FIRST OFF . . .

A documentary film being shown this week on Soviet national television equates Joseph Stalin with Adolf Hitler. More than any film previously shown in the Soviet Union, “Risk-2� portrays Stalin as a demented autocrat whose paranoia drove him to order the executions of countless intellectuals, Jews, military officers, political rivals and others. Earlier this year, Soviet literary journals published Vassily Grossman’s novel “War and Fate,� which also drew a parallel between the Stalin and Hitler regimes. “But what is astonishing is the power of television in this case,� one Soviet artist told the Washington Post. “Millions of people watched the (Monday night) premiere.� The film, which was directed by Dimitri Barshchevsky and Natalya Violina, also compared Stalin and Hitler and their actions with Mao Tse-tung and the repressions and executions of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. One Western diplomat who watched the film said: “I was blown out of my chair. The film didn’t play any word games about ‘the cult of personality’ or talk about a few thousand people killed. They were comparing Stalin--and not favorably--to the worst of the age.