The Soviet Story

The documentary sets out the crimes of the Soviet Union: the famine in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933, the Great Terror, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and its secret protocol, the occupation of the Baltic states, the deportations, Katyn. Its argument is that these were not separate events but a system working as designed, and that the two regimes resembled each other. It also covers contacts between the Nazi and Soviet authorities, including prisoners handed over in each direction. Edvīns Šņore directs the Latvian documentary; eighty-six minutes. Most of the events it lists are documented history. The film was criticised for its method: for using its sources selectively, for polemical language, and for an equation of the two regimes that remains contested among historians. Russia objected to it officially. In the Baltic states it was shown widely.