OK, seriously...
Having just finished this movie, I'm shocked, absolutely shocked how anyone can think this movie is worthwhile in any way outside of the historical footage it presents. OK, fine, I'm Russian/Ukrainian so I do have something at stake here, I'm not going to be entirely unbiased. But how can anyone avoid the fact that this movie is trying to create an unrealistic version of history. As many others have said, I'm not denying the Ukrainian Famine, the Katyn Massacre, even the NKVD cooperation with the SS. The Soviet regime, before, during, and after Stalin has killed millions of people. I'm not here to deny any of it or make excuses. I even agree that these guys are war criminals and should be tried as such.
1) However, I don't understand what the point of dragging Marx and Engels into this is. The quotes he uses are really odd. You can probably find a 100 quotes where Marx says that nationalism is bourgeois tool to exploit the proletariat, which specifically contradicts the idea that he wanted to kill an entire population of people. The quotes themselves are shaky translations at best. In the quote about the holocaust Marx refers not to an actual mass slaughter but to the fact that the CULTURES must parish in the progress of history. Regarding "racial trash", I still haven’t found the actual text this supposedly comes from, but is anyone really surprised that Marx, a man writing in the 1840s, held racist thoughts somewhere in his head? Though I doubt the quote's accuracy, I don't doubt at all that Marx was a racist on some level (he was probably more racist than the average American is today). Still, what's the point? If you're going to cherry pick 2 quotes out of millions of pages of text and use the worst translation possible, you're really overstepping a line of what's a reasonable line of conclusion. If this was really such a tenant of Marxism, he would have written a lot more about it and especially in two most important works ("The Communist Manifesto" and "Capital").
2) The second thing is, why is the fact that the Soviets cooperated with Germans such an important theme to him. Stalin is evil/with or without Hitler as his buddy. OK, if you have evidence to link the two, you should certainly come public with it. But nothing points to this as being anything except an alliance of convenience for both the Nazis and the Soviets. The Nazis saw Slavs as an inferior race and Communists as an inferior group of philosophs. The Soviets simply wanted the Nazis off their backs because they wanted to invade Germany AFTER it exhausted its resources and at a point when there was military parity (or superiority). The footage of the Russian officer supposedly hailing Hitler is over the top (looks like just a wave goodbye), and completely irrelevant. All of it is completely irrelevant, because the documents and actions don’t dictate an ideological agreement; they were just trying to avoid war.
3) Number 3: Why is Russians celebrating the victory in the “Great Patriotic War” (or WWII in the US) a bad thing? Does he really think that the Russian people are celebrating the atrocities the Soviets committed in WWII?!?
Did the Soviets commit atrocities (as I listed above) before, during, and after the war? Yes! Does it really take away from the fact that the Russian people (and sure, Stalin too) give life and limb for country to defeat Nazi Germany? I don’t think so. My grandmother was a victim of the forced relocations to/from Poland in WWII, it was a tremendously hard on her. It doesn’t make what my grandfather did, fighting 4 straight years, “liberating” (in quotes for the cynics) 5 cities any less heroic. That level of military commitment has never and could never be paralleled in the West. Any other country but Russia would have crumbled. But the Russian people had already suffered so much that they didn’t know what else to do except to keep fighting. It’s a shame so many of the deaths were unnecessary and the Stalinist treachery that Russian (and other Soviet troops) endured should be addressed. Still, what they did should be celebrated and honored for as long as Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Uzbekis, etc exist as nations on this earth. Can’t believe I even had to write something a justification.
4) Lastly, the last part of the movie is just baffling. Modern Russia is undoubtedly messed up. I can say this from having seen some of it firsthand. Putin I certainly don’t like either. However, what’s the point in dragging Russia’s name through the mud? Russia’s really not alone in the war-crimes. Every single power committed them and of course none of the Axis were brought to trial for it. The Francoists in Spain were given amnesty too… If the EU’s affairs aren’t enough, let add the fact that the EU is home to numerous leaders with blood on their hands that they won’t extradite for trial in their home country. Why single out Russia for this?
Ok, fine, it’s a documentary about Russia/USSR, I’ll concede that. But you can’t demand justice from Russia with a straight face when there are literally thousands of cases like this that have fallen on deaf ears in every corner of Europe (except maybe Iceland or something).
Back to the point, Russia does have a problem with neo-Nazism, as ironic as it is to me, but Russia is not alone in this. It’s happening all over Europe within the less educated/xenophobic sectors of society and not only Russia has xenophobic tendencies professed by its leaders. It’s RIDICULOUS to suggest that the Russian government could somehow affect this by admitting to war crimes. It would have 0-effect.
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All of these “enhancements” to the history of WWII show that the author is trying to narrate history as he sees fit. It’s insulting to me as the viewer and ultimately insulting to all the victims of both Nazi and Soviet brutalities. What greater insult that to have your life get turned into a propaganda piece.
I felt like the seriousness of the movie was betrayed with the fear manufacturing/monster truck commercial-like voice Strickland used and used almost mockingly in some parts of the movie. The music score to fatal gunshots and body dropping was also very much in bad taste and made death into a sort of trivial form of emotional manipulation.
All in all, I can’t believe this is passable as a documentary. It’s crazy to think this could possibly be shown to every (very impressionable) school child in Latvia. If they don’t hate Russians enough yet, wait until those children age 10 years.
More and more hate and fear, it seems like that’s really what this documentary is about.