The Soviet Story

Of thousands of films, books, and plays on the communist experience, this one stands out above all the rest — a monument to millions of innocent victims and a charge against a bloodthirsty socialist theory that killed almost two hundred million people in the 20th century and continues its murderous trail into the 21st.

The film was directed by a talented Latvian producer Edvīns Šnore.

In its synopsis Šnore writes: This is a story of an Allied power, which helped the Nazis to fight Jews and which slaughtered its own people on an industrial scale. Assisted by the West, this power triumphed on May 9th, 1945. Its crimes were made taboo, and the complete story of Europe's most murderous regime has never been told.

The film argues that there were close philosophical, political, and military relations between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union before and during the early stages of World War II. It highlights the Great Famine: the infamous "holodomor" which wiped out seven million Ukrainians, the Great Purge in Moscow and elsewhere in the USSR with over eleven million murdered, as well as the Katyn massacre of tens of thousands of Polish officers.

The film sheds the light on Gestapo-NKVD collaboration in mass murder of Jews and German opposition, Soviet mass deportations, and inhuman medical experiments in the GULAG.

The Economist praises the film by saying: "Soviet Story" is the most powerful antidote yet to the sanitisation of the past. The film is gripping, audacious and uncompromising. The main aim of the film is to show the close connections—philosophical, political and organisational—between the Nazi and Soviet systems Those who keep a soft spot for Marxism may flinch to hear that the sage of Highgate referred to backward societies as Völkerabfälle (racial trash) who must "perish in the revolutionary holocaust." Or that the Nazi party in its early days idolised Lenin (Josef Goebbels said he was second only to Adolf Hitler in greatness).

This is a revelation for some. Ludwig Von Mises wrote about Nazism and communism as two forms of the same socialist tyranny for a long time. He analyzed "two patterns for the realization of socialism" when he wrote: The first pattern (we may call it the Lenin or the Russian pattern) is purely bureaucratic. All plants, shops and farms are formally nationalized (verstaatlicht); they are departments of the government operated by civil servants. Every unit of the apparatus of production stands in the same relation to the superior central organization, as does a local post office to the office of the postmaster general. The second pattern (we may call it the Hindenburg or German pattern) nominally and seemingly preserves private ownership of markets, prices, wages, and interest rates. There are, however, no longer entrepreneurs, but only shop managers (Betriebsfuhrer in the terminology of the Nazi legislation).

Both systems, as Von Mises pointed out, were inevitably doomed to result in "barbarism," as they promptly did.

The film features interviews with western and Russian historians such as Norman Davies and George Watson from Cambridge, Boris Sokolov, Russian writer Viktor Suvorov, Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, members of the European Parliament and the participants, as well as the victims of Soviet and Nazi terror.

Eminent British literary historian George Watson proved in his research that Karl Marx is "the ancestor of the modern political genocide." Marx used the term "racial trash" (Völkerabfälle) in relation to a number of some European ethnicities who were left behind by economic progress and should be "disposed of."

As former Soviet dissident (now a dissident again under the Putin regime) Vladimir Bukovsky explains: "When Communists come to power, it does not matter where, let it be in Russia, in Poland, in Cuba, in Nicaragua, in China, initially they destroy about ten percent of the population" in order to restructure the fabric of society. Then the "real work" begins with destruction of the designated target groups: priests, peasants, intellectuals, entrepreneurs, certain ethnicities – Ukrainians, Chechens, Jews, Crimean Tatars and others.

The making of the film is timely as the FSB/KGB regime in Russia increasingly embraces its Stalinist roots. Joe Bendel of The Epoch Times, mentioned that producer Edvīns Šnore was burned in effigy by Neo-Soviet Russians for his in-depth survey of Soviet crimes against humanity: It is an ominous badge of honor. This film that you are not supposed to see in Putin's Russia tells us how the ultimate government inevitably becomes the ultimate evil.

A couple of reviewers here tried to trash The Soviet Story as a propaganda movie. It is not. It is a very angry, but accurate film. Some footage, however, is somewhat repetitive. I can see why. Unlike their Nazi colleagues, Soviet mass murderers were trying to conceal their crimes and did not leave us many pictures or film about their crimes. Even officers in the Soviet Army were not permitted to own a camera. They could be shot as "spies" just for having one. Nazis, on the contrary, were proud of their crimes and left us with a lot of pictures and footage of their victims.

I do not care how accurate is the episode with a wheel barrow cited in one of negative reviews. If Soviets murdered 40-60 million people of all nationalities wouldn't they occasionally toss some corpses from a train car? It is believable to me.

I agree with reviewers that Mr. Šnore does not like the USSR and current Russian rulers. Should he? There is an ongoing hysterical campaign orchestrated from Kremlin against him, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland and "historical revisionism" i.e. exposure of socialist criminal regimes.

The Soviet Story is a must see for any friend of liberty. You can either watch The Soviet Story for free on YouTube or order a DVD from www.sovietstory.com.

