The Soviet Story

This documentary focuses on the atrocities committed against innocent people, mainly by Stalin and other high ranking Soviet leaders in the name of Marxism and Communism prior, during, and after the Second World War.

The documentary consists of much original footage, newspaper clips, interviews with witnesses and even some present day footage, all very well edited and cut.

The story told in this documentary is the best one I've yet to see regarding horrible crimes committed against humanity, because it is very well substantiated in terms of source-material and historical argumentation. The delight of seeing this educational footage is strengthened even more due to its addressing of one of the most inconceivable facts in the post-WWII world: How Adolf Hitler was forever after unconditionally condemned by close to everyone across the globe for his crimes, and how Joseph Stalin was commemorated for aiding the Allies in liberating Europe of fascism, regardless of the fact that in total more than 20 million (some even claim up to 50 or 60 million) people was murdered by the hands of the Soviet Gulag State. A fact which nobody in the western world seems to care about.

What this documentary furthermore achieves which is what eventually made me give it the 10th star, was the fact that the story was told very honestly and very unbiased, unlike much historical media, and the scriptwriters have done an extremely well job in mastering the whole aspect of the stories, and not just focused on narrow one-sided details.

Regardless of the fact that most people see Hitler as the "far-right", and Stalin as the "far-left", this documentary raises the ultimate question: were they indeed that different, after all?

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.

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.

The movie is excellent. It is well known that winners are writing the history- so the truth of soviet mass murders and genocide is still not truly known for the world. The movie is well-structured and compares two parallel regimes, so opposite but at the same time so similar. People from the countries that were occupied by red plague, know these stories from they parents and grandparents. it is rough to realize for a western world- but the soviet Russia was in no case better than Nazi Germany. For Baltic States people for example, actually it was in number of times worse, the real "holocaust" was created by red army. I have spoken with a lot of people who were in WW2 (for example my grandpa and grandma and et.) and all of them are describing Germans as "at least culture nation" but red soldiers as "dirty brutal people with no honor and compassion". Number of killed persons was several times bigger by Stalin than by Hitler. So who was the worst dictator? That is the question that this movie adduces and it is good, there are so much to bring to daylight and rewrite the history.

For his in-depth survey of Soviet crimes against humanity, including Soviet cooperation with the Third Reich, Latvian director Edvins Snore was burned in effigy by Neo-Soviet Russians. It is an ominous badge of honor.

Soviet Story acts as an effective corrective to the popular notion that the Communist experiment only turned horrific when Stalin ascended to power. The film documents orders mandating mass executions, estimated in the tens of millions, originating with the father of the revolution, Lenin. Still, it is devilishly difficult to outdo Stalin's sheer capacity for terror. For instance, the deliberate use of famine to pacify Ukraine is explained here in chilling detail. In a crime against humanity largely ignored by the West, seven million Ukrainians were intentionally starved in the cordoned Republic, as foodstuffs were confiscated at gunpoint by the Red Army.

The heart of Soviet Story explores the close ideological similarities and barbaric collusion between the Soviet Socialists of Stalin and the National Socialists of Hitler. There is an eerie sequence juxtaposing thematically similar propaganda posters from both regimes, side-by-side on-screen. Even more damning are the documents Snore uncovers establishing close links between the SS and the Soviet NKVD (the precursor to the KGB), discussing among other issues, the "Jewish Question." They did not just talk—they carved up Poland between themselves, and at Stalin's prompting, staked their claims to the rest of Europe.

Soviet Story is most devastating when discussing the ways in which the more advanced Soviet killing machine served as the inspiration and model for the Holocaust. According former Soviet intelligence officer Viktor Suvorov: "A delegation of German Gestapo and SS came to the Soviet Union to learn how to build concentration camps." Snore has produced a chilling indictment of the Soviet experience with socialism. He calls some very convincing witnesses, including Bukovsky, and the eloquent Cambridge historians Norman Davies and George Watson. As evidence, he produces some shocking archival film and documents. However, as the film makes clear, none of those who did (and still do) the Soviet dirty work has ever faced justice for their crimes. All told, Snore has produced a passionate but thoroughly reasoned case against the Soviet regime.