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简介：Discord, distress, the threat of dissolution. Such is the prevailing spirit in the Soviet Union today as vividly captured by "Soviets". Through striking photographs and probing interviews, Juris Podnieks, a Latvian director, conveys the misery, resistance and flickering hopes of people who are demanding much more than the Gorbachev reforms. The very existence of such a work, which was made in 1988 and '89 and which has been shown in some Soviet movie theaters, is of course evidence of how much has changed in recent years. Yet as Hedrick Smith, the author of "The New Russians," observes, the reforms have released ambiguous and often hostile feelings. 1 red hot In the first, impressionistic program, Mr. Podnieks, a noted director of feature films, heightens the facts with scenes of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl and the aftermath of the 1988 earthquake in Armenia and with the angry faces of striking workers at an engine factory in Yaroslavl in central Russia. He has a case to make and knows how to use his camera to make it. Do not look to "Soviets" for journalistic balance; even the tone of the voice-overs separates earnest protestors from stuffy officials. Unfortunately for the viewer, Mr. Podnieks appears to be much taken with a fellow Latvian, the musician and poet Alexei Rybnikov, who begins the first program with brooding banalities -- "We are lost because we have lost our beliefs" and "My weak feet are made of clay" -- as he records his latest opera, "Holy Communion for Nonbelievers." The synthesized music and synthetic philosophy, accompanied by newsreels of Lenin and Stalin, make for an arduously arty opening. Through Mr. Podnieks's lens, the Yaroslavl engine factory is straight out of Dickens. One of the women, who seem to make up most of the work force, asks, "With only one free day a week, when do we see our children? How much housekeeping can I do?" Mr. Podnieks, doing his interviewing out of camera range, pins down a union representative. "Why strike?" this man asks. "We're free to talk about anything." To Mr. Podnieks's observation, "The air is still poisoned; the work is still heavy," the union official counters, "If there is a little anger, take it as a natural female trait." A crane driver comments that although the workers might have lost some of their fear, "we aren't capable of much after these many years of silence." The pictures of the old-fashioned factory add a smoky atmosphere to the words, leaving an image of frail hope choked by decades of resignation. Mr. Podnieks demonstrates his directorial touch as he moves evocatively from a comment by the crane driver that she likes science fiction to eerie scenes of the clean-up after the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl. The director has an eye for symbol and a liking for morality tales. An art historian tells him that people have been stealing old icons from the region, even though they are radioactive. The holy items, taken for gain, may bring death. Mr. Podnieks can be obvious but in his hands even the obvious has strength. The first program ends with interviews with women who, despite warnings, have returned to their homes near Chernobyl. Mr. Podnieks catches their mix of defiance and desperation . It is a mixture that "Soviets" finds everywhere. 2 awakening The second program brings interviews with a Russian Orthodox priest, in the shell of his destroyed church, who longs to return to an earlier Russia, and with Andrei Sakharov, who died in December 1989, looking ahead realistically and not very optimistically: "I don't know whether we will be able to run the whole course, because we have failed so many times." Mr. Podnieks pays particular attention to the rising nationalism in his own Latvia, focusing especially on Valdis Turins, a schoolteacher whom we see being carted away by police during a demonstration. Mr. Turins is no more optimistic than Mr. Sakharov, but he clings to the faith that now there is a chance for his people. The program finds a similar spirit among the Armenians in the district of Nagorny Karabakh who are demanding independence from the republic of Azerbaijan. A newsreel shows a crowd listening to a member of the Communist Party Central Committee offering this comfort: "Dear Comrades! The Central Committee of the party loves you! Honestly!" The ensuing hoots and the pictures of Armenians who have been beaten by Azerbaijani nationalists, perhaps abetted by the police, portend more violence and possibly an end to what is now known as the Soviet Union. 3 do you hear us? The series also contains interviews with disenchanted veterans of the war in Afghanistan, with appealing young members of the Democratic Front and with less-appealing anti-Semites. 4 the wall Another program contains a chilling account of the desperate fight by a woman in the republic of Uzbekistan in Central Asia against the accusation that she was not a virgin at marriage, an offense that among the Uzbeks requires self-immolation. Mr. Podnieks's camera, never ob