Set in 1957, "Crystal Skull" pits our hero Indiana against dastardly Soviet agents in a race to possess a powerful artifact. And like you would expect from the bad guys in a big-budget action flick, the Soviets are continually meeting bad ends at the hands of Jones.
Some members of the Communist Party are upset that young people today may confuse "Crystal Skull" with the real events of 1957. Other members though seemed to take real personal offense at being portrayed at having Soviets portrayed cartoonish villains after Russia supported the United States. "What galls is how together with America we defeated Hitler, and how we sympathized when Bin Laden hit them," said Viktor Perov, a Communist Party member in Russia's second city of St. Petersburg. "But they go ahead and scare kids with Communists. These people have no shame."
In the past few years Russia has been taking a look at its Soviet past. Right after the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia turned its back on the previous seven decades of Soviet history as they looked to embrace western systems of government and economics. Under Vladimir Putin though Russia started to remember with pride some of the achievements of the old Soviet Union, particularly the Red Army's defeat of Nazi Germany and the success of the Soviet space program, which launched the first satellite and sent the first man into orbit. Coming to terms with the legacy of the Soviet Union is an ongoing process in Russia today.
Getting back to Indiana Jones - despite the protests of the Communist Party, the movie had the largest opening of any Hollywood movie ever in Russia, appearing in more than 800 theaters across the country. Most moviegoers I saw interviewed seemed able to separate history from the story of "Crystal Skull".
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