Amerika (miniseries)

The storyline of Amerika primarily follows three political leaders:

• Devin Milford (played by Kris Kristofferson): a maverick politician before the Soviet occupation who ran for President in 1988 (in the novel, 1992), after the Soviet takeover began. Milford was placed in a prison camp for daring to speak the truth about the Soviet conquest; at the beginning of the miniseries, Devin is declared "rehabilitated" and released back into society into the custody of his father, who lives in the Nebraska county run by Peter Bradford.
• Colonel Andrei Denisov of the KGB (played by Sam Neill): the Soviet administrator for the American Central Administrative Area. He is romantically involved with actress Kimberly Ballard (played by Mariel Hemingway). Andrei's superior and mentor is General Petya Samanov (played by Armin Mueller-Stahl), the Soviet military leader in charge of the United States.[5]
• Peter Bradford (played by Robert Urich): a county administrator in Nebraska who cooperates with the Soviets to create a better life for his community. He attracts the attention of the Soviet leadership because, while cooperative, he is independent and respected by his constituents. At the series' climax, the Soviets carve a new country called "Heartland" out of the Midwest, with Bradford as its "Governor-General."

Major female characters, in addition to Ballard, include Peter Bradford's wife, Amanda (played by Cindy Pickett), Devin Milford's ex-wife, Marion (played by Wendy Hughes), and most notably, Devin's sister Alethea (played by Christine Lahti), who at the outset is prostituting herself to the local occupation leader. "Alethea is the center," noted Donald Wrye. "She is a metaphor for America – not just phonically – and it is she who discovers her moral core through(out) the course of the series." Lara Flynn Boyle played Bradford's teenage daughter, Jackie.

The human drama of these characters intersects with the political intrigue of the Soviet plans for the breakup of the United States. Bradford, the pragmatist, clashes with Milford, the idealist; Bradford's wife is Milford's ex-girlfriend, who finds she still has feelings for Milford upon his release from the prison camp; Denisov appoints Milford's ex-wife, a powerful magistrate (and General Samanov's mistress), to serve as Bradford's deputy and assistant in Heartland; and Kimberly's renewed sense of U.S. pride ultimately affects her relationship with Denisov.

Towards the end of the 1980s, as the decline of the Soviet Union puts it in danger of losing the Cold War, the Soviet leadership makes a desperate gamble to rearrange the global balance of power. Four large thermonuclear weapons are detonated in the ionosphere over the United States. The resulting electromagnetic pulse (or EMP) destroys the nation's communications and computer systems, cripples the U.S. electrical grid, and affects any equipment that relies on computer technology, such as most late-model automobiles. With its ICBMs inoperative—and the National Command Authority unable to contact U.S. military forces abroad or their foreign allies in western Europe to launch a counterattack—the U.S. is forced to accept Soviet terms for surrender: unilateral disarmament, the end of the dollar as a reserve currency, and integration into the Soviet military/economic bloc. The United States quickly falls under Soviet military occupation under the command of Russian General Petya Samanov, and the U.S. President and U.S. Congress become mere figureheads for their Soviet overseers. Communications between the administrative areas have been cut off, and the damage to the electrical grid caused by the EMP attack has never been fully repaired.

The above events are implied in the miniseries, although never directly explained. The description is taken from the novelization of the miniseries, Amerika: The Triumph of the American Spirit by Brauna E. Pouns and Donald Wrye (Pocket Books, 1987), based on Wrye's screenplay.

In 1997, a decade after its defeat, the contiguous United States is occupied by a United Nations peacekeeping force, the United Nations Special Service Unit (UNSSU), composed primarily of Communist state forces. The UNSSU in Milford is under a command of an officer from East Germany, Major Helmut Gurtman (played by Reiner Schöne). UNSSU troops periodically engage in destructive combined arms training exercises which are deliberately intimidating to the local population.

Those Americans who engage in dissent are stripped of their privileges and sent to exile camps, where they are anathema to the Soviets and their fellow citizens. Association and communication with the exiles is prohibited and forbidden, although some risk their own remaining freedoms by offering humanitarian aid. Production quotas have been imposed, and foodstuffs rationed, with the surplus being shipped to the Soviet Union.

