For example, Roger Ebert describes Christiane in this way, "A loyal communist named Christiane (Katrin Sass) sees her son, Alex (Daniel Bruhl), beaten by the police on television, suffers an attack of some sort and lapses into a coma" (Ebert).

Whereas Stephen Jolly of the Australian Socialist Party writes, "Christiane is a socialist, loyal to the Party, but not scared to oppose the Stalinist leadership via letter campaigns and lobbying bureaucrats on issues such as the shoddy goods produced by a bureaucratically mismanaged workers' state (Jolly).

The obvious difference between the two character descriptions is one sees her as a communist and one sees her as a socialist, which begs the question, is there a difference between a communist and a socialist? What are the implications of each label? Are there nuances? To briefly answer the question(s), yes, of course there are. And to unpack this point just a little...
[ View Full Essay]