The Soviet Story

The Soviet Story is a 2008 documentary film about the Soviet Union 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.

Using those interviews, together with historical footage and documents, the film documentary argues that there were close philosophical, political and organisational connections between the Nazi and the Soviet systems. It highlights the Lenin's hanging order, the Great Purge, the Holodomor, the mass graves in the Soviet Union, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Katyn massacre, the Gestapo–NKVD collaboration, the German-Soviet military parade, the German–Soviet Axis talks, the NKVD prisoner massacres, 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 summarised 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."

The documentary film, commissioned by the national-conservative and right-wing Union for Europe of the Nations group in the European Parliament, compared the atrocities of the two regimes. In the documentary, producer and director Edvīns Šnore argued that "not only were the crimes of the former inspired by the crimes of the latter, but that they helped each other, and that without their mutual assistance the outcome of World War II could have been quite different." In Latvia the forced Soviet deportations are commonly seen as a genocidal practice. The European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism, proclaimed by the European Parliament in August 2008 and endorsed by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in July 2009; it is officially known as the Black Ribbon Day in some countries, including Canada. Some scholars^[who?] in Western Europe have rejected the comparison of the two totalitarian regimes and the equation of their crimes.

According to Mārtiņš Kaprāns, a communication science expert and researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, University of Latvia, "[s]cholars have argued that The Soviet Story is an effective Latvian response to Russian propaganda, but it also exemplifies the broader problems of post-communist memory politics." Kaprāns writes that "the idea of how memory work triggered by the documentary got started on social networking sites" and on "the video-sharing website YouTube and the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia, both of which are crucial meaning-making sites with respect to history." According to Kaprāns, his memory studies article "demonstrates transnational memory work in YouTube and Wikipedia as a multidirectional enterprise that both reinforces and emancipates existing hegemonic representations of controversial past."

This film had also been aired on several televisions with 12+ or 18+ rating, including TVR, TVP and TVB.

Various Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) who were interviewed for the film have expressed views in favour of it. According to the Latvian MEPs Inese Vaidere and Ģirts Valdis Kristovskis, writing in The Parliament Magazine, "The Soviet Story makes a significant contribution to the establishment of a common understanding of history and brings us closer to the truth about the tragic events of the 20th century. A common understanding of history among the member states is crucial for the future of the whole EU." Both Vaidere and Kristovskis represent the Union for Europe of the Nations group which actively supported the production of the film.

After watching the film, Finnish MEP Ari Vatanen opined: "It is a powerful message. Thank you for telling the truth. It will awaken people." After the premiere in the European parliament, Vatanen stated: "We cannot build a humanity if we close our eyes to this kind of massacres. Our possibility is to serve justice to those people." British MEP Christopher Beazley commented: "This film is very important. It's a very powerful representation of what took place in Poland, in Latvia and the other Central European countries."

Vytautas Landsbergis, MEP and the former head of the Seimas, assessed The Soviet Story as "a world class film, which should be shown to the world", while Latvia's Minister of Justice Gaidis Bērziņš from For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK stated that he would encourage the Ministry of Education to have the film shown in all schools in Latvia because of its important historical message.