Adam Curtis’s Russia 1985–1999: TraumaZone, released last year, does such a good job in setting the stage for the Russo-Ukraine war that one might be tempted to view the documentary as an attempt to explain — through archival film — how the Ukraine conflict came to be. However, the acclaimed documentarian clarifies that, as is customary with his work, there are broader narratives to explore.

Curtis is acutely aware of mass media’s propensity to consult ill-advised and unlettered self-described experts to “Ukrainesplain” a country and a conflict few understand and fewer still saw coming. But while TraumaZone leaves its viewers better equipped to understand the recent conflict, the film is actually about the death of Communism, and then of democracy, over a roughly fifteen-year period in Russia at the end of the twentieth century. While viewers may indeed discover valuable insights into Russian and Ukrainian history, Curtis’s latest work also serves as a window with which we can consider the recent past of a crumbing empire that bears uncomfortable resonances with aspects of our present circumstance.

Jacobin’s Taylor C. Noakes recently caught up with the director to discuss Russia, Ukraine, oligarchs, Communism, democracy, and hyperrationalism.