Soviet Cinema: Politics and Persuasion Under Stalin

Soviet Cinema

Published and forthcoming in KINO: The Russian Cinema Series Series Editor: Richard Taylor Advisory Board: Birgit Beumers, Julian Graffy, Denise Youngblood Central Asian Cinema: A Complete Companion Edited by Michael Rouland and Gulnara Abikeyeva Cinema and Soviet Society: From the Revolution to the Death of Stalin Peter Kenez The Cinema of the New Russia Birgit Beumers Dziga Vertov: Defining Documentary Film Jeremy Hicks Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany (second, revised edition) Richard Taylor Forward Soviet!: History and Non-Fiction Film in the USSR Graham Roberts Real Images: Soviet Cinema and the Thaw Josephine Woll Russia on Reels: The Russian Idea in Post-Soviet Cinema Edited by Birgit Beumers Savage Junctures: Sergei Eisenstein and the Shape of Thinking Anne Nesbet Soviet Cinema: Politics and Persuasion under Stalin Jamie Miller The Stalinist Musical: Mass Entertainment and Soviet Cinema Richard Taylor Vsevolod Pudovkin: Classic Films of the Soviet Avant-Garde Amy Sargeant

Soviet Cinema Politics and Persuasion under Stalin

Jamie Miller

Published in 2010 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 Copyright © 2010 Jamie Miller The right of Jamie Miller to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978 1 84885 008 8 (HB) 978 1 84885 009 5 (PB) A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Set in 12pt Baskerville by Joe Murray in Glasgow, Scotland. Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham from camera-ready copy edited and supplied by the author

For my wife, Sofia

KINO: THE RUSSIAN CINEMA SERIES General Editor’s Preface

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inema has been the predominant art form of the first half of the twentieth century, at least in Europe and North America. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the former Soviet Union, where Lenin’s remark that ‘of all the arts, cinema is the most important’ became a cliché and where cinema attendances were until recently still among the highest in the world. In the age of mass politics Soviet cinema developed from a fragile but effective tool to gain support among the overwhelmingly illiterate peasant masses in the civil war that followed the October 1917 Revolution, through a welter of experimentation, into a mass weapon of propaganda through the entertainment that shaped the public image of the Soviet Union – both at home and abroad for both elite and mass audiences – and latterly into an instrument to expose the weaknesses of the past and present in the twin process of glasnost and perestroika. Now the national cinemas of the successor republics to the old USSR are encountering the same bewildering array of problems, from the trivial to the terminal, as are all the other ex-Soviet institutions. Cinema’s central position in Russian and Soviet cultural history and its unique combination of mass medium, art form and entertainment industry, have made it a continuing battlefield for conflicts of broader ideological and artistic significance, not only for Russia and the Soviet Union, but also for the world outside. The debates that raged in the 1920s about the relative merits of documentary as opposed to fiction film, of cinema as opposed to theatre or painting, or of the proper role of cinema in the forging of post-Revolutionary Soviet culture and the shaping of the new Soviet man, have their echoes in current discussions about the role of cinema vis-à-vis other art forms in effecting the cultural

and psychological revolution in human consciousness necessitated by the processes of economic and political transformation of the former Soviet Union into modern democratic and industrial societies and states governed by the rule of law. Cinema’s central position has also made it a vital instrument for scrutinising the blank pages of Russian and Soviet history and enabling the present generation to come to terms with its own past. This series of books intends to examine Russian, Soviet and ex-Soviet films in the context of Russian, Soviet and ex-Soviet cinemas, and Russian, Soviet and ex-Soviet cinemas in the context of the political history of Russia, the Soviet Union, the post-Soviet ‘space’ and the world at large. Within that framework the series, drawing its authors from both East and West, aims to cover a wide variety of topics and to employ a broad range of methodological approaches and presentational formats. Inevitably this will involve ploughing once again over old ground in order to re-examine received opinions, but it principally means increasing the breadth and depth of our knowledge, finding new answers to old questions and, above all, raising new questions for further enquiry and new areas for further research. The continuing aim of this series is to situate Russian, Soviet and exSoviet cinema in its proper historical and aesthetic context, both as a major cultural force and as a crucible for experimentation that is of central significance to the development of world cinema culture. Books in the series strive to combine the best of scholarship, past, present and future, with a style of writing that is accessible to a broad readership, whether that readership’s primary interest lies in cinema or in political history. Richard Taylor Swansea, Wales

CONTENTS

xi

List of Illustrations

xiii

Acknowledgements

xv

Note on Transliteration

1

Introduction

15

Chapter 1 Film Administration and Industry Development

53

Chapter 2 Censorship

71

Chapter 3 The Purges

91

Chapter 4 Thematic Planning

105

Chapter 5 Representation and Reach: Cinema Unions and Societies

121

Chapter 6 A Tale of Two Studios: Mezhrabpomfilm and Mosfilm

139

Chapter 7 Film Education and Training

154

Chapter 8 Film-makers and Film-making

179

Conclusion

185

Notes

203

Bibliography

211

Filmography

215

Index

xi

ILLUSTRATIONS Page 25 A cartoon sketch of a couple leaving an outdoor cinema in the countryside. In a humourous reference to the regular piecing together of different film fragments, the couple say to one another: ‘What did you like most of all in the film?...I liked the part where Dzhulbars bit Dubrovsky on the golden lake’. From Kino, June 1935. 27

A caricature of foreign film stars sitting on top of one another. The description reads: ‘What a tolerant audience!’ From Vecherniaia Moskva, 26 July 1933.

55

A Russian version of an advert for the foreign film Moulin Rouge (1929). Private collection.

68

Still of the main characters from the film The Hearts of Four (1941). Courtesy of the Museum of Cinema, Moscow.

84

Photograph of Boris Shumiatsky when he was arrested (1938). The picture shows that Shumiatsky was not even given the opportunity to get properly dressed, before being taken away by the NKVD. Courtesy of the Museum of Cinema, Moscow.

95

Still of actor Boris Chirkov from The Youth of Maksim (1934). Courtesy of the Museum of Cinema, Moscow.

97

Film poster for the film Lenin in 1918 (1939). Private collection.

103 A cartoon sketch of a bureaucrat pouring money into thematic planning (1935). From Kino, July 1935. 124 Crowd scene from Protazanov’s Feast of Saint Jorgen (1930). Private collection. 133 Still of Andrei Abrikosov in a rare moment of sobriety from the film Stepan Razin (1938). Private collection. 155 Von Kneishchitz terrorises Marion Dixon in a scene from Circus (1936). Private collection. 161 Still of the class enemy Kuganov, posing as a committed communist in The Party Card (1936). Private collection.

xii

164 Still of the hero Shakhov from The Great Citizen (1937–39). Courtesy of the Museum of Cinema, Moscow. 170 Film poster for the film Happiness (1934). Private collection.

xiii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I wish to acknowledge the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Canada who both provided the generous funding that allowed me to write and complete this book. I also wish to thank the following individuals: Richard Taylor who has provided me with invaluable materials, constant support and constructive criticism; Birgit Beumers for her advice and encouragement; Julian Graffy for kindly arranging access to the SSEES library and film collection and Alastair Renfrew who first suggested that I do a doctorate on the role of politics in Soviet cinema during the Stalin era. I am also grateful to the staff of various institutions, including the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI), The Russian State Library, Rusar publishers and the Museum of Cinema in Moscow, Lenfilm in St Petersburg, the British Library in London, IDC publishers in Holland and Esterum in Germany. Part of chapter one was published in a different form under the title: ‘Soviet Cinema 1929–41: The Development of Industry and Infrastructure’ in the journal Europe-Asia Studies in January 2006 (article available at: http://www.informaworld.com). Chapter three has been updated and shortened from the version entitled: ‘The Purges of Soviet Cinema, 1929–38’, published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema in January 2007 (article available at: http://www.atypon-link.com). Chapter seven is a shortened variant of an article entitled: ‘Educating the Filmmakers: The State Institute of Cinematography in the 1930s’, in the Slavonic and East European Review in July 2007 (article available at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com). I am grateful to the publishers of these journals for allowing me to reproduce and amend these materials for this book.

xv

NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION Transliteration from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet is a perennial problem for writers on Russian subjects. I have opted for a dual system: in the text I have used the Library of Congress system (without diacritics), but we have broken away from this system (a) when a Russian name has a clear English version (e.g. Maria instead of Mariia, Alexander instead of Aleksandr); (b) when a Russian name has an accepted English spelling, or when Russian names are of Germanic origin (e.g. Meyerhold instead of Meierkhol’d; Eisenstein instead of Eizenshtein); (c) when a Russian name ends in –ii or –yi, this is replaced by a single –y (e.g. Dostoevsky) for a surname and a single –i for a first name (e.g. Grigori, Sergei). In addition, in order to aid pronunciation I have chosen Fyodor instead of Fedor, Semyon instead of Semen, Yakov instead of Iakov, Yuli instead of Iuli and Yevgeni instead of Evgenii. I also use the more familiar Politburo instead of Politbiuro and Orgburo instead of Orgbiuro. In the scholarly apparatus I have adhered to the Library of Congress system (with diacritics) for the specialist.

INTRODUCTION Existing Research, Aims, Objectives and Methodology

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he basic shape of the established Western approach to Soviet cinema, which emerged in the 1930s, and still exists in a traditional, ‘totalitarian’ form of analysis, suggests that, under Stalinism, the Soviet film industry was brought under the firm grip of an allembracing, centralised state and administrative system. This system crushed the creative spirit of the 1920s and obliged film-makers to become complicit in the creation of pro-regime film propaganda and the imposition of an artistically weak socialist realist approach.1 Such accounts were challenged by ‘revisionists’ who emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. Richard Taylor began looking at Soviet cinema in the 1920s from a political point of view, contending that the Party only began to gain control of the medium at the end of the decade.2 Taylor soon turned to the 1930s, arguing against the traditional film history interpretation of the decline into socialist realism. He contended that, while the aim of creating a ‘cinema for the millions’ was subject to complex political and economic constraints, the film industry and in particular its leader, Boris Shumiatsky, managed to lay the foundations of a genuine mass form of politicised entertainment by the late 1930s.3 Taylor and Ian Christie have also provided researchers with invaluable resources on Soviet cinema in the 1920s and 1930s, through the translation and publication of newspaper/journal articles and other documents, in the collection The Film Factory.4 Taylor later co-edited a very important contribution to understanding the cinema of the Stalin era and its legacy, Stalinism and Soviet Cinema, featuring a range of articles from scholars of different disciplinary backgrounds, including academics from the former Soviet Union. The collection dealt with

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the origins, development and legacy of Stalinism in cinema and offered contributions from both the ‘totalitarian’ and ‘revisionist’ schools of thought.5 Denise Youngblood has also challenged received historical ideas about cinema, but from the broader perspective of revisionist Soviet history. In her Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, Youngblood argued that Stalinism constituted a revolution from below in cinema, but later amended this theory, arguing that there was no mass support for the changes. Instead a ‘revolution from the middle’ was said to have taken place within the film industry itself.6 The approaches of Western revisionists stood in stark contrast to the work of their Soviet counterparts. In the USSR academics, at least formally, saw the Party as the careful guiding hand for the film industry, ensuring that it moved in the correct political direction. For example, Alentina Rubailo examined the process of growing Party control during 1928–37, contending that the Bolsheviks gradually increased their influence in terms of administration, planning and the ideological side of film production. Given that the book was written in the Brezhnev era, it is unsurprising that the author presented a wholly positive account of Party influence and the politicisation of the film industry. Since the collapse of the Soviet system, study of the 1930s has ironically adopted the traditional, ‘totalitarian’ arguments of the West, concentrating on the supposedly overwhelming influence of Stalin, comparing Soviet films of the 1930s with those of Nazi Germany, and focusing on the negative aspects of the cinema industry. Nonetheless, Russian scholars have recently published a wealth of archival materials which promise the emergence of more nuanced accounts of the interaction between politics and cinema in the 1930s.7 Interest in the 1930s has grown and moved in new directions over recent years. The French scholar Natacha Laurent has dedicated an entire book, based on archival sources, to censorship during the Stalinist era (although the particular focus is on the 1940s). Laurent pays special attention to aspects of the decision-making process, providing us with a better understanding of the mechanics of censorship. Among other arguments, she points out that censorship was not only imposed from above, but also involved the film-makers themselves who formed part of a complex web.8 Eberhard Nembach provides a useful narrative on the reorganisation of the film industry in the 1930s which favours the bridging of historical divides and provides some new factual information also based on archival research.9 Other recent work has tackled new areas, such as

INTRODUCTION

3

gender and masculinity and the importance of time and space in the films of this era. Yevgeni Dobrenko has devoted a book to the exploration of how Stalinist cinema produced history (as opposed to this work which looks at the history of the film industry itself) with film playing the role of a museum that artificially manipulated the past to legitimise the Soviet present. This new work has emerged in a context of increasing interest in the broad domain of Russian and Soviet cinema from academics working in a whole range of disciplinary areas. Such interest is exemplified by the creation of a new journal, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema.10 On the one hand, the current work acknowledges the importance and validity of elements of historical interpretations that lean toward traditional or ‘totalitarian’ approaches. It will be argued throughout that centralised and administrative political control had a fundamental impact on Soviet cinema during the 1930s. Excessive bureaucracy played a large role in undermining the film industry and minimising the potential impact of the envisaged ‘cinema for the millions’. Moreover, political violence had a significant impact on cinema especially during the late 1930s. At the same time, however, the analysis argues against certain aspects of the traditional view, especially those that regard Stalin as wielding complete control over the industry and the suggestion that any creativity was completely wiped out during this period. This book also endorses aspects of revisionist accounts. In addition to the fact that cinema was subjected to extreme centralisation and bureaucracy, the film industry was also characterised by organisational chaos and inefficiency. But while these arguments are important to this book, the aim here is to develop a fresh approach to Soviet cinema in the 1930s. If we want to understand why Soviet cinema adopted certain political, economic and organisational forms and why the aims set out for the film industry led to particular outcomes, we must begin by examining the ways of thinking that underpinned its development. This work not only differs methodologically from previous interpretations of cinema in the 1930s, but it also deals with a broader political subject matter than has traditionally been the case. Areas that have received the particular attention of scholars, such as Peter Kenez, Taylor and Youngblood, include government and Party policy, cinema administration and administrators, censorship, the relationship between politics and socialist realism, questions of genre, the role of popular cinema and close examinations of directors, individual films or groups of films. This book also deals with some of these matters, but aims to use the

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aforementioned method to gain a new perspective. So, for example, the analysis agrees, to some extent, with Kenez’s view that censorship had a profound impact on film production, but the intention here is to establish why censorship increased in the 1930s and why certain decisions on films or potential films were made. It is a certain mentality that lies behind the elaborate control mechanisms and it is essential that we understand these modes of thought if we are to comprehend what happened to Soviet cinema in the 1930s. Certain aspects of cinema have received some attention for the period covering the 1930s, but not as much as the 1920s. This is particularly relevant to the economic facets of Soviet cinema.11 I will address this and try to develop a closer examination of the central role of the industry and its infrastructure in reaching the people. I will also address the area of film education and training which has received negligible treatment despite its fundamental importance.12 Political violence was also of great significance in determining the future direction of the industry in the late 1930s. Again, this is an area which has been discussed, but requires further exploration.13 Other areas have been almost completely neglected by film historians, namely thematic planning, one of the key driving (or hindering) forces behind Soviet cinema during these years. The establishment of the first cinema trade union is also important for a better understanding of how representation of varying interests changed in the 1930s and how film-makers and other workers interacted with the authorities and the cinema administration. Although this work seeks to explore new territory, it is not all encompassing. For instance, the author has decided to focus mainly on the feature film aspects of Soviet cinema as documentary filmmaking in this period deserves more comprehensive treatment than this book could allow. If we are to apply the aforementioned method successfully, we must also understand the way in which the Bolsheviks attempted to justify and legitimise the basis of their power and see how their defensive ways of thinking, to a large extent, arose from the application of (an already demanding) Marxist theory to an impoverished Russia. Particular Bolshevik attitudes and ways of thinking were crucial in both shaping the Soviet system and almost every aspect of film industry development from the late 1920s onwards. The historical methodology of examining the mentalities of human beings has long-established foundations. It is usually associated with the French Annales school of historiography who established the approach through a series of studies which examined the attitudes

INTRODUCTION

5

and values of various social groups over the long term, but with a particular interest in medieval themes.14 Moreover, a concern with distinctive mentalities has also long preoccupied scholars of Russian and Soviet history. This methodology has proven especially fruitful when examining the psychological world of individual Bolsheviks, such as Stalin, and has helped us to understand why they acted in the ways that they did.15 It has also been applied to collective mentalities manifested during the Revolutionary events of 1917, as well as in longer-term overviews of Russian history.16 Bolshevik Defensive Thinking The attempt here to understand the Bolshevik way of thinking, and its impact on Soviet cinema in particular, will involve a slightly different methodological approach than those normally applied to deciphering attitudes and values in human history. The focus will be on the domain of politics as opposed to the sphere of social history often examined in the area of mentalities. The main subjects of this work are Bolshevik politicians, administrators, film-makers and cinema industry personnel in general. The aim is to show how the Bolsheviks tried to create a cinema that would serve their goals rather than to examine the reception of film among the masses or its role in their everyday lives. Thus the focus will be on the view of political history and cinema ‘from above’, as well as ‘the middle’, as Denise Youngblood describes it. The analysis does not seek to claim that there was only one mode of thought in Soviet society, rather, it tries to discover how a dominant mindset had such a huge impact on the film industry and its day-to-day functioning. The Annales historians have generally argued that attitudes have to be analysed over a long period of time as changes do not take place instantaneously.17 The argument presented here does not deny this point, but suggests that the Bolshevik defensive way of thinking, while having its roots in pre-Revolutionary attitudes, had its own distinctive Bolshevik stamp. One of the central methods employed by the Annales school has been the use of figures and statistics as both a means of revealing changes in mentalities, as well as proving the scientific credentials of the historiographical enterprise by suggesting that it has the same claims of accuracy and objectivity as the social sciences. For example, this might involve trying to prove the decline of the Spanish Empire in the seventeenth century by carefully quantifying imports and exports of money and goods and the balance of trading relations with the New World. The

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analysis adopted here does not use numerical methods as a means to confirm its argument, but it does adopt the concepts of ‘structure’ and ‘agency’ from the world of political science as a means of trying to establish how dominant patterns of Bolshevik thinking emerged. This approach is the first step in the methodology of this work. Whenever we attempt to understand political, social or economic developments, either historical or contemporary, we try to establish the connection between agency (individuals or groups of individuals) and the structures in which they find themselves. In the twentieth century, academics working in social sciences and humanities have adopted differing views over where the emphasis should lie in this debate. Structuralism emphasises the importance of structure, arguing that observable political, social or economic events, processes and outcomes are merely the product of unobservable political, social or economic structures, of which ‘actors are merely bearers’. An alternative, but equally simplistic view, can be found in the arguments of intentionalism which suggest that structures are the outcome of human agents (often, but not always individual) acting on rational, strategic intentions that are usually unfettered by any structural constraints. Over the past two decades, there have been various attempts to overcome the artificial separation of structure and agency in order to develop more sophisticated explanations of how humans have interacted with their world. Among the most effective of these has been critical realism. Critical realism contends that human agency must always be understood as a close interaction with existing and pre-constituted structures as these structures either constrain or enable individual or collective agents by the choices and strategies which they define. Human agents can, to some extent, transform structures through intentional acts which might have either intended or unintended consequences. Moreover, by combining their incomplete knowledge of existing structures with strategic learning, achieved by observing the consequences of their actions, agents are able to develop new strategies for future action.18 If we apply this basic conceptualisation to the historical agency of the Bolsheviks and the distinctive structures which defined the courses of action available to them, then we are able to see why their future approach to the cinema industry (and every other aspect of Soviet life) revealed less of a flexible strategic learning and more of an almost unchanging way of thinking. A particular defensiveness evolved which, to a large extent, reflected the gap between what the Bolsheviks wanted to achieve and what the structural realities allowed them to achieve.

INTRODUCTION

7

Before we can establish a proper understanding of the relationship between Bolshevik measures and Russian structural realities, we must first look at the origins of their ideas, which can be traced back to Karl Marx. In order to understand the Bolsheviks’ attempts to frame Russian reality within the terms of Marx’s thinking we must briefly examine his fundamental ideas and the efforts to apply them to specifically Russian circumstances. Despite the debates on the scientific status of Marx’s theoretical framework, his thought was fundamentally moral. Marx thought that human beings had the potential to be creative, free individuals, to realise themselves as fully as possible. Such emancipation had not been achieved mainly due to scarcity and the inevitable struggle for resources that were related to primitive levels of material productivity. The advent of capitalism and its mechanisation of labour showed that the masses could potentially become free of compulsive labour. Yet this could only be achieved if humanity could destroy the class system on which capitalism thrived. For Marx the central characteristics of capitalist society were class division and class exploitation, reinforced by a state that enabled the ruling class to maintain the exploitative status quo, through coercion if necessary. He believed that this intolerable situation would eventually culminate in a social revolution, leading to the end of capitalism and the emancipation of humanity. Following the revolution the proletariat would seize and maintain political control in a transitional period whereby a socialist society would gradually replace its capitalist predecessor. The transitional period consisted of the replacement of ‘bourgeois’ class dictatorship with proletarian class dictatorship, justified by the fact that the working class constituted the large majority of the population. The transitional, proletarian class-controlled, socialist state would oversee the dismantling of the legal and institutional basis of capitalism, foster the development of the economic and productive powers of the state and protect the revolution from political enemies.19 In short, it would lay the basis for the future communist society. Marx assumed that the working class would be the agency, not only for the transitional period of social change, but also for the eventual emancipation of humanity as a whole from capitalism and its class system. The ultimate goal of communism consisted of a classless society of individuals freed from exploitation, drudgery and able to realise their creative capacities in a context free from ‘bourgeois’ institutions. This would largely be made possible by abundance and the final elimination of scarcity. The Bolsheviks adopted Marx’s basic theory

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as one of the key foundations of Party legitimacy. They claimed that he had uncovered the objective laws of human development through which all societies must pass, yet, despite their allegedly inevitable character, the Bolsheviks argued that such laws had to be partly helped along by political activism and this was particularly necessary in the Russian context. It is well known that Marx’s predictions failed to materialise in the West as he expected. When the Revolution took place in Russia, it was in a country where capitalism was still in its early stages and the state was dominated by a huge peasantry engaged in primitive agrarian forms of production, while a relatively small working class existed in the urban centres. Indeed, the pre-existing structures within which the Bolsheviks would attempt to realise Marx’s vision certainly enabled the Bolsheviks to seize power. They managed, at least for a very brief period, to appeal to workers and peasants with promises to transform lives, end exploitation and expropriate land from the wealthy. In this way the Bolsheviks presented themselves as a saviour to all. Yet, economic backwardness would also prove to be an enormous constraint in the drive to implement Bolshevik policies. Lenin, who was acutely aware that Marx’s schema did not correspond to Russia, adapted to the country’s particular circumstances. In accordance with his belief that the working class did not have the knowledge and understanding to lead a social revolution, he argued that they would have to be led by a so-called vanguard. This vanguard consisted of the Communist Party, an elite organisation of class-conscious, professional revolutionaries who would lead the way from capitalism towards a classless society. However, in Russia the highly productive material basis to be created by advanced capitalism was absent. As Marx had contended, this well-developed material base was an essential prerequisite for a successful transition to a communist society where scarcity would be eliminated. Thus from the very beginning, the Bolsheviks were faced with the need to reconcile the gap between the need for a sophisticated material base and their claim that the new Soviet state had entered the transitional period referred to by Marx.20 In truth the USSR began as a dictatorship of communist elites that would have to oversee full industrialisation and the drive for productive powers, before it could claim to have even reached the transitional period of socialism. So from 1917 onwards, the Bolsheviks were presented with a huge problem and it was essentially a problem of political legitimacy. In the first place, the revolutionaries claimed to embody an ideology that sought to free the masses from the inhuman exploitation of capitalism. Yet, with

INTRODUCTION

9

regard to its pre-existing economic and social structures, Russia was an undeveloped country and the arduous process of full industrialisation still lay ahead. The historical record had shown that the transformation of societies from predominantly agrarian economies into industrial giants usually involved hard toil, poor living standards and a significant level of exploitation. It seemed evident that Russia would struggle to avoid such difficulties and when industrialisation did take place under Stalin, it proved to be far more brutal than anyone could have imagined. So, from the very beginning, the Bolshevik claim that Party authority, to some extent, emanated from the inevitable developmental march of history was shown to be an unfounded and illegitimate argument. The Party tried to cover this glaring lack of theoretical legitimacy by still claiming that the USSR was in a transitional period, which it rather euphemistically described as ‘socialist construction’. The Bolsheviks also suffered from a further political legitimacy deficit. Marx had never adequately described the nature of worker control during the socialist transition period, but the implication was that it would involve the participation of the working masses in some form. Although Lenin argued for a vanguard party, he recognised that this must be temporary and that a truly socialist system had to provide democratic mass participation if society was to be successfully transformed. Such a view was enunciated in his State and Revolution (Gosudarstvo i revoliutsiia, 1917) where he supported mass participation in the administration of socialism and the abolition of the parliamentary system in favour of the true democracy of the commune. He believed that such developments would lead to the gradual withering away of the state. The post-Revolutionary reality was quite different. When the Bolsheviks were soundly defeated in the constituent assembly elections, it was clear that they did not have the popular backing they wanted. Their reaction was the closure of the assembly, the banning of rival parties and the establishment of repressive police control. From this point on, the masses, in whose name the Bolsheviks claimed to rule, would have no say in the running of the Soviet state. This was problematic, as the Bolsheviks’ other source of legitimacy came from the people and, in particular, the working class. As soon as it was clear that the Bolsheviks did not have popular support, they tended to lean on the role of the elite vanguard party and, more importantly, Marxist-Leninist doctrine, which would always be the ultimate area of Party legitimacy. Internal structural constraints were compounded by the regime’s uneasy relationship with the rest of the world. Marx’s vision of proletarian

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revolution was a worldwide vision and, for a short period, the Bolsheviks held out some hope that revolutions might break out in other European countries. When this did not happen the USSR was isolated. Indeed, not only did the Western powers attempt to prevent the Bolsheviks from winning the civil war, there was also a reluctance to recognise the legitimacy of the Soviet Union as a geo-political entity for several years. Russia traditionally had a difficult relationship with the West. Rulers, such as Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, had tried to emphasise the need for European modernisation, while Slavophiles argued about the unique nature of Russia which they believed should follow its own path. This historical tension manifested itself in the Bolshevik desire to see Russia reach and surpass European levels of development. At the same time, this development would be guided by Marxist ideology, which became both a way of attacking the capitalism of the West and a way of showing how Russia was unique. Throughout the existence of the Soviet state the Bolsheviks constantly believed they had to defend themselves from what they saw as an immoral, exploitative Western world. Thus, in terms of the collective agency of the Bolsheviks, once they had seized power they could not simply proceed towards the transformation of the pre-existing structures of tsarist Russia. On an even more fundamental level the Bolsheviks had to prove the legitimacy of their ideas and their right to hold power. On the one hand, this meant intellectual self-justification which, as we have seen, was achieved by emphasising the importance of revolutionary elites and the role of the vanguard party. However, more importantly their vision had to involve a significant degree of mass support and participation which, as we have also seen, was largely absent when the Bolsheviks came to power. Certain historians of a purely totalitarian persuasion have sometimes overemphasised the combination of ideology and terror, implying that the Bolsheviks treated the masses with contempt and, therefore, had no interest in whether or not they had their support.21 But such accounts fail to recognise the importance of the mass of ordinary people for the potential realisation of Marxist ideals. Coercion was, of course, an option available to the Bolsheviks and one that was often employed in the 1930s. Yet, pure coercion can rarely be the sole basis for the effective functioning of a modern state. The industrialisation of the Soviet Union required mass cooperation to achieve its extremely ambitious goals. But the Bolsheviks wanted more than cooperation. They wanted the masses to believe in the ideals of the classless society of emancipated human beings and to be

INTRODUCTION

11

part of the transformation towards that society. It was not their intention to enslave ordinary people. The Bolsheviks were subject to constraints on various different levels. As we have seen, on a fundamental level they had to contend with economic backwardness, which always threatened to undermine their entire project. But they were also constrained by political and social issues. In particular, their claim to embody the will of the masses was problematic given their ideological partiality to the working class. They may have been able to offer a brief and superficial appeal to the peasantry, but the Bolsheviks believed in collective ownership, while the peasant was desperate to maintain a significant degree of private farming. The Bolsheviks were also constrained and, to some extent, influenced by the political mentalities and traditions of the past. Generally, autocracy and coercive government have been regarded as central to Russian history. While there is a great deal of truth in this, recent research has shown that there was a long-standing pre-Revolutionary belief in strong government constrained by religious and national tradition in the interests of the masses. If the Bolsheviks were too repressive, they might be seen as a continuation of the worst aspects of tsarism, but if they failed to be ruthless, they might be perceived as weak utopians. The Bolsheviks ultimately leaned towards the idea of an extremely powerful and unconstrained government, which was consistent with their monolithic view that any power ceded to the opposition, or even the slightest element of pluralism, would destroy the entire Revolutionary enterprise. Another aspect of the pre-Revolutionary political mode of thinking was a belief in the centrality of the state not merely as a mechanism for maintaining public order and raising taxes, but also for administering justice, acting as a moral arbitrator in public affairs and playing a substantial role in economic ownership and regulation. Thus the substantial role of the state was already firmly rooted before the arrival of the Bolsheviks. Nonetheless, the communist agenda was very specific in that it sought to use the state’s resources to gain the support of and mobilise the masses toward a distinctive political vision, eliminating private property in favour of a state-led form of public ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange.22 These factors limited the strategies open to the Bolsheviks. The demands they faced from millions of peasants and workers meant they had to be decisive, strong-willed and, most importantly, they had to produce visible results quickly in order to maintain their hold on power. Following years of civil war, the revolutionaries sensibly adopted the course

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of compromise through the NEP (New Economic Policy) which allowed them to consolidate their position and foster economic recovery. However, the Bolsheviks were never satisfied with compromise. Their revolutionary model was preoccupied with the need to fit Russia into the Marxist historical schema and to reach the level of economic and social development that Marx had seen as a necessary prerequisite for the socialist transition period. This necessitated rapid economic development as well as radical policies that would prove the legitimacy of Bolshevik power. By the end of the 1920s, the decision to embark on holistic transformation had been made. Certainly, this was partly due to Stalin’s political manoeuvring, yet it was also fully consistent with the Bolshevik revolutionary ‘all or nothing’ model and their impatience to enact radical programmes. The structural constraints that the Bolsheviks faced both internally and externally meant that their choices and strategies were always restricted. Their choice to go down the path of exclusive, elite dictatorship meant that they would always be on the defensive. Their inability to reconcile a grandiose ideological outlook with these structural constraints led to the evolution of a defensive way of thinking, a sense of constantly being under siege. As well as the constant need for self-justification, the Bolsheviks knew that the greater mass of the people, including the huge peasantry, were not with them. This became more obvious during the grain requisitioning onslaught after the Revolution and the later industrialisation and collectivisation programmes. In addition to the realisation that the majority of the people were not sympathetic to the regime, the revolutionaries genuinely believed that there were traitors, enemies, spies and saboteurs throughout society intent on destroying the communist dream. This was accompanied by the fear that the capitalist countries were also attempting to undermine the Soviet system by any means necessary. When a regime believes that it is under siege it takes defensive measures not unlike those adopted during a war. Thus the strategy of holistic transformation was guided and shaped by the revolutionaries’ defensive outlook. However, the reaction of defending or closing up, especially when radical measures had unintended consequences, meant that the Bolsheviks tended not to learn from their mistakes. Their strong belief in a rigid revolutionary model meant, as we shall see, that the Soviet government and cinema administration continued to implement failing policies to the cinema industry, fearing that openness to new ideas might be seen as an acknowledgement of political failure.

INTRODUCTION

13

Implications for Cinema How does what we have said relate to our central concern, Soviet cinema? In order to answer this question we must examine the formal, intended functions of cinema in Soviet society. Cinema presented the Bolsheviks with a potentially powerful weapon, as it was not only an exciting new technology; it was also accessible and appealing to the masses as an art form that they could engage in. From the communist perspective, cinema could serve many crucial functions. First of all, it could play its role in the struggle to circumvent the problems implied by illiteracy. Yet, this was not merely a practical application. The liquidation of illiteracy would be done within the terms of reference and ideas of communist ideology. Therefore, cinema would politically educate the masses so that they would develop a conscious understanding of the Revolution, the new socialist reality and their part in that reality. At its most ambitious, such an education would contribute to the creation of a ‘New Soviet Man’, a highly moral, socialist paragon of virtue, dedicated to the final goal of communism. However, the most fundamental task of cinema was never publicly spelled out. As we have argued, the Bolsheviks’ defensive way of thinking was central to their outlook and this had both an impact on their idea of cinema’s purpose and how it should be organised. The cinema industry became both part of the quest for legitimacy and part of the frontline of political and ideological defence. It had to legitimise and protect communist ideology, power and, most importantly, the reality that they had given rise to. The communists could not properly explain why their hold on power did not correspond to the supposedly scientific Marxist theoretical framework to a sceptical intelligentsia, although the average Soviet citizen was almost certainly not interested in such issues. Nonetheless, ordinary people were concerned with the everyday reality that sprang from Bolshevik thinking. The communists had to reconcile their rhetoric of human emancipation with the grim Soviet reality of breakneck industrialisation and the hardship and low living standards that came with such a transformation. Party leaders also knew that achieving mass cooperation was essential for the realisation of their goals. So they had to convince the masses of the necessity of their effective participation in socialist construction, by claiming that they were working towards a communist paradise. Thus cinema was to play a fundamental role, not only in politically educating and moulding the new man, but also in showing ordinary people that their feats and sacrifices were in their own interests and the interests of society as a whole. Cinema would

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play a crucial role in helping to keep the masses on side while they made good the modernisation gap required to give them the better life that they yearned for and to provide an interim legitimacy for the Bolsheviks. Indeed, film’s political function went beyond political education, mobilisation and persuasion. As we shall see in the final chapter, film would also play a key role in sharing the Bolsheviks’ burden of political responsibility with ordinary citizens. The Bolshevik defensive way of thinking that emerged was shaped by a range of past and present structures but, most of all, by the irreconcilable gap between their political aims and the pre-existing structures within which they had to operate. This defensiveness sought to protect the communist ideal and Soviet power from being exposed as fraudulent. It guided policy and administration, which rested on the uneasy foundations of profound political insecurity and illegitimacy, and was a disaster for Soviet cinema, bringing it to the brink of productive and creative collapse. As we shall observe, this defensiveness manifested itself in many different ways on both an institutional and an individual level. Ultimately, its main effect was to undermine the very industry that had been intended to serve as a frontline in the ideological defence of the Bolshevik regime.

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CHAPTER 1

FILM ADMINISTRATION AND INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT

T

his chapter will examine the role of government, Party and administrative decision-making and the development of Soviet cinema’s industry and infrastructure. The 1930s saw a gradual shift from a preoccupation with the macromanagement of the broader industry, to organising cinema on centralised principles and imposing ideological control over the production process. This shift was particularly evident in official government and Party decision-making, as well as industry administration. At this time the administration came under increasing pressure not only to create an industry that reached the masses and was economically successful, but also ideologically sound. However, the impact of defensiveness had unintended negative consequences. Boris Shumiatsky, the cinema chairman, reacted to increasing centralisation and his own decreasing autonomy by devising an individual defensive strategy to protect his position of power. This involved an attempt to prove his credentials as an ideal Bolshevik leader of Soviet cinema, in the course of which Shumiatsky became obsessed with micromanaging the industry. His everyday activities shifted from a concern with broader industry development to checking every film script before production, controlling individuals’ movements and writing letters to Stalin and Molotov, pleading for funds or approval of some sort. This made a huge contribution to stunting the growth and success of Soviet cinema. In this way, Bolshevik defensiveness had an effect on the day-to-day operation of the system, as well as its output. Paradoxically, the desire to defend and protect thus provided the source of the system’s paralysis as well as its chaotic aspects. It helped create elaborate structures of control while simultaneously undermining these principles of organisation by taking them to absurd levels.

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By the end of the 1920s, the Soviet film industry was under attack from government and Party representatives as well as journalists. The cinema administration, initially under the name Sovkino, was accused of pursuing an overtly commercial line with too much emphasis on films of a Hollywood type that did not address the vital political issues of the time and were clearly intended for profitable export. Sovkino was also criticised for spending vast sums of hard currency on the import of popular Western product in the interest of profiteering. In essence, it was considered that Sovkino showed far more concern for ‘trivial’, ‘bourgeois’ films than the more ideologically sound products. Yet, ideological reasons were not considered to be Sovkino’s only shortcomings. It was accused of failing to develop the industry itself with too few films being produced and not enough adequate theatres to show these films.1 The criticism culminated in the first All-Union Party Conference on Cinema which was held on 15–21 March 1928 under the auspices of the Party’s Central Committee. This was an important turning point as it marked the beginning of the gradual shift towards centralised administration, which would eventually have a detrimental effect on Soviet cinema. The conference was an attempt to bring political order to Soviet cinema and direct it along a secure ideological path. A series of key resolutions were made at the event. Acknowledging the public’s love of action, adventure and comedy, which they had become accustomed to through popular Soviet films and imported American and European films, it was stressed that movies should provide communist enlightenment, but in a form ‘intelligible to the millions’. This meant that cinema had to convey the political message, but in an entertaining manner that would engage the mass audience.2 The conference also noted what it regarded as the political unreliability of those who ran the cinema industry, calling for more workers and peasants with Marxist sympathies from the spheres of literature, theatre and journalism to take control. Among the other important resolutions was recognition of the importance of creating an expanded cinema industry to reach the masses and a domestic infrastructure, thus freeing itself from dependency on the foreign market in areas such as film stock and almost all forms of cinema equipment and hardware.3 The fact that the Party conference was to help shape the elaborate legislative framework of subsequent years became immediately evident. On 11 January 1929, a Central Committee decree was promulgated, reflecting the aims of the conference resolution that referred to cadres.

