The Soviet Story

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The Soviet Story

Directed by	Edvīns Šņore
Written by	Edvīns Šņore
Release date(s)	2008
Running time	85 mins
Country	Latvia
Language	English

The Soviet Story is a 2008 Latvian Documentary film written, produced and directed by Edvīns Šņore and sponsored by the the UEN Group in the European Parliament. According to the Parliament Magazine, the film 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.^[1]

The film examines the close philosophical, political and organizational connections between the Nazi and Soviet systems before and during the early stages of World War II.^[2] It highlights the following:

The Great Famine in Ukraine (1932/33);
The Katyn massacre (1940);
The Gestapo-NKVD partnership;
Soviet mass deportations;
Medical experiments in the GULAG.

[edit] Controversies

The source of the Gestapo-NKVD agreement document is highly questionable. The author of the film speaks about "some archive worker". At the same time, according to David Irving^[3], a number of H. Müller documents have been faked by writer Gregory Douglas aka "Peter Stahl" in his book "Müller's interigation reports"^[4].

For the part considering medical experiments in the GULAG, the author of the film used as a source web-site "GULAG: with photocamera along the camps"^[5]. Historian A. Dyukov[1] reported previously about the poor credibility of this source^[6]. A publicly available picture of armenian orphans during the Ottoman invasion of Armenia in 1918^[7] is used on this web-site in context of GULAG for children with no information about the shooting date and broken link to the original picture^[8].