If you are looking for the "Janet and John" version of the rise of Communism around the globe, then you could do worse than this enthusiastically narrated lecture on just how this doctrine rose to prominence throughout the world. From czarist Russia through the Second World War and the emergence of the Soviet Union to uprisings in Cuba, China and South America, this superficially describes just how the situations in many places were ripe for a bit of socialist revolutionary politics. There is no attempt at balance here: it isn't a documentary at all, really. It is more of a critique on those absolutists who seized power (from other absolutists) on the basis of false promises and then carried out their own real-life versions of "Animal Farm" before turning on each other and ensuring the peoples they were to ostensibly "free" ended up just as downtrodden as they ever were when their bosses wore a shiny crown. It competently mixes animation with actuality and some print headlines and it whistles along, so you don't have to wait long before it's message emerges - but there is a chance that it might stimulate some interest to delve a little more into the cause and effect of a philoposphy that has gripped almost one quarter of humanity.