Well i think this whole thing was very interesting. It was a different perspective on history, some details like the soviet controlled famine in Ukraine i knew about already, and some details like the collaboration of the SS and the red army i didn't. But of course i would not believe everything this documentary says, because the Latvians really aren't too good with Russia these days. Of course for me, Stalin still is the biggest Massmurder of our time (right next to Hitler), but on some aspects of the Soviet Union, this documentary does get a little polemic, since they forget to mention about the part after Stalin's death, were people could actually sleep at night without being scared of getting arrested every second. But still, very interesting take on history.

The Soviet Story is a very important contribution for understanding a series of questions about leftism and Marxism outcomes. But other questions remain. First, _how_ is it possible at all that so many young people, as well as oldies, are still impressed by such ideologies? _How_ could it ever be possible that a historian such as Hobsbawn considers himself a communist socialist today, having declared not long ago that if it was not for being a Jew, in the 30s could very well have enthusiastically joined Nazism? With a huge lot of information and discussion nowadays freely available?

Many good comments on the documentary have already been made. But the main question that remains after it is: _how_ came that a Marxist "theory", that started copying the condolent humanitarians in the XIX century, defending egalitarianism ... terminated by practicing the most cruel and extensive genocides of the whole History of mankind?

Unfortunately, the answers to these questions are not short, and not without some work. And perhaps not bound to be contained in movie documentaries, however well performed as is this one. Only through some reading can we begin to see the answers, in analyses made clear along the last century by people such as Isaiah Berlin (as in 'Against the Current') and Karl Popper (as in 'The Open Society and It's Enemies'). Do enjoy them piecemeal.

This is a sledge-hammer documentary that even the most partial viewers would find difficult and hard to digest - many simply cannot or refuse to endure it, the stuff being too heavy. It is important to observe, that the film is Latvian, it is written and directed by a Latvian, and Latvia has a special trauma from the Soviet days, having suffered more from the Soviet ethnic cleansing after the war than both Estonia and Lithuania, large parts of the population being simply abducted to Siberia and concentration camps in other remote parts of the union with no possibility of any return, since most of them died, like people usually do in concentration camps. These Soviet crimes against innocent Latvian people, the Russians have never been brought to account for, in contrast to the Nazis for their crimes, which is one of the major points of the film. Latvia was not alone. The Soviets did the same although on a lesser scale in Estonia and Lithuania and in most east European countries under Russian occupation and above all in Ukraine, where in a single year seven million were intentionally starved to death. Already Lenin started persecutions in Ukraine, but Stalin expanded them into a holocaust from fear of losing Ukraine, and he saw a major reduction of the population as a means of reducing that danger. Edvins Snore, who made the film, points out the fact, which few have been aware of, that already Karl Marx in 1849 professed it as a necessity that all parasites of society and lower races (like Basques and Scottish highlanders) should be cleansed out of humanity to provide room for abler people, an inhuman philosophy that even Bernard Shaw as a socialist advocated and which turned into a trademark for all kinds of socialism, Russian Bolsheviks first of all and later Nazis. The documentary actually shows how Bolsheviks and Nazis learned from each other and instructed each other, Stalin and Hitler collaberated closely all the way up to 1941, Stalin using the Ukrainian harvests for export abroad to let the Ukrainians starve, and Nazis showing Stalin how to organize death camps. There is a grotesque irony in the film, showing Bolsheviks and Nazis partying and toasting each other in one scene to in the next show the harvest of corpses of starvation in Ukraine - the film is full of such horrible social penetrations into the dictatorial system. The film is vital for its message of telling inconvenient truths that so far haven't been generally known and can be seen as actually a resounding cry for retribution for all those millions unknown and buried alive who were intentionally sacrificed to suit the inhuman long term strategy of this ideology and its dictatorships.

I believe The Soviet Story is an excellent film. Some reviewers here seem to oppose this view. It is understandable. However, what I do not understand is why they use lies to denounce the film? For example, Mr Frank Roberts review here. Dear Mr Frank Roberts, if in your review you are telling the truth, answer the following:

A) Frank Roberts states: "there was a scene where corpses were being thrown from a wagon onto the snow, and in the film it's claimed that these were the victims of the Ukrainian famine. But these were in fact dead Russian soldiers from the First World War." >>> If so, why did these "Russian soldiers" had civilian clothes on them, Mr. Roberts? Moreover, I saw the film twice, the footage you mentioned was NOT used to show Ukrainian famine victims, as you claim. It was used to show victims of the Communist terror.

B) Frank Roberts states: "Another good example is the scene where several officers are shown drinking and giving a toast. The Soviet Story claims that this is proof of Nazi-Soviet collaboration. In reality there were no Russians present at that meeting." >>> Really? Who is then the officer in the Red Army uniform? A Japanese? What about the Order of the Red Banner on the officers chest?

C) Frank Roberts states: "Soviet Story tries to make the current Russian government look bad. How is this done? By showing a clip that the film claims involves Russian Neo-Nazis. Now what does this have to do with the Russian government? Nothing at all." >>> Who is the man performing Nazi salute in the film? Nikolay Kuryanovich. Was not Nikolay Kuryanovich a member of Russia's parliament?

It is quite understandable that The Soviet Story is so acrimoniously denounced by Communists and those who believe Stalin was "a successful manager". No surprise that some pro-Putin gang even burned the effigy of Edvins Snore in Moscow. The anger and hatred is clearly there. What is missing - is counter-arguments.