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The decree entitled: ‘On the Strengthening of Cinema Cadres’, was intended to ‘proletarianise’ the personnel throughout the Soviet cinema industry on every level. The decree proposed that Party, professional, Komsomol and civic/scientific organisations foster the development of new cadres and discuss cinema enterprise production plans. Writers of working-class or peasant origins were to be drawn into the work of studios on a permanent basis. The predominantly proletarian and peasant personnel elements in cinema were to be guaranteed by giving these groups a seventy-five per cent quota in the cinema schools. 4 The decree represented the first of many legislative building blocks in the ambitious effort to create a centralised system of complete control over the cinema industry. The part that this piece of legislation was intended to play in the overall framework was the elimination of the old, ideologically unreliable ‘bourgeois’ personnel in favour of the new and younger generation. In essence, the decree sought to ensure that the views of the political leadership and the creative workers of cinema coincided. The Party made the sweeping assumption that those of a working-class background would both agree with the communist outlook and, therefore, were best suited to producing ideologically sound films. Indeed, the impact of this decree in subsequent years brought limited results for the leadership. While the numbers of workers and peasants entering into all areas of the cinema industry undoubtedly rose, the process of giving individuals from these backgrounds positions of control was extremely slow. A year and two months after the decree it was noted, during the purges of Mezhrabpomfilm, that of the two hundred and twenty-six personnel working at the studio, only sixteen to twenty could be considered to be of worker or peasant origin.5 Moreover, this minority carried out tasks, such as joinery, which was important for film production, but had little influence on the running of the studio’s artistic and administrative affairs. By the end of 1930, even after the height of purges in cinema had passed, it was clear that administrative personnel of working-class and peasant origins were struggling to break through into leading positions of authority. This led to further calls for the working class to take control of cinema production.6 However, most key positions were still held by older specialists from what was regarded as a less desirable social background. As we shall see later, it would only be during the late thirties when those of a working-class or peasant background would occupy many more positions of power. One of the central reasons for the slow rise of worker and peasant personnel was their lack of experience

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and training in administrative and artistic matters. Indeed, the failure to fully purge the cinema of the old bureaucrats, typically of a middle/ lower middle-class or an intelligentsia social background, was due, to a large extent, to the need for their experience and expertise at a time when these were desperately required. The Soviet government issued several decrees over 1929–30. The first of these established the short-lived Cinema Committee which was entrusted with the task of planning for the future development of a centralised cinema industry. Yet its proposals for reorganisation were passed on to a special Central Committee commission to be finished off. On 10 July 1929, a decree was passed ‘On Tax Relief for the Cinema Industry’, proposing the freeing-up of the sphere of cinema equipment production from business tax, as well as general state and local tax breaks for cinema theatres affiliated to institutions, industrial enterprises, military units, educational establishments and so on. In reality though, this was a meagre concession. The domestic cinema equipment sector was still relatively small at this stage and, therefore, any taxes gained by the state would have been fairly modest. Moreover, the lifting of taxes from cinemas affiliated to various institutions and the mobile installations was certainly a positive move, but offered no relief to the urban theatres, which made the real taxable money that could have benefited the industry. Indeed, tax on cinema tickets would consistently rise during the 1930s at a time when the industry desperately needed all the finances it could hold on to.7 Later that year further decrees were issued concerning the establishment of cinefication funds intended to finance the expansion of the cinema network although, again, this involved more talk than action. This was followed by a further decree, promulgated on 7 December 1929, instructing cinema enterprises to create special departments devoted to the production of politico-educational films. A substantial thirty per cent of each studio’s budget was to be allocated to the production of these films and the union commissariats were expected to devote resources to politico-educational work in the sphere of cinema. However, the most important decrees issued at the turn of the decade were those that shaped the structure and administration of the cinema industry. On 13 February 1930, the Soviet government issued a decree entitled ‘On the Development of an All-Union Cinema Industry Combine’. The rather brief document pointed out that the new organisation, named Soiuzkino, should concentrate on ‘all matters concerning the production of cinema equipment’, as well as ‘all matters of film production, rental and general use’.8

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A charter was drawn up for the new cinema administrative body Soiuzkino to provide further clarification on the purpose of the new organisation. The charter indicated that Soiuzkino would be responsible for the broad leadership, planning and regulation of the cinema industry. The charter also suggested that full centralisation had not yet arrived. It specifically stated that, while Soiuzkino would have ideological leadership of film production, in the republics, the regional Narkompros (People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment) agencies would be responsible for such leadership. Moreover, while the advent of Soiuzkino signalled the end for almost all of those studios which did not constitute part of the state film industry, the charter notably allowed the Mezhrabpomfilm studio to retain almost complete independence due to the fact that it was owned, to some extent, by foreign capital. Soiuzkino only had the powers to check and approve its production plans. It is very likely that as the foreign investors were from International Workers’ Aid, who supported the communist cause, this studio was tolerated for a few more years. The prolonged existence of the Mezhrabpomfilm studio meant that competition for the now government-led cinema industry had not been completely extinguished.9 A brief glance at the decrees on cinema issued at the turn of the decade reveals a striking emphasis on the macromanagement of the economic and administrative aspects of the cinema industry rather than the predominance of ideological concerns that one might expect, given the fact that the cultural revolution was now in full swing. The aforementioned decrees point to a central concern with the economic development of cinema, focusing on ways of speeding up the process through tax relief and establishing cinema funds for the expansion and growth of the industry. Even the decree, which called for the establishment of what was to become Soiuzkino, quite clearly suggests that the main role of the new body was to oversee the construction of new studios, cinema equipment manufacture and the general economic development of the cinema industry. On the other hand, the decrees on cadres and politico-educational films certainly indicate that ideological questions were also of the utmost importance in this period. It is also important to note that certain non-legislative means of influence were getting more rigid, such as censorship, thematic planning, as well as ideological indoctrination through the cinema education system. Yet the broad emphasis on economic matters in cinema decrees reflected the modernisation drive to close the development gap which, as we have observed, was so important to the Bolsheviks.

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Boris Shumiatsky Government and Party decrees were crucial in developing the basic structure of the industry, but the most important individual was the head of that industry. The first chairman of Soiuzkino was Martemian Riutin, who had carried out Party work in Irkutsk, Dagestan and Moscow in the 1920s, before becoming a member of the VSNKh (Supreme Council of the National Economy in the USSR) Presidium in 1930. He was an apparently reliable Party figure, advocating strict planning, socialist production techniques, administrative intervention where necessary, as well as rigid censorship. On the other hand, Riutin also argued that the cinema organisations under Soiuzkino’s control must be given at least some independence and ought to show initiative. He even took the concerns of the republics into account, persuading the Politburo to halt temporarily the moves towards full centralisation. Ultimately, the main reason for Riutin’s brief spell as chairman of Soiuzkino was connected to his conflicting political relations with Stalin, which would eventually lead to his arrest. On October 23 1930, the VSNKh ordered Riutin’s dismissal.10 In the meantime, Konstantin Shvedchikov, who had been criticised for his commercialism as chairman in the late 1920s, took temporary charge of Soiuzkino until the VSNKh declared Boris Shumiatsky as the new chairman one month later on 23 November 1930.11 Shumiatsky would prove to be the most important leader of the cinema industry throughout the 1930s, at least until his arrest in 1938. In his first few years of control, Shumiatsky and his board were preoccupied with the transition to sound and the construction from scratch of a cinema industry capable of producing its own raw film stock, cameras, projectors, sound recording machines, lighting and so on. Consequently, Soiuzkino decrees were predominantly concerned with approving economic plans or demanding additions or amendments to those plans. There were endless orders on producing or acquiring sound equipment along with all the other necessary components for film-making and on securing the qualified personnel who could operate the new devices.12 Shumiatsky was very conscious of the need for the Soviet industry to become independent from foreign products and during his first few years he repeated much of the general political rhetoric on how the end of this dependence was in sight. Thus Shumiatsky gave strong support to ‘mass inventiveness’ such as a certain Kosmatov’s idea of reusable film stock.13 Directives were issued supporting such inventiveness, demanding an end to the sabotage

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allegedly preventing such ideas from reaching fruition. Many of Soiuzkino’s directives revealed a central concern with the frequent lack of discipline in the workplace or general slovenliness and irresponsibility among certain personnel. This had implications for efficiency and productivity so Shumiatsky passed an order, which would mean wage deductions or sackings for those who did not fall into line.14 It is important to point out that ideological matters were not completely absent from Shumiatsky’s agenda in the early to mid-1930s. For instance, he issued orders demanding improvements to film quality by ending the production of films that were reflective of an ‘ideology alien to the proletariat’. He also ordered the introduction of questionnaires for new personnel in every sector of the cinema industry. This reflected his concern to attract those from ideologically reliable backgrounds.15 Yet, on the whole, Shumiatsky’s ideological measures were fairly low key during his first few years in charge of cinema. His concern with broader industry development was illustrated in a draft plan written by Shumiatsky in 1931, under the heading, ‘The Big Programme of Soiuzkino for 1932’. Shumiatsky began with the now familiar condemnations of Soviet cinema to date. That is the lack of film productivity, caused by the same old ‘illnesses’ of Soviet cinema production, namely far too many ideologically unsound films, as well as the lack of scripts and cadres. Shumiatsky also complained of the lack of an industrial base for the production of film stock and filming equipment, as well as the poor financial position of Soviet cinema in terms of its debts and tax obligations, but also with regard to investment in capital construction. Furthermore, Shumiatsky pointed out that completed films were not being exploited properly and cinefication was characterised by the backwardness of the rural and school cinema network.16 In response to these problems, Shumiatsky proposed a comprehensive programme of development and reconstruction for Soviet cinema. First of all, Shumiatsky aspired to the creation of 500 full-length films, including more than 100 silent movies compared to the output of 200 films in 1931. He looked to a figure of 3 billion cinema visits in 1932 compared with 700 million in 1930 and 1 billion in 1931, as well as a 1 billion rouble turnover compared to 400 million in 1931 and 300 million in 1930. From these rather optimistic figures, Shumiatsky deduced that the state would be able to deduct taxes and duties of between 200 and 220 million roubles, as opposed to 100 million in 1931 and 20 million in 1930. He wanted to see a clear profit for Soviet cinema of between 200–

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220 million roubles instead of the zero profit of 1930 and the 17 million roubles made in 1931. As well as a dramatic increase in financial growth, Shumiatsky aspired to massive industrial projects, including the building of a gigantic film stock factory, three new studios in Central Asia, Belorussia and Eastern Siberia, 100 new cinema theatres in new areas and kolkhoz centres, 8,500 sound cinema installations and 50,000 new mobile installations. Shumiatsky’s plan was extremely ambitious. While it was intended to be a programme for 1932, in terms of the figures suggested, it would really prove to be a programme for the entire decade.17 Sound In 1929–30 the central issue of the time for Soviet cinema was the transition to sound. Such a transition, of course, had huge political significance. In the 1930s, illiteracy was still a significant issue and, while film certainly played its role in eliminating this problem, sound cinema provided the ideal means of reaching the masses in a more effective way. Sound also constituted a technical and economic shift. The director, cameraman, scriptwriter and journalist, Nikolai Anoshchenko, recognised that the rhetoric of the political leadership on ‘catching and overhauling the West’ could, ironically, not be realised without the technical help of the West. Other journalists, such as Ippolit Sokolov, believed that the Soviet sound devices invented by Pavel Tager and Alexander Shorin were both important and not inferior to their American rivals. 18 But Anoshchenko argued in March 1930 that, despite Tager and Shorin’s impressive efforts, sound cinema in the USSR was still at an ‘elementary stage of development’. In effect, the materials that Tager and Shorin were working with to develop their ideas were not sophisticated enough and so the quality of their first experimental films was fairly low. Anoshchenko realistically contended that, if Soviet cinema wanted to make a quick and effective transition to sound cinema for the benefit of quality, propaganda and the overseas trade of Soviet films, then the cinema administration simply had to rely on American help and technical advice.19 Regardless of the official government line on independent Soviet economic development, the government and the cinema administration succumbed to the practical need for technical assistance. On 25 June 1930, Soiuzkino established an agreement with a New York company called Audio-Cinema to ‘give Soiuzkino technical help in the planning, design and installation of equipment for sound studios and theatres,

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applying the most up-to-date methods of the cinema industry’.20 The American specialist, Joey Koffman, arrived in the Soviet Union in the autumn of 1930, bringing with him all the latest equipment to satisfy Soiuzkino’s requirements, including microphones and modulators. His ten-thousand-dollar payment also entailed advising Soiuzkino specialists how to operate and develop the sound system. Soiuzkino’s reaction to Koffman’s visit was frank. In a letter from Soiuzkino to the VSNKh it was stated that, with the availability of the American equipment, it was now possible to order the laboratories of Leningrad and Moscow (where Tager and Shorin were based respectively) to ‘copy immediately these samples significantly improving the construction of our sound recording and sound producing apparatuses’.21 In addition to Koffman’s visit, Soviet representatives including Ippolit Sokolov, Sergei Eisenstein, Grigori Alexandrov and Eduard Tisse went abroad to observe how cinema industries operated and produced in Europe and America and reported back in detail on their return.22 Nonetheless, despite these exchanges, lack of funds meant that sound device manufacture was very slow and sound cinema took many years to develop in the USSR. Cinefication The development of sound in Soviet cinema was closely associated with the development of ‘Kinofikatsiia’ (cinefication) in the country at large. In essence, this referred to the expansion of the cinema network and the availability of viewing facilities in both the urban and rural environments. Even if the production of sound films had been more substantial, the chances of being able to see them were fairly slim for the majority of the population. By June 1931, the Soviet enterprises concerned had only managed to produce one sound projector, which was set up in a theatre that month.23 The situation remained difficult throughout the 1930s. By the end of the first Five Year Plan in 1933, there were now 27,578 cinema installations, but only 224 had sound projectors. In 1938 there were still only 28,574 cinema installations overall. It seems that many of the silent projectors had been decommissioned as the proportion of sound projectors included in this figure had now reached 11,242. It was only by the end of 1938 that the quantity of sound projectors within the overall network reached the 54 per cent mark.24 Overall then, despite the dramatic increase between the mid-1920s and the beginning of the new decade, the growth of cinema outlets was fairly meagre in the 1930s, largely due to the slow transition to sound. It made no sense to produce more silent projectors,

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yet the technological base was not developed enough to enable the mass production of sound projectors. We can gain a strong idea of just how poorly the cinema network was serving the population from the proposals of the third Five Year Plan declared in 1939. In order to provide adequate cinema facilities throughout the USSR, Viacheslav Molotov announced that the network of sound-producing stationary and mobile projectors would have to be increased by six times.25 The cinefication programme undoubtedly favoured the urban and European part of the Soviet Union. Throughout the 1930s, the major towns and cities of the USSR consistently had over one third of the viewing facilities of the entire Union. Despite Shumiatsky’s wish to create a network over a five year period that would give cinema access to the majority of the peasant population, this did not materialise. Moreover, the quality of cinefication in the urban environment was far superior to that of the country.26 For example, the Udarnik cinema in Moscow could boast a one thousand seat capacity and a grand foyer where waiting patrons could listen to an orchestra, dance, play chess or read. This cinema, as with most urban equivalents, also had a buffet area where customers could have something to drink, such as a cup of tea on a cold night, or some sandwiches, smoked herring, caviar or a pastry. In addition, the viewing experience was better than in rural cinemas as film goers could often see newly issued film prints sometimes shown in cinemas equipped with sound.27 In contrast, films in the countryside were usually shown with silent projectors which were often aged and subject to constant technical problems, leading to persistent film stoppages. Due to the frequently poor state of the film copies, projectionists sometimes had to piece film together with fragments of different films, causing either confusion or amusement among the peasants. Throughout the mid-1930s, films in the country were still being shown in small rooms of about five-six square metres in kolkhoz administrative offices, which were crammed to capacity and generally did not even have seats. Such places were often dirty, dark, cold and sometimes had leaking roofs. Moreover, the projectionist, who was expected to deliver and set up the mobile cinema on site as well as prepare the premises and advertise the showing, sometimes did not turn up. At least certain rural areas had some form of cinema provision, in remote regions of the RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) and republics, such as Tadzhikistan, Turkmenia and Kirgizia, cinema was a rare event.28

FILM ADMINISTRATION AND INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT

A cartoon sketch of a couple leaving an outdoor cinema in the countryside (1935).

Shumiatsky’s administration was so preoccupied with broader industry development that it tended to neglect matters of distribution and exhibition. This may have been partly due to the fact that the agencies that controlled these areas were answerable to Shumiatsky, but had a fair degree of autonomy. In Moscow, up until 1934, cinemas were still dominated by foreign product much of which had been imported in the

25

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late 1920s. In the summer of 1933, one critic demanded to know why Moscow’s theatres could only show dated foreign films, including comedies featuring Harold Lloyd and Monty Banks, escapist westerns or German thrillers that had been seen time and time again with the exception of the occasional new import.29 Although by 1934 the import of new foreign films was reduced to a few on a yearly basis, it did not completely stop. Events, such as the first international film festival in Moscow in 1935, brought the Walt Disney cartoons Three Little Pigs (1933), Peculiar Penguins (1934) and The Band Concert (1935) among other feature films. Even many of the Soviet films shown in the early to mid-1930s were the hits of the 1920s, such as The Bear’s Wedding (Medvezhia svadba, 1926) or Miss Mend (1926) rather than the politicised classics. It was clear by the way that films were being advertised that urban film exhibition still had an essentially commercial face. Lower down the distribution ladder the situation was equally problematic. The difficulty in both workers’ clubs and rural areas was not an excess of foreign films, but rather the lack of films generally. In 1936 one commentator claimed that eighty per cent of the installations were showing dated films which, in many cases, were in a condition not worthy of public exhibition. The typical sort of film shown would again be Soviet product from the late 1920s, such as Grigori Roshal’s The Salamander (Salamandra, 1928), a film about the biologist Paul Kammerer, which was unpopular on its original release, or Amo Bek-Nazarian’s Khaz Push (1928), a film about a revolt of Persian peasants and craftsmen in 1891. Older foreign films were also shown in the countryside, such as Duke Worne’s Blue Fox (1921), an American adventure movie. The obvious concern for Party officials was not only that the more prestigious urban theatres and, to a lesser extent, the workers’ clubs and kolkhoz buildings, were still showing many dated foreign films, as well as old domestic product, but that most new Soviet films were hardly being shown at all throughout the USSR. Soviet citizens, especially in the smaller towns and countryside, could only be offered the same films from the 1920s over and over again. It was clear to all that the new ‘cinema for the millions’ was not reaching the millions.30 The crux of the problem was the lack of prints available for new Soviet films. In the mid-1930s, it usually took two to three years before the areas with cinema provision had seen the majority of new Soviet films due to the low productivity of the newly established copy factories, and this was compounded by the slowness of production. There simply

FILM ADMINISTRATION AND INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT

A caricature of foreign film stars sitting on top of one another. From Vecherniaia Moskva, 26 July 1933.

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were not enough copies to distribute. At the beginning of 1934, there was an average of 39 copies per film for the entire USSR. Over the next few years, this figure slowly increased and prints for sound projectors also began to emerge. By the end of the decade, this had risen to around 250– 300 sound and silent copies per film, which was still less than sufficient. It is useful to draw a comparison with America in this case. In 1940 the USA had fewer than 20,000 cinemas compared to just over 29,000 viewing facilities in the USSR. The average number of prints for major American films at this time was 250, similar to the Soviet figure. However, the fundamental difference was that America produced 673 movies in 1940 compared to the USSR’s 40 films. So, in addition to the fact that US theatres were well provided with film prints, they also had a high level of choice.31 In contrast, the Soviet industry which, in theory at least, believed that every Soviet citizen should see its major films, failed to produce and distribute enough films and copies for the necessary communication of the communist message. There were some exceptions to this rule, such as Sergei Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Fridrikh Ermler’s Peasants (Krestiane, 1935), which were both eventually released in 900 copies. A few more, including part two of Ermler’s The Great Citizen (Velikii grazhdanin, 1937–9) were released in between approximately 500– 600 copies. But, even for this minority of films, such figures were still less than sufficient, especially when we take into account the low output of film production and the rapid decline of the copies. On the whole, the distribution of most films, including ideologically important propaganda movies such as Lenin in 1918 (Lenin v 1918, 1939), was meagre. In 1939 one observer noted that Tula, one of the better-served regions of the Soviet Union, which had 79 installations, had been presented with only 5 copies of the film. Moreover, although the sound network would increase sharply over the next two years, at this point nearly half of the network still consisted of silent projectors. Despite this, no silent copies of Lenin in 1918 were produced and this applied to other films, such as Shchors (1939) and T he Tractor Drivers (Traktoristy, 1939).32 A great deal of the blame for what was being shown on the screens throughout the USSR in the early to mid-1930s was placed on the shoulders of the film distribution agencies. Rossnabfilm and its Union representatives remained fairly autonomous until 1938, which meant that a policy of profit making with the films that were available still prevailed

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over planned, ideologically orientated distribution throughout the decade. Although distribution did not fall directly under Shumiatsky’s jurisdiction, he and his successors gave their full support to the idea of planned repertoires, thus helping to level the imbalances favouring urban centres, as well as ending commercialism and competition between theatres. In 1938 distribution was centralised under Semyon Dukelsky, formally giving the new Cinema Committee more control over what was being shown on Soviet screens. However, by the end of the decade, Soiuzkinoprokat, the division of the Cinema Committee now responsible for distribution, was failing to distribute films evenly. Instead of planning, the old commercial system of dividing cinemas up into first, second and third screens remained in place, suggesting that the administrators of Soiuzkinoprokat were not prepared to distribute some new film prints to the less profitable regions and villages first in the interests of ideology.33 Theatre managers in Moscow regarded the new system of planned repertoires as chaotic. They complained that Soiuzkinoprokat often did not provide them with details of film content and duration, which meant that planning timetables and selling tickets in advance was impossible. Managers also complained that Soiuzkinoprokat frequently promised individual theatres specific films. In response to this, the theatres would arrange advertisements and sell a large quantity of advance tickets only to learn that they would not receive the film after all.34 These complaints suggest that the very opposite of planning was taking place in the area of film distribution. Some argued that the theatres themselves should also be under a consistent, centralised control structure. When the autonomous Cinefication Administration was established in 1933, the theatres that had formerly fallen under Sovkino and Soiuzkino control were placed in its hands, while equivalent administrations were established in the republics. Yet, although private ownership had by now been officially liquidated, urban theatres were controlled by a variety of organisations that still competed with each other for the biggest profits. Moscow provides an interesting example. Those cinema outlets, which did not constitute part of the Cinefication Administration trust system, were under the control of Moscow City Council, the autonomous Mezhrabpom, which controlled several top theatres in the capital, and other organisations, such as Vostokfilm, which also owned a theatre in Moscow. These different outlets were all in competition with one another to maximise profits. Gradually, ownership was narrowed down. In 1936 Mezhrabpom was

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liquidated, as was Vostokino. In 1938 the Cinefication Administration was also liquidated, handing over the control of many cinemas to the centralised Cinema Committee. In Moscow the majority of theatres were now under the control of the city council’s cinema trust (Mosgorkino). In effect, the competition had been significantly reduced. Nonetheless, even in Moscow there was a clear divide between the quality of theatres located in the centre of the city and those further outside the main metropolis. Managers of the top theatres knew that they would be most likely to receive the best films and the newest prints. Consequently, they could charge as much as four roubles a ticket in comparison to the lesser theatres, which usually charged less than two roubles a ticket. In contrast, tickets for the most basic rural cinema installation cost as little as fifty kopecks. Ultimately, the desire to eliminate competition and introduce an ideologically sound, planned, equal system of film access was compromised by a distribution and theatre system that was stratified and inevitably succumbed to the practical necessity of making money for the state. Shumiatsky’s task of overseeing the establishment of an industry and infrastructure was a particularly big challenge. The production of Soviet film stock was considered to be a matter of urgent priority as the USSR had become accustomed to importing it from Western Europe and America on a large scale and at a high cost for the cinema industry. In 1929 construction began on the USSR’s first film stock factory in Shostka in the north of Russia and this was soon followed by the building of a second factory at Pereslavl-Zalessky near Moscow. In the Shostka case a deal was reached with Lumière to help with the construction and equipping of the film stock factory, while a company called SIMP (Société Industrielle des Matières Plastiques) was hired to provide similar support in Pereslavl-Zalessky. Both of the factories began operating at the end of 1931. However, the Soviet desire to move towards fully independent film stock production proved to be a slow and difficult process. The official figures suggest that, in 1930, 46 million metres of foreign film stock were imported, but in 1933 this figure had dropped to 1 million metres. Between 1932 and 1941, the output of Soviet film stock remarkably soared by nearly eight fold. Nonetheless, this quantitative increase was not, at least until the end of the 1930s, accompanied by qualitative improvements. Film-makers were consistently presented with low-quality Soviet film stock. Cameramen and directors came to expect ‘new’ film stock that might be scratched, covered in fingerprints, cut to the wrong size, unevenly

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perforated, or even partly or completely lack the silver compound chemical emulsion necessary to shoot the images.35 Consequently, despite the apparent abundance of film stock, a great deal of it was not up to professional standards. In practice this meant that there were shortages of good quality Soviet stock and this was undoubtedly a factor in the low levels of film production. Although the import of foreign film stock had been curtailed, the evidence suggests that the cinema administration continued to import it, as well as chemical emulsion for the Soviet stock from countries such as Germany and Italy throughout the 1930s and beyond. Indeed, during April 1935, Shumiatsky informed Stalin that film stock was being produced at approximately two times below demand, but also at roughly two times more than was being imported from abroad. This indicated that film stock imports were still very significant.36 Other areas of film equipment production, such as cameras, were less successful. Here too the quality was poor, necessitating a continued reliance on foreign models. Soviet cameramen particularly liked the cameras made by André Debrie’s French company as well as the German ‘Kinemo’ model and these, along with foreign lighting products, dominated film production throughout 1930s. The USSR had been producing its own projectors since the 1920s, but with the advent of sound, the industry struggled to produce both the right quantity and quality of sound projectors. As in every other sphere, Soviet technicians combined their own ideas with foreign designs. American Super-Simplex sound projectors were purchased for urban theatres, including Stalin’s own private cinema and Soviet experts studied their design. While in the countryside the Pathé silent projectors were still abundant.37 Boris Shumiatsky’s initial approach to developing Soviet cinema’s technical base had been to try to reduce the emphasis on imported materials and machines, emphasising the need to develop domestic cinema equipment production. But Shumiatsky developed a more realistic attitude by the mid-thirties, realising that Soviet technical development in cinema had not reached acceptable standards. He was not afraid to tell the political leadership what he thought about the quality of domestic equipment and was instrumental in persuading Stalin and the Central Committee that the import of more foreign products, as well as expertise, was absolutely necessary.38 In May 1935, with Stalin’s approval and the financial backing of the Soviet government, Shumiatsky was permitted to lead a delegation to America to examine technical equipment and

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production processes. The main requirement for a better understanding of film stock production was satisfied during this period. The delegation visited the Friedman laboratory in New York where the group studied film developing and film copying machines and were impressed by their speed, efficiency and quality. After the delegation had returned home, several American film technicians were invited to the USSR to help with further improvements and development in the various areas of production. When the technicians arrived, they were posted at Mosfilm and Lenfilm to carry out support work. In addition, the cinema administration ordered a sizeable quantity of technical equipment to be imported into the Soviet Union. In 1936 Shumiatsky’s administration spent nearly 500,000 dollars purchasing American equipment that was used to update the Soviet studios.39 Thus, under Shumiatsky, the aspiration to achieve complete independence for the Soviet cinema industry was gradually brushed aside as importation continued in almost every single area associated with cinema. As we have seen, all the key technical items were still imported, including film stock, cameras and projectors. But other items were also imported by Shumiatsky and his successors. Amongst them were film printing and developing machines, cranes, special automobiles for carrying out moving shots, as well as more minor items, such as cables. This meant that imports varied from, for example, the 3,000 roubles released by the government in 1940 for Ivan Bolshakov’s administration to make some purchases in France, Germany and Switzerland to the 300,000 dollars spent by Bolshakov’s representatives in New York in the same year, with plans to spend three times that amount.40 Given the continued need for imported materials it is important to note that the Soviet film industry did export materials in the 1930s although levels of items, such as raw film stock, cameras, projectors and so on were relatively low. As the USSR was fairly new to these areas of production, demand for its raw film stock and equipment was almost non-existent in the West. Most of the income from exports in the late 1930s came from neighbouring countries, such as China and Mongolia, which were at a fairly early stage of cinema industry development.41 By far the most profitable area of export for the Soviet film industry were the films themselves. In the mid-to-late 1920s, Soviet films achieved both critical and financial success in countries such as Germany and the USA. Yet, despite the financial success, the USSR was receiving little in terms of a currency equivalent due to relatively weak connections and understandings

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of Western markets, as well as a lack of specialised personnel to trade with foreign partners and establish more beneficial price policies.42 Moreover, by 1933 the close relationship with Germany was ended by the rise of the Nazi regime. Despite this setback, the USSR began to develop a more professional approach to film export with the establishment in 1930 of a specialised department called Intorgkino, which became Soiuzintorgkino in 1933. The closure of the Berlin offices led to the set up of a new permanent Paris office and stronger trade links were forged with America through the Amkino Corporation in New York. Overall though, Soviet trade links with foreign cinema industries remained extremely basic, partly due to the general decline of world trade in the 1930s and the increasingly inward nature of the Soviet economic system. The export of Soviet films to America in the mid-tolate 1930s represents a good example of how underdeveloped trade links were at this time. In 1935 Soiuzintorgkino established an agreement with Amkino, giving that corporation the rights of sale and rent on all types of Soviet film. However, these rights not only covered the USA, but also South America, Central America, Mexico, Cuba and Canada, indicating that Soiuzintorgkino was reliant on one trading partner for the length and breadth of an entire continent. Moreover, while the price of each individual film was negotiable, the copies of all feature films were to be sold for ten cents a metre, which represented a very modest figure for the time. Given such an undeveloped export system, it is not surprising that the actual overall income from film exports, while important, was even lower than the levels of the late 1920s. In 1929 the Soviet Union received 1, 509,000 roubles from film exports. Throughout the 1930s, exports often failed to yield even a third of this figure, falling to 216,000 roubles in 1940.43 GUKF While the development of Soviet cinema’s industrial base was central for Shumiatsky in the early to mid-1930s, changes were gradually taking place which foresaw the shift from macromanagement, concerned with broad industry matters, to micromanagement concerned with film content and control over the film production process. The signs were there as early as 11 February 1933, with a Soviet government decree ‘On the Organisation of the State Directorate for the Film and Photo Industry’. This new body replaced Soiuzkino and was to be directly subordinate to Sovnarkom (Council of Peoples Commissars). The decree gave GUKF

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(the State Directorate for the Film and Photo Industry) direct authority over several trusts formerly under Soiuzkino control. In the ideological sphere, the new directorate was placed in charge of all higher education institutions dealing with the training of new personnel for the cinema industry in the RSFSR and, more importantly, GUKF was instructed to ‘observe the content of films, examine and confirm basic plans for the production of the most important films.’44 Although the decree, and the charter that followed it were still, to a large extent, concerned with economic factors and corresponding matters of central administration, they also indicated that GUKF was responsible for examining and scrutinising the yearly and quarterly plans of all union and republic trusts for all the main types of film, as well as the plans of the independent Mezhrapomfilm. Moreover, control over film content was extended to the republics. The statute also devoted a section to the administrative structure of the new state directorate. This structure was to be headed by a manager who essentially carried out similar functions to those of Soiuzkino. As with Soiuzkino, the chairman had a considerable degree of autonomy.45 Shumiatsky’s Administration of GUKF Shumiatsky’s administration of GUKF continued in a similar manner to the way he had run its predecessor Soiuzkino. Yet, while the broad development of the Soviet film industry still lay at the heart of the administration’s agenda, Shumiatsky had to deal with everyday issues too. GUKF would occasionally take action if a given trust or organisation was failing to fulfil its obligations. This meant administrative intervention, especially when production efficiency was being hampered in any way. For example, in September 1934, the film stock factories complained of constant shortages of tin boxes needed to package the new reels of film. GUKF reacted to this shortage by ordering the director of the Samara cinema apparatus factory to establish a new agreement with the Shostka film stock enterprise whereby the quantity of tin boxes produced would be more than doubled.46 As the head of Soviet cinema, Shumiatsky used his powers to employ and dismiss on an even more frequent basis between 1933 and 1937. Many of the sackings now took place in the industry trusts responsible for the production of film stock, film copying, cameras, projectors, lighting and other hardware. These factories had only or were only being built in the early 1930s and there were seemingly endless problems with the quality

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and quantity of output. This led to a series of usually high-profile sackings, such as the two senior engineers based at the Shostka raw film stock factory who were fired in September 1934 due to incompetence. On some occasions Shumiatsky sacked enterprise heads, such as the director of the Leningrad cinema apparatus factory, who was removed in August 1936 for the inability to deal with his workload.47 While organisational and personnel issues were central to the everyday running of the Soviet film industry in the mid-1930s, it was at this time that Shumiatsky began to devote more attention to the content of the films themselves and further increase his micromanagement of the film industry. In 1935–36 he published a series of articles in the cinema press as well as his book A Cinema for the Millions: the Experience of Analysis (Kinematografiia millionov: opyt analiza, 1936) in which he expressed his arguments on the ideological and artistic content of past, present and future Soviet films. Shumiatsky wanted to completely rid Soviet film of Formalist cinema characterised by montage, the absence of a typical plot or a clear line of narrative, the instrumental use of the cinema actor, reducing him to a social type or model and often unnecessary exposition or detail.48 Certainly, Formalist films were now in the minority, but the slow development of sound cinema in the USSR was not helping his cause. Shumiatsky wanted to see the creation of a mass Soviet cinema with compact, entertaining films that would have simple plots and heroic figures with whom the audience could identify. The mass spectator would also be attracted by a broader range of genres including drama, comedy, fairy tales and the biographical film, as well as new themes, ranging from socialist construction in the town and the countryside to defence. Only this type of cinema could effectively convey the communist message to the broader audience. A Soviet Hollywood? Part of his inspiration for developing such a cinema undoubtedly came from the USA. After returning from his three-month trip to America, Shumiatsky and the other members of his delegation wanted to apply some of the best aspects of American film production to the studios of the USSR. He wanted to introduce the idea of the producer as the key manager of every Soviet film project. Following Hollywood, Shumiatsky was convinced of the need for producers who would deal with creating a general plan for a given film, including estimates and specific dialogues and have full financial control over resource distribution for a production. The producer would

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also attend to issues of film crew and actor recruitment as well as obtaining costumes and sets. In short, the producer was expected to deal with the general organisation of the production, allowing the film director to concentrate on artistic matters. Nonetheless, the director was obliged to assist the producer on the artistic aspects of the above issues.49 The Shumiatsky delegation were impressed by other aspects of American studios which also led to high levels of efficiency, namely the professionalism of cinema personnel, the constant improvement of technology and especially the rationalised methods of production, which led to a highly efficient, conveyor system. In effect, Shumiatsky and his colleagues had observed Taylorism in practice whereby film production was based on getting the most out of individual workers through optimisation methods, such as the division of labour into specialist tasks. This was hardly new to Shumiatsky as there had been calls for work rationalisation in the early 1930s. However, this had clearly not developed in any substantive way. Now Shumiatsky insisted on the idea of dividing work into specialised tasks, borrowing America’s ideas of how to run a script department, create stunt and special effects departments and establish editing departments.50 Shumiatsky’s trip to America also inspired his most ambitious project: to create a Soviet Hollywood. Again this idea was not entirely new, in the early 1930s various figures from the film industry had pointed to the need for Soviet cinema to have a southern base. Shumiatsky himself had first mentioned the idea to Stalin in June 1934. In that same year, one journalist described the newly established Yalta studio as such a base, suggesting that substantial investment from GUKF could create a ‘model cinema village’.51 Nonetheless, Shumiatsky’s experience in Hollywood led to his proposal of a huge southern cinema complex far more daring in scope than anything previously put forward. For Shumiatsky, the idea of a Soviet Hollywood represented the potential solution to the extremely low output of Soviet films. Shumiatsky argued that Hollywood’s abundance of sun and minimal levels of rain allowed them to film almost all year round. He was also impressed by the availability of varied outdoor locations within the bounds of the Hollywood studios. Thus he proposed the establishment of a similar base in the Crimea, which would eliminate the difficulties of the long, harsh winters of the north, as well as ending the expensive trips all over the USSR to find suitable natural locations. Such a base would therefore save money but, most importantly, it would improve efficiency, eventually yielding 800 films a year.52 Such output would also be made possible by the

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introduction of changes recommended for all the existing studios in the Soviet Union, namely the establishment of a producer-based system of film-making and a strict division of specialists and labour. The planning stage for the project seemed to go reasonably well. By the end of 1935, Shumiatsky had produced cost estimates for the construction of cine-city (Kino-gorod). The construction would be a largescale project, ranging from tree-lined streets to a huge complex capable of housing four studios as well as permanent accommodation for the thousands of administrators, film-makers and workers. Initially the cost of the enterprise was estimated at 305 million roubles although this figure rose closer to 400 million by 1936. At the beginning of 1936, GUKF set up a special commission to investigate the most appropriate site for cinecity. On 4 July 1936, GUKF announced that the Laspi valley near Foros in the Crimea was its preferred location.53 Yet despite all the preparation and planning, cine-city never emerged. In many ways such an imaginative project was precisely what the somewhat moribund Soviet film industry needed in the late 1930s. The idea certainly had a great deal of support, not only from Shumiatsky’s assistants and colleagues, but also from the film-makers themselves, who were generally very enthusiastic about the proposal. More significantly, Stalin gave his full support to the plan, challenging government figures opposed to the project by stating to Shumiatsky in 1935: ‘Of course we need a cine-city. Objectors cannot see further than their own noses. Can our cinema really rest on a dwarf base?’54 Stalin maintained a close interest in the development of the plan for cine-city and continued to support the idea until the general tide of opinion began to turn against Shumiatsky, during the last months of 1937. This was particularly evident in the press where there were references to ‘alien ideology’ and the attempt to introduce methods of mass production ‘alien to the spirit of Soviet culture’.55 In October 1937, the newspaper Kino (Cinema) published an article denouncing one of the project’s key proponents, Vladimir Nilsen. It also announced that the plan, which was considered to have been a potential waste of money, was only stopped by the ‘intervention’ of state organs and the Soviet public.56 The All-Union Committee for the Arts On the 17 January 1936, the Central Committee and Sovnarkom adopted a decree ‘On the Establishment of an All-Union Committee for the Arts’. The Arts Committee was intended to unify ‘the entire leadership in the

