Talk:The Soviet Story

Ban the Vandals
Someone please BAN Ogomemnon from vandalizing this article.. (see article history) it's been going on almost since the protection for this article was lifted. may be you should add it back,as the only changes since then are by vandals like him and no major updates or contributions have been made(the minor ones that were, were made by registered editors anyway, and the protection does not affect them) He comes here every day.. sometimes even several times every day to do his dirty deed.. it would solve the childish "edit war" issue for good.. and the protection would keep away other retards and Ogomemnon as well, as I'm sure that after his ban he'd come back with many different anonymous IPs to continiue trolling

Bernard Shaw
I removed the passage about Bernard Shaw because of the following reasons: It violates the Wikipedia policy, namely WP:OR, which states: "Wikipedia is not the place to publish your own opinions, experiences, arguments, or conclusions." The passage about Bernard Shaw was also a classic example of WP:SYNTH. The user AlbertSM writes: "The film also makes celebrated author George Bernard Shaw out to be an inveterate Nazi sympathizer". This is AlbertSM interpretation of the film, which states, and I quote: "Bernard Shaw and the Left in general fundamentally opposed Nazism". Andora1 (talk) 09:29, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Watching the film, I was very surprised to see George Bernard Shaw say:


 * You must all know half a dozen people at least, who are no use in this world, who are more trouble than they are worth. Just put them there, and say, “Sir, or Madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence.  If you can’t justify your existence, if you’re not pulling your weight, if you won’t, if you’re not producing as much as you consume, or preferably more, then clearly we cannot use the organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us, and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.”

(This is my transcription; others and the subtitle vary slightly.) The clip includes a cutting from an unidentified newspaper article titled, "SHAW HEAPS PRAISE UPON THE DICTATORS / While Parliaments Get Nowhere, He Says, Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin Do Things." I Googled other sources, but they only link back to The Soviet Story; they do not provide independent corroboration, nor place and date. I also could not find the anonymous undated newspaper cutting sourced anywhere except to the same film clip. (The film's website does not provide a source, although it might be in the credits on the DVD.) I agree the excerpt does not fully support the deleted statement mentioned above, and the quote may be taken out of context, but it does look like him and it makes a startling impression.TVC 15 (talk) 09:48, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Maybe you were looking for this. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70810FA3C5513738DDDA90994DA415B838FF1D3


 * The same quote appears on his own page, George Bernard Shaw, along with an indication that Shaw on this occasion was using "satiric irony". If so, then this is not apparent when used in The Soviet Story. If the quote is reintroduced in this article, then it might be a good idea to give a hint of this interpretation. Lklundin (talk) 22:40, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Fox News style "journalism"
For clear discussion about the biases of the article and what should be included/excluded the following factors have to be considered, as much of what has been said in the documentary appears to be regarded as true by people on this talk-page forum.

This "documentary" is clearly classic propaganda. Claims are made and then linked together to paint phony comparisons based upon simplistic arguments. The most obvious is the claim (commonplace among the right-wing) that Nazism was "socialist" and "leftist". This is like saying that the USA, North Korea and East Germany are the same because Americans believe strongly in democracy and North Korea is called the Peoples' DEMOCRATIC Republic of Korea, and East Germany is called the German DEMOCRATIC Republic. The National Socialists were not socialist - that was simply a buzz word of the era, somewhat like the terms "freedom" or "natural" are today. The Nazis were anti-union, rabidly anti-communist and financially supported by business people and property owners.

Furthermore capitalists like Pinochet used similar methods, yet Soviet methods are painted as socialist. And what if, say, Somalia was held up as a fair example of what free-market, minimal statists seek to achieve? - I doubt people on the right would like that comparison and would, fairly enough, find it a false representation of what they stand for. And what about if I was to point out that social psychology shows that authoritarian personalities and attitudes are vastly more the norm for people on the right than on the left, so therefore because Stalinism is an authoritarian system it must be right-wing? - there would be cries of protest - and yet this is the methodology of this film. As for ends-justifying-the-means thinking, the British and Americans bombed civilians throughout Germany remorselessly during the war to achieve their ends, so killing large groups of people to achieve aims you conceive as the higher good is hardly the preserve of communists - it is a human behaviour, not a socialist one.

