The Soviet Story (2008)

Introduction The Soviet Story is a 2008 documentary film about Soviet Communism and Soviet-German collaboration before 1941 written and directed by Edvīns Šnore and sponsored by the UEN Group in the European Parliament. The Soviet Story offers an alternative history of an Allied power, which helped the Nazis to fight Jews and which slaughtered its…

Andrew Marshall

18/01/2020

1–2 minutes

History, Military Documentary, War, World War Two

Introduction

The Soviet Story is a 2008 documentary film about Soviet Communism and Soviet-German collaboration before 1941 written and directed by Edvīns Šnore and sponsored by the UEN Group in the European Parliament.

The Soviet Story offers an alternative history of an Allied power, which helped the Nazis to fight Jews and which slaughtered its own people on an industrial scale.

Outline

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

Using these interviews together with historical footage and documents the film argues that there were close philosophical, political and organisational connections between the Nazi and Soviet systems. It highlights the Great Purge as well as the Great Famine, Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Katyn massacre, Gestapo–NKVD collaboration, Soviet mass deportations and medical experiments in the GULAG.

The documentary goes on to argue that the successor states to Nazi Germany and the USSR differ in the sense that postwar Germany condemns the actions of Nazi Germany while the opinion in contemporary Russia is summarised by the quote of Vladimir Putin: “One needs to acknowledge, that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”.

Production & Filming Details