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LibertyEagle
05-01-2009, 09:46 AM
This movie, "The Soviet Story", should be watched by everyone. But, especially by those who mistakenly believe that communism and national socialism are at the opposite ends of the political spectrum. In reality, there is very little difference between the two.

The Soviet Story Video by Hisshadyness - MySpace Video (http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=55733455)

Todd
05-01-2009, 10:08 AM
So far it's a great vid. But I am having trouble picking up Russian with Russian subtitles. ;)

Any english subtitle versions?

MsDoodahs
05-01-2009, 10:12 AM
Not that I'm aware of, Todd.

sailor
05-01-2009, 10:16 AM
This movie contains factual errors. Aspects of it are propaganda. Particularly the way in which holodomor is presented. And no wonder when you see who are people behind the film.


So far it's a great vid. But I am having trouble picking up Russian with Russian subtitles. ;)

Those aren`t Russian subtitles. I think they`re Latvian.

LibertyEagle
05-01-2009, 10:19 AM
Sailor,

Which aspects are propaganda?

Todd
05-01-2009, 10:26 AM
Sailor,

Which aspects are propaganda?

Yes...Just how do you spin 7 million starvation deaths?

sailor
05-01-2009, 10:59 AM
Sailor,

Which aspects are propaganda?

First their pitch that holodomor was a case of evil Russians trying to "exterminate" Ukrainians. One quarter of the people starved to death in holodomor were in fact Russians and the rest were Russian speaking Ukrainians in eastern Ukraine which are very pro-Russian. It would have made no sense to target those people for their ethnicity. That was not the reason they were victimised.

This myth of Russians trying to kill Ukrainians was in the West created by Ukrainian diaspora which stems overwhelmingly from the western-most province of Ukraine (Galicia) which is Greek Catholic rather than Orthoox like the rest of Ukraine and rabidly anti-Russian (and anti-Polish and anti-Jewish while we are at it). But actually Galicia was at a time not even a part of the Soviet Union and was never subject to this engineered starvation, so they were actually in no better position to know what went on there than any other foreigner.

Those Ukrainians who actually are from areas where holodomor happened never claim it was an assault on them because of them being Ukrainian.


Just look who the movie was made by. Sponsored by European Parliament and directed by a Latvian? Jeez, can you in third millenia come up with a more Russophobic team than that? Even today Latvia`s treatment of its Russian ethnic minority is appaling and includes severe violations of human rights. Jet the European Parliament which is otherwise supposedly so concerned about the plight of minorities remains curiously quiet.

That is not even going into the fact that Latvians collaborated with the Nazis extensively, but worse that today in Latvia SS veterans can display their medals in public are allowed to hold parades and are celebrated by Latvian politicians.

Todd
05-01-2009, 11:13 AM
Those Ukrainians who actually are from areas where holodomor happened never claim it was an assault on them because of them being Ukrainian.

That's entirely possible. I always saw it as more of the goal of communism to bring the region under control to benefit the party, more than an attack on ethnicity. You seem to know far more about the subject than my limited Russian history studies.

I think what I took away most from this video is that it only confirms my beliefs that the communist and NS systems come from similar roots and philosophy.
I made no distinction in the film between what the Nazi philosophy was and what Bernard Shaw said as a socialist

LibertyEagle
05-01-2009, 11:26 AM
http://socialissues.wiseto.com/Articles/194331804/

Holodomor: the secret holocaust: when Ukraine resisted Soviet attempts at collectivization in the 1920s and '30s, the Soviets used labor camps, executions, ...


"In 1933, the recently elected administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt granted official U.S. recognition to the Soviet Union for the first time. Especially repugnant was that this recognition was granted even though Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had just concluded a campaign of genocide against Ukraine that left over 10 million dead. This atrocity was known to the Roosevelt administration, but not to the American people at large, thanks to suppression of the story by the Western press--as we shall show."


Stalin accomplished genocide against Ukraine by two means. One was massive executions and deportations to labor camps. But his second tool of murder was more unique: an artificial famine created by confiscation of all food. Ukrainians call this the Holodomor, translated by one modern Ukrainian dictionary as "artificial hunger, organized on a vast scale by the criminal regime against the country's population," but often simply translated as "murder by hunger."