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development of art’ in the USSR.57 This piece of legislation represented a further attempt to centralise all the main artistic organisations in the USSR, including cinema. The demands that GUKF be subordinated to the new Arts Committee and that the republican Narkompros organs hand over the financial means for running cinema organisations and educational institutions, suggested a reduction in autonomy for GUKF. Indeed, while the Arts Committee was partly established to unite personnel from all branches of the arts and ensure the greater interaction between the republics and the centre, it was fundamentally the result of recent dissatisfaction among the leadership with a series of so-called ‘Formalist’ productions in the arts, including the film Prometheus (Prometei, 1935). The new chairman of the Arts Committee, Platon Kerzhentsev, stated that one of the central roles of the committee would be the implementation ‘of the correct political line in the arts’. He also suggested that the committee would give ‘special attention’ to cinema.58 Evidently, Shumiatsky’s failure to adequately control the ideological nature of film production was part of the reason for the establishment of the new Arts Committee. On 22 July 1936, the new body issued a decree, confirming GUKF’s thematic plan for that year, but calling for the addition of other themes, ranging from Stakhanovism to the Soviet woman. The Arts Committee demanded that GUKF actually produce the number of films included in the plan. It also proposed that GUKF give particular attention to the production of certain films in the plan, especially those of an ideological character. Shumiatsky was ordered to strengthen control over the scripts passed for production, as well as maintain closer checks on the entire process of film-making and the release of films. The decree concluded that all completed films accepted for release by GUKF must then be viewed and approved by the Arts Committee, before reaching the general public.59 Thus the Arts Committee was intended to fulfil the role of ideological enforcer over GUKF and Shumiatsky. However, the short two-year influence of the body on the cinema administration became yet another organisational failure. Although some of the priority ideological films were made between 1936 and 1938, Shumiatsky failed to prevent the commencement of production of controversial films, such as Abram Room’s A Strict Youth (Strogii iunosha, 1936) Garin and Lokshin’s The Marriage (Zhenitba, 1936), Mikhail Dubson’s Large Wings (Bolshie krylia, 1937) or Sergei Eisenstein’s Bezhin Meadow (Bezhin lug, 1937) among the many others. The Arts Committee was also unsuccessful in improving GUKF’s performance

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in terms of film output, which became worse. Moreover, the precise areas of competence conferred on the Arts Committee and GUKF were not clear. In August 1936, Shumiatsky gave a warning to the director of Lenfilm, Leonti Katsnelson, over the studio’s failure to secure a group of actors with an adequate salary. A few days later, the Chairman of the Arts Committee also issued a warning to Katsnelson for failing to turn up to another disciplinary hearing with the Committee.60 This sort of duplication was largely due to the fact that GUKF’s role did not fundamentally change with the arrival of the Arts Committee. Indeed, Kerzhentsev made a formal complaint to Molotov about Shumiatsky in August 1936, stating that the latter refused to recognise the authority of the new institution, and simply continued to run the industry as he had before without any reference to the head of the new body. Kerzhentsev recommended Shumiatsky’s removal, but the Party and government tended to correspond with both men which simply added to the confusion. 61 Shumiatsky and the cinema administration were now increasingly under attack and thus had to develop their own strategy to defend their autonomy and power. This involved a substantial effort to prove to Stalin and the Party leadership that he was not only a loyal, committed communist, but also a careful protector of all things Bolshevik in the domain of cinema. From this point on, Shumiatsky got embroiled in a conflict with Kerzhentsev as both men tried to prove that they were the genuine defenders of Bolshevism and that the film industry could only serve its required political function under either of these individuals’ control. As we have seen, Kerzhentsev tried to get rid of Shumiatsky from the beginning, but Shumiatsky fought back. For instance, In December 1937, he wrote to Stalin and Molotov complaining that the Arts Committee was using its control of the censorship body GURK (Main Administration for the Control of Shows and Repertory) to ban a whole series of films of both ideological and artistic value. Shumiatsky claimed that the bans had no foundation whatsoever and were hindering the work of the cinema administration. He also argued that the Committee for Artistic Affairs was failing to implement the Party and government line in cinema.62 Indeed, it was clear that the Arts Committee was an unnecessary extra layer in the running of the Soviet film industry. The concern over the precise role of the Arts Committee had been belatedly recognised several months earlier on 23 June 1937 when GUK (the State Directorate for the Film Industry, as it became known from January 1937)

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formally lost the powers granted in its original charter.63 Yet, the Arts Committee never really took full control of cinema and this redundant role led to its replacement in March 1938 when the Cinema Committee was established. Another method by which Shumiatsky tried to defend himself would be to appeal to Stalin with whom he enjoyed a relatively good relationship, or to Molotov, the head of the Soviet government. Shumiatsky’s desire to please the leader was particularly evident in one of his last measures as chairman of GUK. This involved equipping the Kremlin cinema with an automatic projector and lamp, as well as imported and expensive American sound equipment.64 During the last two years as head of the cinema industry, Shumiatsky also spent a lot of time writing letters to Stalin and leading members of the Party and Soviet government. On occasion, the letters were more substantive reports on industry development or ideas for the future. Most of them were directed at Stalin, pleading for more funds for general industry development. Shumiatsky’s requests for economic support also extended to specific requirements. For instance, Shumiatsky wrote to Stalin and Molotov in November 1936 asking for 15,000 dollars to provide film stock for cameramen working in Spain during the civil war.65 More typically, the cinema head would ask for extra funds for Soviet films which invariably exceeded their budgetary limits. In December 1937, Shumiatsky wrote to Stalin to inform him of the necessity of filming expensive battle scenes for part two of the film Peter the Great (Petr pervyi, 1938). This, Shumiatsky argued, meant that the overall cost of the film could be up to 7.5 million roubles. In the end the film was given a budget of between 3 and 4 million roubles.66 Shumiatsky wanted patronage and approval as a sound, politically reliable leader of film industry and, until his last few months in control, it appears that he was relatively successful at gaining the leader’s favour and support. The result of the battle to defend Bolshevik ideals and personal positions of authority and influence was the virtual paralysis of film production in the USSR. This was perhaps most obvious in Shumiatsky’s increasing role as a censor. In the mid-to-late 1930s, Shumiatsky became increasingly involved in determining the fate of films that he or others considered to be ideologically unsound. When the film was a big production, Shumiatsky sought advice from senior Party/government officials or from Stalin himself. In 1935 Shumiatsky had seen an early rough edit of Ivan Kavaleridze’s Prometheus produced at Ukrainfilm in Kiev. He considered

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the film to be ‘completely unacceptable, mistaken in direction and extremely low in terms of its creative standards’. Shumiatsky wrote a letter to the Politburo recommending that the film be altered in several places. The Politburo agreed with Shumiatsky. Yet it seems that Ukrainfilm did not take any action. Consequently, the film was released in its original form in Leningrad for six days and was advertised in the Moscow press as due for release at the same time. Shumiatsky showed Prometheus to Stalin after which GUFK issued a decree banning the film.67 During his last two years as industry head, Shumiatsky became increasingly obsessed with micro-managing film projects at the early script stage. On a daily basis Shumiatsky wrote letters to studios expressing dissatisfaction with scripts or changes that had been made. He became ever more conservative towards new ideas, fearing that he might let something ideologically unacceptable through the net. He began to check all feature film scripts which led to an inevitable slowing down of the checking process with many of them remaining in his office for weeks. As an insurance policy, Shumiatsky would order his assistants to include phrases in his concluding decisions, such as ‘despite GUK’s orders’ thus avoiding responsibility for any future criticism levelled at any given film.68 Shumiatsky also exercised ideological control by deliberately excommunicating film-makers who he believed would not have anything to offer a ‘cinema for the millions’. He was, to some extent, responsible for frustrating the careers of avant-garde directors, in particular, Sergei Eisenstein, Lev Kuleshov and Dziga Vertov. By way of illustration, in February 1938, just after the arrest and execution of Shumiatsky, Kuleshov wrote a letter to the new, incoming head of cinema, Semyon Dukelsky, stating that Shumiatsky had refused his proposals to make films and had deliberately blocked him from working. As a result his film-making career was in tatters and he was essentially pleading for another chance. We also know that Shumiatsky stopped the production of Sergei Eisenstein’s film Bezhin Lug (1937), before publicly denouncing the director as a Formalist.69 Other film-makers who claimed to be victims of Shumiatsky’s ‘cinema for the millions’ agenda included Mikhail Dubson, Margarita Barskaia and Sergei Yutkevich. But while Shumiatsky excluded or made life difficult for some film-makers, he was more generous to his trusted friends, including Fridrikh Ermler, Grigori Alexandrov, Mikhail Romm, Leonid Kozinstev and Ilia Trauberg. It is clear that Shumiatsky’s tenure involved a significant degree of cronyism. Not only were his friends trusted with major

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productions, they were given the best flats and their actress wives and girlfriends were frequently given leading roles in their own films.70 The Last and Most Significant Decrees of the 1930s The 1930s had seen a gradual process of increasing administrative and government control over the cinema industry. Nonetheless, there were still significant levels of autonomy in several key areas, such as cinefication and distribution, which led Stalin to demand full centralisation.71 Stalin’s demands soon became government laws. On 23 March 1938, a decree entitled: ‘On the Development of a Committee for Cinema Affairs’ was signed. The opening clause of the decree was very purposeful, declaring that the development of the new Cinema Committee was intended to lead to the ‘improvement and unification of the leadership of cinematography [and] putting in order the matters of cinefication, production and rental of films’. Leadership of the production process was firmly placed in the hands of the Cinema Committee with all the cinema enterprises and organisations formerly under GUK and Arts Committee control now being passed on to the new body. The cinefication administration was also liquidated, bringing control of theatre and factory construction under the grip of the Committee on Cinema Affairs. The cinema organisations in the constituent republics and in the regions of the RSFSR theoretically became fully subordinate organs of the new Cinema Committee and would be controlled through republic or local Sovnarkom bodies. In addition, a council would be set up in the Cinema Committee to scrutinise general production and thematic plans for films, cinefication and distribution in the republics and regions. Rossnabfilm, the distribution trust, which caused so much concern, was finally liquidated and all its local agencies were centralised into the Cinema Committee under the new name ‘Soiuzkinoprokat’, which would have a monopoly on all film distribution throughout the USSR. This new monopoly right meant that all distributors in the republics were to be firmly directed from the centre.72 However, although the laws of 1938 undoubtedly moved centralisation to a new level, In December 1939, over a year and eight months since the original decree, serious concerns were raised that those in charge of distributing cinema installations in the RSFSR and the republics were ‘refusing to obey’ the centre and making their own decisions as to where cinema facilities should be based. The facilities were being distributed mainly in the more profitable cities and towns, leaving some areas without any cinema outlets. Moreover, when the 1938 decrees were

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implemented, the cinema network was still divided into the trust network, consisting of exhibition outlets under cinema administration or central state control and the non-trust network, which was controlled by trade unions, factories, kolkhoz or sovkhoz administrations, as well as organisations, such as the Pioneers and educational establishments. The decree failed to unify these networks. For instance, trade unions continued to develop their own cinefication programmes and, even for those theatres that fell within the trust system, organisational chaos reigned. The attempt to end commercial-style distribution also proved to be an illusion. Soiuzkinoprokat was aware of the fact that the vast majority of non-trust installations, especially the workers’ clubs, had been losing millions of roubles on a yearly basis and that distributing limited supplies of new film copies immediately to these outlets was financial suicide. The direct consequence of this reality was the continuation of the system whereby the highly profitable urban theatres continued to get the new films and best prints while the workers’ clubs and rural installations received an unpredictable flow of dated films, which were often in a dreadful condition.73 The second decree also issued by Sovnarkom on 23 March 1938, was even more noteworthy for its content. The legislation was entitled: ‘On the Improvement of the Organisation of Film Production’. The most noteworthy aspects of this decree are those that indicate a concern with introducing a firmer political and ideological grip on the film-making process. Unlike previous years where relatively little had been done from a legislative perspective to impose political and ideological control, several aspects of the decree suggested that this was about to change. The changes were particularly notable in the sphere of script production. The establishment of script departments, with the tasks of creating scripts alongside film production plans, establishing a script reserve and attracting professional script writers, can on one level plausibly be seen as a measure to prevent script shortages and improve organisation, discipline and efficiency in the production process. Yet this was essentially an attempt to gain control over the nature of film content.74 In contradistinction to many of the other centralising measures introduced in 1938, the creation of a script department within the new Cinema Committee significantly changed the system of film production. Now the script, which used to emerge from the studios, would begin its life in the Cinema Committee’s script department. The difference now was that this department produced a strict plan of production that had to

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be approved by the Cinema Committee chairman from the very beginning. Within the Cinema Committee, production-managerial departments were established. They examined the director’s montage script and the production plans, which meant that every dialogue and frame would be checked and accounted for, as would all the projected expenditures of a given project, before again being approved by the Cinema Committee chairman. During the filming process itself, the production-managerial departments were responsible for insuring that the film-makers stuck to the approved director’s montage script and any changes were strictly forbidden. Finally, the studio’s artistic council would examine the finished product, before passing it on to the studio director who then passed it on to the Cinema Committee chairman for permission to release the film.75 Dukelsky Semyon Semyonovich Dukelsky became the head of the new Cinema Committee on 23 March 1938.76 Dukelsky had previously been the chief of the Voronezh NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) and his appointment was a political measure intended to accompany the recent centralising decrees. In fact the new cinema industry head was the embodiment of the very worst aspects of the Bolshevik defensive mentality in that he was prepared to destroy film productions that, in his view, did not glorify the Party, its leaders and its policies in some way. Dukelsky differed from Shumiatsky through an even stronger emphasis on discipline and control over cinema. It was not long before he issued a decree on labour discipline which led to a series of dismissals and legal action against workers who had been late for work, not turned up, or had arrived in a drunken state. He also established a military style regime of daily registration at studios, theatres and enterprises intended to monitor the movements of each worker.77 Despite Dukelsky’s draconian discipline, he failed to end the low levels of production that were becoming increasingly critical. Indeed, Dukelsky’s dogmatic demands that films made in 1938 should reflect themes of ‘modernity’ helped to reduce production even more. His misguided attempts to defend and foster the dissemination of films favourable to contemporary Party-sponsored issues had an extremely negative impact. The director Mikhail Romm recalls how he was summoned to Dukelsky’s office along with many other directors who were told that any production not relevant to modern themes would be cancelled. The difficulty with Dukelsky’s decision was that this included several high-profile, expensive films, which were either finished

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or close to completion. Among them were Romm’s Queen of Spades (Pikovaia dama) and Iurenev’s Blue and Pink (Goluboe i rozovoe). Miron Bilinsky’s Old Fortress (Staraia krepost) had been completed in Kiev, but an editor had forgotten to include it in a plan presented to Dukelsky who, accordingly, ordered the film to be destroyed. Other projects, such as Pudovkin’s and Doller’s Suvorov, were cancelled. This film was only produced after the removal of Dukelsky in 1939.78 Inevitably, such a rash policy did not help improve film output. In 1938 a mere thirty-eight films were made, only three more than in 1937, suggesting that the government’s and Dukelsky’s methods of introducing order to Soviet cinema were proving to be less than effective. Dukelsky extended his role as an enforcer of work discipline to the area of financial discipline. On the one hand, this meant a ban on wasting any film stock whatsoever during a given production. This was, of course, a completely unrealistic request given that unwanted shots were inevitable on even the most carefully planned project. On the other hand, Dukelsky’s financial discipline led to even more serious consequences for film-makers. On 5 January 1939, Dukelsky, in accordance with a general Sovnarkom decree, issued an order ‘On the new system of work payment for directors, cameramen, authors of scripts and music productions’. The decree ended the system by which these creative workers would receive their main income in the form of a fixed percentage of ticket sales. From now on, directors would receive from 6,000 to 50,000 roubles and cameramen would receive from 2,000 to 15,000 roubles dependent on the ‘quality’ and ‘character’ of the film. The same criteria were applied to scriptwriters and musicians who would gain no more than 40,000 and 15,000 roubles respectively. In all cases, works of an outstanding level would receive additional rewards in agreement with Sovnarkom.79 Dukelsky defended the new system, arguing that films should be rewarded according to their quality rather than to the number of spectators that saw each movie. In Dukelsky’s view, film-makers’ income did not always depend on how hard they had worked and the best filmmakers were not being paid according to a state controlled system that would encourage ‘creative competition’.80 Dukelsky’s argument that filmmaker income depended on the haphazard nature of the distribution system was, to a large extent, true. However, this new measure was not essentially about rewarding the best films. Instead, the move was aimed at significantly reducing the income of the broader group of creative personnel to redirect revenues into the state coffers. By way of illustration,

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in the mid-1930s the directors of Chapaev (1934), Georgi and Sergei Vasilev, received nearly one million roubles between them from tickets sales for that film, Vladimir Petrov also received five hundred thousand roubles for his film Peter the Great while a lesser-known director of children’s films, Nikolai Lebedev, received approximately three hundred thousand roubles for his film Fedka (1937).81 Even if we take into account the fact that, under the new system, directors would also be given a monthly salary of between 1200 and 2000 roubles, the new changes represented clear state exploitation of cinema personnel crudely masked as a means of socialist levelling. The new law was also created to engender conformity among film-makers as the criterion of ‘quality’ meant quality defined according to the typical political yardstick. Many film-makers recognised that producing films according to the required themes and formulas would now be even more likely to give them a higher income. Ivan Bolshakov Semyon Dukelsky was removed as chairman of the Cinema Committee, ‘at his own request’, on 4 June 1939. He was immediately replaced by Ivan Bolshakov, formerly a manager of Sovnarkom affairs.82 Bolshakov was undoubtedly more liberal than his predecessor and, eventually, he would give his careful support to a surge of dissatisfaction from below, which had begun long before his appointment. Under Bolshakov these criticisms became more and more vociferous and they were no longer being used as weapons against past administrators, but as calls for change. It was clear that the way in which cinema had been organised and administered, with the guiding hand of defensive thinking, had failed to produce the desired results. On the contrary, the obsessive checks and heavy-handed discipline had led to an industry that was stagnating in almost every way. At the chairman’s first meeting with representatives of the cinema industry in August 1939, Mikhail Romm criticised the script problem. Romm was concerned about the endless censorship mechanisms through which scripts had to pass before being put into production. In particular, he complained that changes had been made to scripts without the participation of the authors. He also argued that, when working on the director’s script, the director should have the right to consult composers, actors, artists and cameramen. As part of the solution, Romm called for the establishment of a creative union of film-makers. Ivan Pyrev took this further by calling for the establishment of an artistic council under the auspices of the Cinema Committee, which would allow film-

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makers to ‘discuss matters of a creative nature and find the correct solutions’. At the same meeting, Alexander Medvedkin again pointed to the bad relations between the cinema administration and the film-makers. In his view this was largely due to the administration’s lack of attention towards the initiative and ideas of individual directors and cameramen. The fundamental connection between many of these complaints was clear: the film-makers were calling for more autonomy as a means to moving the industry forward.83 In such a crisis situation, it was clear that some sort of fundamental structural changes would have to take place if the industry were to start functioning adequately. In contradistinction to the early to mid-thirties, when Shumiatsky still had enough autonomy to shape the cinema institutions, Bolshakov was in a less powerful position. So, in 1940, the Soviet government issued two decrees, which responded to the crisis and the dissatisfaction from below. The first of these, issued on the 11 January 1940, established artistic councils in the Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Tbilisi, Odessa and Soiuzdetfilm studios. The second decree emerged on 29 October of that year. It created several artistic leader posts at most of the Soviet studios and within the Cinema Committee. Bolshakov enthusiastically supported the new decrees, arguing that the new institutions would broadly deal with artistic matters: They will scrutinise and discuss the studios’ thematic plans, the director’s cameraman’s, artist’s and sound engineer’s production plans, each director’s script, the set design sketches; they will view shot material from films and discuss it; organise help for individual film crews and look over completed films before they are handed over to the Committee.84

Given the levels of centralisation that had been gradually imposed on the industry during the 1930s, these were unexpected and fairly radical measures on the part of the Soviet government. Although the new system did not immediately yield dividends, within the course of a few months it was evident that the film-makers were far more satisfied with the new regime and studios were beginning to slowly turn around. Bolshakov not only recognised the fact that the reforms would move Soviet cinema forward, but he saw further reform as a means to unburdening the Cinema Committee and thus improving the administrative efficiency of the industry. Bolshakov himself had to

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read and reread every script and watch every film. This, as it had over recent years, inevitably slowed down potential output. Bolshakov proposed that the Committee should only approve of the original version of the script. This would undoubtedly provide the studio with more autonomy to develop final versions of scripts. Bolshakov also argued that the studios should have more economic independence and responsibility. He, along with Mikhail Romm, believed that the Cinema Committee should set a financial limit for each production. Subsequently, the studio would issue the details of how much the film should cost, how long it should take to make and so on. If a film were to become more expensive than the set limit, then it would be the responsibility of the studio to find the resources by making savings on other film projects. Bolshakov and Romm also argued for the establishment of a ‘directors fund’ whereby a small percentage of a studio’s income could be set aside to support productions that might not provide the guarantee of good financial returns. Sovnarkom turned down this particular request immediately. 85 A planned Central Committee decree created in 1941 sought to address some of these issues. The planned decree was undoubtedly weighted towards more control from above with the call for the script departments in the studio to be fully subordinate to the administration and the demand that only approved scripts should be included in the studios’ plans. The proposal did also make some important concessions, granting more autonomy to the studios. In response to the proposals supported by Bolshakov and Romm, it was suggested that the Cinema Committee only approve original scripts and the cost limits of films as well as giving permission for production to go ahead and checking the finished product. This meant that the studio directors and filmmakers would have more autonomy in relation to the development of the director’s script and in financial areas such as budgeting and estimates. In addition to the measures already taken, the introduction of these proposals would have undoubtedly helped to improve the ongoing crisis in Soviet cinematography. However, the decree was never introduced due to the onset of the war and was forgotten with the passage of time.86 An Appraisal Shumiatsky’s ambition to develop a genuine ‘cinema for the millions’ did have some success. Although many film-makers themselves had shown

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their own political and artistic initiative in developing ideologically correct films in the early 1930s, Shumiatsky also played a key role by facilitating the production and release of films that would entertain and politically educate the mass audience. Indeed, in the case of Alexandrov’s The Happy Guys (Veselye rebiata, 1934) Shumiatsky was involved from start to finish. After seeing the original jazz music hall comedy The Musical Shop in Leningrad, Shumiatsky suggested to Leonid Utesov that the show be turned into a film. Subsequently, Shumiatsky defended the film, now called The Happy Guys, as it went into production from protesting senior Party officials and figures at Mosfilm and secured its release despite strong opposition. Three years later Shumiatsky was again involved in supporting the production of Volga Volga (1938), which proved to be a popular mass film. Boris Babitsky, the director of Mosfilm, demanded that the script for Volga Volga be cut. Shumiatsky intervened to ensure that the film-makers’ ideas would not be compromised and that any cuts would be minimal. As noted, such involvement and support won Shumiatsky many allies among creative personnel.87 During Shumiatsky’s tenure some high quality mass films were made, albeit in relatively small quantities, that managed to combine entertainment with the communist political message. At the same time, we find many examples of films made between 1930–1938 which did not fit into the neat ‘cinema for the millions’ formula, or which even mocked or criticised the new Soviet reality. While, as we have seen, Shumiatsky did show much concern over the ideological content of films, he knew that the production of a few high-quality mass films such as Chapaev or The Happy Guys was simply not enough. He was convinced that the Soviet cinema industry had to aspire to the large scale production of this type of mass, politicised film and that this could only be realised if the infrastructure was sufficiently developed to meet this task. Thus, as well as his general commitment to the Bolshevik plan to close the development gap, Shumiatsky tended to focus more on broad industry development during his early years and this was also reflected in the official decrees and government measures. Nonetheless, while, under Shumiatsky, the Soviet film industry made remarkable leaps forward during the 1930s, it still failed to reach the masses in the way that had been planned in 1928 and it had not achieved its goal of economic independence. On the one hand, Shumiatsky was faced with very difficult contextual circumstances. The cinema industry struggled for much of the 1930s to accumulate capital, partly due to a burdensome tax regime, and sometimes had to rely on state loans.

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Shortages of key components, such as microphones or lenses tended to undermine the good work being done by Soviet technicians and engineers; shortages of electricity were still a fundamental problem for the developing cinema industry during the 1930s and this affected cinefication; Soviet cinema lacked a significant quantity of technical personnel who could be relied upon to generate the knowledge required to create the infrastructural base of the industry; the efficiency of those workers who had received the necessary training was also compromised by the nature of the bureaucratic Soviet economic system with its emphasis on quantity over quality. On the other hand, Shumiatsky’s limited achievements were also partly due to his irreconcilable ideas. Throughout his tenure, he called for huge increases in film output, knowing that he had neither the personnel nor the resources to realise such unrealistic goals. He wanted the Soviet government to benefit from cinema’s substantial tax revenues yet he fought hard to gain financial resources back for the development of the industry. He wanted to introduce the best of capitalist production techniques, but still supported the inefficient and ineffective implementation of planning to every aspect of Soviet cinema. The eventual burial of the cine-city project prevented what could have been Shumiatsky’s most innovative legacy. In the end the Soviet government must be blamed for failing to show commitment to even a gradual realisation of the plan, which might have transformed Soviet cinema. It did not consider the long-term benefits of such a project. In subsequent decades the cinema administration was forced to continue wasting vast sums of money on expensive filming expeditions throughout the USSR. Problematic weather conditions in the north continued to plague Soviet film production for decades to come and yearly film output only began to reach decent levels by the end of the 1950s. Shumiatsky’s disciplinarian approach to the industry, which saw endless dismissals and reprimands, was intended to encourage better work practices, but the lack of financial incentives was one of the root causes of indiscipline, theft and poor productivity. Shumiatsky was aware that a purely disciplinarian approach could not produce a thriving Soviet film industry. His desire to introduce capitalist production methods into Soviet cinema might have helped to improve the organisation of production, but in the end Shumiatsky’s reform programme was never properly implemented and the organisational structures of Soviet cinema continued to exist in essentially the same form. Discipline became the guiding

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principle for all of Dukelsky’s measures. Yet, Dukelsky’s approach failed to recognise that film-makers and other personnel needed incentives to encourage creativity and hard work. Discipline and dogmatic demands alone simply helped prolong the stagnation. For instance, the significant reduction of income for film-makers was hardly a stimulus to produce high-quality films. As Shumiatsky eventually recognised, Soviet cinema did not need more authoritarian and disciplinarian measures, it needed to be expanded and given proper resources, well-educated specialists and better organisation from top to bottom. During the last years of his tenure Shumiatsky’s ambitious plans to transform Soviet cinema into a truly powerful industry began to fade. Shumiatsky was a committed Bolshevik who wanted to protect the Marxist political ideal as much as his contemporaries, but he knew that their policies had so far failed to yield results for Soviet cinema. Unfortunately, leading Party figures were not sympathetic to his Hollywood-inspired plans as the dominant Bolshevik way of thinking tended to be less flexible or open to alternative ideas of Western origins. In this context of increasing defensiveness and central control, Shumiatsky had no alternative but to ape the prevailing Bolshevik strategy which, again, was becoming more evident in official decrees. The criticisms of his chairmanship by the Arts Committee and the press among others, added to the sense that Shumiatsky was under siege. Defending Bolshevism, its leaders and ideas thus became a means of both protecting the grand idea to which he was committed and of defending his own position of power by presenting himself as a loyal communist. The consequence of Shumiatsky’s defensive strategy, consistent with the Bolshevik outlook, was the virtual paralysis of film production. Although the cinema administration rightly recognised that cinema was, to a large extent a mass art form, the increase of micromanagement in the latter part of the 1930s, especially in the ideological sense, arguably narrowed down creativity to an excessive degree. The type of cinematic experimentation characteristic of the 1920s was not given the same support and outlets that it once had. The application of thematic planning as well as the deliberate prevention of certain film-makers from working were just some of the measures that made life very difficult for those involved in film production. As we have seen, administrative centralisation, which reached new heights in 1938 with the arrival of Dukelsky, did in fact have a limited impact in areas, such as film distribution, where chaos often reigned. Where the cinema administration did gain a firmer grip, such as the

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process of production, the result was to further paralyse the industry’s film output. Pockets of autonomy, whether deliberate or accidental, had been central to the functioning of Soviet cinema during the 1930s. The effort to eliminate these elements of autonomy under Dukelsky was both unsuccessful and irrational. During his short period of control, film-makers had already begun to voice their complaints on the state of the industry and the arrival of the slightly more liberal Bolshakov gave these grievances more momentum. Bolshakov recognised that, if the Soviet cinema industry were to improve its performance and become more efficient, the filmmakers and studios had to maintain a degree of autonomy. While Bolshakov was not responsible for the measures intended to grant this autonomy, it is fair to say that he sympathised with the film-makers’ grievances and helped the surge of dissatisfaction to be properly heard. The introduction of the artistic councils, as well as the liberal elements of the planned 1941 decree, showed that the government and the cinema administration understood that defensively guided centralisation had brought limited practical outcomes and that an element of decentralisation was a practical necessity to placate the film-makers and improve the productivity of the film industry. In the end the failure to implement the 1941 decree was to contribute to the further decay of the industry, which, by the early 1950s, had almost ground to a halt.

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CHAPTER 2

CENSORSHIP

F

rom the late 1920s onwards, Soviet cinema was subjected to an increasingly draconian system of censorship. In this chapter we shall observe that censorship operated on a number of different levels and emanated from different sources of power. It is possible to identify a distinct element of Bolshevik defensive thinking which, to a large extent, underpinned the elaborate system of checks and controls. We argued above that the Bolsheviks tended to subscribe to an inflexible, dogmatic brand of Marxism with a very real sense of scientific certitude. This generated a sort of intellectual megalomania whereby the revolutionaries claimed to understand the ‘riddle of history’. But a constant fear and insecurity coexisted alongside this megalomania that their political ideal might fail to engage the masses or be undermined in some way. Thus for cinema to perform its function as a frontline defence weapon against counter arguments, cynicism or dissatisfaction with unrealised promises, its film productions would have to undergo rigorous checks. By the end of the 1930s the rejection of ideas that did not deal with required political matters of the day, or praise the regime in some way, meant that the prospect of a genuine ‘cinema for the millions’ was in real jeopardy as the entertainment aspect of Soviet films was subject to increasing attacks. The first censorship body properly devoted to controlling Soviet films was GRK (State Repertoire Committee) established by a Sovnarkom decree on 9 February 1923.1 In keeping with the relatively liberal spirit of the 1920s, GRK’s censorship regime in these years was mild. But, towards the end of the 1920s, GRK started to ban films more frequently. Some films were removed for idealising ‘bourgeois decadence’ or ‘low morals’. Other films removed from circulation included those that showed crime, prostitution and other ‘depravities’. The main target, particularly in the

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latter half of the decade, was foreign product such as detective or crime films. In November 1928, nearly three hundred foreign films were withdrawn from distribution. It appears that most of these had already been viewed by the few who had access to decent cinemas, yet the figure included many popular mass films such as those featuring the German actor Harry Piel.2 GRK also banned many Soviet films between 1929 and the mid1930s. It is particularly noteworthy that an unusually high proportion of the bans, especially from 1929–1933, were imposed on films from Ukraine, Belorussia, Georgia, Armenia and other Soviet republics. Among some of the most notable banned films was Kote Mikaberidze’s My Grandmother (Moia babushka, 1929), a brilliant satire on the Soviet bureaucratic machine. The Artistic Political Council within GRK imposed the ban rightly considering the film to be anti-Soviet and likely to engender a negative attitude towards Soviet bureaucracy and power in general.3 However, most of the foreign and Soviet films were banned not due to their political content, but on a basis that they contained what the Bolsheviks regarded as ‘mindless’ romantic or adventure stories. Many leading Bolsheviks, who controlled the structures of censorship, felt obliged to denounce popular entertainment films. They referred to American and Soviet popular movies as ‘trivial’, ‘vulgar’, ‘banal’ and even ‘harmful’. This language, which was often highly condescending, revealed a profound insecurity integral to the Bolshevik defensive mentality which recognised that the broad mass of ordinary people found their political world rather tedious and much preferred entertainment films to the idea of participating in anti-capitalist political debates. The revolutionaries had a profound need for acceptance by the people they claimed to represent. However, they mistakenly believed that they could achieve acceptance by ‘civilising’ the masses and revealing to them exactly what life should be about. Nevertheless, up until 1935, many older foreign films remained in circulation, which indicated that Glavrepertkom was not always consistent in its decisions. These included foreign romantic films and dramas, such as the German hit Moulin Rouge (1928), starring Olga Chekhova, or Chicago (1927) a crime story about a heavy-drinking young woman called Roxie Hart who murders her boyfriend after he leaves her, but somehow avoids conviction. Given that numerous films were being and had been banned for containing crime or decadent images of bourgeois life, it is hard to see how some of these films were distinguished from the others as being worthy of distribution. The need to make basic financial gains for the cinema industry was a central factor and still influenced decisions in the 1930s.

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However, this inconsistency in cinema censorship helped fuel the calls for tighter controls and led to a prevailing trend to gradually eliminate the foreign and popular as well as the nationally distinctive from the Soviet film repertoire. From 1933 onwards GRK became increasingly insignificant. GRK was renamed the GURK (see above) in 1933. During the mid-1930s, however, the new body became a rubber stamp for the Orgburo’s cinema committee and Stalin. In 1936 GRK, as it was still known, was absorbed into the Komitet po Delam Iskusstv (All-Union Committee for the Arts), before then becoming part of the Cinema Committee structure established in 1938.4

A Russian version of an advert for the foreign film Moulin Rouge (1929).

