The film conductor gets approximately forty-five seconds of screen time but you still super feel for him. One of the things that makes the movie work is that it's always clear that it's making fun of the top brass, not Stalin's victims.

Although even the top brass were sometimes Stalin's victims, and so there are occasional moments of pathos there too... but that doesn't redeem the moments where they're being awful. These are two things that coexist without canceling each other out.

And yes, there's a definite resemblance to current events. Was it Marx who said history repeats itself, first as tragedy and the second time as farce?