Ukraine was the last place one would have expected famine, for it had been known for centuries as the "breadbasket of Europe." French diplomat Blaise de Vigenere wrote in 1573: "Ukraine is overflowing with honey and wax.... The soil of this country is so good and fertile that when you leave a plow in the field, it becomes overgrown with grass after two or three days. It will be difficult to find." The 18th-century British traveler Joseph Marshall wrote: "The Ukraine is the richest province of the Russian empire.... The soil is a black loam.... I think I have never seen such deep plowing as these peasants give their ground."

In the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution, Ukraine became part of a bloody battlefield of fighting between the Bolsheviks (the group that eventually became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), Czarist Whites, and Ukrainian nationalists. Ultimately, of course, the Bolsheviks prevailed, but Lenin shrewdly recognized that concessions would be necessary to gain Ukraine's cooperation as a member of the unstable young USSR. To exploit Ukrainians' long-standing resentment of Czarist domination, he permitted them to retain much of their national culture. Ukrainians experienced a relatively high degree of freedom extending into the mid-1920s. The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and non-communist Ukrainian Academy of Sciences were allowed to operate independently. However, as the Soviet Union consolidated its power, and Joseph Stalin ascended to the party's top, these freedoms became expendable, and Ukrainian nationalism, at first exploited, now became viewed as a liability.

Coerced Collectivization

Despite a communist push for collectivization, Ukraine's farms had mostly remained private--the foundation of their success. But in 1929, the Central Committee of the Soviet Union's Communist Party decided to embark on a program of total collectivization. Private farms were to be completely replaced by collectives--in Ukraine known as kolkhozes. This was, of course, consistent with Marxist ideology: the Communist Manifesto had called for abolition of private property.

Intense pressure was placed upon Ukrainian peasants to join the kolkhozes. Twenty-five thousand fanatical young communists from the USSR's cities were sent to Ukraine to compel the transition. These became known as the Twenty-Five Thousanders; each was assigned a particular locality, and was accompanied by a weapons-bearing communist entourage, including members of the GPU (secret police, forerunner of the KGB). A communist commission was established in each village.

Reprinted from:
James Perloff, The New American. i.e. the John Birch Society

The link above has the complete article, if anyone is interested. I highly recommend you read the entire article.

LibertyEagle
05-01-2009, 11:35 AM
http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-mainmenu-26/europe-mainmenu-35/540


Is the New York Times "airbrushing" history again? It would seem so. On Saturday, November 22, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko presided over a commemoration in Kiev of the 75th anniversary of the famine genocide of 1932-1933 that took the lives of 7-10 million Ukrainians. Known as the Holodomor (Ukrainian for "murder by hunger"), it is one of the greatest mass murders in history, and one of the cruelest. Joining President Yushchenko for the event were official delegations from 44 countries, including the presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Macedonia, Georgia, Latvia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina.


The Times neglect of the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor is especially inexcusable, inasmuch as the Times served as an indispensable handmaiden to Stalin as he carried out this horrendous crime against humanity. While the communists carried out the mass annihilation of the Ukrainian farmers, the Times assured the Western world that all reports of starvation in Ukraine were merely anti-Soviet propaganda. Times reporter Walter Duranty, known as "Stalin's Apologist," became a willing tool for the Kremlin and denounced as liars those heroic journalists who dared to report the truth — that Ukrainians were dying by the millions, their bodies filling the streets of many towns and villages. The two most notable of those journalists were Gareth Jones of Wales and Malcolm Muggeridge of England, both of whom are revered in Ukraine and were posthumously awarded the country's Order of Freedom on November 22 at a ceremony in Westminster.

Jones, who wrote for The Western Mail, The Times [of London], The Manchester Guardian, and other European and American newspapers became a "marked man," due to his outspoken and fearless exposés of Soviet atrocities, corruption, and failures. In 1935, he was kidnapped and murdered in Mongolia. Although authorities claimed his death was the work of bandits, evidence showed the deed was actually an assassination, carried out by the NKVD, forerunner of the KGB.