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The Bolsheviks saw their political outlook not only as a means of mass liberation, but also as a means of education and improvement. Marxism placed great emphasis on the intellectual liberation of the ordinary person from the drudgery and monotony of life under capitalism. The Bolsheviks wanted to provide audiences with films that dealt with real political and social issues. The elevated Marxist ideal of an emancipated mass suggested that ordinary people could potentially become more cultured and leave behind ‘vulgar’ forms of entertainment. Believing in the certainty of their mission, the Bolsheviks were sure that, given the opportunity, the masses would rather watch politicised films that dealt with serious issues rather than thrillers or detective stories. Following the Party conference on cinema in 1928, it seemed that this myth had been dispelled and a new direction had been taken, which accepted the people’s love of entertainment and sought to combine this with politics. But, in reality, prejudices against mass cinema were enduring and despite the plan to merge entertainment with politics, the latter was often, if not always, given priority. The Role of ARRK/ODSK and Worker Audiences ARRK (The Association of Workers of Revolutionary Cinematography), initially known as ARK (The Association of Revolutionary Cinematography), was originally intended to be a professional association for the cinema industry and, despite its increasing politicisation towards the end of the 1920s, it was not an official censorship organ. Nonetheless, after each discussion of a given film within the organisation, the leadership of ARRK would pass a resolution approving it, suggesting possible changes or condemning the work. In practice ARRK did not have the ultimate power to censor the films and film-makers did not have to take heed of the body’s proposals; nevertheless, ARRK had connections with Glavrepertkom and its members occasionally attended ARRK meetings, which meant that ARRK resolutions could potentially influence the fate of any particular film. The organisation of film screenings for workers by ARRK and ODSK (Society of Friends of Soviet Cinema) allowed members of the general public the opportunity to play their role in the censorship system. In February 1930, senior members of ARRK gathered to discuss Lev Sheffer’s film Two Mothers (Dve materi, 1931), which dealt with the issue of child abandonment and the rights of mothers and women. The director of the First Moscow Studio had withdrawn the film before even GRK had the opportunity to examine it. Later, when the question of making changes to

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the film arose, various worker audiences watched the existing version. The response seems to have been mixed; some heavily criticised the film, others called for it to be banned, while one worker’s club unanimously agreed that it should not be banned.5 Eventually, the film remained on the shelf. It is possible that the negative reactions among workers may have had some influence on this decision. Yet the reaction of workers was not always predictable or did not always correspond to the political views of organisation or cinema administration heads. In May and August 1930, ODSK arranged viewings of Pavel Armand’s Ashamed to Say (Stydno skazat, 1930), which dealt with life in the navy. The film did receive criticisms, such as its failure to show socialist competition in practice. On the whole though, the film was praised for its frank references to the illnesses suffered at sea and its clarity on the ‘struggle for the new reality’. In contrast, Soiuzkino condemned the film as one of several ‘ideologically harmful movies alien to the proletariat’ that had been produced by the First Moscow Studio and were subsequently banned.6 This clearly suggests that, generally, the views of workers had little significance when it came to the final decision on the fate of a film. During the early 1930s the role of ARRK and ODSK started to decline and, by the end of 1934, both organisations were effectively finished. This meant an end to the worker viewings that had taken place in previous years. Indeed, throughout the 1930s ‘the worker audience’ would be carefully selected to give its public approval in the official press to films that the Party, government and cinema administration considered ideal for mass consumption, such as Chapaev or Lenin in October (Lenin v oktiabre, 1937). Therefore, the possibility of censorship by the ordinary worker was shortlived. Studio/Trust Censorship Censorship at the studio level was imposed in a variety of ways. One of these was through the introduction in 1929 of Party representatives or ‘cells’ as they became known. Between 1929 and the mid-1930s the political impact of these cells was rather insignificant. This began to change in 1933 when the Party cells in the studios gained the right to discuss film scripts before they went into production. This right was exercised by the Leningrad studio cell in 1933 when it asked the writers of the film Friends (Podrugi, 1935) to make some changes to their script before going into production. Towards the end of the decade the Party had gained a stronger foothold in the studios. At this stage, the activity of the Party cells was particularly concerned with ‘educating’ the artistic

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personnel and encouraging them to believe in and become part of the communist cause. But its censorship function had also become more noticeable. By the end of the 1930s Party cells and their representatives became involved in the production process itself, examining filmed material at different stages of production and offering advice to the film-makers.7 Between 1929 and 1931 the first place for examining script proposals was the script department of each studio, which could independently order scripts from writers or take them from the artistic production department of the main cinema administration, Sovkino and then Soiuzkino. These departments were not official censorship organs, but sometimes they rejected scripts on ideological grounds, which meant in practice they did, to some extent, contribute to political control over Soviet cinema. The departments predominantly consisted of directors, scriptwriters, cameramen, critics, writers and cinema journalists. They would be presented with a basic idea for a script and had to decide whether or not to pursue the idea. If allowed to proceed, a script would then have to be passed by the script department before being developed further. Required changes or rejections were issued on the basis of a range of factors, including poorly developed central characters, lack of clarity in plots, or an absence of dramatic skill or tension. Other scripts were challenged for purely political reasons due to their minimal concern with social/class conflicts or ideological matters. The script department was monitored by an artistic bureau which met four times a month, examined new scripts and could also decide whether or not a project could go ahead. It regulated the work of the script department and the script workshop, overseeing its implementation of plans and the type of creative personnel being attracted to work at a given studio.8 One example of a script rejected on political grounds was Viktor Gusev’s and Mikhail Romm’s script The Conveyor Belt of Death eventually made into a film by Ivan Pyrev in 1933 after fourteen changes to the original scenario. In 1931, however, the first Moscow film studio was dissatisfied with the script, as it did not show the viewer the ‘difficult but true path, in this case, towards a global October’. In the early 1930s, rejection of a script at one studio on political grounds did not necessary prevent the realisation of an idea. Viktor Shklovsky had presented a script entitled Home and Community to the same script department in 1930. A certain Mikhailov rejected the proposal for being too experimental and for having a Formalist character. During the cultural revolution Mikhailov felt that ‘such experiments are unjustified’.9 Shklovsky’s script was based

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on Dostoevsky’s Notebooks from the House of the Dead (Zapiski iz mertvogo doma, 1862) and sought to explore the writer’s life using sound in a highly experimental form. Shklovsky changed the name of the script several times eventually calling it The House of the Dead (Mertvyi dom, 1932). The script was rejected on four other occasions. However, in the early to midthirties, the existence of the Mezhrabpomfilm studio still provided an alternative for writers and film-makers. Despite the public denunciations of Shklovsky as a Formalist, the studio accepted his script and entrusted the film to the director Vasili Fyodorov.10 Regardless of measures, such as the unsuccessful establishment of artistic councils in the studios in 1929, which were created to improve and monitor the ideological and artistic quality of scripts and films already in production, the script department remained, for some time, the most important body responsible for scrutinising, accepting and rejecting proposals.11 Yet, by 1938, the script departments had become fully integrated into an endless, centralised system of official checks which would have to pass through various departments of the cinema administration as well as the industry chairman. In the latter part of the 1930s the senior leadership of many of the Soviet studios began to adopt a stronger censorship role. This type of censorship was essentially an insurance policy for studio administrators who knew that the submission of unsound ideological films in a general atmosphere of condemnation would inevitably lead to dismissals. This sort of pre-emptive ban took place in all the Soviet republics. In the mid1930s the Ukrainian studios had several of their films banned. Some of these bans came from senior Party organs, but the Ukrainian film Trust, Ukrainfilm, responsible for the Kiev and Odessa studios, issued its own bans. One of the most notable cases was that of Abram Room’s A Strict Youth. On 10 August 1936, Ukrainfilm issued a ban on the film. The film was forbidden on the basis of its allegedly ‘pretentious’ dialogue on equality and levelling, its claim that the intelligentsia would wield power in a future classless society, the suggestion that suffering and the fear of death are intrinsic to both capitalist and communist societies, its portrayal of a weak Soviet youth, a central character alien to Soviet reality and a Formalist deviance from socialist realism.12 As was common, this ban was a pre-emptive reaction to the campaign against Formalism that had begun earlier in the year. The trust knew that the Ukrainian film Prometheus had been used as the first example of Formalism by the authorities in the 1936 campaign. Given the content of A Strict Youth, the trust knew that a ban was necessary to protect themselves from potentially serious

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ramifications. They also defended their own positions by making a scapegoat out of and sacking the head of the Kiev studio artistic production department, Lazurin and other studio administrators, who were blamed for the production of several ideologically suspect films. This sort of pre-emptive action on a local level echoes the actions of central administrators who tried to defend their own positions by appearing to be the most effective implementers of Bolshevik ideology. Banning films to defend one’s own position of power, as well communist ideology, was thus not confined to the upper reaches of power. On the contrary, such methods of self-defence were applied on every level of the cinema industry from the local to the central. The Cinema Administration and its Leaders In the 1930s the consecutive Soviet cinema administrative bodies and their chairmen became increasingly involved in the censorship process. Once again, rigid ideological views played a significant role. As we have seen, during his years in charge of the industry, Boris Shumiatsky was personally involved in preventing the release of several films or demanding changes to many others. This involvement ranged from forcing the director, Yakov Protazanov, to make a minor change to the end of his film Girl Without a Dowry (Bespridannitsa, 1936), to outright bans of notable films such as Ivan Kavaleridze’s Prometheus. In the latter case, Shumiatsky was behind GUKF’s ban on the film, although he sought Stalin’s approval on this decision. But Shumiatsky was subject to the same pressures as the trusts and studios during ideological campaigns which he helped to generate. Thus, while his stoppage of Eisenstein’s film Bezhin Meadow during production was clearly based on ideological grounds, it was inevitable during the purges when criticism against Shumiatsky was increasing. His successors were subject to similar difficulties. During the campaign of 1940–1941 against ideologically unreliable films, Ivan Bolshakov was forced to stop the production of seven films under enormous pressure from above.13 Thus while men such as Shumiatsky and Bolshakov were committed Bolsheviks and often imposed bans on the basis of their own narrow political views, self-preservation was always an important motivating factor. The Orgburo From the mid-1930s other agencies became more involved in censorship. As we have seen, many of the official government decrees pointed to a

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gradual development of ideological control over the industry. Nonetheless, in the spring of 1933, the Party’s Orgburo of the Central Committee established a new centralised cinema commission, which was intended to control all film projects from the early script and thematic stages through to the production and release. On 7 July 1933 the Orgburo issued its own decree establishing the membership of the new commission. It included the head of Agitprop, Alexei Stetsky, as its chairman, several Party ideologues, including Andrei Bubnov and Sergei Dinamov as well as the head of the cinema industry, Boris Shumiatsky. The decree stated that ‘not one theme can be put into production without the prior sanction of the Central Committee and not one film can be released without being viewed by this commission’. The decree also instructed the Central Committee’s Kultprop department to select a group of Party writers and propagandists to review scripts.14 The new Orgburo cinema commission was an extremely powerful censorship organ, providing a strong ideological ingredient to accompany the government’s central concern with the economic development of the cinema industry. Its main functions were to give approval to scripts, to demand changes to scripts or films already in production and to ban completed films that were considered to be ideologically or artistically defective. Furthermore, due to the rather slow changeover of cinema administration from Soiuzkino to GUKF, the commission adopted other functions, such as compilation and amendment of studios’ thematic plans as well as the summoning of film-makers to discuss potential projects and necessary changes to certain films.15 In its short life of just over one and a half years, the cinema commission actively examined scripts. Sometimes the commission would ask filmmakers to make changes before allowing ideas to reach the production stage. Such changes ranged from the demand for entire sections to be removed to more minor alterations concerning, for example, the title of a given film. In terms of outright bans of potential scripts or finished products, the commission acted in a relatively restrained manner. It did reject some scripts and ban several films, including a proposed script for a film entitled Chameleon (Khameleon, 1934) written for Yakov Protazanov and Lev Kuleshov’s Theft of Sight (Krazha zreniia, 1934). The Orgburo’s cinema commission was often ineffective at taking on board the aim of the ‘cinema for the millions’ agenda and, as a result, came into conflict with Shumiatsky’s cinema administration. On 28 July 1934, Shumiatsky wrote a letter to Stalin complaining that members of

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the cinema commission, including Bubnov and Antipov, had described the film The Happy Guys as ‘counterrevolutionary’, ‘worthless’, ‘hooligan’ in nature and ‘insincere throughout’. Members of the commission demanded that entire parts of the film be cut. Once again the Bolshevik impulse to attack popular entertainment films threatened the release of yet another film. GRK, now under Bubnov’s control, had also seized parts of the film bound for an international film festival. Shumiatsky, who knew that Stalin approved of the film, asked for him to intervene. The ban was subsequently lifted and the film was released.16 This is one of a few examples where Shumiatsky managed to defend his own position of power as well as the entertainment element in the ‘cinema for the millions’ agenda. Nonetheless, this was becoming an increasingly difficult task. Kultpros Stalin’s dislike of the Orgburo cinema commission may not have only been because he regarded it as a rival to his own censorship authority. It also seems likely that Stalin simply did not trust the members of the commission. It is noteworthy that most of the commission’s key members, including Stetsky, Bubnov, Dinamov and Kosior were all executed within a few years. On 25 December 1934, the Politburo decided to liquidate the commission, handing over the duties of thematic plan and script guidance, as well as decisions on film release, to the Central Committee’s Kultprosvetrabota (cultural and enlightenment work) department. The evidence suggests that Stalin instigated the move, and Stetsky gave his official support (not having much choice), but one of Stalin’s close associates, Andrei Zhdanov, played an important supporting role in drafting the decree.17 This shift of political control over cinema was highly significant, as Zhdanov would become an increasingly influential figure towards the end of the decade. The reorganisation of Party censorship over cinema into Kultpros was intended to tighten ideological control, yet its functions were largely the same as the Orgburo’s cinema commission. The new body took the defence of Soviet history and its leaders to new levels. In January 1937, it banned the release of Yuli Raizman’s The Last Night (Posledniaia noch, 1937) due to the fact that the film did not show the ‘role of Stalin in the struggle for October’. The Kultpros department was distressed that ‘Stalin’s name was not even mentioned’ in the film. The body decreed that the movie could not be released in its current form and that GUK should think about possible changes to the film, given that the administration was

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responsible for the movie’s ‘defects’.18 The film’s January release was delayed until 2 March 1937, when it appeared on screens throughout the USSR. But, during the intervening period, it is clear that Raizman made minimal changes to the film. The final cut included no material on Stalin’s role in the October Revolution or even a mention of his name at an opportune moment. The difficulty of making changes to this film was that it could not be done easily. The point of The Last Night was to tell the story of the Revolution through the eyes of ordinary people rather than glorified leaders and thus any attempt to introduce the Bolshevik elite would have necessitated a serious structural change or indeed a complete remaking of the film. Nonetheless, this was a warning that censorship was now taking the matter of protecting political mythology to extremes. The obsession with Stalin and other Bolshevik leaders appearing in Soviet feature films, which they often did in the late 1930s, showed that revolutionary political megalomania had reached almost comical levels and that the claims of blending entertainment with politics were increasingly difficult to substantiate. Stalin as the Censor-in-Chief Stalin’s public references to the role of cinema were quite rare. Yet, if we go beyond his political pronouncements, we find that during his long period as the leader of the USSR, Stalin did in fact show an unusually strong interest in cinema. To some extent, this interest was based on a personal desire for light entertainment. Stalin would finish work at eleven or twelve o’clock at night, often after lengthy Politburo meetings, and would frequently ask the head of the cinema industry if they had something ‘cheerful’ for him to watch. The chief administrator would usually bring a selection of two or three films, including new Soviet product or a foreign film. In the early 1930s Stalin, alongside other members of the Politburo, watched the films at the cinema administration headquarters on Malyi Gnezdnikovsky Lane near the Kremlin. By the middle of the decade a luxuriously appointed small cinema had been installed on the first floor of the Kremlin Palace. The viewings and subsequent discussions were lavished with Georgian wines and snacks, and would last until two or three o’clock in the morning. However, the significance of these viewings went far beyond Stalin’s wish to be entertained after work. They became a central part of the Soviet system for the control of film output. In effect Stalin became the chief censor for the industry. During the 1930s Stalin proposed ideas for films. He sometimes demanded that specific changes were made to verbal or

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visual aspects of movies, and gave his approval to many films; he also banned certain films, which he judged to be unsuitable for mass consumption.19 The earliest record of Stalin’s involvement in determining film content can be traced as far back as 1927. During the final editing of Sergei Eisenstein’s October (Oktiabr, 1927), Stalin allegedly told the director that, given the efforts of the Trotskyite opposition to fight against Soviet power, the scenes showing Trotsky’s involvement in the October Revolution would have to be cut. Eisenstein cut three scenes featuring Trotsky while two others were re-edited.20 Notwithstanding this early intervention, Stalin only really became a consistent censor of films in the early to mid-1930s. In 1933, the young Leningrad-based directors Alexander Zarkhi and Joseph Kheifits completed their film My Homeland (Moia rodina). The film, which tells of the coming to class consciousness of a young Chinese man, was released on the 23 February 1933. Initially, the film was received very well by the cinema industry, including Boris Shumiatsky and the press. Nevertheless, in late March the film was banned by GRK. Then on 3 April 1933, the newspaper Pravda publicly announced the ban. One of Stalin’s projectionists recalled how, after watching the film, he heard Stalin dictate to Kaganovich: ‘write this down…the film My Homeland is to be banned as harmful’. The Pravda article repeated Stalin’s words, indicating that he was the main source of the change in attitude towards the film and its ban. Stalin was not satisfied with the depiction of the Red Army in the film. It is highly probable that My Homeland was the first film that Stalin himself banned outright.21 One of the most remarkable cases of Stalin’s involvement concerns the film Shchors (1939), directed by Alexander Dovzhenko. The relationship between Stalin and Dovzhenko can be traced back to 1928 after the release of the director’s film Arsenal. Stalin liked the film but the Ukrainian authorities thought otherwise and began to harass Dovzhenko. The situation deteriorated after the release of Earth (Zemlia, 1930) and Ivan (1932), which were heavily criticised and, by this stage, Dovzhenko was in danger of arrest. However, Stalin played his part in preventing this and convincing Dovzhenko to move to Moscow in 1933. From this point on, Stalin formally became a protective father figure/teacher to Dovzhenko who would meet the leader more often than any other filmmaker in the Soviet Union.22 Stalin recognised Dovzhenko’s talent and exploited the director’s position of obligation to the leader by compelling him to make political films in support of the communist system. After Dovzhenko completed Aerograd (1935), Stalin proposed the idea of making a Ukrainian Chapaev to the director, based on the civil war commander

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Nikolai Shchors. In 1937 Dovzhenko recalled how Stalin told him that the project was merely a proposal: You are a free man. If you want to make Shchors, do so – but, if you have other plans, do something else. Don’t be embarrassed. I summoned you so that you should know this.23

Given that Stalin had already saved Dovzhenko from the wrath of the Ukrainian police, the leader clearly expected that the director would make the film. Predictably, Dovzhenko carried out Stalin’s proposal. Nevertheless, after researching his new theme, Dovzhenko found that Shchors was less of a heroic figure than Stalin believed or wanted him to be. Consequently, after watching Dovzhenko’s first attempt at the film, Stalin wrote a letter to Shumiatsky pointing to several shortcomings in the movie: Comrade Shumiatsky! 1) Shchors has turned out rather crude and uncultivated. You need to restore Shchors’s true physiognomy. 2) Bozhenko did not entirely work out. The writer, clearly, sympathises more with Bozhenko than with Shchors. 3) Shchors’s military staff is not visible. Why? 4) It cannot be that Shchors did not have a tribunal, in either event, he would not have begun to shoot people for no reason (the snuff box and so on). 5) It is not good that Shchors looks less cultivated and cruder than Chapaev. This is not natural. J. Stalin 9/7/36.24

These examples reveal the extent to which Stalin became involved in not only censoring, but also, sometimes, making his own contributions to films. Throughout the 1930s Stalin demanded changes and additions to a whole series of films, including documentaries, placing him at the centre of the censorship process. However, while the extent of Stalin’s involvement in examining films was unusually high, there has been a general tendency to regard Stalin as an all-seeing-eye, capable of exercising complete, efficient control over the cinema industry and its films. This has led to the unjustified assumption that Stalin was always in control of the content of every film. It is important to point out that Stalin’s control over cinema was not complete or systematic. There were many examples of controversial films that were

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released for one or several weeks before Stalin had seen them. As we have seen, the film My Homeland was on release for several weeks before Stalin saw and banned it. Ivan Kavaleridze’s Prometheus was shown in Leningrad for one week before Shumiatsky showed the film to Stalin, who agreed that it should be banned due to its alleged historical distortions on its depiction of the Caucasus battles of the 19th century. Mikhail Dubson’s Large Wings was on general release for nearly three weeks before being withdrawn from cinemas due to its ‘difficult’ content about an aircraft designer who witnesses the crash of one of his own planes and then attempts to commit suicide, but lives on and continues to work with the support of the father of one of the crash victims. Finally, Alexander Stolper and Boris Ivanov’s The Law of Life (Zakon zhizni), an essentially anti-communist film, was on release for ten days before hastily being withdrawn due to its depiction of a depoliticised fun-loving Soviet youth who are less than interested in Marxism.25 It is clear that Stalin did not see these films before their release, indicating that it was not considered essential that films should always initially be passed by the leader. When the head of cinema brought films to him for viewing, he tended to select the best of industry product. This was more about entertaining Stalin than asking for approval on each and every film. So, in effect, there were many cases where thousands of spectators were given the opportunity to watch films that either challenged or did not fit into the Party vision of Soviet cinema. Nonetheless, while it is important that we take into account the limitations of Stalin’s censorship role, we must acknowledge the fact that, overall, his influence on Soviet film was disproportionately high. Again when we look at the content of his decisions, it is evident that the leader himself was also motivated by a mentality of protecting and defending the politically sacred. His desire to see Shchors portrayed in the same heroic light as Chapaev did not merely reflect a wish for Soviet cinema to produce effective propaganda. Stalin and most of his Bolshevik comrades genuinely believed in the greatness of Bolshevik heroism as part of the struggle to achieve the communist paradise. It is thus unsurprising that in every decision Stalin made on changing film content, there is a strong sense that the material does live up to some form of political perfection or unwavering greatness. The Politburo of the Central Committee The Party’s senior policy-making body, the Politburo of the Central Committee also played its role in the censorship process. As with many of the other institutions that we have looked at, the Politburo could both

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demand changes to films as well as imposing bans on them. In 1934 it issued a decree requiring the cinema administration to impose a series of changes to the documentary film Cheliuskin (1934). Three years later it decreed an official ban on Sergei Eisenstein’s film Bezhin Meadow. In fact the Politburo was simply issuing decrees on behalf of Central Committee members who had responsibility for cinema or other individuals and Party organs. Stalin was responsible for the demand to make changes to Cheliuskin while Bezhin Meadow had effectively already been banned, following Boris Shumiatsky’s measure. The role of these occasional Politburo decrees was to give censorship decisions more authority than, say, an Orgburo or Kultpros decree may have had.26 The Politburo also issued decrees which established film monitoring commissions. For example, the establishment of a new commission in August 1940 was a clear reaction to events that had taken place earlier in the month. On 7 August 1940, Alexander Stolper and Boris Ivanov’s film The Law of Life was released throughout the RSFSR. The film was advertised in the general and cinema press as a film ‘about the love and friendship of Soviet youth’. It was in fact a film that criticised communist ideology and exposed the traditionally respected Komsomol secretary figure as corrupt and immoral. The release of the film revealed just how ineffective the elaborate system of censorship could be. The film passed through all the necessary checks, including the then head of the cinema commission and the judge responsible for sending many Old Bolsheviks to their deaths, Andrei Vyshinsky. The film also received approval from all the relevant departments of the cinema committee and its leader Ivan Bolshakov, as well as being accepted by the studio where it was made, Mosfilm. The work was only withdrawn on the tenth day of its release after an article appeared in the newspaper Pravda, condemning it as an ‘insincere film’. Subsequently, the Cinema Committee declared an official ban on the movie, which was then withdrawn from all theatres.27 As we have noted, flaws in the system of censorship were a constant feature during the previous decade. However, the fact that a film with strong anti-Soviet content had been both produced and released provoked a swift defensive reaction from the Party’s ideologues. The subsequent appointment of Andrei Zhdanov to the cinema commission was evidently a reaction to Vyshinsky’s blunder. From this point Zhdanov led a campaign to rid cinema of ideologically suspect films. Between the autumn of 1940 and the summer of 1941 Zhdanov’s cinema commission banned at least 17 feature films, most of which were considered to be politically defective in some way.

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Although censorship increased in the form of a series of reactions during the 1930s, certain types of ideologically protective decisions followed a similar pattern. As we have seen, among the most common reasons for films failing to live up to Bolshevik standards was the problem of supposedly trivial content. The consequence of this viewpoint was that many perfectly well-made films were caught up in the effort to make politics prevail over entertainment. Indeed, this anti-trivial motivation remained as strong as it had ever been by the end of the decade. A good illustration of this is one of the major films victimised by the ideological campaign which followed after The Law of Life. The Hearts of Four (Serdtsa chetyrekh, 1940), directed by Konstantin Yudin, was a benign romantic comedy banned by the Central Committee. Andrei Zhdanov was behind the ban and his assessment of the film sums up the extent to which the Bolsheviks were suspicious of popular entertainment: These attempts to amuse the public by means of falling in the water, splashing water in the face from wine glasses and so on. All these simple tricks are very trivial, they cannot rouse, they cannot inculcate enthusiasm. Then there is the general background of the comedy – in the film they love one another, then there is a change of roles – one loves another, then two are in love with the sister, then the roles change – this theme is fairly familiar and well known, and pretty well worn.28

The main characters from the film The Hearts of Four (1941).

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Zhdanov’s comments were soon followed by a Central Committee decree which banned the release of the film. The decree claimed that the film failed to ‘reflect Soviet reality, depicting the life of Soviet people as an idle, frivolous pastime’.29 As a result of the Bolshevik obsession with civilising the masses, many potentially popular films were banned. Indeed, the censors’ lack of flexibility in deciding what could and could not be shown was a tactical mistake. Films, such as The Hearts of Four, would have given the mass viewer both entertainment and a strong sense that everyday life in the USSR was perhaps more joyous than they thought. Conclusion The censorship regime enforced on Soviet cinema from 1929 onwards became more and more elaborate. After beginning with the official body GRK, censorship then developed a much more draconian character as special commissions and Stalin himself began to scrutinise scripts and films on a more regular basis. The most fundamental goal of censorship was to remove scripts or films that, even in the slightest way, challenged, questioned or ignored the Soviet view of reality in the 1930s or the ideological goals of communism. Such a goal was central to the legitimisation of that reality and those political ideals. We have seen that between 1929 and 1941 the censorship enacted by a whole range of agencies was sometimes very inconsistent and lacking in the ideological purpose outlined at the Party Conference on Cinema in 1928. We have also pointed out that, despite the terrible impact of censorship and its apparent ruthlessness, none of the mechanisms of control were as watertight as is often assumed. But the consequence of gaps in the net, however small, was the constant increase in ideological defensiveness year after year. The 1930s saw persistent institutional changes in terms of how censorship was controlled and each perceived failure at closing the ideological net simply helped reinforce the defence mechanisms. Moreover, we have argued that, this defensiveness manifested itself in the decisions themselves, Soviet film censorship was built upon the unstable foundations of Bolshevik insecurity and this was reflected in the patronising condemnation of popular entertainment movies and the simultaneous praise of Bolshevik heroes and leaders. The eventual result of reactions on institutional, collective and individual levels was that censorship played a big role, along with the other contributing factors, in undermining the very goal set out for Soviet

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cinema in the late 1920s: to reach the masses effectively through a wide variety of well-produced films that carefully combined entertainment and politics.

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CHAPTER 3

THE PURGES

T

he question of how violence and the purges affected Soviet cinema between the late 1920s and the end of the 1930s remains an area of research that has received relatively little treatment. Work carried out over the last twenty years has provided us with some idea of who the main victims were, especially between 1936 and 1938, and the reasoning behind their arrests. Nonetheless, post-Soviet Russian accounts of the purges do not make a distinction between the early and later purges and often assume that they always achieved their goals.1 We still lack a more empirical account, particularly of the period between 1929 and 1936, which might provide us with a better understanding of the real impact of the purges over these years. This chapter will attempt to address this issue and will also seek to identify some of the victims of the purges who, despite their importance for the Soviet film industry, have been omitted from previous accounts. Moreover, it will try to establish a more detailed understanding of the circumstances surrounding these arrests and, in some cases, executions. In this chapter it shall be argued that, with regard to the most significant artistic and administrative victims, the purges that took place between 1929 and 1936 had a limited impact. The cinema industry, which was in desperate need of qualified and experienced personnel, saw a recycling of specialists and adaptation to new conditions rather than a genuine purge. During the Great Terror the purges in cinema were much more ruthless and the number of arrests and executions escalated. By the late 1930s there was a backlash against the foreign influence in the cinema industry consistent with the Bolshevik defensive outlook. Film-makers and administrators were especially targeted for their foreign connections and their enthusiasm for a ‘Soviet Hollywood’. The later purges thus

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represented an attempt to ensure that the film industry remained truly Soviet from the principles of central planning to the content of its films. The Earlier Purges of Cinema, 1929–1936 The height of the early purges coincided with the ‘cultural revolution’ which began in 1928. The cultural revolution was essentially a form of revolutionary zeal whereby genuine socialism would at last be introduced to replace the relative cultural pluralism of the 1920s. In the cinema industry this involved a struggle against perceived class enemies and ‘bourgeois’ specialists, and a concerted effort to enable workers and peasants to occupy all the significant artistic and administrative posts. One of the central methods of achieving this would be the purging of ‘undesirable’ elements from their positions. While these purges reached a high point during 1929–1931, they continued over the next few years propelled by broader political events, such as the Kirov murder in 1934, which would eventually escalate into the Great Terror of 1936–1938. At first glance it might seem that the purge commissions of the earlier years were fairly thorough in their scrutiny and actions within Soviet cinema organisations. The procedure for each commission would be to spend several days in a studio or factory to examine the production process, assessing the extent to which orders were being carried out. Every department or branch of the cinema organisation would be covered, from the production department to the accounts section. Individuals would be questioned and asked to fill in forms about their background. The commission would then establish areas that were ‘lagging behind’, before proceeding with a purge of the organisation in these areas.2 In the years 1929–1936 purges included a whole series of possible sanctions that could be taken against cinema personnel. These measures were fairly similar to those applied across the board to all the affected organisations. Perceived class enemies could be arrested, imprisoned, exiled, sent to labour camps or shot, although executions, as we shall see, were not the norm in the early years and the Gulag system was not commonly filled with cinema personnel at this time. Those who were Party members had their cards withdrawn which was tantamount to expulsion. Such expulsion could also lead to the loss of employment and source of income, their homes, and the cessation of certain civil rights, such as the right to vote. During 1929–1936 the majority of personnel, especially artistic figures, were not members of the Communist Party. Although

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this meant that they had no Party card to lose, they were still subject to all the other aforementioned measures. The purges were ongoing during the 1930s. However, it is important to distinguish between the earlier and later periods. It is true that some figures, either directly working in cinema or at least associated with it, experienced terrible lasting hardships resulting from repressive measures taken in the years before 1936. One important administrative figure arrested in 1930 was Martemian Riutin, the short-lived chairman of Soiuzkino who had been appointed by Stalin. Riutin was a fairly outspoken figure who criticised the leader and, it appears, had a disagreement with him at his dacha in Sochi in the autumn of 1930. Stalin ordered Riutin’s arrest and the cinema leader was arrested after returning from a holiday in October of that year. A Soiuzkino directive confirming his dismissal from the post of chairman appeared on 23 October. Harsh punishments and shootings were far rarer in 1930 than in 1937, however, and Riutin was released. In 1932 Riutin became involved in the production and distribution of an anti-Stalinist programme among members of the Central Committee in which he accused Stalin of destroying the Revolution in favour of his drive for personal power. For this Riutin spent over four years in prison, before eventually being executed in 1937.3 A further instance of an earlier purge, this time of artistic figures working in cinema, is the case of Alexander Gavronsky, a less well-known director with a theatrical background. Gavronsky, who was from a wealthy Moscow family, had studied in Switzerland before returning to work in his home city, initially in various Moscow theatres and then, after 1927, as a film director. Certainly, his period abroad would not have helped his cause, yet the central reason for his arrest on 4 January 1934 seems to have been his openly anti-Soviet beliefs. In 1931 the OGPU (Joint State Political Directorate) made a note of Gavronsky’s comments that the country was in a dreadful state and cinema personnel were losing motivation due to the demand for the same themes of class struggle and the glory of the Party. Gavronsky described his latest film The Dark Reign (Temnoe tsarstvo, 1931) as a counterrevolutionary work. Following his arrest in 1934, Gavronsky spent nearly 25 years in the Komi camps. He was released only at the end of 1957 due to ill health and died three months later.4 Nikolai Erdman, who was arrested along with Vladimir Mass, his coauthor of The Happy Guys on the set of that film along with another writer, Emil German, had become increasingly involved in scriptwriting for Soviet

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films. The men were arrested on 11 October 1933, for the ‘dissemination of counterrevolutionary literary works’ and were all sentenced to three years’ exile in grim Siberian outposts. In particular, Erdman was forced to confess that he was the author of a series of ‘anti-Soviet and erotic fables’ for which he had deliberately organised distribution in Moscow and other towns. After his sentence, Erdman was released but was not allowed to live permanently in Moscow until 1949. Despite this formal restriction, Erdman resumed his career as a cinema scriptwriter. Along with Mikhail Volpin, Erdman wrote Volga Volga (1938) and The Old Jockey (Staryi naezdnik, 1940), as well as many other successful scripts in subsequent years. During the war he even worked as a literary consultant for the NKVD ensemble of Song and Dance.5 However, it is true to say that, on the whole, the earlier purges were different in method and outcome from those of 1936–1938 and were hugely different in terms of the number of cinema personnel who were to fall victim. The typical victims of the early purges were often administrative heads of departments, who would be considered responsible for poor performance in their given area. At Mezhrabpomfilm in 1929 it was declared that Vladimir Shveitser, the head of the script department, was to be sacked by order of local Party and political control organs for being ‘improvident’ and for forming a union with ‘anti-Soviet elements’. Also at Mezhrabpomfilm the well-known actor Porfiri Podobed was under secret police observation as a potential ‘enemy of the people’. Yet both men were left alone and pursued successful careers in the industry working with key directors such as Yakov Protazanov and Konstantin Eggert.6 Secret police and purge commission indecisiveness was also evident during the initial purge of Sovkino in July 1929. A purge commission complained that, despite its decrees on the dismissal of Goldin (the head of the trade section) and Bufeev (the head of sales), neither man was dismissed and the departments in question were suffering as a result.7 The indecisiveness of the purge commissions and the secret police in cinema up until 1936 is more clearly illustrated in the case of a higherprofile purge victim. Mikhail Doller had worked in cinema since 1923 and became known for his work as assistant to Vsevolod Pudovkin on the films Mother (Mat, 1926) and The End of Saint Petersburg (Konets SanktPeterburga, 1927). In 1929 he was caught up in the campaign to rid cinema of the class enemy. On 8 July 1929 Doller wrote a letter to the administration of Mezhrabpomfilm, indicating that he had been accused

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of selecting class enemies to work on a recent film project and that Doller knew the individuals in question as well as their social origins. Doller described the accusation as a ‘complete lie’, pointing out that he selected the personnel for purely artistic reasons.8 On 26 August 1929 the Mezhrabpomfilm administration responded to Doller’s plea for help with a letter to the secretary of the Krasnaia Presnia district committee in Moscow, concerning the position of Doller and two other workers. The letter noted that while Doller’s removal had already been decreed, there would be dire consequences, in terms of film completion, if the committee did not reconsider its decision on the production of Pudovkin’s latest ‘highly responsible’ film. The OGPU gave in to the pleas and Doller rejoined the film crew in September 1929.9 Yet, despite the worrying situation Doller found himself in, the attempt to purge him was not renewed. In fact Doller went on to lead an apparently normal career in film throughout the somewhat abnormal 1930s, working as a co-director with Pudovkin on all of his major productions. Ironically, a Soviet cinema encyclopaedia later described the main talent of Doller as his ‘ability to form an actors’ ensemble and select types for films’.10 Although artistic personnel were victimised in the early period of purges and later during the period of the Great Purge, administrative personnel were often given more attention by the secret police. In 1929 Moisei Aleinikov, the director of Mezhrabpomfilm, was stripped of his voting rights ‘as a former participant of the artistic collective “Rus”’. As with Doller, Aleinikov refused to accept the decision and wrote a letter to the Central Electoral Commission pointing out that the artistic collective ‘Rus’ was not of a capitalist nature, and had a sound ideological ethos that served as ‘a powerful weapon of propaganda of our cinema in the West’.11 In March 1930, Aleinikov, along with other senior administrators, was purged from his directorial position at Mezhrabpomfilm and regarded as a class enemy who had no place in Soviet cinema. Nonetheless, Aleinikov was clearly valued too much by figures within the industry, who directly defied their political masters. In 1931 a commission on the purge of Soiuzkino expressed indignation that Aleinikov, ‘removed from Mezhrabpomfilm for carrying out an ideologically harmful policy and producing films for the petty bourgeoisie and capitalists of the west’, had subsequently received a senior position as the deputy leader of the production department of sound cinema at Soiuzkino. Indeed, Aleinikov’s deputy, Grigori Arustanov, was also purged at the same time, yet he too was able to re-establish himself at the Azerkino studio in Baku where he

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had worked in the 1920s.12 Subsequently, far from being ousted once more, Aleinikov was to maintain a strong and respected influence in Soiuzkino and Soviet cinema generally and even headed commissions investigating production problems at Soiuzkino’s first film factory.13 Aleinikov seemed to be able to adapt to changing and difficult circumstances, channelling his pre-Revolutionary commercial approach into the ‘cinema for the millions’ of the 1930s.14 A further interesting example reveals how it was possible for leading industry figures to survive at this time. Anatoli Danashevsky, a reputable administrator at Soiuzkino in charge of the building of the future Mosfilm studio, was accused of sabotage and sentenced to execution in June 1931. On hearing of Danashevsky’s arrest, the American writer Upton Sinclair wrote a letter to Stalin in which he defended Danashevsky as a man committed to Soviet cinema and the USSR. Stalin replied to Sinclair, stating: ‘If you insist, I can apply for amnesty to the senior government body’. After Stalin’s request, the Politburo made a recommendation to the OGPU to release Danashevsky and send him out of the USSR, as he had originally come from America. However, the secret police were, again, more lenient in practice and Danashevsky was permitted to stay in the Soviet Union. He continued to work in cinema and soon became director of the Belgoskino studio. Danashevsky died in 1935 from an unrelated illness.15 The Purges of ARRK, ODSK and the Cinema Institute ARK was an organisation of professional film-makers, administrators and journalists established in February 1924. In the organisation’s founding declaration, the members emphasised the society’s fundamental role in creating a revolutionary cinema to ‘meet the ideological and artistic needs of the proletariat’.16 In reality there was much ambiguity as to what constituted ‘a revolutionary cinema’. Over half of the association’s membership was composed of Communist Party members, nevertheless, the organisation was characterised by a pluralism of political and artistic views until the late 1920s. The association’s reputation as a home of debate and argument exposed it to increasing attacks from critics who supported the narrow proletarianisation programme of the forthcoming cultural revolution.17 Indeed, in a superficial effort to prove its proletarian credentials, the organisation was renamed ARRK (see above) in 1928. Nonetheless, by mid-1929 it was clear that ARRK would soon be subjected to the politically motivated purges that were taking place throughout the industry.