Against this background, Bradford ascends to the leadership as Governor-General of Heartland. He acts the part of a collaborator, hoping to reform the Soviet occupation from within with ideals of the old United States. Milford is released from the prison camp, hoping to be reunited with his children and fight to end the occupation and restore the United States. Denisov hopes to "salvage as much as possible" of the old U.S., while realizing that the U.S. essentially must cease to exist as a nation in order to appease the Soviet Union's leadership.

The Soviet leaders of the occupation are faced with the dual problem of keeping the U.S. pacified and convincing the Politburo that their fears of a revitalized U.S. are unfounded because the country can no longer pose a threat. The Politburo is not convinced, and considers exploding nuclear weapons over several unnamed U.S. cities as a warning to the U.S. people and to the world. Samanov and Denisov, both of whom want Soviet control of the United States to be relatively humane, are horrified by this idea.

At great personal risk, Samanov convinces the Soviet leadership to accept a compromise plan. The United States will be divided into "client states" such as Heartland. Additionally, members of the United States Congress will be executed if they refuse to dissolve the nation's government and disperse in peace. When Samanov asks the assembled Congress to disband the legislative body and dissolve the United States government, the members angrily refuse to do so. Samanov walks out of the House of Representatives chamber and his men begin firing into the crowd of legislators. All members of Congress are killed in the attack, along with the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Vice President. The United States Capitol building and the artwork in its rotunda are destroyed in a terrorist-style attack. After the act is carried out, Samanov surveys the damage and the dead bodies of the members of Congress. He then sits in the United States House of Representatives chamber and commits suicide.

In the final episode of the miniseries, Heartland has seceded from the United States, with other regions to follow within the next few weeks. Instead, Heartland soldiers and local militia attack the local UNSSU compound. There is talk of a "Second American Revolution" that could undermine the Soviet Union's plans to break up the United States. The miniseries ends on a downbeat note, Devin Milford is shown about to make a nationwide speech telling Americans to revolt against the Soviet Occupation, however, Milford is shot to death. It is unclear if he managed to make a nationwide broadcast calling on Americans to resist the breakup of the United States, but based on the ending, it appears that the United States ceases to exist as a nation and is broken up into several independent countries.

In this fictional timeline, the U.S. Congress divided the United States into multiple "administrative areas" in 1988, one year after the Communist takeover. These areas are intended to become polities modelled on the Soviet republics, joined together in a new North American Union. A map shown on screen reveals these administrative areas to be:

• California Special District: California, Nevada
• Western Semi-Autonomous: Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming
• Northwest: Oregon, Washington
• Southwest: Arizona, New Mexico
• North Central: Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
• Central: Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska (this is Peter Bradford's administrative area, and the territory which eventually becomes Heartland, with Omaha, Nebraska as its capital)
• South Central: Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas
• Southern: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi
• Mid-Atlantic: Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia
• Appalachia: Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia
• Ameritech: Indiana, the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania (presumably named after the phone company that serviced these areas)
• Northeastern: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont

In addition to these areas, Washington, D.C. comprises its own National Administrative District, South Florida is described by a character as the "Space Zone," and there is a passing reference to three "International Cities," one of which is San Francisco. Michigan is separated into two administrative regions, with the Lower Peninsula belonging to Ameritech, and the Upper Peninsula belonging to the North Central region. Alaska is described as never having been pacified, requiring continued engagement by Soviet troops, and there are pockets of armed resistance in the Rocky Mountains and in West Virginia. There is no mention of what has happened to Hawaii, or to U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico, Guam, and American Samoa.

The Rust Belt (presumably "Ameritech") faces its own special problems. Most of its advanced factory equipment was removed at the start of the occupation and taken to the Soviet Union. The region suffers 50% unemployment as a result, and its residents are not permitted to leave, except to volunteer for factory work in the Soviet Union, from which no one has yet returned.

Travel and communications between the various zones is heavily restricted, part of the "divide and conquer" plan of the Soviet occupation.

