Film Notes: "A Soviet Story"

“A Soviet Story” Edvíns Šnore film shown at school the last Friday of Occupation Week

·         Opened with pictures of dead and the line: “These were methods used by the Nazis…But this film will not be about the Nazis…These people were killed by one of the allies: the Soviet Union.”

·         Claims the memory of Soviet crimes has been erased from history

·         Presents the common idea that there was nothing wrong with the basic idea of Communism and then counters it

o   Lenin wrote that certain groups of people would have to be killed before the new world order could emerge

o   Lenin supported social engineering

·         Ukraine 1932-33: extermination of 7,000,000 people by means of Stalin’s prepared “famine”

o   people were given bread for turning over bodies to the police, so some people were handed over to be buried alive

o   10 years before the Nazis

o   confiscated grain was exported to the West

§  Western media did publicize the plight of the Ukrainians, but no help was sent…even such a protest as a boycott of the bloody grain was not enacted

·         Marxism preached the need for a “new man”   

o   Nazism would preach the same need shortly after

o   both ideologies were at war with human nature (unnatural ideologies)

·         “Only Socialists publicly advocated genocide in the 19^th-20^th centuries”

o   personally, I wonder if this statement means “only” in the world or in the group of countries usually covered in Western history books…

o   Engels wrote that “racial trash” needed to be destroyed

o   Marx could be considered the “ancestor of modern political genocide”

·         1924- Lenin died

·         Dr. Goebbels published an article in the New York Times in which he compared Lenin’s philosophy and Hitler’s “religion”

o   called Lenin the greatest man in history, second only to Hitler

o   Early Nazis stressed how they considered themselves brothers with the Soviets

§  National Socialists and International Socialists

§  excellent clip in the film showing parallel propaganda posters

o   Later Nazis would stop stressing their similarities publicly, but Hitler and his cabinet continued closely studying the works of Marx and Engles

·         Bernard Shaw (author and communist)

o   supported both dictators

o   wrote about the need to kill the parasites of society

o   called for the creation of a “humane” extermination gas

§  the creation of Ziklon-B 10 years later would be defended at the Nurmburg trials by Eichman using Shaw’s words

o   fundamentally opposed Nazism because Hitler had distorted Lenin’s teaching

§  i.e. extermination should be based on class, not on race

·         Bloodbath in the USSR

o   Bkivna forest in Kiev is a mass grave and memorial forest

o   homeless children in Russia embarrassed Stalin so he ordered those older than 12 years shot

o   Stalin gave his generals killing quotas

§  never signed execution orders alone

§  killing by quota meant randomly exterminating whole groups of his own people

·         nothing to do with class; nothing to do with race—just in the name of terror

§  Khruschev was given a 7k-8k quota and asked that it be increased

o   1937-1941- “repressed” 11+ million of his own people

·         Friendship between Stalin and Hitler

o   Stalin wanted Hitler to destroy the old order in Europe for him; his plan was to wait and then lead the Red Army in as “liberators”

o   secret alliance signed which led to the invasion and division of Poland

§  later, a second secret agreement would prospectively divide the whole of Europe between the two leaders [[this document would later be smuggled out of the “President’s Library” in the Kremlin]]

§  USSR Press justified the invasion of Poland as the joint effort by the peace-loving Nazis and Soviets to eradicate “Polish fascism”

o   Soviets invaded Finland, where they were defeated with huge losses to both sides

§  Red Army lost 1/3 of a million people

§  this attack prompted the League of Nations to expel the USSR

·         thus joined the ranks of Japan, Italy, and Germany

o   Soviet citizens starved as food supplies were sent to Hitler and the Nazis

o   Molotov made fighting Nazism a crime by USSR law

o   Churchill called Nazism “Soviet Despotism”

o   Katyn

o   Igor Radiovnov considers (yes, present tense) the Soviet-Nazi alliance something to be proud of because it was his country helping nobly in the “war against Jewish Fascism”

o   Lev Trotsky “warned the world” that Stalin and Hitler were collaborating, and was assassinated as a result

o   NKVD

§  trained SS, Gestapo, and concentration camp architects

§  carried out same “experiments” and tortures as Nazis

·         when USSR became an allied power, funding for these “scientists” came from the allied countries

§  had own army that followed the Red Army into battles

·         killed own soldiers to discourage retreat/desertion

·         tore dog-tags off of dead Red Army soldiers to prevent their being identified (wanted to keep official number of mortalities low; currently stands at 27 million but should really be much higher…there just aren’t records to tell researchers how much higher)

