The Soviet Story - new docmunetary

[Digitalism]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/08/SovietStory.gif

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soviet_Story#Controversies

http://www.sovietstory.com/about-the-film/

http://www.sovietstory.com/trailer/

just found out about this, my interest has peaked but I'm getting a propagandistic vibe off of this, not to mention a huge smear.

[Harrycombs]

A propagandistic vibe? This looks sick.

I bet its filled with half truths, speculations, ridiculous estimations, and commonly accepted lies. People should listen to Lenin more.

"A lie told often enough becomes the truth."

And portraying Lenin as a mass murderer :cursing:? And for that matter, Stalin wasn't one either people!

[Raúl Duke]

Why is it that some/many people don't notice that revolution tends to be a bloody affair.

Even the American one and also the French ones that allowed the bourgeoisie to rise.

So was the Spanish one, clergymen, landowners, fascists, etc were mostly shot.

Unfortunately some get into the cross fire (and some were unjustly killed; such as the Ukrainian and other anarchist comrades who were betrayed.)

I remember this quote about the French Revolution that went something like: "They now complain of the terror being done to them, yet the people did not complain for all those years of terror they did to them"

However, I have nothing to say about the other years of the USSR's existence.

[Digitalism]

you guys can download this on mininova if you;re interested. I got my hands on it through there but haven't sat down to actually watching it yet.

Good call on the quote, Darko.

[Fiskpure]

This documentary is not made to condem USSR, Stalin, but communism. As all the previous famous bourgeoise, in the West, they are trying to continue their lie and falsification of facts. In this movie, they are making it sound as if it the entire point of the revolution was to establish a dictatorship over the people.

3 minutes into the movie and they're already making statements on incorrect facts, "Lenin belived in what he called: the war of the classes..." yes, so far everything's correct "... which mean't ultimate harmony could only be achieved by killing the other classes."

Can you imagine what kind of impact this has on the people?

[Bilan]

Snore was certainely a choice last name.

What a crock of shit.

[Raúl Duke]

Actually the quote, supposedly attributed to Mark Twain, was this:

"I read much complaint about the four years of terror that the French people inflicted on the aristocrats; I read no complaints, however, of the thousand years of terror that the aristocrats inflicted on the French people".

The movie would be certainly most unfair than it already is if it didn't remark that German communists tried to stop Nazism in the streets and in the elections (they should have focused more on the streets though), French communists making large part of the resistance in France, Italian communists partisans liberated Italy and aided the allies, etc.

The story of communism is far from the idea of "cooperating with Nazis"...

[Digitalism]

just finished watching this. I can't tell you how much of it is true because any documentary or "fact" that are anti-Soviet Union/communism, I watch with extreme caution.. However, the picture it paints of Lenin/Marx as for genocide of some kind, I just had to scratch my head... REALLY?

The ultimate conclusion at the end is that Marx and Engels are the instigators of such atrocities... give me a FUCKIN' break.


http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4217790/The.Soviet.Story[DivX.2008.Eng]

[ckaihatsu]

This documentary is not made to condem USSR, Stalin, but communism. As all the previous famous bourgeoise, in the West, they are trying to continue their lie and falsification of facts. In this movie, they are making it sound as if it the entire point of the revolution was to establish a dictatorship over the people.

3 minutes into the movie and they're already making statements on incorrect facts, "Lenin belived in what he called: the war of the classes..." yes, so far everything's correct "... which mean't ultimate harmony could only be achieved by killing the other classes."

Can you imagine what kind of impact this has on the people?


I saw the documentary, and I agree with Fiskpure here. At the same time, I think it's also valuable because it does cover a large amount of historical ground which includes the mass crimes of Stalinism.

There are some crude, possibly distorted, interpretations of Marx, Engels, and Lenin at the beginning, but later on it portrays Trotsky as brave, finally targeted and done in because of his outspokenness against Stalin.

The overall thesis of the documentary *is* to show early and ongoing collaboration between the Nazi and Stalinist camps -- they *were* both nationalist in leadership, but internationalist in ambition, after all. It also indicts the Allies at certain points, thereby balancing out the thesis a bit.

