No refuting the hard truths in the Soviet Story

Toronto Sun ^ | 2010-02-03 | Peter Worthington

[Clive]

Those who are concerned that once history is distorted, it often never gets corrected, can breathe easier after a startlingly accurate documentary was premiered this past Sunday at the Ukrainian Cultural Centre in Toronto.

Even so, The Soviet Story, made two years ago and shown mostly in the Baltic states and Europe, has resulted in angry protests in communist quarters. The documentary’s young writer and director, Edvin Snores, a Latvian, has been hanged in effigy and denounced as a liar by some in the European Parliament.

One Russian historian publicly regretted having taken part in the film — a film in which he did not take part. Such is the outrage.

The Economist urged “those who want to ban it should try refuting it first.”

I’ve seen the film (it premiered in the U.S. six months ago) and, put bluntly, it cannot be refuted. Rejected, maybe; offensive to some sensitivities, perhaps; horrifying, undoubtedly; painful, without doubt. But refuted? Impossible.

The core theme is the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin was mentor to Hitler and the Nazis. Until Hitler turned on his ally, Stalin and the USSR were Hitler’s partners in war, with a treaty to divide Europe once the pesky problem of defeating Britain had been solved.

Most people do not realize — or have forgotten, or never knew — how closely Nazi propaganda emulated Soviet propaganda — similar images of muscular men in posters, smiling young women, all working for the improvement of mankind by eliminating human trash like Jews, Serbs, Gypsies, even Scotsmen!

The genesis for genocide to rid the world of the weak or unwanted, originated with Karl Marx who, around 1849, wrote: “Killing is justified, especially if it cleanses society.”

Lenin agreed, Stalin expanded the creed and Hitler copied it.

In the early days of the Second World War, Jews who fled Germany to the USSR were rounded up by the NKVD and turned over to the Nazis.

Where Hitler and Stalin differed in building a pure society and better human beings, was Hitler digressed from Stalin’s formula of “class warfare” and introduced “racial cleansing.” Hitler watched with envy how the NKVD eliminated seven million Ukrainians by imposing the world’s first man-made famine on Ukraine in 1932-33, confiscating all food and making record sales of Ukrainian grain to Europe.

The world paid no attention — the few journalists who did (Malcolm Muggeridge) were ignored. The New York Times correspondent in Moscow, Walter Duranty, won a Pulitzer Prize for dodging the famine.

The film footage is ghastly but persuasive. Mountains of skeletal, starved bodies are bulldozed into mass graves. Vivid photos of victims shot in the head and tumbling into mass graves. There is Katyn Forest, where 20,000 Polish reservists were shot, some buried alive in mass graves, and our side pretended the Germans did it.

The world remembers the horrors of the Nazi death camps, but we hunger to forget, if we can, the 20-plus million who died in the Soviet Gulag at the whim of our wartime ally, “Uncle Joe.”

Among Edvin Snores’ interviews are aging women who recall the famine, the massacre of their families, the Gulag. Painful, but essential to record.

With younger generations reluctant to believe history, it’s important there be a source for unvarnished truth.

— The movie can be bought at sovietstory.com

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

The Irish Famine is perfect example of lassaiz faire in action to the detriment of the lower orders. You are correct in that the Famine was part of the reasoning behind the repeal of the Corn Laws, and that the starving Irish labouring classes were too cash-poor to buy food, cheap or other wise, but that doesn't change the fact that the prevailing ideology behind the repeal of the corn laws (minimal state intervention, free-market economics) meant that to do what was neccessary to relieve the famine was ideologically impossible. The idea of state intervention, especially that of forcing landlords to hand over their export grain to their starving tenents, was an anaethma to the 1840s high Victorian, especially ones that viewed the poor as being primarly responsible for their own condition. I'm sure you are familiar with Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol'. Ebenezer Scrooge's early attitude towards the poor and comment about 'decreasing the surplus population' was a reflection of the attitudes towards the poor in general which were prevalent in 1840s Britain. The irony is, before he had that encounter with the three spirits and became a paternalist, his character was that of a pure market liberal, Gotta love those liberals indeed...