Couple of questions
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emmaclarke781 — 13 years ago(October 16, 2012 05:21 AM)
I re-watched the scene on my DVD and this is what I think was going on. Those two men turned up to recruit Floyra for the partisans.Floyra's mother was upset because, understandably, she didn't want her teenage son to be a child soldier.
Sensing this, the two men(one appeared to be a soldier, the other a commissar)decided to take Floyra by force.They also stole the family's poultry, probably with the excuse that they were taking it for the partisans.The man in the cart appeared to be a German prisoner.The villagers (especially the mayor and Floyras young friend)were proud that Floyra was leaving to join the partisans. The two Soviet men took Floyra and the German prisoner, to the partisan's base in the woods. The German prisoner was probably executed.
I would guess that you are right about the German uniforms-they were probably wearing German uniforms, so that if they came across any Germans, the Germans would think that they-the two men-were also Germans and were arresting people, when they were really recruiting people for the partisans. If they were pretending to be Germans, that would explain how they captured the German man.
Remember, Joesph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union at that time, was as brutal as Hitler- its estimated that 20-25 million people died under Stalin's reign.He was perfectly capable of ordering that children be forced to go and fight.
history is a battle fought by a great evil,struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness -
aliza_tvito — 13 years ago(October 16, 2012 08:03 AM)
///the two men(one appeared to be a soldier, the other a commissar)decided to take Floyra by force.They also stole the family's ///
it's not right, Emma.
the decision to join Partisans Flyora took by himself, he dug the rifle at the site of a battlegroung - to be accepted in their ranks (as it was shown at the beginning). The Mother begged Flyora not to do join the Partisans just before the pair arrived, for she knew what is going to happen.
///also stole the family's poultry/// - the poultry wasn't "stolen". Sadly, the almost only source for partisans to have a food supply - was taking it forcibly from a people.
///He (Stalin) was perfectly capable of ordering that children be forced to go and fight.///
Sorry, it's not truth. As a former Soviet person, I perfecly know about who Stalin was, but also know that children weren't recruited by Soviet authorities. Many kids in the occupied zones were orphaned; they witnessed the horrors Nazi perpetrated and were eager to take their revenge. Many of them were adopted by Partisan units as a spies. These kids weren't forced, but volunteered to fight.
Listen to your enemy, for God is talking -
emmaclarke781 — 13 years ago(October 16, 2012 09:49 AM)
Flyora did want to join but if he had said no, I'm sure the two men would have taken him anyway. Floyra's mother clearly didn't want her son to go but those two men took no notice of her.
Taking something forcibly from someone-that is the definition of stealing.
I'm sure many children did volunteer to fight. But it wouldn't surprise me at all if Stalin had ordered them to go.As a former soviet person- you mean you were a Refusenik?
history is a battle fought by a great evil,struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness -
emmaclarke781 — 13 years ago(October 17, 2012 05:20 AM)
As a very opinionated person, it is very hard for me to admit this:)But you are right. I looked but I couldn't find any account of a Soviet child being forced to fight.
I'm sorry about all my questions:) Though if I had know you had actually lived in Russia, I would have asked a lot more! I assumed you were born in Israel and that your parents were Russians. I have never met an Israeli person or indeed any Jewish person.
I have meet several Russians, but they were teenagers, foreign exchange students, only interested in silly things like mobile phones and lady gaga, instead of important things like Wars, Hitler, Putin and Stalin:) Yes, I know my interests are very strange:)
history is a battle fought by a great evil,struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness -
emmaclarke781 — 13 years ago(October 17, 2012 10:13 AM)
Do you ever miss Latvia?
I love learning about the Countries of Eastern Europe. They have a fascinating(and a little tragic) history.
I'm from Cork, which is the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland after Dublin. My mother is Irish, my father is from Norfolk in England. No I can't speak Gaeilge:)
Hardly anyone in Ireland can, expect for people in some Western regions, like Galway. We study Irish at school but no-one speaks it as a first language. It died out really after the Great Famine of the 1840s. About a million people died, another million emigrated to England, Canada or America. After that most people spoke English as a first language and its been that way ever since.
history is a battle fought by a great evil,struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness -
emmaclarke781 — 13 years ago(October 18, 2012 09:45 AM)
I'm surprised that you can speak Russian if you lived in Latvia. I thought the Latvians disliked the Russians? What's Israel like?
I have mentioned the Palestinians on my other posts on Schindler's List and Downfall. I put thereI deplore the Israel's government past and present treatment of the Palestinians. But don't misunderstand-I support Israel's right to exist and I am not remotely Anti-Semitic. I think its a very complex issue with right and wrong on both sides. Jewish people deserved a home land after the horrors of World War Two. But I do think what happened to the Palestinians in 1948 was a tragedy. But they have no right and never will have, to bomb Israeli citizens.
The history of Eastern Europe is very depressing. I enjoy learning about it though. I think Westerners have a very snobby attitude towards Slavs-we think we are superior and they are backwards and primitive. Most of us don't know anything about their history or culture. I think we have no right to judge.
The Irish Famine was caused by Potato blight. Some people think the Famine was a genocide because the British government didn't do much to help. It's often compared to the Holodomor famine in Ukraine. I don't think it was a genocide, I think it was more a case of negligence by the British Government. I think the Holodomor was different though. I don't know if it was a genocide, but while blight caused the Irish Famine, Stalin's policies seem to have caused the Holodomor. I remember reading that there were even signs in Ukraine put up by the government saying,Good Soviet Citizens don't eat each other.The history of Ukraine and Belarus in particular, is very, very, tragic.