Furthermore Stalinism and totalitarianism are linked with communism as if communism somehow endorses these things. Communism is fundamentally anti-authoritarian and anti-nationalist, unlike fascism which is a totally different ideology based on completely different fundamentals. A more genuine comparison would be to show how different ideologies can manifest similar outcomes when they become totalitarianism. The backlash against Stalin among socialists is because his behaviour was so at odds with core socialist principles.

I am not even a communist, I disgree with many (but not all) of it's fundamental principles, yet I find myself increasingly these days defending Marx, communist ideas and even social-democratic ideology from clear distortions and misrepresentations. This film is a perfect example of this pattern. Perpetuating these false caricatures is very unhelpful. It is also an attempt by the right-wing to disown a clearly right-wing ideology gone wrong, i.e. Nazism. Communism is clearly a left-wing ideology, yet few people on the left would agree with Stalinism. Nor are Soviet crimes simply the result of the Soviet Union being communist. As for Soviet anti-semitism, Russia has a long history of anti-semitism. This hardly appeared on the scene because the communists took power, yet this documentary blames socialists for it - once again creating misleading linkages. In fact the mainstream of communist and socialist teaching clearly oppose nationalism, racism and xenophobia and, post-Stalin, there were affirmative action campaigns in the USSR to achieve just that.

121.73.7.84 (talk) 10:12, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

"The National Socialists were not socialist" Yes, we all know how Hitler wanted to make Europe safe for a libertarian minarchism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.195.60.121 (talk) 05:40, 28 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Umm...? Read the NAZI platform: http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/25points.htm That platform does have many soc-dem positions... The issue isn't left/right. It is whether some large corporate institution can tell you how to live. "Communism is fundamentally anti-authoritarian and anti-nationalist..." Have you read Marx? He may be trans-national, but communism is far from anti-authoritarian. A "dictatorship of the proletariate" and the prohibition of free labor and property ownership/exchange or capital based on the economically false labor theory of value is not particularly anti-authoritarian. Please explain! 96.253.119.205 (talk) 19:42, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

@IP 96.253.119.205 - Marx believed (rightly or wrongly) that the state would wither away and is not part of a communist society. Marx would not accept your notion of free labour on the basis that labour and capital have an unequal power relationship, so workers are hardly free agents - modern labour & contract laws, workplace regulations, etc were developed specifically to redress this inbalance of power. Marx regarded productive property such as land or capital as theft, based on advantage biases. As for Nazi "social democratic positions" - that is largely a red-herring. As an analogy - to call the American Republican Party a socialist party on the basis that they tolerate or even fund public libraries, public schools, etc is not credible. Furthermore, those Nazi positions you have provided a link to were more about electioneering than anything, i.e. attracting votes from the working class. Hitler's policies while in power were hardly pro-labour or pro-working class at at the expense of the upper classes - that was mainly rhetoric. Real wages in Germany actually declined during the Nazi period. HansNZL (talk) 11:07, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Multiple issues with this article
As these issues have been raised, they need to be rectified before tags (which are not disruptive) are removed. --Russavia I'm chanting as we speak 12:57, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Neutrality is disputed - Positive reviews are placed first and foremost. Some of these so-called reviews are from subjects who were connected, either directly or indirectly with the production of the documentary. Criticism from Russian sources is not presented in an NPOV way - it is presented by way of trying to present those POV as being wrong. Take for example the Nansen photo which is used in the documentary to portray victims of the Ukraine famines in the 1930s. Words such as "alleged" and "according to" - it either is or is isn't portrayed in the documentary as such. This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of POV problems with the article.
 * Lead needs to be rewritten - This is a problem that I see in too many articles - as per WP:LEAD, the lead is supposed to summarise the article succinctly. In this article the lead has a little bit of information on the documentary, and then the article itself is simply a "positive" and "criticism" dumping ground.
 * Tone and style is not appropriate - this goes along with the NPOV problems. The writing style of this article is not acceptable.
 * Confusing and unclear - as the article only includes positive reviews and criticism, this makes it confusing to readers as to what exactly is this article about. This also goes hand in hand with other issues being raised.
 * Copy editing - the article requires copy editing, especially for things such as style and tone.
 * Cleanup required - cleanup of the article is required, as it is nowhere near beginning to reach any sort of quality standards as is expected on articles on the project.