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It must be pointed out that exclusions were not an unusual phenomenon for other reasons. Many members of ARRK, including Vsevolod Pudovkin, Ivan Pyrev and Abram Room, were excluded for simply failing to pay their membership fees or for lack of activity.18 The main purges of ARRK did not begin until 1930. However, the first targets were picked out towards the end of 1929. Vladimir Sillov who was the head of the script section of ARRK and a consultant at Sovkino was accused of being a Formalist and for harbouring a condescending attitude towards Boris Svetozarov’s film Tanka the Bar Girl (Tanka traktirshchitsa, 1929) and mass taste in general. Despite Sillov’s efforts to repent, and his description of Formalism as ‘reactionary’, he was purged from the organisation.19 However, Sillov’s position became more serious as he was arrested by the OGPU in January 1930 then, on 13 February 1930, he was sentenced to execution on the basis of alleged spying and counterrevolutionary propaganda. Later that year a lesser-known director and journalist, Anatoli Ardatov, was also given a death sentence based on similar counterrevolutionary charges, and in early 1931, Anton Pazin, an artist based at Vostokfilm, was arrested and, three years later, he was executed on the grounds of spying.20 The Sillov, Ardatov and Pazin cases show that, while executions were less common for cinema industry figures at this time, they did take place. Further purges began in February 1930 and the process continued until the end of April, yet they made a relatively minor impact on the organisation. The fact that these early purges of ARRK were mild was confirmed by renewed attacks on the organisation that appeared in the cinema press in the summer of that year, accusing the body of defending Formalism and its theoreticians. This led to a further purge in November and December of 1930. In January 1931, an ARRK meeting was called to discuss the conclusions of the purge commission. Although the work of the commission was subject to some criticism, the gathering concluded that the purge had broadly been effective. On this occasion the purge had been far more rigorously implemented. Of the 428 members 40 per cent had been removed from the organisation. Those purged included a large number of actors, who were considered to be especially inactive and alien to the organisation’s proletarian ethos.21 Again though, the effect on careers was limited. For instance, Antonina Kudriavsteva was among the many actors purged from the organisation in 1930. This did not prevent her from establishing a career at Lenfilm as one of the leading directors of children’s films during the 1930s. Indeed, the main overall

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effect of the ARRK purges was not the strengthening of its communist credentials. The organisation never achieved its goal of attracting a strong proletarian membership. Instead, the purges simply weakened the body and helped to facilitate its subsequent demise. As well as directors, such as Boris Svetozarov, who still managed to forge a career in documentary film, the purges also affected cinema journalists who were closely associated with ARRK, including Mikhail Shneider who also lost his job as editor of the cinema journal Kino-Front, Ippolit Sokolov, Khrisanf Khersonsky and the writer and critic Viktor Shklovsky.22 Yet the purges failed permanently to remove any of these important figures from the cinema industry. Shneider and Sokolov continued to work as journalists in the area of cinema, albeit less frequently than in the 1920s. Khersonsky continued to work as a respected critic in the 1930s. Nonetheless, his ability to survive was undoubtedly eased by his willingness to please the leadership. For instance, after writing an article in Izvestiia criticising the model Soviet film Chapaev, Khersonsky was attacked by Stalin and other Party leaders. Subsequently, the critic wrote a letter to the editor of Pravda apologising for his ‘mistake’. In particular, Khersonsky suggested that he ought to have offered a better account of the ‘merits of this beautiful film’ as Pravda had done.23 Viktor Shklovsky followed a similar ‘safe’ path, opting for cautious regime-friendly articles and scripts. ODSK was the least affected cinema organisation during the purges of the late 1920s and early 1930s. The society was intended as a means of drawing the masses in to Soviet cinema through the organisation of lectures, discussions, film viewings and so on. By 1929 the body had become increasingly subject to the criticism that it was failing to fulfil its function. In 1930 an editorial article in the journal Kino i zhizn (Cinema and Life) attacked ODSK for failing to develop a clear political line. The author also accused the organisation of not fulfilling its main function of mobilising the worker and peasant masses in the factories and the fields.24 Despite these criticisms, ODSK was never purged as such. As a result of its weakness, ODSK was not perceived as a political threat, therefore, when demands for change were made, they focused on the need for reorganisation rather than the removal of leaders or members. By 1932 ODSK was receiving increasingly less attention in the cinema press and the organisation only survived until 1934 when it was formally liquidated. One of the more significant victims of the early purges was the director of the Cinema Institute, S.S. Lialina, who, along with other right-wing

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opportunists in the body’s Party organisation, was dismissed. 25 Paradoxically, though the often limited impact that the early purges had on cinema was particularly evident in the lecturer composition at the Cinema Institute. If we look at the individuals employed by the institute during the early purges and beyond, we find a series of controversial figures. They included Sergei Eisenstein, the head of the director’s faculty from 1932. By now he was seen as a Formalist with foreign connections and sympathies after his journey to Europe and America. In the early 1930s Lev Kuleshov, regarded as a class enemy and no longer permitted to make films, joined Eisenstein, as did the equally controversial Abram Room. Vladimir Nilsen, who had spent three years in exile following suspicion over his foreign connections, as well as Eduard Tisse, Eisenstein’s artistic colleague, were central to the development of the cameraman faculty in the mid-1930s. Mikhail Shneider, who had been purged from cinema journalism as a Formalist, managed to find refuge in the Institute’s new film studies faculty in the early 1930s. It simply did not make sense to completely rid the cinema industry of perceived class enemies. Skills and experience were in short supply at this time. It is therefore unsurprising that these individuals maintained a strong foothold in film. As indicated above, it would be incorrect to conclude that the earlier purges had no impact whatsoever. The arrest and executions of Sillov, Ardatov and Pazin would contradict such an assertion. Moreover, the early purges also affected a few ordinary people working in the broader industry. These included Viktor Engels, a photographer based at a film laboratory in Tbilisi, Yevgeni Brokman, a clerical worker at Soiuzkino, Stepan Lebedev, a nightwatchman at Soiuzkino, Vasili Nefedov, a cinema theatre director, Stepan Stroganov, a cinema theatre administrator, Ivan Sidorenko, a deputy director of a major Moscow cinema theatre, Nikita Sidorov, a boiler-man at the studio for defence and educational films and, Konstantin Manukhov, a fireman at that same studio. These men were all arrested and executed between 1929 and 1935. There were also tragic cases that were related to the attempt to purge individuals. For instance, Viacheslav Uspensky, the director of Teakinopechat, was victimised by the purge of that organisation in 1929–30. The impact of the public denunciation was so great that Uspensky committed suicide in March 1929.26 Furthermore, the earlier purges also affected the republics. On 12 April 1932 the newspaper Kino reported the discovery of a ‘saboteur group’ in the Uzbekistan studio Uzbekgoskino, which included the reputable

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scriptwriter Boris Leonidov, the director Yuri Vasilchikov, the head of production Ignatenko, a certain Kunin and an artist by the name of Chelli, as well as aspiring directors David Yashin and Nikolai Klado. The group were accused of chauvinism, ridding the studio of Uzbeks and were held responsible for ‘colossal’ financial losses, as well as the consequent ‘destruction’ of the studio. The Supreme Court of the UzSSR sentenced Leonidov, Ignatenko and Kunin to death by execution, but due to Leonidov’s bravery during the Civil War, he was instead sentenced to eight years in prison. Vasilchikov received a ten-year jail term while the artist Chelli received a one-year sentence. Yashin and Klado received warnings.27 Boris Leonidov stopped writing due to the onset of a ‘chronic’ long-term illness, which may or may not have been connected to the purge, but lived until 1958. Fortunately, Yuri Vasilchikov did not serve out his sentence and returned to cinema almost immediately. He later went on to direct Brother Hero (Brat geroi) in 1940. Ignatenko and Kunin may well have been executed, this is still difficult to confirm, while Chelli continued to work in cinema. David Yashin and Nikolai Klado managed to return to Moscow to establish successful careers in educational film and scriptwriting/cinema journalism respectively.28 In Ukraine the early purges also had an impact. Liudmila StaritskaiaCherniakhovskaia, a writer who was also one of the key organisers of Ukrainian cinematography, was arrested twice in 1930 and 1940 and died in prison in 1941. Ukrainian military figure Yuri Tiutiunnik, who co-wrote Dovzhenko’s Zvenigora (1928) and appeared as himself in several films, was arrested in 1929 and executed that same year. One of the more high-profile victims of the earlier purge in Ukraine was the head of the script department at Ukrainfilm, Oles Dosvitny, arrested in February 1934 and executed in March of that year. Some Ukrainian writers and journalists who had been involved in cinema scriptwriting at one time or another were also caught up in the purges, including Daniil Gessen, arrested in 1930 and released in 1936; Mikhail Yalovy arrested in June 1933 and executed in 1937; Miroslav Irchan arrested in December 1933 and executed in 1937; Grigori Epik arrested in December 1934 and executed October 1937 and Valerian Polishchuk arrested along with Epik and shot in November 1937. Lesser-known actor and director Osip Girniak was arrested in December 1933, he was later released and emigrated to Austria and then America. The poet, Oleks Vlysko, a regular writer for the Ukrainian cinema newspaper Kino, was arrested in November 1934 and executed the following month. Mark Vorony, another author

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of publications related to cinema, was arrested the following year and executed in November 1937. 29 Although it does not lessen the significance of these cases, it is worth noting that most of these victims in Ukraine had only slight connections with cinema. The majority were arrested for reasons unrelated to film. For example, Polishchuk and Epik were arrested as part of a drive to root out political opponents intent on breaking Ukraine away from the Soviet Union.30 Moreover, while many were arrested in the mid-1930s most of them were executed during the height of the purges. At Belgoskino Osip Dylo, a writer who was deputy head of Belgoskino at end of 1920s, was arrested in July 1930 and exiled to Siberia for five years. He was arrested again in 1938, but finally released a year later. That same month Ales Lezhnevich, an actor and writer, who worked as a consultant at Belgoskino in the late 1920s and as an assistant director from 1930, was arrested. He survived initially before being arrested again in 1937 and executed.31 Thus the earlier purges did have a significant impact in the republics or their studios and this must be taken into account when we consider the overall effect of these measures in the area of cinema. Nonetheless, this does not alter our basic finding that, in terms of the most influential administrative and artistic personnel, especially in the dominant Russian republic, the period between 1929–1936 sees recycling and adaptation to new conditions rather than a genuine purge of the cinema industry. Comparing the Earlier Purges of Cinema with the Later Purges of 1936–1938 The contrast between the nature of secret police work in the cinema industry during the earlier purges and the years 1936–1938 is well illustrated with regard to both artistic and administrative figures. Vladimir Nilsen had been an assistant cameraman on Eisenstein’s October and The Old and the New. Nilsen was arrested in the autumn of 1929 due to his time spent in Germany, as well as the fact that he had married an Italian citizen. He was sentenced to three years’ exile, after which he became established as the cameraman on Alexandrov’s musicals The Happy Guys, The Circus (Tsirk, 1936) and Volga-Volga (1938). Nilsen also became a lecturer at VGIK and a leading specialist in his field, but was arrested in 1937, before being executed in January 1938. He was shot for supposedly being a spy and for his alleged plan to commit a terrorist act against a member of the Soviet government. He was clearly a victim of his earlier arrest

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and of a lingering suspicion that his true state loyalties did not lie in the USSR. His wife, Ida Penzo, an actress and ballerina, was arrested the following year and was only freed from the camps in 1955.32 The differences between the nature of the earlier and later purges is also manifest in the cases of high-ranking administrators. In the summer of 1929 the OGPU arrested Albert Slivkin, the technical director of the Leningrad cinema studio. This was followed by a letter from that studio’s director, Natan Grinfeld, to Konstantin Shvedchikov, asking whether or not Slivkin should be finally removed from the studio’s employee list and whether or not his family should lose the right to live in a flat situated in the grounds of the studio.33 However, despite Slivkin’s apparently dire situation, a secret report on Sovkino from 16 December 1929 angrily complained that not only had Slivkin been released from prison, but he had simply gone back to Sovkino and was already engaged in talks with the administration on finding a job once more in cinema. Despite these protests, Slivkin was able to carry on working in Moscow where he found employment at Mezhrabpomfilm as a financial administrator and then at Mosfilm as the assistant director of the studio.34 However, unlike many other figures who had survived initial purge attempts in the late 1920s and early 1930s and gone on to lead relatively normal careers, avoiding the more serious purges of 1936–1938, Slivkin was not so fortunate. On 3 August 1937, Mikhail Romm was temporarily living at Slivkin’s flat where he was attempting to finish the script for Lenin in October (Lenin v Oktiabre, 1937). Romm recalled how men in military uniform knocked on the door late that night and came in to arrest a rather weary and resigned Slivkin. Slivkin was sentenced to execution on 15 March 1938, accused of ‘provocatory activity’ in the Communist Party, of which he was then a member; he was shot on the same day.35 Soviet Cinema at the Height of the Purges As the Nilsen and Slivkin cases suggest, during the Great Terror the nature and tone of the early purges significantly changed with arrests drastically increasing in number. In the cinema industry the key difference now was that the frequently ineffectual nature of earlier purges was replaced by a ruthless efficiency, taking violence and intimidation to new levels. Between 1936 and 1938, many key administrative figures in Soviet cinema were arrested and executed. The first major arrests took place in March 1936. NKVD checks unearthed what they believed to be a Trotskyite group connected with the Party

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organisation within GUK. Yevgeniia Goltsman, the secretary of the Party organisation; Ivan Sidorov, the head of GUK’s planning department; Viktor Iosilevich, the manager of the trust for newsreel films (Soiuzkinokhronika) and Valentin Sokol, the manager of the trust for educational films (Soiuztekhfilm) were all arrested, as were administrators from the photo-chemical trust and the Mosfilm studio. Most of these individuals were exiled to labour camps, although Sokol was executed while Sidorov was rearrested two years later and shot in September 1938.36 Further arrests took place in October 1936, when three senior administrators from Vostokfilm were charged with bad management, abuse of power and the wastage of large sums of state funds. A senior administrator by the name of Vadim Atarbekov was sent to the camps for four years while the organisation’s former chief accountant Dunaiats was given a year of hard labour. The purged director, Grigori Mariamov, was also given a two-year prison camp sentence. These individuals may have been saved from execution by the simple fact that they were sentenced before the Great Terror was in full swing. Indeed, Mariamov was able to restore his career within a few years, becoming an assistant to the later head of the cinema industry, Ivan Bolshakov.37 Those administrators arrested between 1937–1938 were not so fortunate. Among them were the head of the industry Boris Shumiatsky and his assistants, including his former deputy, Yakov Chuzhin, and the man who replaced him Vasili Zhilin, as well as Vladimir Usievich, Konstantin Yukov, the aforementioned Albert Slivkin and Veniamin Bruk, who were all executed on grounds ranging from terrorism to spying. Shumiatsky in particular was accused of assembling a group of terrorists from within the cinema industry who allegedly planned to assassinate Stalin and the Politburo. The group included the aforementioned Vladimir Nilsen; another lesser-known cameraman based at Mosfilm, Samuil Sverdlov; an engineer by the name of Alexander Molchanov who worked at the Scientific Research Institute for Cinema; Yakov Smirnov, the director of Lenfilm; Konstantin Korolev, a Kremlin projectionist and a certain Sakharov. In January 1937, Shumiatsky was said to have guided Molchanov and Korolev as they carried out the attempted assassination. The official NKVD account suggested that the men deliberately smashed a mercury rectifier, sending poisonous vapours into the Kremlin cinema. Grigori Mariamov, who retells the incident, suggests that the projectionist, who was carrying out repair work, slipped accidentally dropping the glass

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Photograph of Boris Shumiatsky when he was arrested (1938).

vessel, containing mercury, and then carefully cleared up the substance. Mariamov notes that the projectionist simply ‘disappeared’ after this incident. Korolev was in fact arrested and executed alongside Shumiatsky, Molchanov and the other members of the so-called terrorist group.38 On the whole, administrators were far more heavily affected by the terror than artistic personnel. A secret report on the cinema administration,

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at the time of Shumiatsky’s arrest suggested that out of the 453 individuals working at GUK, 154 people had politically unreliable backgrounds or affiliations and emanated from one of the ‘exploitative’ classes. Notably, 61 of these administrators had travelled abroad. In 1938, following the arrest of Shumiatsky and his colleagues, the cinema administration was hit by a further series of arrests and executions. In a similar manner to the earlier purges, most of those arrested were heads or deputy heads of departments. Among them were Yevgeni Satel, the manager of Goskinoprokat, the division responsible for distribution; Vladimir Stepanov, the head of the technical department for feature film production; Fyodor Sokolov, a senior inspector for the cinefication administration; Alexander Kucherovsky, a consultant for the building sector and Mikhail Breslavsky, the deputy director of that sector, as well as Alexander Kadysh and Matvei Shkolnik, the heads of the sectors for film viewing in two separate departments. In addition, the head of the department for the production of educational-technical films, Grigori Pechalin-Perez, was arrested and shot. No department escaped the terror. The heads of the financial department M.A. Kagan and Rafail Antikol were repressed, as was the senior economist Vasili Khomutov. Soiuzintorgkino was targeted due to suspicions of foreign connections established while films and film materials were being imported and exported which led to the arrest of the body’s director Samuil Ginsburg who was of Polish extraction. The deputy of the building sector, a certain Okulov, was arrested after spending time abroad while a chief engineer of the cinema mechanical industry, by the name of Petrov, was also under suspicion due to his foreign ties. One of the leading administrators in the Americaninspired Cine City project, Yuli Piatigorsky, was accused of spying and executed.39 Arrests were also made within the industry itself especially in the studios. A similar trend prevailed in all the studios as a series of departmental heads were arrested. At Mosfilm the former director Boris Babitsky and the new director Elena Sokolovskaia, were both arrested and executed as were the heads of the department of colour cinema, the planning department and the sets and decorations department. The director of Lenfilm, Yakov Smirnov and his assistants, Leonti Katsnelson, Natan Grinfeld, as well as the artistic director of Lenfilm, Adrian Piotrovsky and the technical director, Vasili Mikhailyk were arrested. Solomon Orelovich, the director of the Kiev studio Ukrainfilm, suffered the same fate, as did leaders from other key bodies including the Odessa and Armenian studios. In Azerbaijan the head of the cinema administration, Gulam Sultanov, was accused of giving

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jobs to family and class enemies in the administration and at the studio Azerkino. He was arrested and executed. In Georgia, the head of the cinema industry, Amvrosi Titberidze was arrested and shot. The head of Sibtekhfilm, Mikhail Chertulov, was arrested as was his predecessor, Mikhail Mordokhovich. Former studio directors and leading script consultants at all studios were arrested and the purges affected other personnel, including editors, sound technicians, engineers, pyrotechnic experts, accountants, drivers and firemen.40 Furthermore, the purges, as they had in earlier years, extended beyond the administration and the studios. For instance, the State Cinema Institute which, as we have seen, provided refuge for many controversial figures during the 1930s, was subject to attack by the secret police. As we have also seen, the head of the cameramen faculty, Vladimir Nilsen, was arrested and executed, as was Lev Monosson, the head of the faculty of the organisation and economics of cinema, and Vanda Rossolovskaia, a lecturer on foreign cinema. One of Eisenstein’s former students, Kira Andronikashvili, was also arrested and spent a few years in the labour camps. Kei-Kheru, the head of department of socio-economic science was accused of spying and shot in 1938. Again, it is noteworthy that four out of these five victims had foreign ties of some sort. Nilsen had travelled abroad with Shumiatsky, establishing many connections in the world of cinema technology, while Monosson was the USSR’s film trade representative in New York in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Kira Andronikashvili was married to the writer Boris Pilniak who had established friendships with Western writers, including Upton Sinclair, during a visit in the early 1930s. Finally, Kei-Kheru came from Korea which meant that he became an instant suspect at such a dangerous time. In the sphere of journalism the editor of the newspaper Kino, Grigori Vovsy, was arrested and executed and the editorial board were dismissed. Vovsy and his colleagues were accused of giving a voice to class enemies through the publication. Pavel Shukailo a Belorussian professor at VGIK, and a previous editor of Kino in the early 1930s, fell victim to the terror. Kirill Shutko, a leading journalist in the field of cinema, was arrested in 1938 and died in prison in 1941.The secretary of the organisational bureau of the Central Committee of the Union of Film Workers, and Latvian-born, Karl Blium, was arrested and executed. The terror had a broader impact on the mass of workers in the entire film industry. Directors of factories, theatres and countless projectionists, among many others, were caught up in the wave of arrests all over the USSR.41 Nonetheless, it is important to acknowledge the fact that some individuals

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from the artistic sphere of cinema, both well known and not so well known, did suffer heavily during the height of the terror. The victims were drawn from all areas of film-making endeavour. Among them were fairly eminent directors, including Konstantin Eggert, famous for his 1920s blockbuster The Bear’s Wedding. He was arrested and only released in the 1950s.42 Mikhail Dubson, another director virtually forgotten by history, was arrested in 1937, following the ban on his controversial film Large Wings. Dubson had started to make a name for himself at Lenfilm in the 1930s, before being sent to prison; he was released in 1939, but his career never fully recovered and he found it difficult to find work in cinema.43 Lesser-known assistant director, scriptwriter and actor Viktor Portnov was arrested at Lenfilm in April 1937 and shot the following year. Ukrainian director Faust Lopatinsky fell victim to the purges at Ukrainfilm in 1937. Documentary film-maker, and a cousin of Leon Trotsky, Lev Bronshtein, was arrested in August 1937 and only released in the 1950s, dying only after a few days of freedom. The assistant director, Nikolai Dirin, who had made a name for himself on such films as Vladimir Gardin’s Poet and Tsar (1927) and the controversial My Homeland, was arrested and executed in 1937.44 Many scriptwriters were arrested during the height of the purges, including Alexander Kurs, the writer of Lev Kuleshov’s The Great Consoler (Velikii uteshitel, 1933); Boris Gusman, who co-wrote The Gay Canary (Veselaia kanareika, 1929) also with Kuleshov, Tatiana Zlatogorova, initially an actress, but then a co-writer with her husband Alexei Kapler, who was later arrested himself, on Three Comrades (Tri tovarishcha, 1935) and Lenin in 1918; Raisa Vasileva, who wrote the script for Leo Arnshtam’s Friends (Podrugi, 1935); Sergei Tretiakov, who became known in the world of cinema for his theory and criticism in the 1920s, but also wrote scripts for several films; Yakov Zaitsev, a scriptwriter and assistant director at Mosfilm along with the writer Isaac Babel, who were both involved in the lengthy rewriting of Eisenstein’s Bezhin Meadow; Vasili Lokot who wrote the script for the hit film A Girl in a Hurry (1936); the actor, Ivan Koval-Samborsky, who played in Yuli Raizman’s Flyers (Letchiki, 1935) and had spent some time working in German film, spent nearly twenty years in the camps, he was released in 1956. Yvan Kyrlya, famous for his role as ‘Dandy’ Mustapha in The Road to Life (Putevka v zhizn, 1931) was arrested and sentenced to ten years imprisonment in 1937, he died in 1943. Pyotr Pirogov a well-established actor at Lenfilm was arrested and shot. The well-known actor of cinema and theatre, Alexei Diky was arrested in 1937 and was only released four years later. Dmitri Konsovsky who had acted with Diky in Erwin Piscator’s

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Revolt of the Fishermen (Vosstanie rybakov, 1934) was arrested, however, he was executed in 1938. Another film actress victim of the mass repressions was Yevdokiia Urusova who spent most of the 1940s in prison and, consequently, only came to prominence later in her life. The foreign artist, Hungarianborn Yevgeni Enei, who had worked in cinema from the 1920s was exiled to Kazakhstan for several years, fortunately though, he managed to return to the film industry in the 1940s.45 Again, the purges of artistic personnel extended to the republics. The director, Boris Shpis, who was based at Belgoskino and co-directed the Return of Nathan Becker (Vosvrashchenie Neitana Bekkera, 1932) and the banned film Engineer Goff (Inzhener Goff, 1935,) was sentenced and executed in 1938. Belorussian writers Anatol Volny and Mikhas Charot were arrested in 1936/ 1937 and later shot; Galina Yegorova, an actress based at the same studio, was accused of spying and executed; the Armenian scriptwriters Yeghishe Charentz and Aksel Bakunts fell victim in 1937 as did the scriptwriter Yeghia Chubar, who was arrested in June 1937 and shot the next year. Maria Dzherpetian, an Armenian actress who played in the popular film Pepo (1935), was arrested as a ‘socially dangerous element’ and sent to Kolyma for five years only returning to Armenia in 1945. That republic also saw the arrest of director Amasi Martirosian, later released, but in poor health. The Georgian scriptwriter Bachua Kuprashvili is also named in the list of executed purge victims. Ivan Kulik, scriptwriter of Georgi Tasin’s Nazar Stodolia (1937) fell victim to the purge of Ukrainfilm in 1937. Ukrainian poet and scriptwriter, Nikolai Vorony, was sentenced to eight years in the camps in June 1937. The next month another Ukrainian scriptwriter, Zinaida Tulub, was sentenced to ten years in the camps, but was only released in 1956. Mikhailo Iogansen, a writer, from Ukraine, was arrested in August 1937 and executed in October 1938. The cameraman Alexei Kaliuzhny, also from that republic, fell victim in December 1937. The Azerbaidjani director and actor, Abbas Sharifzade, was accused of spying and executed.46 It is clear that these purges were far more ruthless than previously, only now there was more emphasis on anti-communist wreckers, foreign infiltrators and spies than issues of, say, poor work discipline. By way of illustration, Eggert was arrested due to the fact that his second name matched that of a Swedish baron, while Dubson had been under suspicion for his ties with Germany and because his wife was also German. The director had spent many years working in Berlin during the 1920s. Indeed, paranoia over any foreign connections led to the arrest of many immigrant cinema

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personnel from various countries, especially Germany. The writers Gusman and Kurs had been accused of writing ideologically unsound scripts in the past, although the specific reason for Kurs’s execution was ‘anti-party activity’, while Yakov Zaitsev was accused of being a terrorist. Whatever its justification, the use of terror, violence and intimidation against personnel from the Soviet cinema industry significantly increased during the Great Terror.47 Moreover, the application of this terror, violence and intimidation manifested itself in other more subtle forms that had been much less common until 1936. One method was to arrest family members or friends. In 1938 the father of the famous actress Zoia Fyodorova was arrested as was the elder brother of actor Georgi Zhzhenov (in time Zhzhenov and Fyodorova were arrested too). The two brothers and sister of actress Vera Maretskaia were also arrested. A series of colleagues associated with Alexander Dovzhenko were arrested or shot in the years 1937–1938, including his favourite cameraman Danylo Demutsky.48 The secret police’s other method would be to deliberately arrest people during the filming process itself. In 1937, when The Great Citizen was being made at Lenfilm, three members of the film crew were arrested in front of their colleagues against a background of controversy surrounding the film’s false account of the murder, once again, of Kirov.49 This created a real sense of fear in the studios that anybody could be victimised. Moreover, foreigners, who, as we have seen, were particularly vulnerable to the later purges, were also subjected to arrests in studios. The two German actors Walter Tauschenbach and Ernst Mansfeld, involved in the filming of the Mezhrabpomfilm production Fighters (Bortsy, 1936), were arrested during production and, by the end of 1938, two thirds of the film crew had been arrested. Many other Germans associated with Soviet cinema were repressed at this time.50 Conclusion As we have seen, the earlier purges did see the arrest and execution of some individuals from the cinema industry. However, we have argued that in terms of high-profile victims specifically associated with film, especially in the RSFSR, the early purges often turned out to be a mere recycling of specialists and had limited success. But, in terms of the later purges, we can state that, from the point of view of its supporters and implementers, these purges did remove many individuals who were regarded as subversive or a threat to the Soviet state, including many people who had survived previous attempts to get rid of them. In 1938 Soviet cinema was being run by a very

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different kind of administrator and this was most evident in the new leadership. Semyon Dukelsky and his assistants from the NKVD were characteristic of the new upwardly mobile workers who were filling the posts vacated by purge victims. To some extent, cinema was not targeted as an area that should receive special attention by the secret police and many of the arrests were not specifically connected to cinema activity as such. The cases that we have examined suggest that cinema personnel were victimised for the same reasons as the rest of the population. Yet the film industry was also targeted for a specific reason. Cinema was very much a foreign art form and the connections between Soviet artists and administrators and their Western counterparts were particularly strong. The need to learn from the West’s technical innovations in cinema meant that these associations continued throughout the 1930s. This explains why in the case of cinema foreign associations constituted one of the main reasons for arrest and execution during the late 1930s, especially when we consider how Shumiatsky’s administration supported the idea of a ‘Soviet Hollywood’. The turn to the West for ideas undoubtedly provoked indignation and resentment among the Party hierarchy and NKVD who wanted to see cinema run purely on the Soviet principles of planning and discipline. According to the secret police interpretation, Shumiatsky’s administration had rejected the Soviet approach (this was untrue) and rejection was dealt with by a dangerous form of defensiveness. We have also indicated that the impact of the purges on cinema was specific in another sense. While we have noted the fact that many artistic figures fell victim, it is clear that administrators were arrested in greater numbers than directors, scriptwriters, cameramen, actors and so on. In this way cinema differed significantly from the other arts, some of which were decimated. In the end, though, the NKVD’s attack on cinema merely contributed to the existing decay within the industry, as they either physically or mentally destroyed many talented people who, even under the politicised laws of that time, were completely innocent of the absurd accusations levelled against them and were all rehabilitated during the 1950s and beyond. The attack on cinema exposed a regime that had simply run out of ideas. Moreover, although the later purges undoubtedly engendered a strong sense of fear among cinema personnel, these measures along with many other Bolshevik policies, were simply counter-productive and self-defeating.

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CHAPTER 4

THEMATIC PLANNING

I

n the broader Soviet context, the year 1929 saw the beginning of the shift towards the command economy and the idea of planning. The Bolsheviks believed that planning production, distribution and exchange would ensure a fair distribution of resources, taking economic matters away from the erratic and exploitative control of the market and placing them in the control of human hands. The revolutionaries argued that such an economy would satisfy human needs more effectively than its capitalist rival. However, the Bolsheviks application of planning was not only confined to economic matters. Such an approach was also applied to the sphere of culture and ideas where planning was introduced, not only for rational economic reasons, but also to help control the very content of cultural production. For cinema to follow the path outlined at the Party conference in 1928, it too would be subject to a system of central planning. The Party believed that the plan would put the future development of the studios in their hands. The thematic plan would designate a particular quantity of films that should be made in a given year; it would, in theory, act as another means of quality control; it would carefully distribute the financial and other means required for each production and, most importantly, it would provide the studio with a series of particular themes that had to be covered.1 Thematic planning became an integral part of the Bolshevik defence strategy to harness cinema to the needs of the young Soviet state. However, as we shall argue, the defensive mentality that helped create the elaborate system of thematic planning also tended to undermine that system. Plan Compilation The compilation of thematic plans involved a series of institutions and individuals. From the very beginning of planning in 1928, the Party’s

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Central Committee had begun to shape the broad themes of yearly thematic plans. The Central Committee and other senior bodies, such as the central trade union organisation, sent the cinema administration recommended themes and materials that were to be covered. The precise details of the plan would usually be discussed and elaborated by the cinema administration’s artistic council, which consisted of artistic and bureaucratic members of cinema organisations and studios, as well as representatives of the film industry and the press.2 Thus until the end of 1931, planning methodology was based on the so-called ‘direct order’ system, whereby a combination of political figures and cinema administration bureaucrats would compile a list of priority thematic areas, relating to the fundamental political issues of the day, these themes would then be elaborated upon, before the studios received an order to make a certain quantity of films on socialist construction, cultural revolution and so on. Then the studio would be expected to find a scriptwriter who could carry out the order as well as a director to turn the script into a film.3 This system changed with the creation of the thematic plan for 1932. The obvious weakness of planning up until this time was its failure to attract the scriptwriters themselves into the process of thematic plan formulation. This was seen as one of the central reasons for the collapse of the early thematic plans. Henceforth, the plan would be reinforced by a series of specific, creative ideas proposed by scriptwriters. The difference was essentially one of emphasis. It was recognised that scriptwriters were not simply implementers of Party policy, but had their own ideas to contribute.4 This, however, was not an attempt to grant film-makers more creative freedom, rather, it was intended to draw them towards the idea of planning. Furthermore, while scriptwriters were now participating more in terms of the film content, the basic thematic areas that could be covered were still determined by senior Party figures, according to the political needs of the regime. This meant that, throughout the 1930s and beyond, authors knew that they would have to produce proposals and ideas that would at least appear to meet the political demands of the Party. Efforts to deliberately go beyond the narrow confines of the thematic plan would simply mean an end to careers, as there would eventually be no alternative sources of funding other than the state. Therefore, in order to make ends meet, creative personnel knew that they would have to work within certain thematic boundaries. Moreover, after 1931, thematic planning became subject to more and more control from various organisations, the cinema administration and

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the Party leadership, indicating that the opportunity for the writers to fully shape their own ideas would always be constrained to some extent. First, the draft plan was sent for discussion to workers’ meetings and literary organisations. Second, studio personnel could make any required changes and consider whether or not the plan could be implemented. The studio leadership would have to give final approval for their individual thematic plans. Third, every year the cinema administration would have to give its confirmation of the final plan. Fourth, the official censorship body, GRK, had to approve each plan. Fifth, the agitprop department of the Central Committee had already been giving its assent to thematic plans since the late 1920s, as well as offering its own recommendations for implementation. Agitprop also set up committees that offered their conclusions and proposals for discussion under the oversight of agitprop. From 1933 onwards, the Central Committee’s Orgburo discussed the thematic plans and, within the studios themselves, Party organisations began to get more involved in the debates and criticism of the plans. Finally, from the late 1930s onwards, in addition to providing the themes that should be covered in each plan, the Soviet government and the Party’s Central Committee began to issue decrees approving the final version of each yearly plan.5 But the main Party-sponsored means of improving the ideological and organisational influence of the plan was the establishment of yearly thematic planning conferences, which began in 1931. These conferences would be attended by senior Party figures from the Central Committee’s agitprop department, as well as a broad cross section from the film community, ranging from studio administrators to directors and scriptwriters. Every year the conference would examine how effectively script work was going in the studios, taking into account how far Party directives on the need for film production to be based upon fully prepared scripts were being carried out. The conference would also look at issues of genre as this lay at the very centre of the thematic plan structure.6 Plan Content and its Function It was considered essential that the Party could fully determine the thematic coverage of every film produced in the USSR. The thematic plan represented one of the central means by which the political leadership would attempt to harness cinema towards the goals of the regime. As we have argued, the defence and legitimisation of the regime were the most fundamental roles of the Soviet film industry. Throughout the period 1929–1941, the political leadership and the cinema administration

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supported two basic dimensions of legitimisation through thematic planning; films that would deal with the long-term origins and existence of the regime and films that would legitimise current government policies or campaigns in a given area. From the very first thematic plan until 1941, two thematic areas formed a constant part of every annual plan. These were historical and historical-revolutionary themes. These themes were intended to show the masses why and how the Revolution had taken place and suggest that, through the Communist Party, ordinary citizens had taken control. Films based on these themes were to convey a largely one-sided interpretation of history whereby all events would be seen through a Marxist-Leninist prism. Several films were included in annual thematic plans, which sought to show ordinary people that they had become empowered through the Revolution, that the Soviet system was all about mass control of power and resources, through the Party, and the establishment of a just, fair type of human existence. Among the most well-known planned films in this area was the Maxim Trilogy, featuring The Youth of Maksim (Iunost Maksima, 1934), The Return of Maksim (Vozvrashchenie Maksima, 1937), and The Vyborg Side (Vyborgskaia storona, 1938). The essential task of these films was to show the coming to revolutionary consciousness of the young worker Maksim as he witnesses the brutality and cruelty of the tsarist social system. Maksim becomes a member of the Party and eventually a minister of the revolutionary government. The films were included in the thematic plans of the early to late thirties in an effort to show the masses that the people running the country were the same as the ordinary people on the streets, not an elite dictatorship. The rulers and ruled supposedly merged into a mythical whole. The thematic plans also contained a series of films, which offered a purely Bolshevik interpretation of recent and distant historical events. The Vasilevs’ Chapaev portrayed the civil war as a struggle between the red forces of good and the white forces of evil. Again the ordinary person is the vehicle for mythologising the Bolshevik victory as Chapaev, a man of peasant origin, becomes the great military leader who dies for the communist cause. Other historical films dealt with great political figures, who were seen as playing their role in the struggle towards the eventual communist society. These included Petrov-Bytov’s Pugachev (1937), which questionably suggested that the uprising of the Ural Cossacks in 1773 was part of a long historical struggle towards the establishment of social justice for the peasantry.

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Still of actor Boris Chirkov from The Youth of Maksim (1934).

In the latter part of the 1930s, a series of films, which were planned under the historical-revolutionary banner, were made concerning the leaders of the Party, during the Revolution. Examples include the films Lenin in October and its sequel Lenin in 1918. These films sought to reinforce

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the heroic myth of Lenin’s revolutionary greatness. They also aimed to show that the Bolshevik arguments were always the correct arguments. In Lenin in 1918, the post-Revolutionary atmosphere of terror, executions of enemies, traitors and bread speculators, as well as forced grain requisitioning from the peasants is justified by a context under which the Bolsheviks were encircled by the Whites, alongside the allied powers, and had to deal with internal enemies and a starving population. At the end of the film, Lenin tells Stalin that without ‘severity’ and ‘iron’ the Revolution would have failed. The film not only justifies the violent establishment of the Soviet regime, it also implies that the brutality of the system under Stalin was equally justified given the seemingly persistent existence of the class enemy. Other films emphasised the natural succession from Lenin to Stalin, such as The Great Glow (Velikoe zarevo, 1938), where the two revolutionaries were shown working in close coordination. The film suggested that Stalin had played a more prominent role in the October Revolution than was in fact the case. Films were even made concerning slightly less significant revolutionaries, such as Yakov Sverdlov (1941). The other central aim of thematic planning, to ensure the creation of films that would defend and legitimise current government policies or campaigns in given area, was applied to each yearly plan significantly narrowing down creative possibilities. The planning system ensured that many films would cover themes that were considered to be of great priority for the Party. In this sense thematic planning was about legitimisation, but it was also about mobilisation. Cinema was considered an ideal means to help convince the masses that they must participate in the realisation of political and economic goals. These varied according to the needs of the day. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, thematic plans included films that would deal with socialist construction, reflecting the drive to fulfil the first Five Year Plan. At this time films were also planned, which fitted into the spirit of the cultural revolution, such as anti-religious films. In the mid-1930s, a series of film versions of Russian literary works were produced, reflecting the Party’s desire to raise the cultural level of the masses and introduce to them, in an accessible form, to the classics. There were many of these films, including The Storm (Groza, 1934), based on Nikolai Ostrovsky’s tale, Dubrovsky (1935), based on Pushkin’s story and Without a Dowry based, again, on a play by Ostrovsky. The latter part of the 1930s saw the introduction of themes on Stakhanovism, including films, such as Miners (Shakhtery, 1937), part of the attempt to increase worker productivity, as well as productions concerning the defence of the country,

T HEMATIC PLANNING

Film poster for the film Lenin in 1918 (1939).

such as If War Comes Tomorrow (Esli zavtra voina, 1938) or Sailors (Moriaki, 1939). The government needed cinema to help convince the masses that they must be ready to protect the USSR on land, sea or in the air from the threats of external powers, particularly that of Nazi Germany. Thus, to a great extent, the annual thematic plans coincided with government campaigns and concerns at a given time.

