Edvins Snore Meets with Columbia Students

September 16, 2008

Edvins Snore (right) discussing his film with Tanah Spenser of THE BIRCH, journal of Eastern European and Eurasian Culture, published by students of Columbia's Slavic Department.

On September 16, 2008, Edvins Snore, the director of the contraversial feature documentary The Soviet Story visited Columbia University on invitation of the UFCCU. He discussed with students enrolled in the course Soviet Post-Soviet, Colonial, Postcolonial Cinema (taught by Yuri Shevchuk) his film. In it, Mr. Snore, who was born and grew up in Riga, Latvia, makes a compelling case in favor of revisiting the history of Soviet Communism and the atrocities suffered by Ukrainians, Poles, the Balts, and other minorities at the hands of the Soviet regime and still denied by the Kremlin today. The world public opinion remains completely unaware of such crimes as the murder in a manmade famine of 1932-1933 of 7 mln. Ukrainians, execution of Polish POW at Katyn, mass deportations of Latvian, Lithuanians, Estonians, Crimean Tatars, Chechens and other ethnic groups to Siberia, Soviet-Nazi military, political, and economic cooperation before 1941. The students had previously seen extensive parts of the film and were in a position to discuss it in detail. Interested members of the Ukrainian Film Club of CU, who had been invited to meet with Mr. Snore, also took part in the discussion. Present was also the Honorary Consul of the Republic of Latvia in NYC Mr. Daris Delins.