Not Neutral
The above person does not seem to be a neutral source to make the claims he is making.
 * If you have anything to add, apart from a personal attack, then I would be pleased to hear it. Concentrate on content not on editors. --Russavia I'm chanting as we speak 04:19, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, you do claim to be a Russophile, so it would seem that your opinion on a film that portrays Russia and many Russians in a negative light would naturally be negative. Do we really care what the position of Russian state-affiliated organizations is? No governments, especially that one, should be considered credible sources. But I guess since I was born in the Ukraine to a Ukrainian mother and a Jewish father and lived so long in the decadent West, my opinion doesn't matter either. Why can't we just accept that Hitler, Stalin, they were all bad. Kill one person, kill a dozen, kill a million. All bad. Incidentally, Hitler probably didn't personally kill anyone (maybe in WWI), but Stalin actually did murder and rob banks for the revolutionaries. So if we want to get personal, who was worse? 96.253.119.205 (talk) 19:12, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

The Russians were important victims of the Communism. Xx236 (talk) 12:19, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Alexander Reshideovich Dyukov
Almost the whole paragraph quotes Alexander Reshideovich Dyukov. This article is about the movie, not about Dyukov.Xx236 (talk) 12:13, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree. I trimmed it down a little by removing contentious poorly sourced claims by Dyukov about another person (Roginsky) which looked to me as completely irrelevant (and possibly even a BLP violation). But we probably need a better consensus to remove more. My very best wishes (talk) 18:09, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

"Völkerabfall" means Tribe Trash or Nation Trash
...and nothing more. It's a pejorative term, used by Engels and Hegel. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.134.0.18 (talk) 15:16, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Multiple versions of the film?
The film and its parts has been uploaded numerous times on youtube. In some versions the scene with the two starving brothers is present, and in others it's replaced by a random photo. Can anyone elaborate? Could it explain the disappearance of the scene with the piles of corpses from a concentration camp? 95.28.198.161 (talk) 14:18, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
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Original research removed
I removed the following paragraph per WP:NOR: More insight can be gained by considering the work of Marx and Engels. For instance one can find the citation: "Diese Reste einer von dem Gang der Geschichte, wie Hegel sagt, unbarmherzig zertretenen Nation, diese Völkerabfälle werden jedesmal und bleiben bis zu ihrer gänzlichen Vertilgung oder Entnationalisierung die fanatischen Träger der Kontrerevolution,...", which can be translated to: "These remains from a nation, ruthlessly crushed by the course of history, as Hegel says, these Völkerabfälle will be every time and remain, until their complete extermination or denationalization, the fanatical support of the counter-revolution,...". In this context the people presented as 'Völkerabfälle' are described as ennemies of Marx and Engels' ideas. Extermination or denationalization are presented as two possible options to remove these ennemies. Furthermore, in another citation one can find: "Der nächste Weltkrieg wird nicht nur reaktionäre Klassen und Dynastien, er wird auch ganze reaktionäre Völker vom Erdboden verschwinden machen. Und das ist auch ein Fortschritt.“, which can be translated to: "The next World War will not only whipe out reactionary classes and dynasties, it will also 'make disappear off the face of the earth' entire reactionary peoples. And this is also a 'progress'." Note that the word 'Fortschritt' in German leaves no doubt to interpretation, that Marx and Engels see in a positive light the elimination of these "reactionary peoples", without stating their preference between the two aforementioned options of "extermination" or "denationalization".

--Omnipaedista (talk) 05:26, 28 August 2017 (UTC)