Meanwhile, the Times' Walter Duranty, basking in the glory of a Pulitzer Prize for his sychophantic pro-Stalin reportage, continued to promote the communist line. Without the Times and Duranty providing cover, it would have been politically impossible for President Franklin Roosevelt to grant recognition to the Soviet regime. Four presidents before him and as many Secretaries of State had adamantly refused recognition because of the numerous crimes and atrocities of the communist regime and because of its continuing sponsorship of communist subversive activities within the United States. However, with the Times covering up Stalin's crimes, including the famine genocide in the Ukraine, Roosevelt was free to arrange official U.S. recognition for the U.S.S.R. on November 16, 1933.


But in the case of Holodomor the Times was guilty of far worse than "slanting" the news; it was a willful collaborator in a "crime of the century," a willful collaborator in blatant propaganda to cover up that crime.

These are only excerpts, please read the entire article.

sailor
05-01-2009, 12:18 PM
LE, what is the point of your posts? Do you think anything you quoted is news to me?

"Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group." Holodomor was not a genocide. It did not target a specific ethnic group.

That does not make it any less of a crime, but it makes it much less useful as a tool for demonisation of Russians and for potentialy driving a wedge between Russians and Ukrainians.



That's entirely possible. I always saw it as more of the goal of communism to bring the region under control to benefit the party, more than an attack on ethnicity. You seem to know far more about the subject than my limited Russian history studies.

Its targets were the peasants who resisted the collectivisation. They were deemed "kulaks" by the propaganda. Kulak was a farmer who was wealthy enough to hire additional hands to help him with his farm, which most of the peasants were absolutely not. It was a monstrous crime, but ethnicity had nothing to do with it. For what reason would Ukrainians be targeted? There was no special hatred of Ukrainians in the USSR.

MsDoodahs
05-01-2009, 12:37 PM
Was this done only in the Ukraine?

LibertyEagle
05-01-2009, 12:37 PM
Ok, so you're not questioning the fact that the Communists murdered them. You're just taking issue with the movie implying that they murdered them just because they were Ukrainian? If that's it, yes, I agree. The Communists were equal opportunity murderers.


That does not make it any less of a crime, but it makes it much less useful as a tool for demonisation of Russians and for potentialy driving a wedge between Russians and Ukrainians.

We're talking about history here and nothing more. I'm sincerely hoping that Russia's government is quite different now than it was during the Communist Revolution.


LE, what is the point of your posts? Do you think anything you quoted is news to me?
Sailor, I have no idea who you are, or what you know about this issue. Beyond that, this thread is for everyone. Not just you or me.

sailor
05-01-2009, 12:47 PM
Sailor, I have no idea who you are, or what you know about this issue. Beyond that, this thread is for everyone. Not just you or me.

I thought you were replying to me. My mistake.

Todd
05-01-2009, 01:02 PM
Its targets were the peasants who resisted the collectivisation. They were deemed "kulaks" by the propaganda. Kulak was a farmer who was wealthy enough to hire additional hands to help him with his farm, which most of the peasants were absolutely not. It was a monstrous crime, but ethnicity had nothing to do with it. For what reason would Ukrainians be targeted? There was no special hatred of Ukrainians in the USSR.

That clarifies a whole lot. When I took a 20th century Russian history course in College, that was exactly the conclusion I reached. It would have never occured to me that it was something ethnic.

It seems the hatred of Ukranians was directed at their recalcitrant compliance to get in line with the great collectivist experiment. And of course, it didn't help that they were the overseers of the breadbasket of the nation.

Meatwasp
05-01-2009, 01:02 PM
Thank you LE. I read and heard this for many years. Stalin was a terrible butcher. worst than Hilter by far and Hitler was bad enough.

LibertyEagle
05-01-2009, 01:12 PM
Its targets were the peasants who resisted the collectivisation. They were deemed "kulaks" by the propaganda. Kulak was a farmer who was wealthy enough to hire additional hands to help him with his farm, which most of the peasants were absolutely not. It was a monstrous crime, but ethnicity had nothing to do with it. For what reason would Ukrainians be targeted? There was no special hatred of Ukrainians in the USSR.

