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| Yachangku Magazine |
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The Party-Approved Foreign Movie in Soviet Russia (Photoplay, 1937)
Saturday night in the proletarian's paradise: so much to do! If you wanted to take your date to a Russian movie you could go to "Battleship Potemkin", or you could take her to "Battleship Potemkin", or to "Battleship Potemkin"! On the other hand, you might choose a foreign movie that was approved by the all-knowing Soviet apparatchik, and in that case the two of you would see a Charlie Chaplin movie:"Charlie Chaplin's 'Modern Times', which I saw Charlie make more than a year ago in Hollywood and San Pedro,was the only American picture I ever remember having seen in Moscow. This film packed the theater and was shown twenty-four hours a day." Click here if you want to know what films Hitler liked.
| The Soviet Press on Famine Conditions (Literary Digest, 1923)
"Indignant accusations of trickery in dealing with the grain supply, which have been launched against the Russian Soviet Government by American and European editors, who were amazed to find that Russia was exporting grain in the midst of a new famine, are not particularly noticed by the Moscow press, which however, in such journals as the Moscow 'Isvicstia' and the 'Economcheskaia Gizn' feature reports of starvation in the Volga provinces."Although there is no mention of the Soviet famine in this 1938 interview with Leon Trotsky, it is interesting nonetheless; to read it for free, you may click here.
| Starvation in the Worker's Paradise (Current Opinion, 1921)
The first Soviet famine lasted from 1919 through 1923; some historians have placed the death toll as high as five million. This is an editorial that appeared in an American magazine a year and a half after the disaster began:"The effort to keep the outside world in ignorance of the extent of the suffering in Russia has failed completely. Tchicherin, the foreign minister, was afraid that if the Western chanceries realized the extremity to which the Soviet commissars were reduced, they would at once become difficult to negotiate with. ...[Lenin] is held responsible for the policy which has brought about a consumption of so great a proportion of the seed wheat that the fields cannot be sown. For the first time since Bolsheviki gained power, says the Berlin "Lokalanzeiger", Lenin is a cipher." Although there is no mention of the Soviet famine in this 1938 interview with Leon Trotsky, it is interesting nonetheless; to read it for free, you may click here. *Sad Film Footage from the First Soviet Famine*
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