The Red Snowball Tree (1974) was the most popular film in the USSR. It is a morality tale about a man Yegor who bucks the system and becomes a gangster, and by the end he is killed, as are all the other gangsters.

But I think that the Soviet citizens really liked the gangster part, where they were high living and doing whatever the f--k they wanted. Given how Russia was basically taken over by gangsters after the USSR folded, the film may have had the opposite affect intended by offical film board

Lenin considered cinema the most important means of educating the proletariat.

Cheers.