Here are some notable excerpts:


[44:36] (Winston Churchill, sitting, pounding his thigh with his fist) "Winston Churchill made no secret that, to him, Nazi and Communist ideologies were pretty similar. [Highlight of a section of a newspaper page] "In his view, Nazism was a *form* of Communist despotism. 'The hateful Communist despotism,' as Churchill called it in 1940, eventually won, with the help of the Allies. (Pan from Churchill over to Roosevelt, sitting side-by-side)

[1:07:10] (Magazine cover: "Soviet Russia Today, November, 1945, 15¢" -- proud profiles of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill against a drawn background of a skyline at night with fireworks) "In May, 1945, the Allies defeated Hitler. This horrible film footage was shown in the West. (Frame fills and pans over emaciated bodies in a mass grave) "The Nazi concentration camp after liberation. (Landscape of internment barracks on flat dirt land with a bulldozer pushing a small mound of bodies) "But only a few understood what they were actually seeing. The site was being cleared for new inmates. (Flyover of a grid of barracks buildings) "The Soviets did *not* destroy the Nazi camps. They continued to use them after the war."

[1:07:44] (Kristofers Bïzlijs, vësturnicks, Eiropas parlamenta deputats) "The agreement which Stalin made with the West affected the whole of Europe for the next 50 years. So, although you can say the crimes are of the same order, the political outcome at the end of the Second World War quite clearly was very different for those two dictatorships."

[1:08:03] (Border guard tower with fencing) "And it was also very different for the people of Western, and Eastern Europe."


Chris



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[Pawn Power]

After seeing the trailor I wouldn't recommend this 'documentary' to anyone.

[Led Zeppelin]

Haha, the trailer was hilarious.

I only watch such documentaries for the archive footage, I'll check it out and post some comments later on.

[Led Zeppelin]

Ok, I just saw it.

It was pretty boring and shit so I wouldn't recommend it, the only interesting part was some archive footage of Trotsky.

There were some especially idiotic parts in it though (not that the whole thing wasn't idiotic), specifically the part where they tried to turn the theory of "class war" into an "ideology of genocide" and thereby imply that Marx and Engels were the first intellectuals who "called for genocide".

They even quoted both of them to that effect, so I was interested and decided to look up those quotes and their other claims, which they sourced.

First there's a quote by Lenin which they cite, after saying


Lenin believed in what he called 'the war of classes', which meant that the ultimate harmony can only be reached after certain groups of people are killed.

This is a lie, Lenin never said other classes "should be killed", he said they should be expropriated:


The dictatorship of the proletariat, the proletarian state, which is a machine for the suppression of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat, is not a “form of governing”, but a state of a different type. Suppression is necessary because the bourgeoisie will always furiously resist being expropriated.
Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/oct/10.htm)

Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie.
Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/01.htm)

Just as in Russia in 1905, a popular uprising against the tsarist government began under the leadership of the proletariat with the aim of achieving a democratic republic, so, in Europe, the coming years, precisely because of this predatory war, will lead to popular uprisings under the leadership of the proletariat against the power of finance capital, against the big banks, against the capitalists; and these upheavals cannot end otherwise than with the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, with the victory of socialism.
Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jan/09.htm)

Then they quote a telegram which Lenin supposedly sent:



Send to Penza To Comrades Kuraev, Bosh, Minkin and other Penza communists
Comrades! The revolt by the five kulak volost's must be suppressed without mercy. The interest of the entire revolution demands this, because we have now before us our final decisive battle "with the kulaks." We need to set an example.

1.You need to hang (hang without fail, so that the public sees) at least 100 notorious kulaks, the rich, and the bloodsuckers.
2.Publish their names.
3.Take away all of their grain.
4.Execute the hostages - in accordance with yesterday's telegram.
This needs to be accomplished in such a way, that people for hundreds of miles around will see, tremble, know and scream out: let's choke andstrangle those blood-sucking kulaks.
Telegraph us acknowledging receipt and execution of this.
Yours, Lenin

P.S. Use your toughest people for this.
Link (http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/russia/lenin_quotes.html)

They used a mistranslation of that telegram to falsify history.

This is the real telegram from MIA:



To Penza
To Comrades Kuraev, Bosh, Minkin and other Penza communists.

Comrades! The uprising by the five kulak volosts must be mercilessly suppressed. The interest of the entire revolution demands this, for we are now facing everywhere the “final decisive battle” with the kulaks. We need to set an example.

1. You need to hang (hang without fail, so that the people see) no fewer than 100 of the
notorious kulaks, the rich and the bloodsuckers.
2. Publish their names.
3. Take all their grain from them.
4. Appoint the hostages — in accordance with yesterday’s telegram.

This needs to be done in such a way that the people for hundreds of versts around will see, tremble, know and shout: they are throttling and will throttle the bloodsucking kulaks.

Telegraph us concerning receipt and implementation.
Yours, Lenin.
PS. Find tougher people.
Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/aug/11c.htm)

He never said "execute the hostages", yet in the documentary the narrator explicitly says this and then reads the signed name: "Lenin".

What a joke.

As for one hundred "Kulaks, rich and bloodsuckers" being hanged after an uprising was started by them during the civil war, do you mind if I said that I don't give a shit?

Now, on to Marx and Engels.

They bring on some idiot historian or whatever he is who goes on to claim that Engels called for a genocide of "backward people", and "he had in mind the Basques, the Britons [?], the Scottish highlanders [??] and the Serbs, and he calls them 'racial trash'."

This is all fantasy.

Nowhere did Engels use the term "racial trash", nowhere did Engels refer to those groups of people as "racial trash" because they were "backward", and by this the idiot means that they had not yet reached capitalism, which is a moronic thing to say given the fact that the vast majority of nations had not yet reached that stage of development. What, was Engels calling them all "racial trash" and for mass genocide at the same time? Well, yes, that's what they want people to believe.

That kind of nullifies the whole point of communism and Marxist theory, doesn't it? At least he would have had a point if he didn't pull that quote out of his ass

Then some other moron comes on and says that Engels considered Slavs to be "dirty" and that Poland "had no right to exist". This is yet another falsification of history because both Marx and Engels were the ones who were arguing for Polish independence during that time: Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/self-det/ch08.htm)

They then quote Marx:


The classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way.

[...]

They must perish in the revolutionary holocaust.

The first part of the quote is true, the last part; "They must perish in the revolutionary holocaust" is not even in the same article as the first part of the quote, in fact, it is nowhere to be found in the works of Marx.

It is yet again a fabrication.

The first part of the quote is from an article Marx wrote for The New York Tribune on...Forced Emigration under capitalism.

This is the quote in context:


Now I share neither in the opinions of Ricardo, who regards ‘Net-Revenue’ as the Moloch to whom entire populations must be sacrificed, without even so much as complaint, nor in the opinion of Sismondi, who, in his hypochondriacal philanthropy, would forcibly retain the superannuated methods of agriculture and proscribe science from industry, as Plato expelled poets from his Republic. Society is undergoing a silent revolution, which must be submitted to, and which takes no more notice of the human existences it breaks down than an earthquake regards the houses it subverts. The classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way. But can there be anything more puerile, more short-sighted, than the views of those Economists who believe in all earnest that this woeful transitory state means nothing but adapting society to the acquisitive propensities of capitalists, both landlords and money-lords? In Great Britain the working of that process is most transparent. The application of modern science to production clears the land of its inhabitants, but it concentrates people in manufacturing towns.
Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/03/04.htm)

This documentary is a fraud.

[spartafc]

the stuff in this about how the NAZIs and the COMMUNIST/MARXISTS both were for the creation of a "new man" is hilariously lazy. As though a philosophy about the progressive role of social classes can be compared to that which proscribes "healthy, happy, blond haired males".

Alongside the suggestion that there was going to be a truce between the Nazis and the Communists (Hitler as a "german Lenin") pre-Stalin obviously which was changed because it "didn't go down well with the voters". That would seem to fly right in the face of the tragic history of the German Communist Party!

