I started watching this series a few months ago, and I know it's just a series rather than a scholarly works, but I was amazed at the number of things it presented that are unpopular/we are typically not taught (best example I can think of is Henry Wallace and his contributions and personality as VP, which if this series is in any way trustworthy Wallace should be a much bigger name in US history and should receive much more praise than right now as he is relatively unknown).
I know Oliver Stone is not your typical director and does not make the typical Pro-American movies, but one thing that especially struck me as interesting was how sympathetically the series seems to portray Soviet Russia, at least in the first 5 episodes because that's how far in I am. It struck me as interesting because it seems that typically in American media Russia (Soviet and post-Soviet) is painted in a negative light, their contributions are not widely known to America, and neither are US transgressions against them. I grew up in Canada, so I am close enough to America to be familiar with American media but our history classes never highlighted Russian involvement in world events: we were always presented with more information and explanations about the American side of things. As for media, TYPICALLY in more popular blockbuster type movies Russia and Russians are the villains, OR if they are shown to be neutral, America is shown to be the hero on the right side of things and not much insight is provided into Russia's motives etc.
This show seems to do exactly the opposite: it shows America's transgressions, America's bad decisions, flaws in popular American historical figures etc, and it shows Russia's side of things, their motivations, their contributions, their perceived slights against them, etc. It does this for other countries too like Japan and Korea, but I presume due to Russia being a bigger key player in the world (?), the Russian information is a lot heavier. While it's refreshing to be viewing history without the Pro-American anti-Russian (or lack of Russian) tinted glasses, I can't help but feel that the Russian sympathy is a little too extreme, that although Russian/Stalin's atrocities are presented, they seem to be HEAVILY brushed off and overshadowed by a more sympathetic view.
Since I began watching this months ago I am unable to come up with examples of this but there are many. And unfortunately for me, I've JUST NOW forgotten the one example from a recent episode watched today that I was going to use in this post...so, I apologise for being unable to elaborate further. But my question is for anyone who's familiar with the series, is it showing Russia a little too sympathetically, or is that really just a perfectly valid interpretation of events?
There's a section in the FAQ about this documentary, which you can find here. Since then we've also had more threads on it, sometimes about the documentary in general, other times about specific claims in it, but either way, there's a lot of virtual ink spilled on the topic here and most of it will likely be of interest to you.
Some of the more recent ones not featured in the FAQ:
My own commentary moves beyond purely historical accuracy, since your question is a little more nebulous than just "what is factually accurate/inaccurate about the documentary". Is there a Russian bias in Oliver Stone's work? I'd say not directly, however there is an undercurrent of what some would call "anti-American sentiment" although I'm not sure if that's exactly an accurate phrase to use. By this I mean there is a reflexive mistrust of what Stone would consider to be "the official story" as told by America. This level of skepticism does not appear to be extended towards other groups and countries, which when discussing cold war politics means the narrative trends towards one where he criticizes America while downplaying the Soviet Union's problems.
Recently, I've been reading through a lot of books on the 20th century, and the Cold War has been a bit of a focus. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War by John Lewis Gaddis, Postwar by Tony Judt, Six Months in 1945 by Michael Dobbs (this one is pretty light weight as far as history goes). The Sword and the Shield by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin has been quite illuminating, but of course it focuses heavily on what the KGB did and does not go into the not-exactly-sparkling-clean history of the CIA, except where the two groups interact with each other. One passage that was of note from that book is a quote from Kissinger on meeting a man named Georgi Arbatov, a Russian political scientist who was known during the Cold War for being sort of media facing personality for the Soviet Union, appearing on talk shows and doing interviews in America giving the Soviet perspective.
He was especially subtle in playing to the inexhaustible masochism of American intellectuals who took it as an article of faith that every difficulty in US-Soviet relations had to be caused by American stupidity or intransigence. He was endlessly ingenious in demonstrating how American rebuffs were frustrating the peaceful, sensitive leaders in the Kremlin, who were being driven reluctantly by our inflexibility into conflicts that offended their inherently gentle natures
Kissinger is taking a cheap shot here, but there is a kernel of truth at least in the sense that there has historically been a trend among certain circles of being highly sympathetic towards the USSR and other totalitarian communist regimes of the 20th century. These aren't all "useful idiots", either. Some genuinely brilliant people have historically taken some positions that were embarrassing in retrospect - Chomsky downplaying the Cambodian genocide and defending the Khmer Rouge in the 1970's wasn't his proudest moment.
If you're perceiving a pro-Russian bias, it's not because Stone himself loves Russia exactly. Not every point he makes is wrong, not all criticisms of America or American policy are unjustified.