The applause anecdote you were thinking of comes from the Gulag Archipelago. I’m not sure if Solzhenitsyn was the first to tell it, but it was in there.

I really loved this movie. What got me was the way they were all stuck performing absurdities, and they all knew it, but they couldn’t stop. The movie seemed to follow the history accurately, as least as far as I’ve read. I’m not sure if this is true, but I think Beria’s execution was the last execution of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev put an end to the death penalty as soon as he got into power.