A type of film that you only watch once. "Heavy atmosphere" doesn't do it justice. You feel drenched in blood and gunshot sounds.
It sells you the feeling, the rhythm rather than historical accuracy of a mundane horror of **not so bad days** (oh, yes there is no comparison to Great Terror of 1937) of the small scale of first wave of so-called Red Terror.

The clash between indiscriminative mass murder of people of any gender, nationality, religion and even social status on one side. And **multinational** (Russians, Latvians, Jewish, Polish, Ukrainians and many more) band of people united by blood on their hands clinging to any justification for their actions, next in line to be executed almost two decades later. Fruits of civil war in a single country.

Made in the last days of USSR. With nations pointing fingers at each other and claiming that _they_ are victims who never participated in creation of the monster. That choice of characters feels deliberate.

Those who have no memory have no future. The evolution of the son of the Revolution is excellently shown, sincerely believing in his struggle, then driving doubts like heresy, losing his mind, standing against the wall after the execution of his colleagues. But this is not supposed to be! Emotions will be like from Romm's film "Ordinary Fascism". According to the book of the executioner conveyor worker