Both the novel and miniseries imply that the Soviet Union has conquered other countries after the U.S. coup (it can be surmised, for example, that the EMP which disabled U.S. technology also would have crippled Canada and Mexico, a minor character says that he and his wife fled East Germany for the United States and remarked that "the promised land [had] become worse than what [they] left", and Denisov says at one point that "we control most of the world").

In this new world, Fidel Castro heads what is now called "Greater Cuba", embracing most of the Caribbean and Latin America, and Taiwan has been absorbed into China. North Korea has conquered and occupied South Korea and Korea is united under Communist rule. A politician named "Mbele" heads the "Socialist Republic of Southern Africa" which also includes South Africa, "Barghout" is the leader of "Iraqistan" which includes present-day Israel and all of the Arab world in both the Middle East and North Africa. Eastern Europe is in a state of unrest, echoing the turmoil in the former United States. The Soviet leader mentions being stationed in England before being posted in America, implying that Western Europe is also under Soviet control, much like America.

The flag of the occupation is the pale blue United Nations flag, with crossed U.S. and Soviet flags superimposed on the sides. The U.S. flag is shown without its stars, and this flag is displayed during the "Lincoln Week" ceremonies. The standard U.S. flag is outlawed, although one scene shows a group of war veterans marching with the old U.S. flag upside down, this being a distress signal. The U.S. national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner," also is outlawed, but this does not stop a group of citizens from singing it (haltingly at first) after the "Lincoln Week" parade.

Abraham Lincoln is included with Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin in propaganda. One of the signature scenes in the film is a twenty-minute, dialogue-free depiction of the celebration of "Lincoln Week" (a holiday replacing the Fourth of July), with both Lincoln and Lenin displayed on red banners that were most likely intended to be striking and startling to television audiences of the time.

A new Pledge of Allegiance is given by "rehabilitated" political prisoners upon release from the U.S. gulags. While the prisoners are told that they are free to refuse to make this pledge, the circumstances under which it is administered suggest otherwise. The pledge states:

I pledge my allegiance to the flag of the community of American, Soviet, and United Nations of the World, and to the principle for which it stands – a nation, indivisible with others of the Earth, joined in peace, and justice for all.

Although it aired only two years before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, Amerika implied that American apathy and an unwillingness to defend freedom on the part of many citizens made the Soviet takeover rather easy. At one point, a key Soviet official observes that their plans for conquering the United States succeeded far beyond their wildest dreams, because once the nation had been defeated, the U.S. turned inward, not caring about national issues, seeking only to retain a piece of the prosperity that had once been theirs. "[The Soviet coup] worked because you lost your country before we ever got here," says the Soviet leader. "You had political freedom, but you lost your passion [...] How could we not win?"

This theme is echoed by Devin Milford later in the film:

Nobody wanted to risk anything for anybody else. Everybody was afraid they were going to lose what they had. They knew it was bad. They were just afraid it'd get worse. That's all they lived for – for things not to get worse.

Further dialogue, by politician Peter Bradford, lashes out at apathetic U.S. attitudes:

Damn, I'm so tired of this "I'm an American" bull! Where was all that patriotism when it counted? Where was that willingness to sacrifice? Nobody wanted to join the damn army to defend the country unless they got paid well! Nobody wanted to give any time to public service unless they could make a career out of it! And I didn't notice a lot of us giving up our lives in the last 10 years!

A speech delivered by one child (Devin Milford's son) demonstrates the extent of Soviet indoctrination in the new U.S.:

We are the voice of the new generation. We are the voice of the new people. The destructive ways of the past are gone. We will replace them with our vision of the future. The Party will lead us to the new age. There have been those who have tried to stop the new age. They are the corrupt reminder of the past. They have tried to confuse us with the idea that the old America was a good country. We know that lie. History teaches us that lie. We are grateful to our Soviet brothers who saved the world from destruction, and we can now join them in a world of socialist brotherhood. Everyone will go to school, everyone will have a job, everyone will be equal. No one will exploit or be exploited, and all those who oppose this wonderful vision will be crushed.

General Samanov sums up the futility of the hypothetical Soviet domination:

When you lose and fail, that is understandable; but when you win and fail--that brings madness.