[ExI] Upon pondering your freedoms: _The Soviet Story_ documentary

[Amara Graps]

Hi freedom-loving folks,

For some years I have used F.A. Hayek's 1930's _Road to Serfdom_ as a
kind of map with guideposts to demonstrate how particular actions and
propaganda by an unnamed large modern nation's federal government was
building, piece-by-piece, the Total State. Just as those same actions
and words 70 years ago at a faster pace, and more brutally, built
Fascist States and Communist States. Hayek explained in exquisite
philosophical detail that the two, Facism and Communism, were, in fact,
just two sides of the same coin.

Such a correspondence was easy for me to see, when my family
historically experienced both systems, over the same piece of land, with
the same results. We were split, half was sent in a cattle car to
Siberia and survived but barred behind the Iron Curtain, the other half
escaped as a refuge and then started over with a new life in a new
country. Still, for me, as a child of a Baltic refugee, the horror of
the Communist and Nazi experiments was mostly abstract.

Then, last night, upon my distant, abstract, philosophical landscape,
the documentary called _The Soviet Story_ landed. This two hour
documentary made by mostly Latvians is making some waves in the Baltic
countries and in the EU Parliament now. It is not just a simple
historical film of all of the nasty things that Stalin did. It makes
glaringly convincing connections of the collusion of activities between
Hitler and Stalin to build a 'new world' and a 'new man' before and
during WWII and by Stalin after WWII

It has been some decades since I've seen film footage resembling what I
saw last night. When I was about eight, living in Honolulu, my parents
brought my sisters and I to a small gathering of a few dozen people
meeting in a small, dark, windowless room, to view a film of WWII, as it
was experienced by the Baltic people. I remember seeing scenes of
torture and seeing mass graves and I remember my father telling me that
one could identify who was in that mass grave by just their clothes; the
Latvian men owned one good suit. One might think that a 1.5 hour event
seen almost forty years ago as an eight year old would be quickly
forgotten, but those images have remained with me. I predict that the
scenes from _The Soviet Story_ will stay with you. It's rare for the
world to see actual film footage of the atrocities committed by Stalin,
but the film-maker had access to archives, that were never viewed by
a wide audience. And if you didn't get the message seeing that scene
once, then the film-maker made sure that you would get the message when
that scene was repeated in front of your screaming conscious mind a few
more times. This is a hard-hitting film.

And thought provoking. And a graphic application of the philosophical
principles involved when building a Total State, such as the
extermination of races and classes, which included principles to build a
'new man' and a 'new society'. Of the latter points, I think that the
transhumanists would benefit from viewing the documentary, to understand
the criticism one occasionally hears when they talk about becoming
better humans. The difference is that transhumanists want to be 'better'
humans by their personal free choices and their diversity. The Nazi and
Communist experiments were as far from individual choices as life and
death.

The new aspect for me in this film was not only the remarkably identical
propaganda tools and brutal actions of the two systems, but also of the
many close agreements and meetings between Hitler and Stalin and their
colleagues. The famous Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement that split Europe
between the Soviets and the Nazis was not an isolated agreement, there
were many others that planned strategies for who was to get what, where,
how and when. Moreover, the Soviets were experts at mass extermination
before Stalin and Hitler met, and they continued to be experts at mass
extermination after Hitler was gone. They were performing experiments on
humans before, during, and after WWII and used the same experiment and
death chamber facilities as the Nazis used after Hitler was gone too. So
why is it that out of World War II, the only war crimes that were put on
trial were committed by the Germans? Why was/is it a European policy
that a WWII crime _must_ have been committed by a German? Many of those
Soviets responsible for the mass exterminations are still alive,
protected by Putin today.

If there were any light moments in this film, then it was in the form of
irony, when the film-maker spliced in 2005 Moscow parade scenes from the
60th anniversary of Nazi Germany's defeat. Political figures from all
over the world attended the celebration, including the Italian and
German and Japanese prime ministers. This event was boycotted by the
presidents of the Baltic republics for the farce that it represented.
One might add a bit more irony and coincidence when I note that the day
in which I am writing this summary, July 4, is a U.S. holiday to
celebrate the U.S. Constitution, in a time when that particular document
is in shambles from the actions of its own government.

So how might one view The Soviet Story documentary? At this time, I
found one way: a bit torrent .avi file from here:

http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4217790/The.Soviet.Story%5BDivX.2008.Eng%5D

downloaded via Vuze and viewed in QuickTime. If I find it for sale
anywhere I will certainly buy it, but I have not located it for sale
yet.  The film is mostly in English (narrated), with Latvian subtitles,
but there are interviews with Russians that will not be understood if
you don't know those languages. I found those moments of uncomprehension
only a distraction though, since you still see the interviewee, can fill
in the blanks what the interviewee said, and the narrator easily picks
up and continues the story. Also, I don't recommend seeing the film
before bedtime. I felt bludgeoned by the hard-hitting message and by the
end, I began to be numb to seeing mass graves of starved and tortured
people.

So on this day of pondering your freedoms, I offer this perspective
of where humans have been, where humans might be going, and what truths
can humans accept today, in order to help you place the value of your
freedoms.

Amara


-- 

Amara Graps, PhD      www.amara.com
Research Scientist, Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado