The Soviet Story, A Documentary Film Directed by Edvīns Šnore

The Soviet Story is a 2008 documentary film about Soviet Communism and Soviet–German relations before 1941 and after, written and directed by Edvīns Šnore, and sponsored by the Union for Europe of the Nations group in the European Parliament. The film features interviews with Western and Russian historians such as Norman Davies and Boris Vadimovich Sokolov, the Russian writer Viktor Suvorov, the Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, members of the European Parliament, and participants and survivors of the Soviet terror. Sokolov later emphasized that he simply offered expert advice and told Šnore that some of the things he claimed were based on obvious falsifications.

Using those interviews, together with historical footage and documents, the film documentary argues that there were close philosophical, political and organizational connections between the Nazi and the Soviet systems. It highlights the Great Purge, the Holodomor, the Molotov — Ribbentrop Pact, the Katyn massacre, the Gestapo — NKVD collaboration, forced population transfer in the Soviet Union, and the medical experiments in the gulags. The documentary goes on to argue that the successor states to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union differ in the sense that postwar Germany condemns the actions of Nazi Germany, but the opinion in contemporary Russia is summarized by a quote from Vladimir Putin: “One needs to acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” In the closing credits of the film, it is stated: “The Soviet Union killed more than 20,000,000 men, women and children. This film is dedicated to them.”

(Above description of “The Soviet Story” from Wikipedia.org; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soviet_Story; accessed February 24, 2022)