The Harsh Reality
Occasionally there are films of such import to historical understanding that they stand out head over heels over all else...This is one such film. It supports the thesis that, not only was Nazism the heir to Communism, but that its leaders, Hitler, and Lenin, and Stalin, substantially cooperated with one another and learned from one another. Nazism was only different from Communism is that it was ethnically and racially based...whereas Communism was economically and class based. Philosophically, as Goebbels publicly wrote, they were the same, in their employment of repression, and mass murder, and fear to achieve their "idealistic" aims.
The romantic leanings of too many in the West, then as now, always seem to pit early Communism against Nazism....one being good and idealistic, and the other being pure evil. This DVD demonstrates like no other film, that nothing could be further from the truth...for Nazism and Communism, aside from occasional distrust, from the beginning,...
A History Writ in Blood
From its inception, the story of the Soviet Union was writ in blood. However, the Empire's apologists persistently deny the brutality and extent of Soviet crimes against humanity, most particularly including Soviet cooperation with the Third Reich. As a result, Latvian director Edvins Snore was burned in effigy by Neo-Soviet Russians. It is an ominous badge of honor. Happily, that film that you are not supposed to see, The Soviet Story, is evidently available for sale here.
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. The heart of Soviet Story explores the close ideological similarities and barbaric collusion between the Soviet Socialists...
Really struck a chord
As a history buff, I have noted a couple of important aspects of Hitler's and Stalin's regimes that have largely been swept under the rug or revised. One is that just as Stalin is considered a left wing communist, Hitler is often referred to as a right wing conservative. The other is that while the horror and genocide of the holocaust under Hitler are very well publicized, the horrors and genocide under Stalin are to a significant extent ignored.
This documentary blows those two notions out of the water. Snore documents an amazing political overlap between the nazis and the communists. And he expertly shines a spotlight on the enormous magnitude of the systematic mass murder of the soviets under Stalin; that it is on a par with the nazi's, if not much worse.
It was captivating from start to finish.
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