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One of the fundamental problems of thematic planning was that its attempt to convey these differing political messages to the masses often neglected the need to do so in an entertaining manner. It is certainly true that some strong films were made in the 1930s that managed to achieve the right balance. Obvious examples are Chapaev, or the Alexandrov comedies The Circus (Tsirk, 1936), Volga Volga (1938) and The Radiant Path (Svetlyi put, 1940) or Ivan Pyrev’s rural comedies The Rich Bride (Bogataia nevesta, 1937) and The Swineherdess and the Shepherd (Svinarka i pastukh, 1941). The dramatic action of Chapaev and the outstanding music and direction of the comedies meant that these films were hugely popular and effectively conveyed the sense that life was good in the Soviet Union. However, films of this quality were not the norm in the 1930s. As we noted earlier with censorship, the politicisation of films often tended to overwhelm the entertainment element. The result was that many films tended to be overtly long and tedious. For example, Lenin in 1918 tended to dwell on the political arguments as to why Lenin made a certain decision at a certain time. Towards the end of the decade these films were becoming increasingly commonplace. As we shall later observe, Ermler’s Great Citizen, for example, lasted for over four hours in total and contained endless political debates and speeches glorifying Stalinism. Thus despite the rhetoric that thematic planning would ensure a varied diet of entertaining feature films, the plans leaned more towards the satisfaction of political imperatives. Plan Implementation The first proper thematic plan was discussed and confirmed in July 1928 and would become an established feature of Soviet cinema.7 However, the early plans were somewhat primitive, attracting wide criticism with some figures questioning the need for any planning whatsoever.8 On 10 July 1928, Sovkino’s artistic council held a meeting to discuss the thematic plan for 1928–1929, decreeing that the plan should be accepted on the condition that it would be further refined by a specially appointed committee. The committee met the very next day to consider the final plan. The committee reflected on the shortcomings of the themes in films over the past year, concluding that there were few films dealing with international matters, issues of political and economic construction, as well as an absence of anti-religious films. Moisei Rafes, who read out the conclusions of the committee, suggested that there was a need to strengthen ‘the political commitment of our thematic plan’. In order to do this it was proposed that the plan should contain a clear division of

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thematic areas that were mandatory. There were nine divisions in the plan with the following titles: ‘political questions and economic construction in the urban sphere’, ‘political questions and economic construction in the rural sphere’, ‘the cultural revolution and reality’, ‘international themes’, ‘youth themes’, ‘films for children’, ‘historical and historical-revolutionary films’, ‘comedies’ and ‘newsreel-political films’. Under each division a series of scripts were listed as either being ready to be filmed or in the process of being written. The scriptwriter was listed along with a description of the proposed project. All of this was clearly intended to narrow the possibilities down to the demands of the Party. The committee requested the establishment of special artistic council meetings to view finished films.9 As we have seen, from the mid-1930s onwards, the thematic plan does appear to be a reasonably sure way of controlling and determining film production and film content. However, this was not always the case. For instance, under the division ‘political questions and economic construction in the urban sphere’, the plan contained Ermler’s Fragment of an Empire which was described in the plan as concerning ‘Soviet relations at a factory and Soviet reality through the eyes of a person brought up on tsarism’. While this is not an inaccurate description, it gave no indication whatsoever that Ermler intended to make a Formalist film that was critical of Soviet reality and revealed the extent to which the early plans relied on trust rather than compulsion.10 In the autumn of 1930, during the development of the first Moscow studio thematic plan for 1930–1931, an anonymous commentator stated that, although two and a half years had passed since the Party Conference on cinema, the goals laid out by the conference had not been achieved. The blame for this was firmly attached to the cinema leadership, claiming an ‘absence of a correct artistic political leadership of cinema production’. The author pointed out that there had been several cases of cinema creative personnel moving away from the tasks put forward by the Party, as well as the ‘distortion’ and ‘vulgarisation’ of these tasks in films that had been initially presented in thematic plans, but had been banned. The author cited the films The Path of the Enthusiasts (Put entuziastov, 1930) and Quiet Flows the Don (Tikhii Don, 1930) as examples, claiming that planning had so far only existed ‘on paper’. The temporary head of Soiuzkino, Konstantin Shvedchikov, offered an even more frank assessment of the existing system: ‘the main shortcoming in our work at Soiuzkino relates to plans. We do not have any plans – we work from case to case’.11

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Stricter procedures were proposed as a means of making the plan more effective. It was suggested that the plan should include precise characteristics of ideological thematic material, which would ensure a more sound content in the films. These characteristics were to be found in the everyday reality of socialist construction. A clear correlation of genres was to be established as were ‘indicators of an artistic-ideological quality’ such as “class steadfastness”’. By 1932, there were signs that the demands for more rigorous plan creation and application were gradually being answered. The films being produced began to correlate to the original plan. In 1934, the cinema administration introduced a new system whereby raw film stock would only be issued after a director’s script and a general plan had been approved.12 So, following an ignominious first few years, more attention was gradually accorded to the control and content of thematic planning. Yet the failure of the thematic plan to ensure that purely ideologically correct, Party approved projects would be produced did not only represent a problem for the early plans. Despite the apparent restrictions imposed by the new thematic boundaries, a whole series of films were produced throughout the 1930s that indicated that the system did not achieve what it ought to have achieved. It is important to note that most scriptwriters faithfully supported the regime and endeavoured to create films about class enemies, saboteurs or Stakhanovites. Indeed, it is true that the majority of films produced in this period were unambiguously supportive of the regime and its goals. However, others who were less enthusiastic about the options available would present proposals that appeared to fit in to the plan’s remit, but when it came to production they would exercise their semi-autonomous license to express themselves more fully and stretch their creativity. Directors frequently changed script content during the filming process itself, introducing their own artistic stamp to the given project.13 Among them was the director Yuli Raizman who worked within the narrow confines of the system to express himself in a manner, which differed from the orthodoxies of the time. For instance, his film The Last Night (Posledniaia noch, 1937) had originally come under the ‘historicalrevolutionary’ thematic category. As we have seen, the typical film to fall under this heading would usually glorify the Revolution and its leaders. However, Raizman emphasised the everyday experience of ordinary people and carefully pointed to the tragic and even comical elements of October 1917. Raizman’s more sincere portrait of the Revolution caused much unease and proved that thematic planning was not always as effective as the Bolsheviks would have liked.

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The Practical Failures of Thematic Planning One of the central reasons for yearly plan failure was the manner in which available finances were being used. A report on the collapse of the 1929 plan at Sovkino’s Moscow studio suggested that the actual cost of the average film exceeded the plan figure by forty four per cent.14 This was a problem that would be repeated at Mosfilm and all the Soviet studios throughout the 1930s. It was certainly true that, to some extent, the planning system failed to take into account the true costs of filmmaking and the fact that creativity needed generous resources, the expenditure of which was hard to foresee in estimates. And so each year, significant financial sums would be poured into each studio’s thematic plan, but the result would always be the same; many films would drop out of the plan as a result of millions of roubles being overspent on other productions. But the reality for Soviet cinema was that resources were very scarce and so new controls over film budgets were inevitable. From 1935 the old system, whereby the studio director would be given funds, presented with a general limit on overall expenditure and expected to distribute those funds accordingly, came under attack in the cinema press.15 By 1938, a system was in place, according to which, each film would have a strict, individual budget limit that would be approved by the head of the cinema administration. Yet figures in the film industry knew that the financial chaos that had plagued the studios in the 1930s could not solely be attributed to the limited sums of money available to the film-makers. First of all, there was a fundamental problem with actors. The cinema industry had failed to establish courses to attract student actors into the world of cinema. Theatre was still considered to be a superior art form and professional actors almost always preferred to be theatre trained. This meant that cinema usually had to pay theatre actors to play film roles. The difficulty was that these actors preferred to carry out theatre work simultaneously and regarded film as a secondary job. This was particularly problematic over the summer months when the Soviet theatre companies toured the country, while a great deal of outdoor filming took place. Actors often had to be flown from one city to another in order to carry out their dual obligations. The consequence for the film industry was the loss of significant amounts of time and the substantial delays in film completion.16 Secondly, poor organisation was contributing to the unbalanced use of resources and subsequent plan failure. Much of this poor organisation came down to a lack of preparation. A great deal of time was being

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wasted setting up lighting, cranes and microphones for particular shoots during time allocated for filming. Moreover, ill-prepared actors would often continuously rehearse their parts when the shoot should have been taking place. 17 At the same time, a combination of organisational weakness and technical backwardness caused significant hold ups. Studios were often overbooked at certain times of the year. This was problematic as even in the better studios, such as Mosfilm, poor soundproofing and a weak electricity supply meant that two crews could not work simultaneously. Furthermore, many film-makers relied on good summer weather in the USSR’s main northern cities to carry out necessary outdoor shooting. However, slow project development frequently necessitated film crew trips to the south to complete work, which had not been finished while the climate was warm in the north. These trips were very expensive, incurring inevitable overexpenditure.18 Finances were also being squandered due to the constant changes to scripts that were either in the process of being accepted or had already been accepted. Scriptwriters would be paid advances after establishing an agreement with the studio to complete a script for a given film. But, the constant checking and demands for changes by studio editors and consultants had a very significant impact on eventual film production and release. Excessive concerns about the ideological and artistic quality of scripts led to huge losses of money. Between January 1935 and June 1936, the Kiev studio had made 94 agreements with scriptwriters amounting to just over a million roubles. Over half of this sum had already been paid out in the form of advances. However, 33 of these agreements were annulled, after it had been decided that these scripts were ideologically and artistically weak and could not be improved further.19 Even those projects that did go ahead were subject to further script examination when the film was already in production. Such bureaucracy could cause varying delays. In 1929, Yuri Olesha’s script version of his novel Envy (Zavist, 1927) was included in Sovkino’s original thematic plan for that year.20 After six years of bureaucracy, the script, which had now been completely rewritten, was finally set into production at the Kiev studio, but A Strict Youth was then banned from release. Similar problems dogged Efim Dzigan’s The First Cavalry (Pervaia konnaia) completed and subsequently banned in 1941. It had originally formed part of the 1936 thematic plan. These are certainly extreme examples, but delays of around two years on certain films, partly due to editor interference, were not unusual and many films did not go beyond the planning stage.

THEMATIC PLANNING

A cartoon sketch of a bureaucrat pouring money into thematic planning (1935).

Indeed, the often rigid Bolshevik defensive outlook that, in combination with Marxist ideology, led to the attempt to apply thematic planning to cinema production, failed to recognise that the problem with using cinema as a political vehicle for defending the past and present of the Soviet regime was that international circumstances and alignments were very changeable at this time. The First Cavalry again provides a good example. The film dealt with a past conflict between the Soviet Union and Poland after the Revolution. However, in 1939 Nazi Germany invaded Poland and, by 1941, as the USSR got involved in the war, Poland became an ally of the Soviet Union. Consequently, the film, with its anti-Polish tone, was no longer politically valuable and was banned.21 Several other films, which began their lives in the seemingly safe world of the thematic plan, were also victims of the complexities of international developments and Soviet foreign policy, including Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Herbert Rappoport’s The Guest (Gost, 1939). The cumulative result of script alterations, rapid changes in political policy, organisational chaos and the actor problem meant that millions of roubles were simply wasted on a yearly basis and thematic plans were never even close to fulfilment. Conclusion Thematic planning was considered to be one of the central means by which the Bolsheviks would take full control of Soviet cinema in the late

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1920s and utilise it to both persuade the masses of the righteousness of the regime and the need to carry out the tasks demanded by that regime. After the failure of the initial thematic plans in the late 1920s and early 1930s the Party and cinema administration had tried to strengthen thematic planning ideologically and organisationally throughout the remaining years of that decade. This undoubtedly had a significant impact on the cinema industry, but not necessarily the impact desired by Party and administrative leaders. The evidence suggests that the practical and organisational aspects of thematic planning were persistently weak in the mid-to-late 1930s and the films were not being produced in acceptable quantities. Most importantly, the use of the thematic plan as a means of controlling the ideological content did become stronger after the chaotic early years. Yet, it is evident that thematic planning could not provide a guarantee of political and ideological correctness with regard to film content. The main ‘success’ from the Party’s point of view was the narrowing down of thematic possibilities, preventing scriptwriters from avoiding socialist themes of one form or another. Although thematic planning by the end of the 1930s had a huge impact on the nature of Soviet film output, it was clearly a highly negative impact wholly different from the intentions of its creators. It was a defensive mode of thinking aimed at protecting the October Revolution, its legacy and the policies of the present and future that helped to give rise to thematic planning in cinema. Nevertheless, it was this very defensiveness and its obsession with ‘correct’ interpretations of the past and political relevance in the present that, paradoxically, undermined thematic planning. The failure of films to live up to persistently vague and arbitrary political criteria almost brought Soviet cinema to its knees in the 1930s as countless movies disappeared in a maze of bureaucracy.

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CHAPTER 5

REPRESENTATION AND REACH: CINEMA UNIONS AND SOCIETIES

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oviet cinema was similar to other artistic endeavours and was also treated as another branch of industry. Its personnel therefore required the means to defend their interests on a collective and individual level. They required organisations for the purpose of engaging in debates and exchanging ideas, as well as promoting cinema. However, these needs were to come into conflict with the political requirements of the Soviet regime which was more concerned with using cinema organisations as a means for mobilising the industry’s workers for the realisation of Party goals, and for conveying official ideology. Political interference eventually meant that none of these functions would be adequately met and the cinema industry would be denied a proper organisation to represent the needs of its participants. Nonetheless, by the mid-to-late 1930s, an unofficial system of rewards and patronage had developed whereby a privileged group of film-makers now had access to funds and many other benefits that the broader mass of creative and other personnel lacked. Moreover, towards the end of the 1930s members of the privileged group were also given a significant role within the decision-making structures of the industry’s bureaucracy. Thus they differed from the majority in that they managed to compensate, to some extent, for the lack of union bargaining power by exploiting their position of privilege and having some influence in the production process. The Establishment of ARRK In 1922 the first major association of cinema personnel was established under the title ‘The Moscow Society of Cinema Personnel’. The society was distinctly apolitical, committing itself to a union of cinema

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professionals who would continue with technical and artistic development of Russian cinematography. It also maintained a strong interest in the fate of pre-Revolutionary cinema figures, now living in exile in Berlin and Paris.1 Inevitably, this body was overshadowed by the emergence of ARK (see above) in 1924, which would gradually embrace the most significant representatives of the film industry. The new organisation was established as a reaction to the Moscow Society and, in its declaration, it pointed to ‘the colossal significance of cinema as a powerful ideological weapon in the struggle for communist culture’. Although the early debates over the association’s functions suggest that there were differing opinions over what a politically committed, communist cinema should be, the declaration offered a reasonably clear outline of the intended tasks of ARK.2 As a professional association, ARK was supposed to pressure studios into maintaining a correct ideological and artistic line (although this was not defined). It had to promote the interests of cinema to the government and the wider public. This also involved actively engaging the masses through the establishment of ODSK and lobbying for the creation of scientific, educational and rural cinemas. In addition, ARK was to be divided up into areas of cinematic expertise to facilitate debate and research in each area and take measures in order to improve the knowledge of existing film-makers and the emergence of new personnel. Finally, the association aimed to set up relations with foreign organisations, working in film.3 As noted, towards the end of the 1920s, ARK became increasingly subject to attack in the press for its perceived liberal approach and had changed its name to ARRK (now including the word ‘Workers’) to fit in to the new proletarianisation agenda. RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers) joined the attack on the association, accusing ARRK of having ‘no clear ideological platform’ and for considering Formalism to be legitimate. It also demanded that ARRK, which was an association of professionals and had almost no genuinely proletarian representatives from the cinema industry in its ranks, purge ‘obviously hostile elements’ and train film workers from a proletarian background.4 The following year, an article in the cinema journal Kino i zhizn suggested that ARRK was an elite ‘guild’ of leading figures in the industry and had to become a truly mass organisation by embracing thousands of ordinary workers and by making a real effort to reach the masses.5 The association was slow to respond to these accusations. Once again, its first step was to define its functions by a charter created in January

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1929. The role of the organisation was basically the same as that which had been outlined in 1924. Nonetheless, the charter inevitably reflected the times with references to the need for Soviet films ‘saturated in proletarian ideology’ and the requirement to fight against the emergence of ‘bourgeois’ ideology in Soviet films. To some extent, the association adhered to its own rules and regulations governing its powers and activities. It had the right to discuss, debate and provide a research forum relating to any area of cinematography. It could also organise lectures and viewings of new films. The results of debates or any new knowledge could then be publicised in the cinema press. These functions remained at the heart of ARRK’s activities in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The lectures and debates were wide ranging and included discussions on the state of the Soviet cinema industry, creative matters connected to all the main cinema professions, as well as exchanges on technology. For instance, the development of sound was one of the more common preoccupations in ARRK at the turn of the decade and the lectures and debates undoubtedly helped to publicise and improve understanding of a problematic area.6 ARRK also had powers to approve any visits of its members to foreign countries in the interests of technical and practical knowledge gathering. For example, when Sergei Eisenstein, Grigori Alexandrov and Eduard Tisse received an invitation from the American company United Artists to produce a film in the USA, the three men had to write to the board of ARRK, requesting permission to take up the offer.7 It is important to note that ARRK was an association of cinema professionals, not a trade union. In the 1920s up until 1934, the cinemaphotographic section of the arts union Rabis was responsible for monitoring working conditions, examining grievances among cinema personnel, ensuring the enforcement of labour legislation, regulating wages, hours and social insurance. Rabis also got involved in other areas, such as supporting unemployed cinema personnel to gain new training, or find work in other sectors. While Rabis was fairly active in the defence of its members’ interests in the 1920s, as the decade wore on, cinema personnel felt increasingly neglected by the trade union. Rabis accorded cinema less importance than the other arts. In particular, the union gave disproportionate attention to the needs of theatre. Leading cinema personnel perceived Rabis as essentially a union which dealt with theatre actors. Part of the problem may have been Rabis’s huge membership which reached around 150,000 members by the early 1930s, dealing with nearly 600 different professions. It was clear that Rabis was simply unable

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to cope with the demands that were being placed on it.8 As a direct consequence, by the end of the 1920s and, in the early part of the 1930s, ARRK’s role began to expand beyond that of a typical professional association aimed at promoting the interests of cinema and its members. It now began to adopt functions that would normally have fallen within the remit of Rabis, without having the powers of that union. In January 1929, an actress by the name of Rosiner was dismissed by director Ivan Pyrev from his latest film The Strange Woman (Postoronniaia zhenshchina, 1929). The actress then wrote to the actor’s division of ARRK, claiming that Pyrev had mistreated her and unfairly relieved her of her role. The association acknowledged that it did not have the power to demand Rosiner’s reinstatement, but it gave the actress its full support, making a statement in the press, lobbying Sovkino and making a plea to the central committee of Rabis.9 Indeed, ARRK’s involvement in such labour disputes became the norm and it soon began to support unemployed cinema specialists by publicising the situation and applying pressure when possible.10 ARRK’s struggle to support the cause of cinema and its members was made more difficult by the organisation’s lack of financial means. In 1929 it was claimed that only a third of members had paid their fees while Sovkino, the cinema administration, had failed to give ARRK the 5000 roubles that it had promised to provide. The association was also in debt to various organisations, including Rabis and ODSK and this simply made it harder for the body to function.11 Ultimately though, finances had little bearing on the fate of the association. On the other hand, the years of cultural revolution had a devastating effect. By 1932 ARRK, as noted above, had been purged to the extent that the organisation was a pale remnant of its former self. Yet it managed to survive, despite the liquidation of RAPP, which was fairly influential in the world of literature and had helped push ARRK toward the proletarianisation agenda. Why did it survive? It was certainly not perceived as a political threat anymore. Indeed, by the end of 1932, there was a considerable degree of apathy among the most senior members of the association, even in the Leningrad branch, which had been subject to constant suspicion over its political and artistic loyalties in the late 1920s. However, ARRK was to receive a new role which gained support from its leadership headed by Vsevolod Pudovkin and the cinema press. It was agreed that the weakness of ARRK lay in its isolation from the production process. The association was no longer to engage in abstract debate and argument, it had to help in the

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very process of film-making at the studios themselves. The turn to production reflected the tone of the cultural revolution, which had now ended, but the overwhelming emphasis on production and praxis left an indelible mark on the Soviet system. ARRK was renamed RosARRK (Ros standing for ‘Russian’) and special association ‘cells’ were established in the studios where members of RosARRK were supposed to discuss ideas, scripts and films with film-makers, administrators and Party representatives at the studio, as well as help the younger generation. Pudovkin summed up this new direction by stating that the association’s main task was to ‘transform each member of cinema personnel into a highly cultured fighter on the front of the second Five Year Plan’.12 Unfortunately, this attempt to revive the association proved to be a failure. The results at the studios varied, but it soon became clear that RosARRK had no future. In January 1935, at the First All-Union Conference of Creative Workers, Pudovkin announced the official liquidation of the association. He claimed that RosARRK was not prepared for its new role and that a certain RAPP-influenced elitism had remained in the organisation. Pudovkin optimistically called for the creation of a new creative Union of Soviet Cinematographers. Such an aspiration would only be realised over twenty years later with the establishment of the Union of Cinematographers in 1957. By 1935 creative personnel had already been absorbed by a new cinema trade union.13 ODSK ODSK or The Society of Friends of Soviet Cinema, was founded in November 1925 as the industry’s first truly mass voluntary organisation, intended to replace its short-lived predecessor OSPK (The Society of Builders of Proletarian Cinema).14 The cinema writer, Grigori Boltiansky, described the new organisation as having ‘enormous significance’. Boltiansky suggested that ODSK’s fundamental role would be as ‘an instrument of education and knowledge’.15 Most importantly, ODSK was supposed to provide the connection between the Party, Government and cinema industry on the one hand and the masses on the other hand. In order to provide this central link, ODSK was expected to carry out a series of tasks. The most commonly employed function was the use of viewings of Soviet films followed by discussion. There were many sceptics in the film industry who questioned the ability of poorly educated and, sometimes, illiterate workers and peasants to contribute to a useful debate

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on the merits or shortcomings of a given film. The cinema journalist M. Nikanorov argued that workers and peasants could offer worthy commentary, but emphasised the value of discussions as a means of politically educating the ‘least conscious’ members of the audience. Nikanorov proposed the establishment of so-called ‘cinema judges’ (kinosuda), groups of experts who could explain the political and social meaning of Soviet films in an intelligible and engaging manner. Thus, above all, the emphasis on film viewings, for commentators such as Nikanorov, offered the ideal opportunity to spread the communist message and raise mass political consciousness. In addition to film viewings and discussions, ODSK arranged lectures and reports, which would also be accompanied by a film viewing to attract larger audiences. More ambitious plans included expanding these viewings and lectures to include exhibitions where lists of books could be recommended to workers and peasants. In Leningrad a series of ‘cinema evenings’ had been established which, again, included a film viewing expanded upon by cultural events related to the film, such as a concert or ballet performance.16 The Society had one potentially powerful weapon at its disposal to help fulfil its aim of reaching the masses; the newspaper Kino. The wellestablished paper gave the society the perfect opportunity to publicise itself and its activities. In January 1928 at the second plenum of the Society, the general secretary insisted that every member of ODSK, from the top to the bottom of the organisation, ought to be able to obtain a copy of the newspaper given its significant role as part of Soviet cinema’s educational function. This ambition was partly hampered by the patchy distribution of Kino to the extent that even main cities, such as Leningrad, might not receive any copies of the publication for a month. Moreover, in practice articles on ODSK were the exception rather than the rule. ODSK made some efforts to set up film viewings for worker audiences, but judging by the debates that took place, genuinely ordinary workers or peasants were rarely given the real opportunity to express their views and the ideal of films reflecting ideas expressed by ordinary citizens was largely an illusion. Moreover, as we have seen, only a few Soviet films were subjected to ODSK scrutiny and ODSK decisions were often ignored by studios, censors and distributors which underlined the society’s powerless status.17 The society also wanted workers and peasants to actively participate in the development of the industry itself, aiming to take into account their views. Throughout the existence of the society it was emphasised that the broad masses had an important role to play in the

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cinefication of the country, especially in the rural areas. The role of ODSK in the cinefication of the country was also negligible. On one occasion the society had raised the money for the purchase of some mobile projectors for rural areas. Nevertheless, in 1931 one commentator described the work of ODSK in helping the cinefication project as ‘very bad’. He pointed out that the local ODSK cells dotted around the Soviet map were not participating at all in the cinefication project and that this was evident in the high number of projectors in disrepair.18 Nevertheless, while ODSK’s influence was relatively weak, the society did carry out some useful work in certain areas. The Voronezh branch could boast success in the production of its own local magazine as well as the production of two films which it sold to the cinema administration.19 ODSK also played a significant role in educating projectionists to serve the cinema network throughout the USSR through its correspondence courses. The society provided an entry point for some young creative personnel who wanted to make a career in cinema. Yevgeni Andrikanis, who went on to become one of the USSR’s best-known feature film cameramen, began his career as a volunteer for ODSK. Mate Galka, an older friend and member of ODSK’s central council recommended Andrikanis to the State College of Cinematography. Subsequently, Andrikanis became a student and never looked back.20 The society’s weakness at carrying out its tasks was, in a similar manner to ARRK, related to an absence of financial means. Although the Party, cinema administration and trade unions often referred to the importance of the society as the main connection to the masses, they were reluctant to provide it with resources. A certain Mamet, a member of the society’s central council reported in 1931 that no financial help whatsoever had been offered by these bodies. He pointed out that, despite their official rhetoric, Soiuzkino and the central trade union organisation ‘underestimated the significance’ of the society. The cinema administration clearly regarded the work of the body as essentially voluntary and failed to accept that its demands on ODSK had to be backed up with some sort of financial support.21 Failure to fulfil its mission was also due to weak leadership, poor organisation and recruitment in the regions and republics. Due to its voluntary nature, ODSK struggled to establish a strong leadership that could guide the society. Vladimir Kirshon described ODSK as an ‘army without a commander’. Indeed, the society’s central council only met twice a year due to the fact that its leaders had many other priorities to

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deal with.22 The absence of a constantly working leadership might have been mitigated through closer work with other organisations in the film industry. Unfortunately, the society’s relations with other bodies were weak. ARRK and ODSK were less than cooperative with one another. In the late 1920s there had been a breakdown in communication between ODSK’s leadership and ARRK. This did not improve much in the early 1930s and ARRK tended to maintain a somewhat dismissive attitude towards the society. Soiuzkino also failed, not only in offering basic financial support, but in working with ODSK to help make its work more effective. The society had been renamed in 1929 as ODSKF (Society of Friends of Soviet Cinema and Photography) and then in 1931 as OZPKF (Society for Proletarian Cinema and Photography). However, these superficial changes made little impact. The organisation was eventually liquidated in 1934. The shortcomings of organisation and leadership, as well as financial problems, undoubtedly played a part in this downfall. But, more importantly, the Soviet government was increasingly concerned with achieving mass support for the regime through educating the masses and much less interested in their active participation or views on Soviet cinema. Ordinary people were now expected to visit their local cinema not to engage in a debate, but to hear and absorb carefully prepared points of view in new Soviet films. The Union of Cinema Personnel At the Plenum of VTsSPS (All-Union Central Council of Professional Unions) in September 1934, it was decided that existing trade unions would be split into smaller, more representative unions. This affected Rabis, which would now be divided into two unions: the Union of Cinema Personnel and the Union of Arts Personnel. At the final Plenum of Rabis that same month the Union of Cinema Personnel was officially inaugurated. The union constituted the first Soviet cinema trade union created to specifically address the needs of cinema personnel.23 To some extent, the union was created as a reaction to the poor representation of cinema personnel by Rabis. However, the issue of representation extended to the broader mass of cinema workers, especially the thousands of projectionists, who had largely been ignored up until now. The inclusion of the mass of rank and file cinema workers into the new union was the logical outcome of the criticisms of ARRK that it was nothing more than an elite ‘guild’. It also continued the spirit of the

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cultural revolution by arguing for the need to be ‘closer to the masses’ and ‘closer to production’. At its first plenum, the new union set out a series of practical matters that it would be responsible for dealing with as a trade union. First of all, this included regulating wages and salaries. The union was charged with overseeing the implementation of payment by the job in technical workshops, helping in the selection of the best workers and rewards for high quality and productivity. It was also responsible for ensuring the implementation of the law on paying for periods of work stoppage and for the production of defective products, as well as ensuring that lower paid professionals, such as cinema actors, received the correct salary. Secondly, the new union would be responsible for social insurance to ensure that cinema personnel would have access to basic medical care, including sanatoria for those with more serious health problems. Finally, the union was intended to ensure adequate work conditions. This meant checking the implementation of measures to maintain the health and safety of its members in every place of work affecting the cinema industry, from laboratories to studios. It also meant that the union would protect cinema personnel from carrying out too much overtime while simultaneously helping to enforce labour discipline.24 Indeed, these planned functions indicated that the union would engage in a combination of measures aimed at protecting its members and efforts to mobilise its members to the tasks of the communist regime. Nevertheless, in time the balance tipped. In the 1930s trade unions turned increasingly towards mobilising and organising the working class for the aim of socialist construction and the implementation of Five Year Plans. The emphasis on protecting their members became much less significant and the unions became less representative of the grievances of those members.25 The new cinema union reflected this context and its first leader, Mikhail Grinberg, stressed the political mobilising role of the union. Grinberg acknowledged the protective aspect of the union’s work, but suggested that it would not be purely reduced to a trade union mentality characteristic of the West, or Russian trade unions of recent times. Grinberg argued that the trade union should not be in conflict with the Party or the state. As with all Soviet trade unions the new cinema union was to help convey the Party message to the masses.26 The union did certainly make some positive impact on the lives of cinema personnel. It organised summer rest camps in the Caucasus,

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offering two or four week breaks for 180 or 360 roubles. This was undoubtedly of great value to those who could afford the expenditure. The union also made efforts to improve working conditions at studios, as well as applying pressure when wages or salaries were late or not being paid at all. However, such protective measures were invariably accompanied by other demands. These demands often involved helping the cinema administration implement its orders. For instance, in 1935 the studios in Moscow and Leningrad were found to have incorrectly spent money assigned to wages. The cinema trade union and GUKF worked together to deal with the problem. The trade union also assisted GUKF in its efforts to enforce labour discipline at cinema studios and enterprises throughout the country, this included the introduction of wage systems that depended, to some extent, on how well plans were being carried out.27 As a consequence of the union’s politicised nature, much of its work that claimed to protect the workers was in fact aimed at getting more out of them. Indeed, despite the new concern with the broader mass of workers within the cinema industry, the work of the trade union aimed at improving the conditions of its most ubiquitous members, the rural projectionists, was rather ineffectual. The union’s rhetoric on the importance of the projectionist and the need to look after his or her needs and demands, especially labour conditions, had little substance. In practice, the mass of projectionists in the country lived in poor conditions and often had to sleep rough with a low income that was less than enough to cover the costs of accommodation, food and the expense of making the journey around the countryside with his or her projector for which they received no extra money. Unfortunately, the cinema trade union did little to improve the lot of projectionists, such difficult conditions persisted throughout the 1930s and, as a direct result, the projectionists, who were often very young, were leaving their jobs in significant numbers to find a better life.28 The trade union also failed to fulfil its promise to help ensure that a new generation of creative workers would break through in the studios. As we shall see, the 1930s were a time of great difficulty for aspiring filmmakers who struggled to make a career in the relatively small Soviet film industry. Once again, regardless of the intentions set out in 1934, the cinema trade union did not and could not do much to change this situation. The union was successful in gaining joint control over the newspaper Kino alongside the cinema administration. Nevertheless, it failed to increase the frequency of issue from every six days to every three days as it had

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planned. It was also clear that, while the trade union’s activities were given substantially more attention than ODSK had received, the cinema administration was the more powerful partner in the running of the newspaper. Towards the latter part of the 1930s the cinema trade union became less and less representative of its members. This was particular evident among creative personnel. In July 1938, Sovnarkom issued a decree that effectively gave the rights of authorship to the scriptwriter, taking them away from the director. This represented a strong attack on the artistic value of the director in Soviet cinema, but the trade union fell notably silent, showing no support for its director members. This left the directors with no official organisation with which they could defend and protect their own interests. The absence of a proper lobbying or bargaining organisation meant that cinema personnel had to find other means of presenting their views and arguments to the authorities. Nonetheless, the absence of a means for lobbying and bargaining was more of an important issue for some than it was for others. Towards the end of the decade, a privileged group was emerging among cinema creative personnel, consisting of largely established film-makers. This development was evident in many areas, especially that of income. Although Dukelsky’s salary reforms would soon reduce the incomes of the broader mass of film-makers, the privileged group would still receive increased salaries for making politically ‘correct’ films and the promise in the future of generous pensions which meant that, in practice, the elite remained fairly wealthy. For instance, for the film Lenin in 1918, director Mikhail Romm was given a raised salary of 100,000 roubles and his cameraman Boris Volchek received 30,000 roubles. The same amounts were given to director Alexander Dovzhenko and cameraman Yuri Ekelchik for the film Shchors, while director Sergei Yutkevich and camerman Zhosef Martov received 75,000 and 25,000 roubles respectively for The Man with a Gun (Chelovek s ruzhem, 1938).29 In each case the film-makers were being rewarded for producing ideologically ‘sound’ films. In addition, this group enjoyed large budgets for their films. Instead of spreading limited resources to give outsiders and younger artists a chance, excessive amounts of money were being used on individual films and lavish productions which were almost always given to the same favoured directors. Rewards also came in other forms too. The privileged group of filmmakers enjoyed extremely comfortable lifestyles compared with most of

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their colleagues in the film industry and the population at large. In the first place, they lived in spacious, private flats rather than communal accommodation, which was the norm at this time, and many of them were given the best cars to drive, usually foreign models such as Ford. This group was also given opportunities to travel to Europe and America on official film festival visits or to acquire knowledge of Western technological developments. These visits were used as unofficial holidays and to make foreign friends in the industry. These film-makers enjoyed substantial rest at home. They had access to Party canteens and regularly engaged in drinking, billiards and card playing.30 They received symbolic awards of prestige given to film-makers for the quality of their work or perceived contribution the Soviet film industry, which helped to consolidate their privileged status. These were similar to those applied across the board and included ‘the Order of Lenin’, ‘the Order of the Red Banner’, ‘the Order of the Red Star’, as well as prestigious arts awards, such as a ‘People’s Artist’.31 This economic well-being did, to some extent, placate the most privileged film-makers who, on the whole, were happy to buy into the Bolsheviks’ defensive outlook by making heavily politicised films to defend the regime’s past, present and future. Nonetheless, while they enjoyed economic prosperity, they were often excluded from the process of artistic and administrative decision-making in the film industry. There were a few options open to film-makers beyond the official trade unions. They could make appeals in newspapers, as Eisenstein and his colleagues did in 1940, concerning the dreadful state of the Institute of Cinematography in Moscow.32 They could meet the leader of the cinema administration and his deputies to discuss artistic matters, or questions of industry organisation. In such cases the film-makers usually struggled to make themselves heard. Meetings with Semyon Dukelsky in 1938–9 proved to be extremely difficult as the chairman tended to treat film-makers with contempt rather than listen to their grievances.33 Later meetings with Ivan Bolshakov acknowledged the views of cinema personnel, but little was done in practice to satisfy their concerns. One of the most direct methods increasingly employed by film-makers in the late 1930s was the individual or collective letter addressed to the Soviet government or the general secretary. Following the failure of the cinema trade union to provide a platform for grievances after the decree that included the clause on film authorship, the industry’s leading directors came together to write a letter of protest to Viacheslav Molotov, calling for changes to the new

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law.34 Although this proved unsuccessful, the weak protective power of the trade union meant that letter writing became the only real means by which creative personnel might be heard. In July 1940 another group of Soviet film directors wrote to Stalin complaining about pay, ‘wretched’ equipment and a lack of autonomy in the studios.35 It had become abundantly clear that the trade union had done more to create grievances rather than defend film-makers from the policies of the government and cinema administration. Nonetheless, these complaints did bear some fruit for the elite filmmakers. By the end of the 1930s, government, Party and administrative leaders recognised the frustrations of artistic personnel being frozen out of almost all important decision-making. Gradually, some film-makers were given extremely important roles in the cinema bureaucracy. For example, in January 1939, the directors Mikhail Chiaureli, Mikhail Romm, Ilia Trauberg and Vsevolod Pudovkin were all included in the new Cinema Committee script department, which would have a significant influence on whether or not scripts would be accepted as potential film productions.36 Mikhail Romm would also soon become an influential figure in GUPKhF (Main Administration for the Production of Feature Films). Subsequently, the film-makers would gain more power in the studios themselves through the new artistic councils. This sudden increase in administrative influence would decrease again after the war. However, these developments reveal that the relationship between the artists and the government, Party and cinema administration were always complex and changing. While the privileged group of film-makers broadly did carry out demands to produce films protective of the regime and its myths, the artists were not content to simply lead a good life. They too were concerned about the general development of the industry and the working conditions within which they had to operate. The Fate of Creative Personnel: The House of Cinema The houses of cinema were set up firstly in Leningrad in 1930, in Moscow during 1934 and other Soviet capitals in later years, although the idea of establishing them had been proposed by ARK and ODSK in 1928.37 The houses of cinema were established as clubs rather than professional societies, but given the decline and eventual liquidation of ARRK, they inevitably adopted many of the functions of that organisation. By the mid-1930s the houses of cinema were organising viewings and discussions of old and new Soviet and foreign films, debating industry issues at a

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given time, such as the actor problem. Their planned programmes also included lectures and discussions on music, art and scripts, as well as evenings of rest and entertainment characteristic of a club.38 Whereas ARRK maintained a significant degree of independence until the 1930s, the houses of cinema were subject to control from the cinema administration, which provided the finances for the organisations, as well as giving its approval to the houses’ activities. Before its liquidation, RosARRK ran the everyday affairs of the houses of cinema. When RosARRK folded in 1935, the creative section of the cinema trade union took over this responsibility, although the central committee of the union now controlled the property and budget of the houses of cinema and participated in the planning of their work alongside the creative section. Leonid Trauberg summed up the rather feeble capacities of the creative section by describing it as a ‘still-born baby’. He pointed out that, despite its shortcomings, ARRK provided a proper arena for debate and argument that was essential for cinema industry development. He pointedly suggested that such a powerful creative forum was essential for film-makers to express their views and ideas to leading cinema administrators. Trauberg proposed a solution, which had support from fellow film-makers throughout the industry: they wanted the recreation of an independent creative union of cinematographers, as ARRK had once been.39 Such an independent creative union would not emerge until the 1950s. In the meantime, the houses of cinema were the closest creative personnel would come to free association. Unfortunately, these organisations did not provide the lively forum of debate that many wanted. In October 1936, leading cinema personnel from the Moscow House of Cinema complained that the organisation did not provide them with the opportunity to participate in a genuine creative exchange. They suggested that film viewings were almost always followed by concerts and dancing, attended by a large proportion of individuals who had little to do with films or the cinema industry in general. Moreover, when interesting discussions were organised by GUK and the cinema trade union, many members of the club were not always invited. In 1936 Shumiatsky ordered the Moscow House of Cinema to end its discussion of a Pravda article, which involved much criticism of the state of Soviet cinema on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the October Revolution. This was a clear signal to film-makers that their desire for free association appeared to be further than ever from realisation.40

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Conclusion The establishment of unions and societies in Soviet cinema was very much an ongoing process in the 1920s and 1930s, which reflected the political, social, economic and cultural changes of the times. In the end the system of interest representation failed to give adequate support to either the film-makers or the mass of workers employed in the Soviet film industry, while the transitory idea of engaging the masses in film production and assessment came to a swift conclusion in 1934. In the late 1920s up until 1934, the trade union Rabis had been unable to give the cinema industry the attention it deserved. ARRK struggled to offer a form of substitute representation, but the association was not established as a trade union. It had been set up as a professional society with the function of an interest group aimed at promoting the new art of cinema. The creation of the new cinema trade union briefly offered hope that both film-makers and cinema workers’ rights more generally would now be protected. This largely proved to be an illusion. Another aspect of film-maker emasculation was the increasing difficulty of engaging in collective debate. ARRK had once provided such a forum, but this was effectively ended by the cultural revolution. The establishment of the houses of cinema in the 1930s again seemed to offer promise of a new forum for creative workers. As we have seen, in practice they were closer to social clubs than arenas of intellectual exchange and ferment. The houses of cinema did replace ARRK to a limited extent, however, as the themes and debates became subject to control from above, free and open discussion became harder to achieve. Film-makers were, for much of the 1930s, also excluded from artistic and administrative decision-making. This began to change, albeit temporarily, in the late 1930s and early 1940s, but film-makers were often forced to adopt what proved to be ineffectual unofficial channels for lobbying, such as letter writing to bureaucrats and leading government and Party figures. However, we have argued that a privileged group of film-makers began to emerge in the 1930s who enjoyed high incomes and a lifestyle that were significantly better than those of their younger colleagues in the studios who were struggling to break through. The gap was even wider between the privileged artists and the rank-and-file workers, such as projectionists. Not only did these men and women find that the new trade union intended to represent their interests was more concerned with the implementation of government and administrative policy, they did not have the consolation of luxurious flats and trips abroad. The political

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changes of the 1930s imposed a uniformity on cinema personnel representation, which prevented the proper development of this area. In the end, narrowing down and centralisation meant that nobody was adequately protected or represented. By the end of the decade, neither interest group representation, nor the protection of cinema personnel rights, nor the availability of a forum for the free exchange of ideas was satisfactory.

