“Two Prosecutors,” “Palestine ’36,” and the Tribulations of Resistance in the Thirties
By the time Kornev is finally ushered into the cell of Stepniak (a mesmerizing Aleksandr Filippenko), there’s no sense of triumph or even anticipation about what he will discover. Stepniak’s account is terrifying, though not terribly surprising: he is one of many Old Bolsheviks who have been strategically targeted by Stalin’s regime, and his “vital…