Eduard Volodarsky, the Russian screenwriter who died on October 8, was a powerful dissident voice in the Soviet Union whose work was banned for its depiction of the horrors of life in the Socialist Utopia. Defying communist propaganda and the deliberate falsification of Soviet history, Volodarsky collaborated with the dissident director Alexei German on several classic films that were banned until the dawn of the era of perestroika. Amongst his other achievements, Volodarsky played a significant role in the demythologising of Lenin, illustrating that the brutality of the Soviet system was initiated by its founder, not by his successor, Josef Stalin, the latter of whom merely built on Lenin’s bloodthirsty legacy. Here’s the obituary to Volodarsky in today’s Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9612739/Eduard-Volodarsky.html