Rebirth of India: Superior

For people of my age, the word Cheka is quite familiar. In every film reflecting the early history of the Soviet Union, it must appear with dazzling brilliance. They are always handsome and majestic, wearing black leather clothes, with sharp eyes, and tirelessly discovering hostile elements from the crowd. As the representative of Cheka, Dzerzhinsky is even more worshipped by us as a hero.

In recent years, as the archives are gradually made public and the truth gradually emerges, the image of Cheka has also dimmed. Seeing these two words makes me feel cold on my back. Cheka is the abbreviation of the Committee for Purging Counterrevolutionaries established at the beginning of the establishment of the Soviet Union. It is an organization that Lenin relies on very much. It is an "institution that uses extraordinary means to fight against all counter-revolutionaries" (Lenin's words). For the new Soviet Union, it is indeed killing people like a spit. The name of Cheka actually only existed for more than four years, but the terror caused by this name has been lingering in human history like a ghost. This film "Cheka" shot by Russia shows the audience a series of bloody pictures through the eyes of a local leader of Cheka.

The film is indeed quite bloody, with gunshots and corpses, torturing your nerves and testing your endurance. When I first watched it, I couldn't watch it anymore after just the first ten minutes. I am currently reading Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, which often mentions the situation at that time. Although the degree of cruelty is described in words, it is not inferior to the shock the movie gave me. In order to have a reference, I watched Cheka again, and this time I watched it from beginning to end.

This film still haunts me like a nightmare. The film is not long, only about 80 minutes, and the scenes are also very monotonous, most of which are located in the basement of a detention center. But in the more than 80 minutes of the film, almost an hour of it was spent on the execution; every time in this basement, a group of men, women, old and young were brought here from the prison, then stripped naked, walked naked to the door, and stood facing the door; every time it was the same five executioners, who shot them swiftly; the bodies were hung upside down on the ground, then thrown on a cart and pulled out of the city. The whole process was extremely standardized, just like a slaughterhouse.

People here have long lost their dignity, living without dignity, and dying the same. They were arrested for various reasons and copied into the list. There was only a simple interrogation: "Name? Patronymic? Surname?" No matter how you answer, your crime has already been determined. The Cheka personnel sat comfortably in the office, reading the names on the roster. The reasons for arrest were simple, hatred of the Soviets, or sabotage, and some were even just because of their profession, or just the wives and children of these personnel. The verdict was also very simple: "Execution proposal?" "Shooting." (There is no need to add an exclamation mark to the word shooting, it is too common, and the Cheka personnel even use lazy voices) Their last life is like a little mouse, living without dignity; until they die, they have to throw away the last sense of shame, come naked, go naked, life here is like a pile of rags, even worse than livestock in a slaughterhouse.

And all of this is carried out in the name of revolution. "Revolution is not a figment of the imagination, it is a living organism. We must let the revolutionary storm give birth to the order construction of a new society." This is a sentence in the movie, and it is also the rule that the revolutionary regime at that time adhered to. For the sake of the regime, revolution is necessary. For the sake of revolution, suppression is necessary. And institutions like the Cheka are just inevitable tools of revolutionary violence. In the name of revolution, everything can be implemented. Including terror, it is also part of the revolution. What they eliminated is not a small group of people, but a class. The entire bourgeoisie is the enemy of the revolution and must be completely crushed. Therefore, the machine of revolution rumbles and starts. As long as you go against the revolution, you are the enemy of the revolution and you will be eliminated from the spirit to the body. In the basement, the White Army officers are of course enemies and are shot; the priests are also enemies and are shot; lawyers and journalists are all bourgeois and are also enemies of the revolution and are shot. Among the piles of corpses, after the sound of gunfire, in the atmosphere of terror, the regime is stabilized and the revolution is carried out.

There are not many dialogues in the film, even more than the gunfire that tortures people's nerves. Most of them are monotonous, repetitive and boring, but there are still many words that are very powerful. "Well, the revolution is a hungry ghost. It craves blood. It wants to suck the blood of the best people. However, its thirst for blood is necessary." "The revolution is shocking the world and reshaping the world. The revolution needs to endure pain, filth and grief." "The birth of the new world is inseparable from torture and blood. To suppress the chaos, a strong and cruel regime is needed, and that regime is our basement." The words are concise and profound, reflecting the essence of the revolution. Revolution is bloodthirsty. It is like a monster that will devour everything, including the revolution itself. The world history of the past century has actually proved this point. A society that advocates violence and terror is bound to be a tyrannical society, a society that despises life, and a society that ignores human dignity. In such a society, there will be no peace, no love, only hatred and violence. It gains everything through violence, and it will inevitably die in violence.

In the film, as members of the Cheka, they have become killing machines. Killing is their profession. Killing a counter-revolutionary is easier than killing a pig. There is no need to pay attention to how to use a knife, no need to consider depilation, no need to worry about the resistance of the target, no need to deal with all the follow-up matters, and no need to aim. Just pull the trigger and shoot the bullet. Countless people die in front of them every day, and life has become numb to them. They joke and end their lives in laughter and scolding. After killing people, they bathe in blood and pick out the clothes taken off by the shot. They have become bloodthirsty monsters. Only the splashing blood can make them feel the value of their existence. However, when they face the unreasonable disappearance of life and the death of living people under their own guns, will they really feel nothing? In fact, they are just alienated by the revolution. No matter how terrifying and cruel the regime is, it cannot eliminate human nature. Human nature will always revive at some point, and the remaining human nature will also make them uneasy. Finally, an executioner attempted to hang himself, and the protagonist of the play eventually went crazy and became a victim of this bloodthirsty machine, becoming the blood in the mouth of the monster of revolution.

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