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CHAPTER 6

A TALE OF TWO STUDIOS: MEZHRABPOMFILM AND MOSFILM

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his chapter will draw a comparison between two studios; Mezhrabpomfilm during the early to mid-1930s and Mosfilm towards the end of the decade. By making this comparison it will be evident how, over a relatively short period of time, centralisation had such a telling effect on the studios and the nature of film production in general, taking bureaucracy to absurd levels and threatening the creative process. The chapter will also examine the fact that hyper-centralisation essentially failed to develop the film industry and demands from filmmakers to become involved in running production led to reforms at the turn of the decade. The most important of these reforms was the emergence of artistic councils in the studios, which gave the film-makers a powerful means of response. While the councils were in practice not necessarily purely democratic bodies, the Mosfilm example suggests that they were still a very positive step forward. Unfortunately, the reforms were soon gradually reversed. The comparison between the Mezhrabpomfilm and Mosfilm studios at this time thus serves not only to show just how bureaucratic the film-making process became, but more importantly, it reveals just how deeply the Bolshevik defensive mentality was entrenched and how their lack of flexibility undermined potential progress. Studio Administration: The Nature of Film Production in the 1930s It is important to point out that film production in the USSR was never highly efficient. Nonetheless, at the end of the 1920s and during the early part of the 1930s studios could make films within reasonable time spans.

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A commission investigating the work of Mezhrabpomfilm in 1929 noted that, on average and in terms of the production period proper, a film should take around three months to make, although the reality was often five months.1 Film production began with the script. At this time the studio heads would either approve scripts that had been submitted to the studio or they would commission a script from established writers based on an idea that may have come from within or outside the organisation. This meant that, while many scripts would deal with specific Bolshevikapproved issues of the day, there was still a degree of flexibility in terms of plots and themes. Yakov Protazanov’s The Feast of Saint Jorgen (Prazdnik sviatogo Iorgena, 1930) provides an illustration of how films were made at this time. The idea for the film derived from Harald Bergstedt’s novel Factory of the Saints (1919), an anti-religious work that made an ideal basis for a cinema script in the USSR at the turn of the decade when campaigns to eliminate religion reached their height. The development of the script was a slow process which had initially been considered in 1925, but began as Protazanov’s own interpretation in the autumn of 1927. It received official approval by Mezhrabpomfilm’s script department on 5 May 1928 when the representatives looked to the spring of 1929 as a possible time to begin production. Two days later it was agreed that Yakov Protazanov should be the director of the film.2 Although the plan was to provide Protazanov with a co-author, this did not come to fruition and, in October 1928, the board agreed to pay Protazanov 1500 roubles to write the script for The Feast of Saint Jorgen.3 In the end, due partly to Protazanov’s busy schedule and his decision to do the script on his own, it was only completed towards the autumn of 1929.4 Even at this stage the signs of future political interference began to surface. In September 1929 the board decreed that the script would have to gain approval from the League of Militant Godless, a government-controlled body created to destroy religion, and ordered Alexander Andrievsky to take responsibility to ensure that agreement would be reached.5 In addition, the film had to gain approval of the censor Glavrepertkom and the studio’s artistic council, before receiving final acceptance from the Mezhrabpomfilm board. Although the process of filming was not continuous, the main scenes were shot in the spring of 1930 and, even without precise dates, we can estimate that the main production itself took around five months to complete. At a meeting of the Artistic Secretariat in March 1930 a decree was issued, establishing the release date of the film on the 1 June that

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year, although it was not actually released until August 1930.6 Yakov Protazanov’s The Feast of Saint Jorgen is an example of reasonably efficient film production from a prolific film-maker. This was possible as the process of checking and approval was, not entirely, but largely in the hands of the studio where the main decisions were taken. Moreover, this autonomy stretched right down to the film crews at Mezhrabpomfilm. In 1934 the studio’s charter stated clearly that the director was the leader of the film crew, but in addition to his creative leadership, he/she was also in charge of broad organisational, administrative, and economic matters It also stated that the administrative head of the film crew was ‘directly subordinate to the director’.7 This official recognition of film-maker autonomy had always been part of Mezhrabpomfilm’s spirit. Indeed, this may well have encouraged the creative and cooperative atmosphere that prevailed during the making of films, such as The Feast of Saint Jorgen. Vladimir Shveitser, a co-writer on several Protazanov films, who was present in Yalta when the outdoor scenes were being shot, observed Protazanov at work with a large mass of extras: It was a joy to watch how at first Protazanov gained the sympathy of the crowd of thousands, then forced them to become interested in the course of the scene, individualising each group or the typical image of the pilgrim.8

Shveitser describes Protazanov’s method of winning over his cast with an easy-going humour, before explaining the idea behind each scene. This meant that actors were willing to tolerate even the most difficult working conditions to successfully complete their parts. Undoubtedly, certain individuals, such as Protazanov, commanded more veneration than the average director. Nonetheless, the fact that interference in the film-making process was still relatively low certainly engendered a milieu of authority and mutual respect. As the decade wore on, increasingly rigid thematic plans led to excessive politicisation of film content and a reduction of freedom in script ideas and development. Later, following the introduction of the 1938 legislation, the official process of checking and approval became obsessive. The Bolsheviks wanted to ensure that one of their key means of ideological defence was fully under Party control. As we have seen, the control of the script was at the centre of this legislation. Whereas in

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Crowd scene from Protazanov’s Feast of Saint Jorgen (1930).

the early to mid-1930s the script began its life in the studios, by the end of the decade the first stop for preliminary checks would be the Cinema Committee’s script department. Fyodor Filippov’s and Valentin Kadochnikov’s The Magic Pearl (Volshebnoe zerno, 1941) began its journey on 21 March 1939 when Nikolai Semyonov, the chief editor of Cinema Committee’s script department gave initial approval to the Mosfilm project. As with all films at the early checking stage, The Magic Pearl was

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approved due to its sound ideological and artistic content, but also as a Soviet fairytale that would be appealing to both children and adults.9 The script would then be passed onto the studio’s script department, which had often unofficially seen it before the Cinema Committee, but could now make its own comments or criticisms. GUPKhF, which was a sub-division of the Cinema Committee, would then maintain constant control over each film from the pre-production period until completion. In February 1940, GUPKhF ordered the filmmakers to shorten their movie down to 1800 metres. However, film directors were often reluctant to carry out large cuts and at least attempted to avoid making such changes. The directors sent a letter to the deputy director of Mosfilm, stating that they had cut the film by 538 metres, bringing its overall length down to 1895 metres. They claimed that they had fulfilled the demands made by GUPKhF and concluded that a ‘further cut of the script by 95 metres was impossible because this would bring an even bigger loss to the overall quality’.10 Unfortunately, Grigori Zeldovich, the head of GUPKhF, did not accept the directors’ conclusions, arguing that, while the implemented changes had made the script more compact, there were still many irregularities. Zeldovich claimed that the length of each shot in the directors’ script had been calculated incorrectly and that ‘further cuts in the script [were] not only possible, but expedient’.11 All feature films since the mid-thirties had to go through a preparatory period before the actual filming process itself could begin. This was intended to weed out any potential difficulties and ensure that actors were adequately prepared. GUPKhF had to approve the beginning of the preparatory period, including its cost and time frame. A typical feature film, such as Yuli Raizman’s Mashenka (1941) would be given approximately two months to prepare for the production itself.12 GUPKhF also considered the preparatory period to be important because it gave the film-makers the opportunity to present a more rigorous production plan and a more realistic financial estimate for filming costs. However, in some cases, such as The Magic Pearl, the preparatory period would take much longer than the norm. The artistic council at Mosfilm expressed concern over whether or not the ambitious technical demands of the script could be realised in practice. It thus called for the carrying out of experimental shots during the preparatory period of the proposed combined special effects shots to indicate the feasibility of the film-makers’ plans. The studio director, Konstantin Polonsky, asked for special permission from GUPKhF to allow for this experimentation, pointing

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out that it was necessary to see if the film could work artistically, as well as to enable the compilation of a general estimate and plan for the actual filming process. The head of GUPKhF, Alexander Kurianov, approved a preparatory period lasting until 1 August 1940. The technical complexities of the experimental shots meant that the preparatory period went on for much longer than expected. On 26 August 1940, Nikolai Kiva, the new studio director, wrote another letter to Kurianov requesting a further extension of the preparatory period, as specialists had not been available to ensure the success of the combined special effects shots. Kurianov and other members of the cinema administration approved the extension until mid-September, but this was not the end of the matter.13 On 19 November 1940, Kiva informed the new head of GUPKhF, Polonsky, that, given their demands for cuts to the film and the suspension of funding largely due to uncertainty over the budget for the actual production, the preparatory period would have to be extended once again until midDecember.14 Finally, on 7 December, Ivan Bolshakov gave his approval to a production period lasting from 25 November 1940 until 31 October 1941 with a budget of 2,194 906 roubles. Thus, while the expectation at Mezhrabpomfilm at the start of the 1930s was that a film could be completed within three months, by the end of the decade this had extended to nearly a year. At last, filming of The Magic Pearl seemed to be underway.15 In the early to mid-1930s the studios had a significant level of autonomy. For example the board at Mezhrabpomfilm, in close conjunction with the studio’s director, made all the decisions on film budget, the distribution of resources, the nominaton and salaries of the film crew as well as decisions on whether a film was ready for production or release. This all gradually changed as successive cinema administrations took control of film production and the 1938 decree gave approval to thorough checking at the top of the cinema administration. In practise this meant that each film could now only go ahead if it had received official sanction by the Cinema Committee chairman. This authorisation would be sent to the given studio and included several strict criteria. The filming process was to fully conform to the approved director’s script and the agreed set design, it would include a financial estimate for every film to which the film crew had to strictly adhere, it nominated the film producer, director and cameraman, as well as their assistants, it gave the film crew a precise thermal coefficient for their given film stock to prevent it from excessive expansion or contraction and, finally, the authorisation laid down a specific period of time for the project, including a submission

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date for the completed film.16 Yet, even the final approval of the director’s script by the chairman of the Cinema Committee did not always mean that the script would remain the same in the final product. After 1938, the film production process itself was subject to further scrutiny and, as a result, further changes. After the preparatory period, GUPKhF kept a close eye on production to ensure that film-makers adhered to approved director’s scripts, budgets, time limits and so on. If it was unsatisfied with any aspect of a film production it could take punitive action or report the matter to the Cinema Committee chairman. For example, the production of the film Gold (Zoloto) which was later renamed The Lad from the Taiga (Paren iz taigi, 1941) was dogged by a series of problems, including some that were beyond the film-maker’s control, such as lack of access to basic studio facilitites. The cinema administration and its chairman were unsatisfied with the ideological and artistic depiction of some of the film’s main characters, which meant that scenes had to be shot again. GUPKhF also rejected the words for some of the songs that were to appear in the film. When Bolshakov gave his assessment of the situation, he, of course, did not criticise representatives from the cinema administration. On the contrary, it was usually studio heads and the film crew who bore the blame for failure to implement production plans.17 In January 1941 the artistic council at Mosfilm decided that the filmed material for The Magic Pearl should be examined before proceeding any further. On 31 January 1941, the studio director, Kiva, the artistic head of the studio Eisenstein, alongside other members of the artistic council and the film crew, gathered to watch the first shots from the film. The quality of the work was considered to be unsatisfactory. On a fundamental level, the early shots of film were considered to lack the distinctive features of the fairy tale style and this was not helped by the poor work of the actress playing Katerina, who was subsequently dismissed. The studio and committee representatives pointed out that the camera work was also unsatisfactory in that the poor use of light made what should have been joyful scenes seem rather grim. The poor quality of the sound recording was regarded as a further serious shortcoming, as it ruined the potentially strong music score composed by Lev Shvarts. The representatives suggested that the early work would have to be filmed again and the film-makers given more time to adequately prepare, ensuring that all the aforementioned problems would be properly addressed, before any further work could take place.18

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In April 1941, the director’s script of The Magic Pearl was subject to yet more scrutiny by Moisei Aleinikov, who now found himself in a very different film production context in Mosfilm’s script department. He demanded yet further changes to the ending.19 Subsequently, in 23 May and June 1941 further meetings took place at the studio, attended once again by the studio director Groshev, Eisenstein, Aleinikov, representatives of the Cinema Committee, the film’s directors and its cameraman, where more changes and monitoring of the sketches and the set construction were approved.20 This sort of intervention was the norm for all films and not only those being produced by young film-makers in need of guidance. Moreover, the significant involvement of studio artistic and script experts revealed more than a concern for ensuring a high-quality end product. The sort of changes demanded by both administrators and artists suggests a desire for creative input that may have reflected a context of creative frustration and the domination of procedure and bureaucracy. Finally, the proper production process could soon begin. Therefore, by the end of the 1930s the central characteristic of Soviet film production was the bureaucratic process of checking and approval at every stage. The aforementioned examples were just some of the main points of this process, but by no means present the full picture. Although the bodies doing the checking changed from time to time, we can summarise the basic process as follows: first the scriptwriter would have to present his/her work to the script department of the Cinema Committee, if approved it would also be sent to the studio’s script department. The director would then devise his own version of the script ready for film production. This script would then undergo a parallel, rigorous series of checks carried out by numerous departments in the cinema administration and in the studio, although authority and monitoring ultimately rested with the Cinema Committee. Most significantly, the chairman of the the Cinema Committee would have to give personal approval to each and every film. After this, any necessary changes would be made and the cast and budget prepared, before the film could be set into production.21 A senior secret police representative would later note the concerns of film-makers at the desperate problems of obsessive checking. He noted the scriptwriter Mikhail Bleiman’s comments that there were a minimum of twelve points of approval for a script, before it could get to the production stage. In the same report the director, Sergei Yutkevich, referred to the ‘monstrous bureaucracy’ that was destroying Soviet cinema. He noted that in the late 1920s bureaucrats

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were in the minority compared to film-makers. Now he claimed that the balance had shifted in favour of the bureaucrats.22 Yutkevich was describing Bolshevik forms of industrial organisation that were created under the guidance of a defensive mentality. In cinema the domination of bureaucrats over artists reflected the obsession with the type of films being produced and the extent to which film-making had become politicised. It was this very bureaucracy intended to defend a certain political outlook that was crippling Soviet film production. The Role of Studio Directors/Resources/Discipline The Mezhrabpomfilm charter of 1934 stated ‘the director of the factory [studio] is in charge of the entire artistic-creative, production, administrative, economic, financial and managerial activity of the factory’. As indicated, this meant that, in conjunction with the Mezhrabpomfilm board, the director dealt with all the key aspects, including establishing the basic structure and organisation of the studio, making the decisions on resource distribution, the employment/dismissal of administrative/ artistic personnel, scrutiny and approval of thematic and financial plans. Moreover, the studio directors over the years, such as Moisei Aleinikov and Francesco Misiano, were usually influential members of, or had been in charge of the Mezhabpomfilm board. Thus the studio directors were individuals with power and influence. It is also important to point out that, throughout the studio, the deputy directors, as well as the heads of the various departments, had real autonomy and were trusted to carry out the tasks for which they were responsible.23 In addition, to the powers of independent decision-making, Mezhrabpomfilm maintained a degree of efficiency by providing incentives to its studio directors to ensure faster movie production. An interesting example of this can be found in the case of studio director and Mezhrabpomfilm board member Moisei Aleinikov. Aleinikov had gained a reputation as a high-level film industry administrator. A contributory factor to this may have been an agreement he had with the organisation whereby for every film successfully completed and released Aleinikov received a bonus of 500 roubles, although these bonuses were capped at an annual sum of 15,600 roubles a year.24 In addition, Aleinikov received a monthly salary of 800 roubles, as well as a further bonus of 1000 roubles for certain films with particular artistic, ideological and commercial significance. However, towards the latter part of the decade, the studio directors

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found that their autonomy had eroded and that they had become middle men responsible for the implementation of orders handed down from the cinema administration. Most correspondence from the cinema administration concerning film production would be addressed to the director of a given studio and, in a similar manner, film-maker responses or requests also had to be filtered through the director. As well as being expected to ensure the successful implementation of plans imposed from above, the director would receive an annual demand from the cinema administration to provide a studio plan for a given year, including comprehensive statistics, inventories and so on. The director then ordered individual departmental heads within the studio to provide clear accounts to date and plans for the foreseeable future. As he had been previously, the director was also responsible for the more important everyday matters involved in running a studio, ranging from the provision of accommodation for creative and administrative personnel to the implementation of fire safety procedures. The absence of studio director power was most evident in a financial sense. In the early 1930s the principle of khozraschet (economic accountability) was introduced in studios throughout the USSR, including Mezhrabpomfilm. This meant that they were, to a large extent, intended to be self-supporting on the basis of money from film distribution which would be carefully managed on a cost-effective basis. In 1938 this was brought to a swift end and replaced by a system whereby the studios would have to hand over their turnover to the Cinema Committee for ‘redistribution’. Each studio was now mainly dependent on GUPKhF for all of its production funding.25 By the end of the decade the command system of economic management had reached absurd levels. For example, if the studio wanted to make even small expenditures that were not foreseen in production plans and estimates, they had to obtain administrative approval. In January 1941 Mosfilm director, Kiva, wrote a letter to Ivan Bolshakov requesting permission to pay director Yuli Raizman 15,000 roubles for his contribution to the script for the film.26 Under the new centralised system of financial distribution, the studios constantly had to request funds from the cinema administration. Most transactions would have to be ordered or approved by a GUPKhF letter, depriving the studio director of meaningful financial autonomy. In the latter part of the 1930s, the director would always be forced to accept cinema administration decisions. Indeed, studio policies would often reflect those of the industry heads and micromanagement from the

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centre filtered down the chain of command to the very production process. However, it is important to remember that this bureaucratic subservience was inevitable given the constant threat of arrest due to perceived or real failure to fulfil often unrealistic plans. This was especially true in the late 1930s. Alexander Anninsky, a leading film administrator (the equivalent of a producer in the West) recalls in his diary, as he worked on the filming of Stepan Razin (1938) in the summer of 1937, that the then Mosfilm director, Elena Sokolovskaia, would constantly send telegrams demanding full justifications for overexpenditures and delays while Anninsky would frequently have to ask for resources and permission to make organisational decisions. Sokolovskaia reminded Anninsky that the film was ‘politically important’ especially as it was part of the anniversary celebration of the October Revolution.27 However, as the film, and others that were being produced at the time, continued to take excessive amounts of time and, due to the vast sums of money that were being spent, the political pressure on Sokolovskaia increased until her arrest in the autumn of 1937. Her replacement, the aforementioned Konstantin Polonsky, arrived from the ranks of the NKVD as part of the attempt to ‘sort out’ the problems of the film industry. Studio directors of the Polonsky mould were even gladder to carry out unpopular measures from above, such as the series of personnel cuts and tough measures that were taken at the turn of the decade. At this time the studios saw a rationalisation process whereby departments were either closed or reorganised, leading to many job losses. While at Mezhrabpomfilm earlier in the decade, the studio director was firmly in control of the hiring and dismissal of his/her own personnel. Studio directors were now powerless to stop Ivan Bolshakov from dismissing several extremely talented individuals, including Viktor Turin who made the remarkable Turksib (1929), Kote Mikaberidze who created the film My Grandmother, one of the best Soviet films of the late 1920s, and Mosfilm’s Nikolai Ekk who was under suspicion following the rejection on ideological grounds of his incompleted film Bluebird (Siniaia ptitsa), but who had established himself as first-rate director. Vladimir Shneiderov, who was firmly committed to the ‘cinema for the millions’ project with such high quality films as Dzhulbars (1935) was demoted to work on educational films at Mostekhfilm, while Alexander Ivanov (who would later attract political controversy) was to be placed under close observation.28 This rigid top-down chain of command inevitably influenced the process of film production. In contrast to the order and harmony that

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characterised the making of The Feast of Saint Jorgen in 1930, the filmmaking process became fraught with both petty and serious conflict. Personality clashes undoubtedly played a significant role, however, the gradual erosion of creative autonomy fostered an atmosphere of frustration and led to a proliferation of yet more defensive strategies, the most significant of which was refusal to carry out orders or particular tasks. In chief administrator Alexander Anninsky’s diary we learn that he had to deal with an uncooperative attitude from the directors Olga Preobrazhenskaia and Ivan Pravov during the making of Stepan Razin. However, the breakdown in relations between administrators and artistic personnel was partly due to the constant interference by the former into the creative process, with demands for script changes in the middle of production, or complaints about the ideological direction of a particular character. The once clear authority of the film director in all matters had now vanished and this led to endless conflict over who was in charge of a given area. This in turn caused a breakdown in leadership. It was felt within the film crew as a whole and resulted in unprofessional behaviour. For example, during the filming of Stepan Razin, constant heavy drinking, especially amongst administrators and actors, day and night, caused a great deal of conflict, leading on one occasion to physical confrontation between Andrei Abrikosov, who was playing the role of Razin, and several colleagues from the crew. Actors continued to delay production by failing to learn their lines and sometimes not turning up on time.29 Judging by Anninsky’s description of other film productions in the late 1930s, it is clear that this sort of chaos had almost become the norm. There were still efforts though to maintain a facade of order. Even when Mosfilm was temporarily merged with Lenfilm at Alma-Ata in 1941, when war with Germany began, the studio’s director, Tikhonov, ensured that the system of studio discipline introduced by Semyon Dukelsky would be re-established. Although the studio was now located far away from the centre, Tikhonov ordered the continued use of registration tables to closely monitor the arrival and departure of all studio personnel. Everyday a registration count would be passed on to the planning department at ten o’clock, indicating the number of individuals at work and a list of absentees and latecomers, with surnames, occupations and reasons provided for absence or lateness. Delays in the film production process caused by unjustified absence would be noted in the daily register and disciplinary measures would be taken accordingly.30

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Still of Andrei Abrikosov from the film Stepan Razin (1938).

The Artistic Council Having looked at the role of the studio director it is clear that the chain of command was very much top down. However, the film-makers were not satisfied with the lack of studio autonomy from the cinema bureaucracy and, as we have seen in chapter one, dissatisfaction from below prompted the reforms that led to the creation of artistic councils in the studios. Artistic councils had some history prior to their reestablishment at the end of the 1930s. In the Mezhrabpomfilm studio during the 1920s the artistic council was simply a branch of the organisation’s board that made decisions, concerning artistic matters. However, in 1928 the government required the artistic councils in studios to have political representatives from outside the studio. In May 1928, Mezhrabpomfilm established a new artistic council which included representatives from the Party’s Central Committee, the local Party cell, Agitprop, Glavrepertkom, ODSK, Gosplan and relevant trade union organisations. This body was responsible for approving scripts received from the script department and the film itself during and after production.31 Nevertheless, the council’s decision-making presidium

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consisted of Mezhrabpomfilm board members Moisei Aleinikov, Boris Malkin and Grigori Arustanov, as well as two representatives of creative personnel in Yakov Protazanov and Osip Brik. They retained the real power while the political figures were essentially advisors. So the artistic councils had existed before, albeit with artistic representatives in the minority. However, by the mid-1930s they had faded away perhaps due to the fact that political monitoring from other institutions became so stringent that they were no longer required. The new artistic councils, which were to be composed of artistic personnel in order to redress the power balance, took some time to establish themselves in all the studios. After carrying out a check of the early work of the artistic councils, Ivan Bolshakov declared that Mosfilm and Lenfilm had failed to fulfil the task of attracting creative personnel to actively participate in the new councils. As a direct consequence, meetings had been held on an irregular basis, lacking leadership and organisation. Bolshakov decreed that in order to realise their central goal of ‘raising the ideological-artistic quality of films’, the new bodies would have to be more professional in approach. From now on each studio director would have to ensure that the artistic councils would meet every week on a particular day and at a specific time, keeping a record of each gathering. Bolshakov clarified the precise function of the councils. They included discussing and approving director’s scripts, dealing with actor auditions, examining sketches for sets and costumes, scrutinising a given director’s production plan and, in certain cases, looking at rehearsed scenes. Before a film project could be passed onto the Cinema Committee for final approval, the artistic councils had to provide that committee with their overall conclusion on the ideological-artistic quality of a given film. During the filming process itself artistic councils were expected to ‘periodically’ examine and discuss various shots, as well as provide an analysis of the work of all the leading personnel involved in the production. In addition to all this, the artistic councils were expected to discuss studio thematic plans and consider the most appropriate director for each film. Finally, the artistic councils were to pay particularly close attention to film productions, involving younger personnel, checking their work more thoroughly and providing them with creative help.32 The artistic councils provided, for a short time at least, a crucial counterbalance to the dogmatic ideological demands of the political leadership and, to some extent the Cinema Committee. As we have seen, the artistic council certainly played its own role in the film checking and

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approval process. However, its members were usually experienced cinematographers whose criticisms were often of great artistic value to film-makers. In late 1940 the artistic council gathered to discuss Ivan Pyrev’s proposed film The Swineherdess and the Shepherd. At this point the script was very much at an early stage of development and, as a result, received a significant amount of criticism. Although the broad consensus was that the project would be interesting and had potential, members of the council, including Grigori Alexandrov, argued that the script was badly structured and that some elements had not been written with the specificities of cinema in mind. Overall, the council concluded that the songs and the dialogue were unsatisfactory and that a strong composer would be required to sort things out.33 The artistic council rarely enforced dogmatic political changes to films. Indeed, its views were frequently at odds with Bolshevik politicians and administrators. The differences in outlook between film-makers and administrators were most graphically illustrated in the case of Konstantin Yudin’s film The Hearts of Four. With the exception of a few minor criticisms, the film received high acclaim from the artistic council. Members of the council praised the high quality of acting due in part to Yudin’s careful work with his cast. But, most important of all, the artistic council expressed delight that Yudin had achieved something rare in the context of current Soviet films: a high-quality romantic comedy which would almost certainly achieve popular success. Yudin was extremely grateful to the council for its favourable reception of the film, especially as he had to endure long delays while bureaucrats in the Cinema Committee made cuts to his script or demanded that he continue filming without a key actress or indeed the correct equipment for the production.34 In February 1941 the artistic council gave its final approval and this was followed in March by the consent of Groshev, the studio director, allowing it to be presented to the Cinema Committee. It appears that the film was on the verge of release as a review praising the movie had already appeared in Ogonek (Little Light), a weekly illustrated magazine, in early May 1941. However, the film had yet to pass through the Party’s Central Committee. Party figures, led by Andrei Zhdanov, took the opposite view to the artistic council. As we have seen, in a decree issued on 26 May 1941 the film was banned and accused of failing to reflect Soviet reality and, instead, depicting life as ‘idle’ and ‘frivolous’.35 The contrast between the more liberal attitudes of the senior film-makers and the defensive dogma emanating from the Party leaders could not have been greater. Unfortunately, the latter tended to

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prevail while film-makers struggled to support productions that did not to conform to rigid Bolshevik formulas. Mosfilm’s artistic council also took advantage of its other powers. It discussed the studio’s own annual thematic plans and would recommend potential film-makers to work on each production. The difficulty was that the artistic council of Mosfilm involved many of the studio’s leading film-makers. This was especially problematic when it got involved in the studio cuts of 1940–41. These individuals alongside studio administrators were responsible for dismissing or transferring seventeen members of artistic personnel. Unsurprisingly, those affected were mainly younger film-makers who had struggled to break through.36 In some cases these cuts may have been justified, it is also fair to point out that certain younger film-makers, such as Filippov and Kadochnikov, received significant help and advice from Eisenstein and Roshal. However, it was remarkable that senior film-makers could have a central role in deciding the fate of their colleagues who also represented potential future competition for production resources. In this way the artistic councils helped senior filmmakers secure for themselves, or colleagues, prestigious film projects from existing thematic plans. Thus, while overall artistic councils were an important development, they were not purely liberalising or democratising institutions. The power of the new artistic councils was particularly evident as they were effectively in charge of artistic affairs in the studios. Studio decrees concerning film production and correspondence between the studios and the cinema administration would be either signed by or addressed to the studio director or his deputy and the artistic leader, such as Eisenstein at Mosfilm. So the advent of artistic councils in the studios had effectively created a dual power structure whereby film-makers on the studio level had a real say in the production process. But we must also acknowledge that, due to the reforms, the dividing line between artistic and administrative personnel was not always clear. As noted above, in the cinema administration Ilia Trauberg became an important figure in that body’s script department while Mikhail Romm became deputy head of GUPKhF. Other film-makers, such as Vladimir Vainshtok and Boris Dubrovsky-Eshke occupied senior administrative positions at Mosfilm. For most of the 1930s all the Soviet studios had been mainly controlled by administrative personnel. The advent of artistic councils and the appointment of senior film-makers into significant positions of authority thus seemed to provide them with the participation that they demanded.

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Unfortunately, the obsession with defending ideology in cinema meant that these reforms were gradually diluted. In reaction to the cases of ideological indifference of the artistic councils, Ivan Bolshakov included Party activists among their numbers to ensure greater political control.37 A similar pattern emerged several years later with the creation of an artistic council in the Cinema Committee itself. Once again, directors, actors and composers dominated the initial grouping. However, following the ideological controversy surrounding the film A Great Life (Bolshaia zhizn, 1940), the artistic council never even began work with those members. It was only in 1949 that committee’s council properly started to operate, this time dominated by bureaucrats and including only two directors out of its thirty-nine members. Bolshakov knew that liberalisation was essential for a Soviet cinema industry verging on paralysis, yet his and the government’s preoccupation with ideological correctness undermined the reforms.38 The reversal of the reforms was made explicit in a letter from Mikhail Romm to Stalin in January 1943. Romm pointed out that the reforms marked what he and his colleagues had perceived as a ‘new epoch in cinema’ in that the gap between the cinema leadership and the filmmakers had finally been bridged. Yet Romm suggested that initial hopes had been dashed. He pointed out that despite his appointment as deputy head of GUPKhF, all decisions were being made without his input. Romm noted that this also affected other studio artistic heads who were being ignored by Bolshakov and the cinema administration hierarchy. It was clear not only that there had been a reversal of the earlier reforms, but that a significant retreat had in fact taken place.39 Conclusion The comparison between Mezhrabpomfilm in the early 1930s and Mosfilm at the end of the decade provides us with an important insight into the Soviet studio system and the problems of the cinema industry more generally at this time. Overall, we have seen that the 1930s saw the gradual centralisation of cinema, reaching extreme proportions in 1938. The reform of studio organisation in 1940 was, to some extent, recognition of the fact that hyper-centralisation was paralysing production and, by giving senior film-makers real powers, it would satisfy their grievances and help to revitalise the stagnating industry. The reforms were certainly not ideal. They only really gave participation to senior film-makers which, on one hand, did mean studio creative personnel could rely on their

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experience and qualified advice. On the other hand, there was no change to the essentially bureaucratic nature of script and film approval which appeared to be as elaborate as it had been in recent times. The artistic council at Mosfilm began with a liberal attitude towards films with questionable Soviet credentials, not entirely predictable given the political loyalty of many of the film-makers in the council. The reaction from above was again defensive in nature. The Bolshevik obsession with their ideology being potentially undermined or ignored meant that the reforms were slowly reversed as artistic councils fell under stricter Party control. The Bolshevik defensive mentality which had guided the rise of a tightly controlled Soviet cinema had resurfaced, undermining the initially brave efforts at liberalisation.

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CHAPTER 7

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he Bolsheviks wanted Soviet cinema to be an effective mass medium of propaganda and persuasion. Yet, for such a cinema to materialise, a new generation of educated artistic personnel would have to be established. Although by the end of the 1920s several Soviet film-makers had gained recognition throughout the world, Party and administrative leaders wanted to foster the rise of young, new, loyal and politically committed film-makers, who could be relied upon to establish the envisaged ‘cinema intelligible to the millions’ alongside their ‘re-educated’ peers. This meant the creation of a new cinema for the masses that would combine the political message with entertainment, rejecting the idea of cinema as an elite or intellectual art form. In this context, examining the development of Soviet film education from the end of the 1920s through the 1930s will provide us with a better understanding of industry development during these years and the precise contribution education made to the evolution of a truly Soviet cinema, which was intended to play a central role in the legitimisation of the communist regime and its ideological goals. The Origins of Soviet Film-maker Education and the Requirements of the Industry Following the October Revolution, various attempts were made to establish basic film courses of an artistic nature in a few of the main urban centres of the USSR. It was GTK (State College of Cinematography), in Moscow, which would become dominant by the end of the 1920s, overcoming competition from SEI (School of Screen Arts) in Petrograd, which eventually disbanded, and a series of attempts to establish basic film courses in the Ukraine, including the Odessa State College of

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Cinematography aimed at actors and cameramen. In Leningrad the TSI (College of Stage Arts) opened in 1926, but it only prepared cinema actors. The other specialist areas were now dealt with in Moscow. In 1930 the Odessa State College of Cinematography was transferred to Kiev and merged with the small Cinema Photographic Institute to become the Kiev Cinema Institute (later renamed as the Ukrainian Institute of Cinematography).1 GTK had initially been established as a vocational ‘tekhnikum’, reflecting the fact that cinema had yet to prove itself as an area worthy of academic treatment. GTK had to endure shortages of funding and thus had difficulty in providing the most basic equipment, attracting committed staff and offering a curriculum that went beyond an emphasis on acting. The School’s first proper graduation ceremony only took place in 1927, pointing to the extent of its early developmental problems.2 At the end of the 1920s, the Party and leading figures throughout the cinema industry called on GTK to produce a new generation of artistically, technically and politically trained young men and women. However, this task would prove to be far more difficult than many imagined. Political Control, Administration and Resources Throughout the 1920s, Narkompros was responsible for GTK. In 1930, Soiuzkino, the new centralised cinema administration, was given control of the establishment. First of all, it implemented the Soviet government’s order to elevate the tekhnikum to the status of an institute. Under Soiuzkino’s successor, GUKF, the institution was structurally reorganised once again. In 1934, under the leadership of the cinema administration chairman Boris Shumiatsky, GIK (State Institute of Cinematography) became VGIK (Higher State Institute of Cinematography). As part of this general reorganisation, NIKFI (Scientific Research Cinema Photographic Institute), had already been incorporated into GIK’s structure and a film library and historical archive established. In 1933, GUKF had also decreed the establishment of postgraduate study at the Institute, which became a reality in 1934. In 1934, the engineeringeconomic faculty and the acting faculties were liquidated. Acting schools were temporarily established in the studios until the end of the decade when the discipline was returned to the Institute. Finally, in 1939 the State Institute changed back to a standard VUZ (Higher Education Establishment) once again with the same abbreviated title VGIK (AllUnion State Institute of Cinematography). Throughout the decade, the

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cinema administration was more concerned with these broader questions of structure, organisation, planning and development rather than micromanaging the Institute.3 The cinema administration did have the power to appoint the director of the Institute and give approval to important decisions, including those that concerned course content. But in practice leaders and teachers were given a great deal of autonomy in devising such content and in the dayto-day running of the Institute. Lecturers were expected to produce their own detailed programmes, which would then be approved by the director of the Institute and then the cadres department at Soiuzkino. Judging by the intellectual freedoms granted to figures, such as Sergei Eisenstein and Vladimir Nilsen, administration approval was essentially a formality. Moreover, lecturers and professors were often appointed on the basis of their reputation in the cinema industry rather than their perceived political reliability. The Institute was also responsible for maintaining its own budget, obtaining loans, creating estimates, issuing student grants and lecturer salaries. It dealt with other everyday matters, including discipline of students and lecturers who might be failing to fulfil their obligations. The policies of the cinema administration were, to a large extent, reflective of broader developments in the USSR from 1928. At this time the aforementioned ‘cultural revolution’ began and had a significant impact on Soviet education generally. The call for the establishment of a new generation of highly trained proletarian specialists provoked a shift in educational policy towards securing for men and women from this background a significant quota of guaranteed places in higher education institutions and introducing a utilitarian approach that emphasised the connection between learning and industrial production. Although this policy was reversed from 1932 because of its failure to produce highquality specialists, we can identify a general shape and direction for Soviet education in this period, as it moved towards central control, planning and standardisation. The mid-to-late 1930s saw the return of traditional academic standards in universities and a general re-establishment of hierarchical indicators in the form of ranks and orders. But, at the same time, the emphasis on vocational practicality, the expansion of student numbers and quicker graduation coexisted with traditional academic approaches and remained central to the Soviet VUZ system.4 To some extent, the problematic relationship between the cinema administration and the Institute in the late 1920s and early 1930s was

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due to the imposition of cultural revolution policies. This relationship shifted between consensus and conflict. Some of its practical policies may have leaned towards a utilitarian approach, but if they were in the interests of industry development, they would get support from cinema education personnel. Broad agreement was reached on the need to ensure close ties between cinema education and film production during the early 1930s, but disputes did arise in relation to the enforcement of the worker and peasant quotas which meant that the quality of graduates being sent to the studios was unacceptable. On 11 January 1929, a Central Committee decree had been promulgated (as noted in chapter one) which would have an impact on cinema education. The decree entitled: ‘On the Strengthening of Cinema Cadres’, was intended not only to encourage the training of a new younger generation of graduates, but also to ensure that those graduates would predominantly be of a working-class or peasant background. The proletarian and peasant personnel elements in cinema were to be guaranteed by giving these groups a 75 per cent quota in the Institute and the minor cinema schools.5 Initially, this policy was supported within the Institute. Eisenstein, himself favoured the move but, along with many colleagues, he changed his mind when in practice the idea proved unworkable. This measure had an immediate impact on the social composition of the establishment. In 1930 the number of workers and peasants had already reached the 76 per cent mark and this trend would continue over the next two years.6 In 1929 the number of students at GTK had reached 400 but, during the cultural revolution, the quota policy almost led to a doubling of the student contingent, which stood at 719 by 1932.7 Throughout this period, government policy guided Soiuzkino, but although it was concerned with the wider questions of organisation, when the cinema administration did intervene in day-to-day affairs, it was usually in a clumsy and ineffective manner. It made life very difficult for the Institute by demanding large student quotas, but without providing the funding to maintain such a high number of individuals. Soiuzkino sometimes intervened in financial matters by determining how many student grants would be available for each faculty. It usually offered the Institute enough to support only a fraction of the student numbers that it demanded to see in the institution. Indeed, economic conflicts between the administration and the Institute were the most problematic, with many of their disputes reaching the courts. On one occasion, the director of

