The Bolsheviks and (to a lesser extent) the Nazis had plenty of good art that also saved as propaganda for the most despicable causes. You can appreciate Eisens

The Bolsheviks and (to a lesser extent) the Nazis had plenty of good art that also saved as propaganda for the most despicable causes. You can appreciate Eisenstein or Harlan as great directors without thinking them to be fine human beings. Of course beyond art that is purely formally fascinating, there is a tension between artistic quality and serving a narrow propagandist agenda, and personally I find Battleship Potemkin utterly dull and overrated. But the best films these directors created in the service of totalitarianism transcend this narrowness: try Ivan the Terrible, for the example.