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Indiana Jones makes Russian communists see red

ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Russian Communist Partymembers condemned the new "Indiana Jones" film on Friday ascrude, anti-Soviet propaganda that distorts history and calledfor it to be banned from Russian screens.

"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" starsHarrison Ford as an archeologist in 1957 competing with an evilKGB agent, played by Cate Blanchett, to find a skull endowedwith mystic powers.

"What galls is how together with America we defeatedHitler, and how we sympathized when Bin Laden hit them. Butthey go ahead and scare kids with Communists. These people haveno shame," said Viktor Perov, a Communist Party member inRussia's second city of St. Petersburg.
The comments were made at a local Communist party meetingand posted on its Internet site www.kplo.ru.
The film, the fourth in the hugely successful Indiana Jonesseries, went on release in Russian cinemas on Thursday. Russianmedia said it was being shown on 808 screens, the widest everrelease for a Hollywood movie.
In past episodes Indiana Jones has escaped from Nazisoldiers, an Egyptian snake pit, a Bedouin swordsman and achild-enslaving Indian demigod.
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"Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett (are) second-rate actors,serving as the running dogs of the CIA. We need to deprivethese people of the right of entering the country," saidanother party member, Andrei Gindos.
Though the ranks of the once all-powerful Communist Partyhave dwindled since Soviet times, its members see themselves asthe defenders of the achievements of the old Soviet Union.
Other communists said the generation born after the 1991collapse of the Soviet Union were being fed revisionist,Hollywood history. They advocated banning the Indiana Jonesoutright to prevent "ideological sabotage."
"Our movie-goers are teenagers who are completely unawareof what happened in 1957," St Peterburg Communist Party chiefSergei Malinkovich told Reuters.
"They will go to the cinema and will be sure that in 1957we made trouble for the United States and almost started anuclear war."
"It's rubbish ... In 1957 the communists did not run withcrystal skulls throughout the U.S. Why should we agree to thatsort of lie and let the West trick our youth?"
Vladimir Mukhin, another member of the local CommunistParty, said in comments posted on the Internet site that hewould ask Russia's Culture Ministry to ban the film for its"anti-Soviet propaganda."
The "Indiana Jones" film is not the first Hollywoodproduction to offend Russian sensibilities.
In 1998 the Russian parliament demanded the governmentexplain why the Hollywood film "Armageddon" - which depicted adilapidated Russian space station that blows apart because of aleaky pipe -- was allowed onto Russian cinema screens.
A government official at the time said the film, starringBruce Willis as the leader of a team of astronauts sent todeflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth, "mockedthe achievements of Soviet and Russian technology."
Reuters/Nielsen