·         After becoming an Allied Power…

o   Stalin deported entire ethnic groups to Siberia

o   put Nazis into their own concentration camps

o   carried out mass ethnic cleansing in the Baltics

·         Current events

o   Dzintars- master torturer currently lives in Moscow, protected by the Kremlin as an “honorable veteran”

o   addresses of officers who carried out the Katyn massacre are known, but they are protected by the Kremlin

o   ex-KGB Vladimir Putin said in a speech “one must acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”

§  under his regime, xenophobic and racist propaganda has been increasingly pushed

§  considers criticizing the USSR to be criticizing current Russia, because his idea of current Russia is not a re-birth after the bloodbath but a continuation of it…the next generation of a country that cherishes the example set by its noble ancestor

·         could be compared to the state of Germany post-WWI

o   so does this mean a second war is inevitable if Russians are to choose a new path for themselves?

o   Radionov said “the Russian media is in the hands of the Jewish Mafia”

·         FILM’S POINT

o   “Europe now has the opportunity to condemn these crimes and to demand the extradition of those who committed them. Yet Europe hesitates. Why?”

§  because Europe is dependent on Russia for petrol/gas

o   if the Kremlin were to decide to arrest those responsible for Katyn, they could flee to Great Britain for protection, because the Katyn massacre isn’t defined as a war crime in Great Britain (legal documents only consider WWII murders committed by the Nazis to be war crimes)

o   EU is apathetic because it is convenient for them to be; this way they can get their petrol/gas from Mr. Putin, deny that they teamed up with a monster (Stalin) to fight Hitler, deny that they turned a blind eye to the atrocities being committed against the citizens of the Soviet Union…

§  neo-Nazis and radical nationalists frequently murder “social parasites,” ethnic minorities, and other undesirables still, and the Russian government is taking no measures to stop such murders

§  proposed that Europe in part believes Marx and Hegel, that it’s acceptable for certain demographics of the population to be killed as long as they are the weaker demographics…as long as their extermination makes space for stronger, more worthy demographics to take power

Obviously, this was a film whose producers had an agenda. It is very clear: the goal here is to lay out all atrocities of the USSR and then to provide insurmountable evidence that the Soviets were worse than/collaborating with/the predecessors of the Nazis. To what end? To point out that the Western Powers collaborated with a genocidal dictator and continue to demand justice for the people who were victims of that collaboration. To draw attention to the roots of the current Russian government, which the West still collaborates willingly with. To suggest that either gas is more important to Western politicians than human rights, or that Western politicians secretly want to let these “weaker” groups kill each other off. I think that the last charge—that Western politicians are secretly disciples of Marx and Hegel—is very extreme. There is certainly truth to the charge that petrol/gas motivates the Western leaders to overlook things like the propaganda (a poster with a picture of Obama in 2009 advertised chocolate ice cream with the slogan “flavor of the year”) being distributed or the ethnic cleansing (train-loads of minority citizens being deported to Chechnya and Dagestan, where guerilla warfare will kill many of them and where a ban on cameras/journalists ensures no witnesses of consequence) being carried out in Russia today. But at the same time, the film presents its ideas in such a way that it seems to accuse the viewer of not realizing—to put it quaintly—that the Soviet Union was bad. The interesting and informative and heart-wrenching bits are periodically interspersed with declarations in a tone that seems to suggest the viewer likely doesn’t consider Stalin a dictator or a murderer. It felt patronizing and propagandist. I know that things were bad; I want the facts and the stories, not melodramatic announcements accusing me of misplaced sympathies. Even more interesting is the fact that the Georgian government requested a translation of the video (professionally done, with subtitles and dubbing and Georgian-language menus) for viewing in schools here. Georgia isn’t mentioned in the video. The Georgian-born Stalin is presented as the leader of a ruthless dictatorship, but no mention is made of the consequences for the individual occupied countries (with the exception of Ukraine and the cluster of Balkin states). There’s the fact that Georgia was Russian starting in 1801, which means that their history of oppression goes back further than mentioned in the film. And then there’s that troubling last note which goes beyond accusing Europe of apathy and actually accuses them of quiet approval. Why would this government want such a film in their schools to mark Occupation Week? Perhaps because it paints everyone else—all other countries—as potential occupiers who cannot be trusted. What a message for kids who are also being required to study Russian and English and who have imported English teachers! A little scary.