For thirty years, Joseph Stalin kept a tight grip on the Soviet Union, imprisoning and murdering millions. After he died, a number of people whom he had imprisoned got released. It turned out that among those were people who had committed violent crimes. Aleksandr Proshkin's "Kholodnoye leto pyatdesyat tretego" ("Cold Summer of 1953" in English) looks at the result of this. When a group of dangerous criminals takes over a rural village, a former political prisoner has to resort to extreme measures.
The movie got released during Mikhail Gorbachev's presidency. It was appropriate that in the period when criticism of its history became part of official Soviet policy, movies like this and "Little Vera" came out. They were finally willing to admit that they had been wrong about so many things. There could be no doubt that Stalin himself was the USSR's biggest criminal of all. Even Lavrentiy Beria, who freed a number of prisoners, organized the Soviet seizure of power in Eastern Europe.
I wouldn't call "Cold Summer of 1953" a masterpiece. At times it seems like an action movie. But it's a good look at this important part of Soviet history.