And of course they were for "national socialism". It has socialism in the title, guys! To prove this point they play the internationale alongside nazi propaganda. Which really convinced me!

[Unclebananahead]

This so-called 'documentary' sounds as though it has the same aims and measure of credibility as the 'Black Book of Communism,' and other notorious pieces of reactionary pabulum

[Pogue]

Ok, I just saw it.

It was pretty boring and shit so I wouldn't recommend it, the only interesting part was some archive footage of Trotsky.

There were some especially idiotic parts in it though (not that the whole thing wasn't idiotic), specifically the part where they tried to turn the theory of "class war" into an "ideology of genocide" and thereby imply that Marx and Engels were the first intellectuals who "called for genocide".

They even quoted both of them to that effect, so I was interested and decided to look up those quotes and their other claims, which they sourced.

First there's a quote by Lenin which they cite, after saying



This is a lie, Lenin never said other classes "should be killed", he said they should be expropriated:


Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/oct/10.htm)

Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/01.htm)

Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jan/09.htm)

Then they quote a telegram which Lenin supposedly sent:


Link (http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/russia/lenin_quotes.html)

They used a mistranslation of that telegram to falsify history.

This is the real telegram from MIA:


Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/aug/11c.htm)

He never said "execute the hostages", yet in the documentary the narrator explicitly says this and then reads the signed name: "Lenin".

What a joke.

As for one hundred "Kulaks, rich and bloodsuckers" being hanged after an uprising was started by them during the civil war, do you mind if I said that I don't give a shit?

Now, on to Marx and Engels.

They bring on some idiot historian or whatever he is who goes on to claim that Engels called for a genocide of "backward people", and "he had in mind the Basques, the Britons [?], the Scottish highlanders [??] and the Serbs, and he calls them 'racial trash'."

This is all fantasy.

Nowhere did Engels use the term "racial trash", nowhere did Engels refer to those groups of people as "racial trash" because they were "backward", and by this the idiot means that they had not yet reached capitalism, which is a moronic thing to say given the fact that the vast majority of nations had not yet reached that stage of development. What, was Engels calling them all "racial trash" and for mass genocide at the same time? Well, yes, that's what they want people to believe.

That kind of nullifies the whole point of communism and Marxist theory, doesn't it? At least he would have had a point if he didn't pull that quote out of his ass

Then some other moron comes on and says that Engels considered Slavs to be "dirty" and that Poland "had no right to exist". This is yet another falsification of history because both Marx and Engels were the ones who were arguing for Polish independence during that time: Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/self-det/ch08.htm)

They then quote Marx:



The first part of the quote is true, the last part; "They must perish in the revolutionary holocaust" is not even in the same article as the first part of the quote, in fact, it is nowhere to be found in the works of Marx.

It is yet again a fabrication.

The first part of the quote is from an article Marx wrote for The New York Tribune on...Forced Emigration under capitalism.

This is the quote in context:


Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/03/04.htm)

This documentary is a fraud.

Veyr good post.

[Wanted Man]

I'm normally pretty good at wasting my time, but this film might be too much even for me. I can't imagine giving this hack job the dignity of watching and taking seriously. But no doubt thousands of Latvians will have seen it, their government promotes this kind of shit to justify itself, after all.

It's even worthless as an "indictment of Stalinism/Leninism" or whatever, because it states that all these atrocities can be sourced back to Marx's "genocidal theories".

[Trystan]

It's clearly biased, so I'm not gonna bother.

[rednordman]

It's clearly biased, so I'm not gonna bother.Yep, its was part funded by the Northen League in Italy - Need I say anymore?

[rednordman]

+the funniest thing is that alot of 'conservatives' in the European parlimant have actually fallen for this ploy. Its like they do not realise the NL are pretty much fascists. So the conservatives are so desparate to put dirt over the left...they even work with the far-right. So much for 'compasionnate' conservatives, lol.

[LOLseph Stalin]

Typical Bourgeois propaganda. "Communism is bad so we must not let it spread". I should still watch this however for some laughs. It's funny how ignorant people are when it comes to Communism.