Ireland was quite prosperous in the90s and early20s though now there's a recession. God, I do go on!
history is a battle fought by a great evil,struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness -
emmaclarke781 — 13 years ago(October 19, 2012 02:53 AM)
Ah, yes that makes sense. I remember reading in a book called 'In Europe' by Geert Mak where he said that Latvians, of the 3 Baltic States, had the worst relations with Russians. It seems Ethnic Russians have a pretty hard time in Latvia and Estonia. I remember an Estonian girl at my school, who hated the Russians.
I personally think they are wrong to think like that. It is not the fault of the whole Russian people, that the Red army invaded the 3 Baltic States. As you rightly say, to dislike someone because of their ethnicity is just wrong and ridiculous.
There are quite a few Latvians, Poles, Estonians and Lithuanians in Cork. They face some racism from Irish People but in general I think (and I hope) that most Irish people have no problem with them. Of my 4 friends, only one is Irish. The other friend is German, the other friend is Polish and my final friend is from Afghanistan.
My Polish friend, Kasia, has been to Israel. Haifa. She said it was a Beautifiul city:) What part of Israel are you from? And (please don't be offended) are you male or female? I'm guessing Female, because of Aliza but I know that in some languages, 'A' is masculine, not feminine.
history is a battle fought by a great evil,struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness -
jbhat — 13 years ago(October 23, 2012 04:34 PM)
partisan forces - yes children fight, see defiance another example
but in regular soviet army, no children fight. there is a difference between partisans and conventional army. partisans is like guerilla warfare or rebels. they aren't directly following stalin's order, more of a rebel force. -
franzkabuki — 13 years ago(December 19, 2012 02:05 PM)
"It seems ethnic Russians have a pretty hard time in Latvia and Estonia".
Theyre sometimes probably less likely to be hired for a well paying job when in competition with a native applicant with a similar set of skills, but thats about all I can think of (well, of course they always first have to go through the trouble of learning the local language but one cant expect to make great career in England without speaking English, either, can they?) As for the "hate" they encounter, a lot it is indeed irrational and prejudiced, stemming from the historical injustice inficted by the Soveit Union, but its a two-way street all the same; while its not a prevalent attitude, a lot of the Russian minority still holds the view - mostly expressed privately - that Russia is the rightful, entitled master of the Baltic countries. And the fact that Russia frequently attempts to interfere with our internal politics (most scandalously, they demanded the Prime Minister of Estonia be replaced in 2007), doesnt exactly make the lot of them more endearing, either.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan -
earthman34 — 12 years ago(October 12, 2013 10:01 PM)
Let's see if I can clarify this, as there seems to be a lot of confusion about what is going on in this film. At the beginning of the film the two boys are digging in the remains of a battlefield looking for rifles. In order to join the partisans, you needed to bring your own weapon, partly because they were short of weapons, and partly to prove you had the nerve in the first place, as obtaining a military rifle in German-occupied Byelorussia would be risky, to say the least. The two men who come to take Florya away are partisans, disguised as Germans. They are not taking him away against his will, he wants to go, eagerly. His mother is not thrilled about the idea. Her husband is already missing. Florya is a little naive at this point, he, like many, simply cannot comprehend the magnitude of the brutality about to be unleashed on them. Byelorussia, like much of the eastern Soviet Union, was overrun rather quickly, and many areas hardly saw any Germans as they rushed east. It wasn't until the Einsatzgruppen came later that they learned the hard way that the Germans were not there as liberators (that being the belief of many opposed to the Stalin regime. That also explains the many collaborators and auxiliaries who worked willingly with the Nazis). The unit that destroys the village is not the German army but a Waffen SS Einsatzgruppe with a bunch of auxiliary collaborators who might have been Byelorussians or Ukrainians. Sadly the SS never had too much trouble finding people to do their dirty work. This is why the survivors of the battle with the partisans who were captured at the end of the film where begging for mercy and screaming that the weren't Germans and they were forced to do what they did. There may even have been some truth to it. Everybody feared the SS units, even German allies. Even the German army tended to avoid them. The Waffen SS was not under the command of the German army and did not take orders from them.
The movie flows as sort of a surreal stream-of-consciousness sequence of events, without any background or attempt to explain what was going on (mainly because it was made for a Russian audience who would have been familiar with the history, at least at the time). Because of that, and because the history of WW II in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union is pretty hazy to most American audiences, it can be hard for some people to follow what's happening.
It is definitely one of the best war movies ever made, and a hard one to forget. We see a lot of war movies that, while filled with violence, are fundamentally heroic, patriotic, or morally uplifting in their focusthis film shows war's senseless (to it's victims) brutality and insanity. The politics are really secondary. I'd imagine a Native American who was at the Wounded Knee Massacre, or a Vietnamese person who was at My Lai, would have no problem understanding what this film is about, while the ordinary person might well be perplexed.
The co-writer of the screenplay actually fought as a partisan when he was a teenager, and some of the events in the film were gleaned from interviews with survivors of the war at the time. The incident where the people were herded into the church and then given the offer to climb out and leave their children behind really happened, and the man who told about it actually climbed out and left his wife and children behind.
Most of the shooting the in film was done with live ammunition, which is why it looks so "real", real ammo behaves differently than blanks.
Oh, and the animal on the shoulder of the German unit commander was a Red Slender Loris. -
GuyOnTheLeft — 10 years ago(November 06, 2015 07:36 PM)
You know your stuff!
Can you explain why there was a German woman who seemed like an aristocrat or something? Was that part realistic? Hard to believe that would happen.
My top 250:
http://www.flickchart.com/Charts.aspx?user=SlackerInc&perpage=250 -
yaroslavrudenko — 12 years ago(November 07, 2013 01:41 PM)