The Soviet Story

Plot synopsis:
Soviet Story tells the untold facts of Soviet Union. Film evokes the similarity between Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and the secret friendship that took millions of Ukrainian lives during the famine - Holodomor, as all the food resources were taken away from Ukraine to be exported to Nazi Germany. This documentary will also provide the Western world with a close look into Stalin's ruled country without any liberty of thought. Any opposition led to Gulag which can be considered an ancestor of Nazi Concentration camps and where numerous medical experiments were carried out. Film contains interviews with witnesses and historians and politicians as well as it has some archive documents and photographs, never been brought to public and taken by Hitler's personal photograph Heinrich Hoffmann. Quite surprising is the comparison of the propaganda posters of both countries, which appears to be quasi identical.The film tells the story of the Soviet regime.
- The Great Famine in Ukraine (1932/33)
- The Katyn massacre (1940)
- The SS-KGB partnership [in the late 1930s the KGB was called NKVD, - Soviet mass deportations
- Medical experiments in the GULAG.
These are just a few of the subjects covered in the film.
The Soviet Story also discusses the impact of the Soviet legacy on modern day Europe. Listen to experts and European MPs discussing the implications of a selective attitude towards mass murder; and meet a woman describing the burial of her new born son in a GULAG concentration camp.
The Soviet Story is a story of pain, injustice and realpolitik. [D-Man2010]

