Big Lies

I owe the idea of the film to Mr. Alexander Yakovlev, the architect of Mikhail Gorbachev’s PERESTROYKA and one of the world’s most brilliant and unappreciated politicians of the late 20th century. Once, in the late 1990s, he gave me a book of recently declassified archival documents on Golodomor. “This is one of the darkest and strictly guarded secrets of Stalin’s Era. We should do our best to make people know about it!” — said, Mr. Yakovlev.

Reading through the files I was horrified to learn how during two peaceful years (1931-1933) Stalin and company meticulously planned and starved to death almost 10 million of its own citizens. Millions more were displaced and enslaved by GULAG. During forced collectivization, mass-cannibalism became common as the genocide continued. To me, it looked like a drama of the epic proportion!

However, to make it even more difficult, the whole notion of Golodomor soon became hostage to different political groups in Russia and Ukraine, each faction using it in their ongoing battles. It took me a few years to fully grasp the magnitude of the task—to reveal the real truth about what happened—and to connect it back to the political leaders responsible for the tragedy. But it wasn’t until three years ago when I heard the story of infamous New York Times Moscow reporter, Mr. Walter Duranty, and his false reporting that the story of “Big Lies” finally crystallized in my mind.

We’ve gotten used to living in the post-truth world where fake news, information leaks, cyberwars surprise nobody anymore. Special programmers or fact-checkers now count how many times American or Russian leaders cheated on their own citizens— in a week, a month or a year. And traditional journalistic institutions and news staffs have been weakened in the digital age.

The film reminds us of the maniac who masterminded the propaganda concept of Big Lie almost one hundred years ago. And about another one who first put it into practice with enormous human sacrifice. But the film also gives us hope that all BIG LIES would be impossible if all of us changed our habits and stopped accepting small lies as an unfortunate but necessary evil in our daily lives.

When the truth about Golodomor was revealed in the mid-1990s Igor Runov was hoping, like many others, that the devastating reports about the genocide would become a catalyst in public debates when talking about the victims of political repression, and that public outcry would eventually lead to the denouncement of communism as a criminal regime.

This, however, never happened. The filmmakers decided to interview remaining witnesses of Golodomor, as soon as possible. After considerable research, a few survivors were identified in different parts of the country—Southern Russia, Volga region and North-West—and production was started.

In the meantime, a number of disclosed documents pointed out to the unprecedented and controversial role played by American businesses and media in Soviet Russia in the early 1930s.