
06:03nobody cries,
06:04no one is happy either.
06:06Everyone holds their breath,
06:08the master of the USSR
06:09is at death's door.
06:11And no one dares to kill him.
06:12But no one dares to save him either.
06:15He died on March 5, 1953
06:17at 9:50 p.m.
06:19In his room,
06:20the silence is total.
06:21Even his death inspires fear.
06:23On March 6, 1953,
06:27the announcement falls.
06:28Joseph Stalin is dead.
06:30Millions of Soviets
06:31parade to see his body.
06:33Some people cry genuinely.
06:35Others,
06:36by reflex
06:37or out of fear.
06:38In the streets of Moscow,
06:39the crowd is dense.
06:40In the corridors of power,
06:42the silence is heavy.
06:43But it's a silence of relief.
06:45The tyrant is no longer there.
06:47And already,
06:47succession struggles begin.
06:49For several months,
06:51power remains shared.
06:52Beria tries to gain the upper hand,
06:55but he is quickly arrested.
06:57Then executed.
06:58Gradually,
06:59a man imposes himself,
07:00Nikita Khrushchev.
07:02Discreet infidel,
07:03skillful,
07:04patient.
07:04And in 1956,
07:06in front of the party executives,
07:08he does the unthinkable,
07:09he breaks the silence.
07:11In a secret speech,
07:12Khrushchev denounces
07:13Stalin's crimes.
07:15The purges,
07:16deportations,
07:17the cult of personality.
07:19The shock is immense.
07:20Some collapse,
07:22others refuse to believe it.
07:24This is the beginning of de-Stalinization.
07:26Statues are being toppled,
07:28cities are renowned,
07:29rewritten school textbooks.
07:32The prisons are slowly emptying.
07:34The Gulag is retreating.
07:35Families find their dead,
07:38on archive lists.
07:39But fear,
07:40She,
07:40doesn't disappear so quickly.
07:42Stalin is dead,
07:43but his shadow still looms
07:44over entire generations.
07:46He shaped an empire in his own image,
07:48an empire built on blood,
07:50submission
07:51and silence.
07:53And for 30 years,
07:54no one had dared to pronounce
07:55his name otherwise,
07:56only to glorify him.
07:58Until the day when history
07:59caught up with him.
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