Tags: historical

Review:
it is rough to realize for a western world- but the soviet Russia was in no case better than Nazi Germany.
I believe The Soviet Story is an excellent film.
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.
C) Frank Roberts states: "Soviet Story tries to make the current Russian government look bad.
It is quite understandable that The Soviet Story is so acrimoniously denounced by Communists and those who believe Stalin was "a successful manager".
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?.
I have to make a comment for zvesda and its followers (do read his other review and please get that he is a pro-socialism pro-imperialism creature who could theoretically almost justify to the ignorant the enormously tragical mass murders of the Soviet Union).
The most unbelievable thing is, though, that some would buy his strange endeavor - could be because of lack of knowledge.Please also get that Russia has no enemies, as zvesda imperiously sustains, and that the theory of "hatred" is extremely dangerous and entails the majority of the citizens of a nation to incredible crimes justified by noble ideas such as "patriotism" and "defense from the enemy of the state".
The documentary shows us the atrocities carried out by some dictators, and is not a personal attack to you, zvesda, or to the citizens of Russia, whether old or young (not to mention those crimes were against the Soviet Union's own citizens!).
But stating expressions such as "the Jewish fascism" in today's Russia is mind-blowing (of course, the 20.000.000 killings in the Soviet Union, solely in terms of number, is quite mind-blowing too...).Those atrocities did exist, whether you acknowledge it or not, and everyone should be reminded of the possible crimes of any dictatorship through fear, censorship, craziness, torture and murder.
The Soviet Story is a documentary film about socialist terror and Soviet-Nazi collaboration in mass murder..
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 nore.
In its synopsis nore 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.
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 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.
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.
A couple of reviewers here tried to trash The Soviet Story as a propaganda movie.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The fact that some imbecile here says this is propaganda and "why bother" since the USSR disintegrated 20 years ago merely amplifies one of the film's points -- that the history is being whitewashed.
Supported by a fringe, neo-fascist faction of the European Parliament, which includes pro-Nazi glorifiers, xenophobes, and anti-Semites of the Fatherland and Freedom (Latvia), Lega Nord (Italy), and the Law and Justice Party (Poland), this propaganda piece with lies and innuendo seeks to generate hatred towards Russia and blacken the image of progressive forces throughout the world.There is nothing new with the approach of this film.
Desperate attempts to blacken the Russian Government and equate it to Nazi Germany is part of the old Cold War propaganda struggle waged by the United States Government and neo-fascist organizations like the John Birch Society.
Especially disturbing about the revisionism of this film is the denial of the Holocaust by seeking to shift blame from the actual criminals to Russia.To start, this piece of pseudo-history does not include contributions from any respected, qualified scholars specializing in Russian history or political science from institutions of higher education.
The film makes the outrageous claim that Marx and Engels called for a "revolutionary holocaust" against specific peoples.
In 1890, Engels would write positively on these backwards nations, believing in their right to self-determination: "Magyars, Romanians, Serbs, Bulgars, Albanians, Greeks, and Turks will then finally be in a position to...manage their own internal affairs according to their own judgment." It should be noted, however, that Marxism is not some kind of immutable dogma; Marx and Engels regularly revised their work and acknowledged their errors and mistakes that they previously made.The film makes the spurious claim that a famine throughout Russia and elsewhere in the Soviet Union constituted a genocide against Ukraine that killed 7 million.
And rather than desiring the famine, the Soviet Government took measures to provide relief to those areas affected by the famine.Other monstrously false claims made in this film include the lies that Russia refused to enter into an anti-fascist alliance with the Western Powers, Gestapo staff trained the NKVD, Russia's extradition of Jews to the Gestapo, and Russia's involvement in the extermination of Jews, which I do not have the space to go into detail about.Rather than wasting your time with this pathetic excuse for a propaganda film, a better choice would be to go to college and study the work of respected scholars to learn the truth..
There is no doubt that the Soviets behaved badly in Germany, albeit they were extremely merciful, if you consider the "you reap what you sow" word of wisdom.Basically, what this documentary does is exaggerating and making claims (like the casualty figures, completely unsourced and without substance).
Though in the end, it could be argued that his brutality united the country, and him treating people as a resource, created enough industrial power to defeat Nazi Germany..
Without this attack by Stalin, well ahead of war in Europe, the army would have won the argument in Japan and joined Germany and Italy in attacking Russia from all sides.
If you already have a good knowledge of the Soviet regime and of the two World Wars then you won't find much that's new in The Soviet Story.
The Russians are shown in a positive way, as they should be because Hitler was broken in Russia, and the Soviet Union suffered 19 million civilian deaths.
One of this film's strongest points is that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were allies before 1941.
Another thing that puzzles me is why the film is called The Soviet Story.
The Soviet Union lasted until 1991, and yet what's shown in the film happened before 1950.
There were no famines or purges after Stalin's death in the Soviet Union.
And yet there are others like Tatjana Zdanoka (Latvian MEP) and historian Alexander Dyukov who said that the film has errors and that it's a propagandistic odd job, which is given out to be "a new word in history".
The film claims this as proof of Nazi-Soviet collaboration.
And what's more disturbing is that Snore at the end uses his film to take a stab at the second president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin.
How does a Russian president fit in a film about the Soviet Union?
The Soviet Union disintegrated two decades ago, so what is the point of a film that strongly criticizes a regime that hasn't existed for a generation already?
Latvia (the country where the film was made) and other former Soviet satellites are afraid of Russian domination.
The Soviet Story is a badly made film, but those with anti-Russian feelings are going to eat it up.
In that way, producers of the movie made a great job and payed back all the money that was put into the project.Well then, now ask yourself, can you really believe those "nice men" who were sponsored to film such a piece of art to sow the seeds of hatred among not well educated people towards Russia?
It tries to explain, why some ex Soviet block countries live bad, even under the EU regime and why Russian people in the Baltic states like Latvia lack civil rights and are oppressed in every way.
No need for falsification even, like in The Soviet Story, just film real people and what is happening today with Russians in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia.Why such a movie may not be produced under current circumstances?
Because there's a unipolar attitude toward Russia today, and that only can make you sober and critical towards artfully made propaganda like The "what you should believe as" Soviet Story..
So ej- 43 likes to think that the communist workers states of the glorious USSR and China killed 100 million people when this is nothing but a US and UK as well as Nazi disinformation campaign to discredit the power of the workers over the rich.Now.One million people over the usual 2.5 % average death rate died in Ukraine during a famine in 1933,this was also exacerbated by rich kulaks murdering over half draft animals and attacking and destroying collective farms,murdering the workers and setting fire to stores and fields of crops.These were the same rich kulaks who murdered thousands of Soviet tax collectors in the 1920's.William Hearst US media magnate and good friend of Hitler followed the Nazi lie that there was Soviet policy to starve people when the Soviets were doing everything they could to feed the people.R.Conquest the writer of "Harvest of sorrow " is the British liar who spread stories about their being 3- 5 million dead in UA in 33.
Watching this documentary will provide many interesting insights into history of the Soviet Union as well as the Nazi Germany through analysis of the documents, ideas of historians, memories of witnesses.Firstly, it should be noted that the documentary focuses on the critical discussion of mass killings, concentration practiced by the Soviet secret state.
Marx and Fr. Engels why the soviet leaders (Lenin, later Stalin) killed people, set up concentration camps seeking to establish their own authority.Secondly, the makers of the documentary revealed how the Nazi government used experience, some ideological ideas of K.
Marx, and shocking experience of Lenin, NKVD to set up killing machine of Jews and other people of Germany.Thirdly, there has been shown how the Soviet officials and the Nazi government collaborated before World War II in order to improve killing machine mechanism and annex territories of free states in Europe.
Later, the shocking crimes of the Soviet state has been shown in the Baltic countries.Finally, the film-makers have revealed shocking legacy dealing with justification of the communism crimes in some social groups of politicians in Russia.In conclusion, watching this documentary will form critical approach towards similarities of Communism and Nazism..
Adolf Hitler was broken in Russia, and the Soviet Union suffered 19 million civilian deaths.
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union did have a non-aggression pact due to convenience, but Joseph Stalin approved it only because he wanted Russia to stay out of the war at that time.
I'm not going to go into this matter, but I will mention that they brought Hitler to power and they seriously opposed the Soviet Union ever since Stalin abandoned the project of world revolution.Reliable critics and historians already heavily criticized The Soviet Story.
It's because I've seen the same footage in the acclaimed 1964 documentary series The Great War. But this doesn't bother a man like Snore.
The film is titled 'The Soviet Story' when the entire argument is shaped around the totalitarian regime of Stalin.
Instead of merely stating the factual evidence behind the atrocities in Stalinist Russia, 'The Soviet Story' tries to tie in his dictatorship with Communist ideology in its entirety, and even demonize the modern Russian state.
Once again, the totalitarian regime of Stalin and his predecessors did not commit their heinous crimes in the name of socialism, but rather, in the name of power.While 'The Soviet Story' is a great example of government manipulation, political oppression, and megalomaniacs, it does not justify it's own doomed thesis that the entire Soviet State was founded on oppression.