Let me see if I have this straight.

The Communists targeted Ukrainians because many stood up to Communism's collectivism. The Communists stole their private property, murdered some of their people outrightly, stole the food from the rest and then, let them starve.

How exactly would it look differently if they did hate Ukrainians?

sailor
05-01-2009, 01:45 PM
Let me see if I have this straight.

The Communists targeted Ukrainians because many stood up to Communism's collectivism. The Communists stole their private property, murdered some of their people outrightly, stole the food from the rest and then, let them starve.

How exactly would it look differently if they did hate Ukrainians?

Nonsense. Communists did not target Ukrainians as an ethnic group, nor did Ukrainians stand up to the government as an ethnic group. The people they targeted were peasants who could be of any ethnicity albeit they were mostly Ukrainians.

Collectivisation was carried out across the USSR. It was ressisted in many places (for example in Khazakstan), but it was most firmly resisted in South and East Ukraine and in adjecent regions of Russia around Rostov on Don, Krasnodar and Crimea (which was until 1954 a part of Russia rather than of Ukraine).

Thus the authorities cracked down on dissenting peasants by engineering a famine which affected large sweaths of Ukraine and certain regions of Russia. But it did not affect the whole of Ukraine, some regions in the North and West were left unaffected. Also alongisde millions of Ukrainians who perished, up to 1.5 million Russians were starved to death alongside them and smaller numbers of many other ethnicities who also lived in the Ukrainian and Russian areas affected.

The famine targeted a percieved class enemy, rather than an ethnicity. There was no specific hatred of Ukrainians in USSR or among the Communists. In fact before, during and after the Holodomor a policy of "Ukrainisation" was in place as a part of a Communist programme of "korenisatsiya" (nativization) programme, where the use of Ukrainian language was encouraged to the detriment of Russian, where Ukraine was to be purged of perceived Russian influences, and where history was taught with an anti-Russian slant (in a sort of "evil white men" fashion, often seen today among Liberals in America), until it was reversed in the late 1930s.



How exactly would it look differently if they did hate Ukrainians?

The famine would affect all of Ukraine, but none of Russia. The epicenter of the famine would not be in the most pro-Russian parts of Ukraine. It would also affect city dwellers to the same extent it affected peasants. And there would not be similar attrocities in places like primarily Russian popullated Northern Khazastan.

cyberrate
12-16-2009, 10:48 AM
Well, don't you see the "Worker and Farmer" statue on the hill of bodies? Don't you think it's a propaganda? It clearly is extremely one-sided film. It doesn't even try to see the other side of the story.
That being said, it also features the video line manipulations and falsification. For example the authors of the film used pictures taken during the starving in "Поволжье" in 1921-22 which was a result of Civil War and presented them as pictures of Holodomor in Ukraine 1932-33:
http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/images/photo04.jpg

USSR as bad as it was, was all about internationalism it was never about ethnic cleansing, did you know that Soviet Ruble had "one ruble" written in 15 languages of all SU republics?
http://www.monetshop.ru/pic/items/item_pic1/4921_1.jpg

I'm sorry, mate but "Soviet Story" is not a good film.



This movie, "The Soviet Story", should be watched by everyone. But, especially by those who mistakenly believe that communism and national socialism are at the opposite ends of the political spectrum. In reality, there is very little difference between the two.

MySpace Video - Watch & Share Videos, Video Clips, Music Videos, TV Show Vids & Movie Trailers Online (http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=55733455)

hugolp
12-16-2009, 11:29 AM
Thus the authorities cracked down on dissenting peasants by engineering a famine which affected large sweaths of Ukraine and certain regions of Russia. But it did not affect the whole of Ukraine, some regions in the North and West were left unaffected. Also alongisde millions of Ukrainians who perished, up to 1.5 million Russians were starved to death alongside them and smaller numbers of many other ethnicities who also lived in the Ukrainian and Russian areas affected.

How did they enginere the famine? Did they block any type of comerce? food only? They did not let people leave the area? How did they acomplish all this?

timosman
07-27-2019, 05:35 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1OZYoxaJ2Y