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the Institute excluded a series of students on the basis of failing to meet the most basic conditions of study, which meant attending, preparing for and participating in classes. Dogmatically enforcing the government’s quota policy, Soiuzkino’s cadres sector issued an order demanding their reinstatement without properly consulting the heads of the Institute, who were then forced to exclude the students once again.8 Thus while the cinema administration generally allowed the Institute to run itself, when it did intervene, it often did so in an ill-informed manner, thereby provoking unnecessary conflict. Eventually, by 1934, a broad consensus emerged between both Soiuzkino and the Institute that the admission of predominantly worker and peasant students had been a failure. Although the idea of granting opportunity to the less privileged may have initially held some appeal, it meant that the average student had a far poorer level of education than in the past. As a result, most of the students struggled to understand the academically challenging lectures given by figures such as Eisenstein, whose cross-disciplinary approach required a broad basic knowledge of theatre, art and literature. Indeed, this was one of the central reasons for the high dropout rate of students, which rose from 23 per cent in 1932 to a peak of 52 per cent in 1935, as remaining proletarians and peasants were removed and sent to work in other branches of industry.9 In terms of the students who remained, the quota policy led to a significant drop in standards and a consequent wave of ill-prepared graduates. These aspects of quota policy impact were certainly not unique to cinema and reflected the reaction of the education sector more generally at this time. Nonetheless, they formed part of a general malaise in cinema education during the 1930s, which would have serious consequences for the film industry in particular. The two sides agreed that the student body would have to be significantly cut and that the quality of future graduates would have to be greatly improved. The solution, mainly drawn up by Institute director Nikolai Lebedev, proposed the establishment of an elite academy which, with the exception of the cinematography faculty, would offer shorter two-year specialist courses aimed at individuals who had already received a higher education and had worked in cinema as assistants or in other branches of the arts. As a result of the new direction, worker and peasant admissions to the Institute began to decrease and by 1935 the student population had dramatically fallen, reaching 230 in that year. Indeed, the number of

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graduates was even less, touching fifty one in 1936. VGIK, as it became known, remained an academy until 1939 when this temporary status was ended and it became a standard VUZ once more. The academy years, however, had shaped its basic future direction, which would continue to emphasise professionalism and standards. The cinema administration could have blamed the Soviet government for the quota policy, yet, due to a weak estimate of its own financial power and a lack of research and communication, the stark truth was that Soiuzkino itself had almost no idea of how many students were required to satisfy the demand within the cinema industry or what that demand was. It only belatedly acknowledged that its estimates had grossly exaggerated personnel requirements in the film sector.10 Indeed, the establishment of the Institute as an academy would, it was hoped, address one of the central problems that had plagued Soviet film education from its inception and throughout the 1930s: its financial poverty and the lack of adequate resources. In the first place, the premises of the Institute were a source of considerable difficulty. Since 1923, the Institute had been situated in what was previously the famous ‘Iar’ restaurant in Moscow. The existing building had a limited number of rooms mostly with poor lighting, an occasionally leaking roof, bad ventilation and a broken central heating system.11 Despite the promise of more funding before and after being given academy status, lecturers and students had to endure the same building until 1939. In that year the government assigned five million roubles for the construction of a new building, which would include more lecture theatres, four filming areas and a huge gym.12 Unfortunately, this plan was slow to materialise and the same old difficulties continued for many years. Living and study conditions were extremely challenging issues for the majority of students who wanted to make a career for themselves in the Soviet cinema industry. One of the Institute’s main hostels in Moscow was less than adequate. There were no toilets in the building, the walls had not been plastered and the rooms were filthy. Students were given used mattresses that had not been disinfected and this was compounded by the general threat of disease due to the fact that the building was ‘swarming with parasites’. Moreover, there were no tables and chairs, as well as an absence of light, making study very difficult. Cultural activity of any kind was also lacking within the Institute itself and there was no reading room. The somewhat spartan facilities were summed up by the Institute’s single shop, which could only offer biscuits and cigarettes.13

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Throughout the 1930s, lecturers and students had to endure more than shoddy premises. The resources within the Institute were also unsatisfactory. In terms of film cameras the situation was described as one of ‘starvation’. By the end of 1934, the Institute had four cameras, which were dated foreign models, all in a ‘shabby’ condition and to be shared by 260 students. Due to lack of finances and slow development of sound equipment manufacture in the broader industry, the Institute’s studio was not equipped for sound and only received its first ‘Kinap’ sound recording device in 1935, following a very slight increase in available funds after the 1934 reorganisation. But the establishment also required a proper transformer to regulate its electricity supply, new wiring, better lighting and urgent general repairs throughout the building.14 In the mid1930s, it did develop its own book and film libraries, although they were both situated in small rooms and there was no money forthcoming for expansion and preservation. The problem of resource shortages was never properly addressed and by 1940 the leading academics complained that the Institute was still not equipped with the necessary technical equipment and materials.15 The cinema administration provided the Institute with nothing more than a subsistence level of income. Consequently, it struggled with debt for most of the 1930s. Its budget was miniscule, amounting to just over 1.5 million roubles in 1934.16 For comparison, at the time one expensive film could cost a similar amount to produce. So, while the cinema administration itself was short of funds, it certainly did not always distribute existing resources wisely. Moreover, even if the reorganisation of the Institute into an academy in 1934 was recognition of previous mistakes, it was also a money-saving measure. If it had far fewer students, it would have more funds for its own budget and be less reliant on the cinema administration. Although the financial situation improved slightly for the Institute after 1934, under-investment was clearly an ongoing problem. The Consequences of Neglect and Under-investment The cumulative effect of these difficulties in film education and the cinema industry as a whole meant that graduates struggled to find work in the industry. This problem was particularly acute in the field of acting. It is helpful to look at the figures. For instance, in 1932 out of the 170 actors who had graduated from the Institute only thirty could find some sort of work in the cinema industry, the rest had to find other jobs in different branches of the economy.

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Similarly, in the same year twenty-four directors had graduated, but of these only nine found work in the studios, mostly as assistants and as documentary film-makers; and of eight scriptwriter graduates only one had managed to secure a contract.17 A similar figure for cameramen in that year was not provided, it was claimed that the majority had found work. However, it was well known that high unemployment was still a serious problem among cameramen.18 To some extent, this was directly related to the weak preparation of many graduates, but the trend continued throughout the decade, despite the later improvements in academic standards. The film-makers who had established themselves in the 1920s predominantly occupied the main posts in the studios, while those graduates of the 1930s who were employed were either sent to the dead-end studios in the republics where career opportunities were extremely limited or found themselves permanently in the role of assistants. If we look at the directors who worked at Mosfilm in 1941 we can see just how difficult it was for the graduates of the 1930s to break through. In that year there were twenty-five directors working at the studio. Of this total sixteen had never received any specific type of education in the area of cinema. This figure included many well-known directors, such as Eisenstein, Mikhail Romm, Ivan Pyrev, Grigori Alexandrov, Yuli Raizman and Vsevolod Pudovkin, many of whom had a theatrical or other type of professional background unrelated to film. A further four individuals had graduated from GTK and a cinema acting school during the mid-1920s. They were Ivan Pravov, Efim Dzigan, Boris Barnet and Tatiana Lukashevich. Only five of the directors in work at Mosfilm in 1941 had graduated from the Institute during the 1930s, including Konstantin Yudin, Fyodor Filippov, Valentin Kadochnikov, Alexander Stolper and Boris Ivanov. With the exception of Yudin, the other directors were paired up to work together to direct their first films. The studio formally had five other directors on its books, including graduates of the Institute. However, there is no evidence to suggest that any of these directors progressed from being assistants and their careers appear to have come to naught.19 If we look at the fate of the majority of Institute director graduates of 1936 and beyond we find that few of them gained major recognition. Many of them did get work as director’s assistants, but never got the opportunity to make their own films. As we have seen, Filippov and Kadochnikov were among the fortunate graduates, as was the Georgian student Konstantin Pipinashvilli who also became a director within three

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years. Isidor Annensky went on to specialise in literary adaptations, such as his film The Bear (Medved, 1938), based on Anton Chekov’s play. Fellow student Ian Frid followed a similar path with many of his films, including Twelfth Night (Dvenatsadtaia noch, 1955), which was based on William Shakespeare’s play. Because of the limited possibilities in film, Frid also worked in theatre and lectured in this area too, providing him with a constant income. One or two others eventually became fully fledged directors too, yet this process took over twenty years to materialise in the case of a certain Viktor Ivanov.20 As before, the majority of graduates found that their years of hard work at the academy would not lead to the promising careers they had expected. It is important to note that this difficult situation also applied to all the film-maker graduates including scriptwriters and cameramen. Scriptwriters found it extremely difficult to gain a foothold in the studios which were dominated by long-established writers from a literary or theatrical background. Although more cameramen were able to find work in the studios, the broader reality of career fulfilment was as limited as the other cinema professions with large numbers of cameramen receiving a very basic monthly income, but not actually working. At Mosfilm in 1940 twenty cameramen, largely consisting of younger graduates, were considered to be ‘unnecessary’ during a series of proposed cuts.21 In documentary and scientific and educational film-making a similar situation prevailed. Many Institute graduates had found formal employment, but the majority were not being given independent work or the chance for genuine career advancement. In the young art of animation significant career opportunities only really emerged in the 1950s alongside the growth of new film-makers in other areas of cinema. Moreover, this trend was not confined to Moscow or the Russian Republic. Although the Institute was by far the most important establishment for the provision of artistic cinema education in the 1930s, there was an alternative, albeit relatively small, for Ukrainian directors and cameramen, but not scriptwriters. Yet if the realities of employment were harsh for the Moscow graduates, they were much worse for their Ukrainian counterparts. In 1936 the Kiev studio director, Solomon Orelovich, expressed concern that over a period of 5–6 years only one young director, Leonid Lukov, had been given the chance to make his own feature films.22 The Cinema Committee failed to ensure that any of the studios had an adequate system in place that would secure realistic career chances for

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young men and women arriving after graduation. Moreover, the committee was incapable of doing anything to prevent the contraction of the industry towards the end of the 1930s with the closure of both the Mezhrabpomfilm and Vostokfilm studios in the middle of the decade. The new children’s studio Soiuzdetfilm could not absorb the personnel from these studios and many had to be given work at Mosfilm thus decreasing available places further.23 Furthermore, at the end of the 1930s the introduction of financial discipline led to a series of personnel cuts and demotions in the main studios. These cuts and demotions simply heightened the frustrations of aspiring film-makers who were facing growing obstacles.24 It is clear that, by the end of the 1930s, Soviet cinema studios were far from being places of career mobilisation and opportunity. On the contrary, they had become largely closed off by older directors, cameramen and scriptwriters who had established themselves, and now blocked the path for the younger generation. In this way the case of cinema provides an important contrast to the sphere of politics. According to Fitzpatrick’s well-known argument, the proletarians and peasants who rose up through the political education system in the late 1920s and early 1930s were able to fill the shoes of the old specialists purged during the Great Terror.25 In the artistic sphere of cinema we find a very different situation. The majority of proletarians who entered the Institute in that period would never work in cinema and, in the same way as those who graduated in the mid-to-late 1930s, were blocked by an older generation who, fortunately, largely survived the purges. They lived relatively well compared to the rest of the population and had privileged access to limited resources. Consequently, they were, predictably, reluctant to spread those resources too widely. Although, economic factors played the central role in hindering the rise of young film-makers, studio bosses and creative personnel also tended to be reluctant to trust the graduates. Indeed, cinema stands out as an area bereft of opportunity compared not only to the upwardly mobile managers and administrators, but also to the broader ‘new class’ of educated professionals. For this new class, opportunity and mobilisation were a fundamental characteristic of the 1930s. However, the cinema industry simply did not have the capacity to give jobs to film graduates. Although cinema was a potentially massive weapon of mobilisation and persuasion, the Bolsheviks did not adequately seize this weapon as they had planned to, choosing instead to invest disproportionately in heavy industry and defence. This explains why the Institute, along with the rest of the cinema industry, was expected to

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survive on an extremely tight budget. As a direct consequence, studios could only afford to employ relatively small numbers of film-makers. One of the great ironies of Soviet film education was that the institution that was intended to produce the directors, writers, cameramen and actors for Soviet cinema was producing a large number of graduates who would never work in film. Personnel and Teaching The status of the Institute as by far the most important establishment for the education of creative personnel from the Russian and many of the other Soviet republics, was reflected in the wealth of teaching talent that it was able to attract in the 1930s. It is important to reiterate the fact that many of the Institute’s key pedagogues in the 1930s had fallen out of favour with the cinema administration by the start of the decade, including Eisenstein, Lev Kuleshov, Abram Room in the directors’ faculty. The cinematography faculty included the aforementioned Vladimir Nilsen as well as Eduard Tisse, Eisenstein’s artistic colleague. Mikhail Shneider, purged from cinema journalism as a Formalist, was able to re-establish himself at the Institute’s new film studies faculty in the early 1930s. Thus, paradoxically, due to the absence of an alternative, those personnel who were not trusted to make and discuss the films for the new ‘cinema for the millions’ era were entrusted with the task of teaching the new generation who were intended to be the driving force behind the new industry. In discussing the nature and content of education at the Institute during the 1930s it is impossible not to mention the central role of Eisenstein. He had taught a short course on film-making at GTK in 1928, but it was after his return from America in 1932 that he was invited to lead and devise a comprehensive academic programme for the directors’ faculty at the Institute. In the 1930s he was, to some extent, responsible for the shift from the less formal, spontaneous nature of film education, with its limited curriculum, experimental workshops, sometimes featuring tightrope walking, juggling, horse riding and an absence of timetables and examinations, to a more organised, academically rigorous system based on longer courses akin to those in traditional universities with both undergraduate and postgraduate provision.26 One of Eisenstein’s most important measures was to broaden the curriculum far beyond the practical aspects of directorial work to embrace the entire spectrum of the arts, including literature, theatre, painting and music and specialist subjects such as Meyerhold’s biomechanics.27

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The Institute was not immune from Marxist orthodoxy. For example, all students entering the Institute had to have a good knowledge of dialectical materialism, which, moreover, they were expected to study for a certain amount of hours during a given course. This influenced the content of certain courses especially the study of film history. In addition, other political pressures, such as the purges mentioned above, did have an impact on the Institute. Despite this, the ethos of the Institute was one of broad learning and creativity. Eisenstein adopted a teaching style that enabled students to simultaneously learn and express their creative ideas. He would begin his classes with a background lecture which provided a context for the artistic tasks that would then be put before his students. This task often involved making the artistic connection between cinema and the various arts that he had now introduced into the curriculum. For instance, second year students were given the task of establishing the mise-en-scène for Dessaline’s arrest in Anatoli Vinogradov’s novel The Black Consul (Chernyi konsul, 1932). After Eisenstein had provided the students with the historical background lecture to the work, they then had to conceive space, physical movements, character behaviour, architectural ensembles, sets, costumes and so on for a given scene. Eisenstein would pose specific questions to the students and they would offer their solutions. Sometimes, the director would indicate that their responses were ineffective. In such cases Eisenstein would explain to them the answer he had in mind and why it would be most beneficial.28 This was essentially a process of creative trial and error for the students. During this process, Eisenstein encouraged his students to identify a central idea contained in the relevant part of each play, painting or piece of music which they examined. Then, in order to express the central idea, students learned both from Eisenstein’s supplementary lectures and the interactive spontaneous creativity of the seminars how to depict this idea by utilising all the techniques of mise-en-scène, shot construction and montage. The students were then expected to apply what they had learned in theory to practical classes. Although practical work did not lead to the jobs it was supposed to, it still formed a key part of the Institute’s program, amounting to as much as one third of the entire course. In the mid-1930s students were given the opportunity to carry out practical work on the set of Eisenstein’s Bezhin Meadow. Students were given very specific tasks, which could involve creating a director’s elaboration of the mise-en-scène, the dialogues and the montage of a given part of the film. Subsequently,

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the results would be compared to those produced by Eisenstein himself, then the students would discuss and analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the work with the director. Other students were given the opportunity to work with various senior film-makers, including the director Alexander Dovzhenko and the cameramen Eduard Tisse and Alexander Galperin.29 It is worth noting though that not all students from the academy were selected to gain practical experience. For example, in 1935 only twentytwo students of the fifty-nine studying in the directors’ faculty were picked to work in the studios.30 Ultimately, Eisenstein wanted his students to learn not only how to create films, but films that would have the necessary impact on their spectators. He was especially concerned with the potential of film as a means of mass education. As a convinced Marxist, he emphasised the specific role and impact of communist ideology in cinema.31 Eisenstein’s ideological motivation in teaching and film-making was reflected in the establishment of psychology in the directors’ faculty at the Institute. As with most teaching at the Institute, the study of psychology was extremely broad examining the theoretical history of the discipline and including the theories of controversial Western thinkers, such as Freud and Adler. But despite the discipline’s potential clash with Marxism, Eisenstein gave his full support to the integration of the study of cinema psychology more effectively.32 Indeed, Eisenstein’s role in the Institute went further. He helped the development of the cinematography faculty by recommending the talented Vladimir Nilsen as a new lecturer at the Institute in 1933. Nilsen was an assistant cameraman on Eisenstein’s October and The Old and the New before his arrest in the autumn of 1929 on the grounds of allegedly working as a spy for Germany.33 Nilsen soon became the leading authority in the cinematography faculty and gave it the shape and rigour it had struggled to attain in previous years. The appointment of Nilsen was particularly significant, as he helped develop the idea, supported in recent years by several experts, that the cameraman was not merely a ‘technical executor’ of the director’s wishes, but a co-director.34 While the calls for cameraman recognition were not always realised in practice, Nilsen undoubtedly helped to raise the profile of the profession. Under Nilsen, students were given a strong foundation in how to realise their creative promise as cameramen. On one hand, they were shown the entire range of practical and technical methods that would enable them to develop the skills of shot composition. These included framing an image,

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camera angle, perspective, optical design, lighting, tone and so on. On the other hand, Nilsen in the erudite spirit being fostered by Eisenstein, emphasised the need for a broader cultural knowledge, especially in other aspects of pictorial art, including painting and photography. Although Nilsen himself worked on films, such as The Circus (Tsirk, 1936) and VolgaVolga (1938), which supported the ideals of the Soviet regime through popular storylines, he wanted his students to be open minded and consider a range of cinematic influences. He wanted his students to engage in the work of artists and photographers, as a means to help them to think about objects in a philosophical manner, to express a particular idea.35 The avant-garde had a strong influence on Nilsen’s teaching at the Institute. In 1934 Eisenstein wrote about the changes to the cinematography faculty pointing out that, unlike previous years, there was now ‘friendship and cooperation’ between the specialist areas. In particular, he indicated that the directors’ faculty and the cinematography faculty were working together to create a ‘unified theoretical understanding of the subjects taught and a unified method of research and instruction’.36 Eisenstein’s influence was especially evident in the practical tasks Nilsen gave to his students. They were expected to examine great works of art and break down a given picture into twenty constituent frames which were then joined together through montage to develop meaning. Such an approach was also employed by Eisenstein in teaching his basic theories of montage to his students. Next Nilsen would ask his students to create sketches based on excerpts from literary works, such as Emile Zola’s books, regularly used on Eisenstein’s course. After outlining the plot and constructing the mise-en-scène, students would again place the sketches in the order that they would be edited together. Again, such an approach was central to Eisenstein’s directors’ course. Only after repeatedly carrying out these tasks would the cameraman be able to do practical work in the studios using a real camera.37 Indeed, this part of Nilsen’s course was not just similar to Eisenstein’s approach it clearly operated in parallel with the latter’s methods. 38 In his teaching Nilsen was less concerned with explaining what a ‘cinema for the millions’ cameraman ought to do to reach the spectator with the political message and more preoccupied by the imaginative possibilities of cinematography. For individuals, such as Eisenstein, Nilsen and many other individuals at the Institute, film-making opportunities were few and far between. Nilsen may have helped create politically orthodox entertainment films, but given the production realities of the 1930s, the choices were limited.

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Teaching work thus provided these individuals not only with an additional outlet for creative expression, but also with a forum in which they could share and test their ideas. As indicated, the teaching was open to the broadest spectrum of creative experience and theories from both the USSR and the West at a time when many branches of education were subject to the imposition of disciplinary orthodoxies and, in some cases, rigid dogma. Conclusion I have argued that a combination of mistaken political policies, poor administration and an unwillingness to provide the Institute with even adequate funding, despite its obvious strategic importance, combined to minimise the potential contribution of film education and thus retard the growth of the film industry in a broad context of advancement for educated professionals. As a result of these factors the Institute became an isolated academic community without a clear purpose, as even after reorganisation, a small minority of graduates would ever establish meaningful careers in the industry. This crisis of function extended to its teaching, which, on one hand, was creative and challenging and open to a broad range of ideas. The Institute also provided artistic and political outsiders with a means of creative expression and established the foundations of film education for the future. On the other hand, the academics failed to engage in the needs of a popular cinema, maintaining little relevance to the realities of film production in the 1930s and so many of their ideas had a limited practical application.

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CHAPTER 8

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arlier we observed that, at the Party Conference in 1928, leading Party figures had decided that the future of Soviet film-making lay in the formula of a ‘cinema for the millions’ whereby the political message would be conveyed in an entertaining form accessible to the masses. It appeared that they had learned the lesson from the 1920s that ordinary citizens were not interested in experimental or ‘intellectual’ cinema. On the contrary, it had been shown time and time again that the people wanted action, adventure, love, romance and light comedy. To some extent, certain film-makers were prepared to make such films in the 1930s and, in certain cases, the fusion of politics and entertainment was successful. In this chapter, in addition to these films, I shall also examine some of those films produced in the 1930s that avoided the rigid formulas of the time and offered an alternative artistic vision. However, overall I will contend that the defensive temptation to emphasise the political elements of film was to have an increasingly overwhelming effect on production. A significant number of movies made in this era sought not only to politically educate the mass audience, but to transfer a large amount of political responsibility for the regime’s shortcomings on to the ordinary person. Excessive politicisation thus undermined the potential for the development of a truly popular cinema that would engage the ordinary Soviet citizen. The Soviet Musical: The Circus Although director Grigori Alexandrov’s first real attempt to fulfil the ‘cinema for the millions’ agenda arrived in 1934 with his film The Happy Guys, it was his 1936 film The Circus that was to achieve this goal particularly well. The movie told of Marion Dixon, an American circus performer

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who is banished from a small Kansas town after it is discovered that she has a black baby. She is brought to Moscow by Franz von Kneishchitz, a villainous entreprenneur who yearns for Marion’s affections, but also exploits her. However, Marion falls for the honest, handsome Russian acrobat Ivan Martynov. When Kneishchitz learns of Marion’s plan to stay in the USSR he tries to get revenge by showing the circus her black child. But, the multi-ethnic audience welcome the child in a show of internationalism and Dixon’s awareness that she is no longer in the backward world of racists and capitalists, but in the free, idealistic Soviet state, is now complete.

Von Kneishchitz terrorises Marion Dixon in a scene from Circus (1936).

As Beth Holmgren has argued, the film-makers made a conscious effort to import many aspects of Western entertainment in terms of melodramatic storyline, the singing and dancing characteristic of Hollywood musicals, as well as the grandiose mise-en-scène. However, Holmgren contends that the film ‘corrects the Western show business it imports’ by offering a Marxist critique of the ‘exploitation and social injustice of Western entertainment’. For Holmgren this Soviet critique thus justified the ‘entertainment focus’ of the film.1 This strategy is one of the keys to the distinctiveness and success of the movie. Marion Dixon inhabits a luxurious, glamorous world which, as Rimgaila Salys has

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observed, is essentially coded in the Art Deco style with its ‘glitter, beauty, affluence and consumerism’.2 This luxury is evident in much of Dixon’s elegant clothing, as well as her spacious, hotel room which includes a grand piano. These opulent surroundings are deliberately conveyed in a fairy-tale representation which is particularly noticeable during the evening shots when we see Red Square with its magical illuminations that give the viewer the sense that Dixon inhabits a world of fantasy. The filmmakers perpetuate this sense through carefully selected shots of some of Moscow’s most grand locations, including a rooftop view of the Bolshoi Theatre, the Moskva Hotel and the newly built underground system. Overall, the look of the film is designed to play its beguiling role of persuading the viewer to imagine Soviet life as it could be, both abundant and moral at the same time. The film is contextualised within the Soviet imperative of ‘catching up with and surpassing the West’. For Dixon the key motivation behind her rejection of America and her acceptance of a new Soviet identity is the nature of social relationships. Yet Alexandrov’s film seeks to claim that the USSR is not only morally superior, but also technically superior. This is most evident in the ‘flight to the moon’ sequences. After seeing the American version of ‘From the Cannon to the Moon’, performed by Dixon, the director of the circus decides he wants to create a Russian version of this stunt entitled ‘Flight to the Stratosphere’. The outcome is significantly more impressive than the American effort. Dixon is accompanied by Martynov both dressed in futuristic costumes with silk gowns. Dixon is fired from the cannon, triggering a catapult mechanism that sends Martynov skywards too. As Dixon swings from a bar that will eventually become a parachute, Martynov flys around the arena with the help of invisible cables. This extraordinary scene suggests that the Soviets can better any of America’s technical achievements and foresees the later escalation of the Cold War space conquest rivalry. Although The Circus has all the necessary ingredients to be a highly entertaining film, it is the music that gives the movie its uplifting feel and makes it a popular classic. Indeed, the director later commented that the music was the most important part of the film and everything else was built on its foundations.3 The music and lyrics for the movie were written by Isaac Dunaevsky and Vasili Lebedev-Kumach respectively. The film is rich in terms of musical genre and the range of melodies and instruments adopted. For example, Song on the Cannon (Pesnia na pushke), one of the opening compositions in the film, has a distinct jazz feel with its ragtime

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piano sound and swing rhythm punctuated by a strummed ukulele. Also in the jazz tradition, Marion Dixon tap dances in accompaniment to the song on top of the cannon that will soon send her to the ‘moon’. This trip, which involves the cannon firing Dixon through a paper moon near the top of the circus tent, is accompanied by a violin-led composition entitled Lunar Waltz (Lunnyi Vals). This classical piece has a romanticism that reflects Dixon’s dream of a happy life beyond the brutality and racial hatred that she has known in small-town America. The composition is used when she first sees Ivan Martynov’s photograph and when she meets him. It also features throughout the film as a leitmotif. Even during apparently minor moments, the music plays a special evocative role. Alexandrov was strongly preoccupied with the Cinderella theme which appeared in one form or another in many of his most successful movies. In The Circus Moscow and the USSR are portrayed as a magical, fairy-tale place to which Dixon has escaped from the misery and oppression of the USA. However, as the threat of Von Kneischitz taking her back to California grows, we are shown a clock ticking towards midnight. This image is accompanied by gentle, melancholic, glockenspiel notes which create a sombre mood, suggesting that Dixon’s happiness is about to come to an end. The lullaby makes a central contribution to the musical and dramatic vitality of The Circus. Initially, Dixon affirms her love for her child, following a racially motivated tirade from Von Kneischitz, by singing him to sleep with a lullaby. This expression of maternal love is extended at the end of the film to the idea of familial love. When Von Kneischitz attempts to expose Dixon’s secret that she has a black baby, he hopes that the circus audience will sympathise with his odious views. Instead, the audience composed of different nationalities and races embraces the child, passing him around as if he were part of a big family. They sing him the lullaby, composed by Dunaevsky, which opens with the following words: Sleep reaches the threshold, Soundly, soundly you drift off, A hundred paths, A hundred roads, Are open for you!

These words convey a sense of safety and hope, not only for the child’s present and future, but for the audience too. Along with the music, the lyrics have a soothing effect on the viewer, creating a strong sense that

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Soviet society is deeply compassionate and contains no prejudice or malice. The most important song in the film is the Song of the Motherland (Shiroka strana moia rodnaia) which effectively became the unofficial Soviet national anthem and can be heard on five different occasions during the movie. The two most important are the scene where it becomes clear that Marion Dixon and Ivan Martynov are in love and they both play and sing the song on a piano in Dixon’s hotel room. It is also employed at the end of the film when it becomes a full march complete with a military choir. At this point Dixon, Martynov and their comrades stride across Red Square as Dixon realises that she now has a new homeland. The piece is adopted at strategic moments in the plot to indicate Marion Dixon’s realisation of her love for Martynov and for the USSR. Thus when she sings the song it is a statement of her rejection of America and her celebration of her new, Soviet nationhood. The song became hugely popular due to its catchy melody and bold lyrics intended to reflect the new confidence of the young Soviet state. The message of the song parallels the idea of the film which was to suggest that the USSR was a truly free country bound by the principle of the brotherhood of man. The Song of the Motherland completes the musical ensemble of the film which succeeds in moving, uplifting and soothing its audience. The Circus was an instant success at the box office, smashing all previous ticket sale records and establishing the musical as a firm favourite among the Soviet public. In addition, when the film was released, the songs became hugely popular also setting new records.4 The brothers Tur, writing in Isvestiia, praised the director’s skilful handling of the central theme of overcoming racist prejudice in The Circus. They also considered the film to be intelligent in contradistinction to ‘mindless foreign comedies’.5 The reasons for the film’s success were straightforward. It made the Soviet system attractive by identifying it with a fairy-tale world of dream realisation, joy, laughter and music rather than attempting to engage the viewer in political debate. Alexandrov knew what the everyday realities of Soviet life were and how to create a cinematic escapism that would be politically effective. The Circus was a success because the director produced a high-quality film that ordinary people would genuinely enjoy. Although the political element is always central to the story, Alexandrov did not let it become too prevalent. The film is driven along by the imperatives of popular entertainment. In this sense The Circus was by no means typical of the

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Soviet films produced in this era. As we shall see, the ‘cinema for the millions’ agenda was often undermined by an excessive emphasis on politics over entertainment that demanded political engagement from the viewer rather than transporting them into the world of fantasy. Other ‘Cinema for the Millions’ Films On viewing films from the 1930s it becomes apparent that films of the Alexandrov quality were certainly not the norm. Indeed, if we consider the ‘cinema for the millions’ to be high-quality movies which carefully balance politics and entertainment, then there are only some films that adequately fulfil this function. Ivan Pyrev developed rural equivalents of Alexandrov’s urban musicals. He made The Rich Bride (Bogataia nevesta, 1938), The Tractor Drivers and The Swineherdess and the Shepherd. These three kolkhoz musical comedies all combined accessible plots with high-quality popular music. The plots were straightforward, all dealing with countryside romance against a background of collective farm development and conflict. For instance, The Rich Bride followed the lives of a tractor driver Zgara and a farm worker Marinka who are in love and happily gathering the harvest in a Ukrainian kolkhoz. A local accounts clerk decides that he also loves Marinka and attempts to ruin the young couple’s union and the harvest. But after the young heroes save the harvest from a storm, the accounts clerk confesses to Marinka that he has deceived her and the young couple are reunited at the end. As with Alexandrov’s films, Pyrev’s rural musical comedies were, on the whole, deservedly wellreceived by both critics and viewers. The Vasilev brothers’ Chapaev is perhaps the most famous example of a successful popular film that conveyed the idea of a heroic Bolshevik victory during the civil war. The film tells of how a commissar, by the name of Furmanov, shows the spontaneous and undisciplined Red Army commander Chapaev how to be a tough, disciplined communist. The commissar is successful in his efforts and, having come to political consciousness, Chapaev plays a major role in the Red victory, before his heroic death at the end of the film. Vladimir Shneiderov’s excellent film Dzhulbars (1935), which was made at the Mezhrabpomfilm studio and was reminiscent of that organisation’s 1920s blockbusters, told of the struggle between Soviet border guards and a criminal group. But the real hero on this occasion is the dog Dzhulbars who performs a series of remarkable feats to save his master and foil the bandits. The film certainly contained the message that Soviet border guards were winning the battle

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to control the wild southern frontiers of the USSR, but this was conveyed by means of action and adventure that, according to its director, made the film a popular classic among Soviet citizens.6 Other movies took adventure into the skies or dealt with maritime themes. Several films were made on the fashionable subjects of aeroplanes and pilots. These included Yuli Raizman’s Flyers (Letchiki, 1935) which told of the conflict between a daring stuntman student pilot and the disciplined flight instructor whose views predictably prevail. A similar plot characterised the less well-known Ukrainian film The Fifth Ocean (Piatyi okean, 1940) where a young aspiring pilot learns that disciplined professionalism is what Soviet aviation is all about. Soviet heroism was celebrated in Efim Dzigan’s We are from Kronstadt (My iz Kronshtadta, 1936) which recalled the victory of the Baltic fleet over Iudenich’s whites during the civil war. There were also a few successful mass-orientated comedies made during the 1930s that were part of the ‘cinema for the millions’ agenda. Mikhail Verner’s A Girl in a Hurry (Devushka speshit na svidanie, 1936) tells of how an engineer and a shoemaker go to a holiday resort, leaving their passports at home. Their wives go to the same post office to send them on to the men, but the female clerk mixes up the envelopes. The men end up with each other’s passport leading to a series of slapstick comic moments. Konstantin Yudin’s A Girl with Character (Devushka s kharakterom, 1939) offered similar light-hearted comic relief. It told of a strong-willed girl who is unsatisfied with life on an animal sovkhoz in the East of the Soviet Union and makes her way to Moscow where she finds love, excitement and adventure. While we can identify a few films of this type, such popular comedies were not common and given less priority in thematic plans, perhaps due to the difficulty of using them to convey ‘serious’ political messages. The Class Enemy Drama: The Party Card The late 1930s were increasingly dominated by films that prioritised the political element and required the viewer to watch and learn rather than relax and escape. This was evident in many different areas, but one of the most common examples was the ubiquitous class enemy drama. Ivan Pyrev’s The Party Card (Partiinyi bilet, 1936) has become one of the period’s most infamous films. Contemporary observers have described it either as ‘perhaps the most morally reprehensible Soviet film of the 1930s’ or, in terms of its plot, as ‘absurd’.7 It tells of how Pavel Kuganov, a young peasant from Siberia, comes to Moscow to find happiness. He gets a job at a factory, thanks to his new found friend Yasha, but soon steals the latter’s object of affection, Anna,

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through charm and proving himself to be a loyal communist. Later in the film the apparently happy life of Kuganov and Anna is cut short when her Party card goes missing. At first she takes the blame and Kuganov demands that she is dismissed from the Party. It soon transpires that Kuganov (whose real name is Ziubin) is an ‘enemy of the people’ who not only murdered a Komsomol secretary in Siberia, but had himself stolen his wife’s Party card on the unlikely orders of a foreign spy. Anna exposes Kuganov at the end of the film, holding him at gunpoint until he is arrested.

Still of the class enemy Kuganov, posing as a committed communist in The Party Card (1936).

The movie deals with the theme of necessary vigilance, prevalent in many of the class enemy dramas of the 1930s, as a means of proving loyalty to the Soviet system. One of its key messages was that even the person closest to you could be a manipulative class enemy. In this way it continues the theme of political paranoia that forces are conspiring to seize power and end the communist dream. In The Party Card, when Kuganov has succeeded in winning Anna’s affections, he says: ‘Moscow you are all mine’, suggesting that his dastardly mission is not merely about economic gain, but a wider political plot. As indicated by Fyodor, the

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Party representative in the film, played by Anatoli Goriunov, the Party card is a “symbol of honour, pride and the struggle of every Bolshevik”. Indeed, the most important aspect of the film is the fact that, although none of the characters express it openly, the meaning of the Party card is extended to the private sphere and personal life. The stolen card represents Anna’s loss of self-discipline. The Party Card and other Soviet films of the time constantly return to the idea that spontaneity must give way to a strict Soviet asceticism where happiness can only be found in self-control, discipline, hard work and responsible domestic relationships. Anna has all of this in her life, before she meets Pavel Kuganov. She is from a good, honest Soviet family. She works hard at the factory and is respected as a strong, independent woman who does not rely on men to provide for her. Yasha, who also works at the factory, is a reliable, hardworking man who fulfils all of the criteria of the upstanding, Soviet male. He falls in love with Anna, but her affection for him is soon overridden by her spontaneous obsession with the dark, brooding, cynical figure of Kuganov, who has entered their lives. The danger of her involvement with Kuganov is expressed by the metaphor of the storm. Kuganov serenades Anna when suddenly rain, thunder and lightening engulf them and she lets him enter her house and her life. In most of the scenes featuring Kuganov, Pyrev shrouds him in darkness, suggesting an impending threat that undermines his charming demeanour. On the other hand, Yasha is the very opposite of Kuganov with his recitals of poetry and his easy-going friendly manner. Following his failure to attract Anna, Yasha soon leaves Moscow to work in Siberia. When he writes to Anna, we are shown the calm, sun-drenched landscapes of Siberia in all their floral beauty clearly intended to reflect the ‘safe’, familiar nature of Yasha’s character. In making this contrast between the two men, Pyrev sought to convey the most important central message of this film: the Soviet citizen should never give in to spontaneous feelings or be tempted to explore dangerous paths as such choices will inevitably lead to negative consequences. In this way the film, and the many other similar movies produced at this time, seek to do more than convey the transition from the spontaneous to the politically enlightened as the right path of development for all citizens, but to suggest that it is a moral and political necessity. The films expresses a communist conservatism that defends a limited view of permissible human conduct and seeks to preserve stability at a time of radical change and modernisation. At the time of its release Pyrev, unsurprisingly, did not make this central

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theme explicit. He argued that the time of making films for elite, artistic purposes had passed. Film-makers should now be making accessible movies that showed that the artist was aware of what was going on around him. Pyrev believed that the film-maker should select themes that worked ‘in unison with the construction of our country’ and were of great necessity for millions of cinema-goers. In The Party Card Pyrev wanted to make a film that called on the audience to show ‘revolutionary vigilance’ and ‘hatred towards the enemy’, he wanted the spectator to leave the cinema with this strong hatred which would force the individual to be ‘guarded’,‘circumspect’ and, having seen the enemy’s tactics on the screen, they would be able to ‘discover Kuganovs on their own area of socialist construction’.8 The critics welcomed Pyrev’s efforts to raise vigilance among the population. In Kino, the critic Litovsky praised the film for how effectively it showed the mechanics of class enemy behaviour and its emphasis on the importance of the Party card. He regarded it as having ‘enormous educational-propaganda significance’.9 Alexander Macheret, writing in Iskusstvo kino (Art of Cinema), gave a similar positive assessment, suggesting that the unmasking of Pavel Kuganov gave the film good dramatic tension. Macheret believed that The Party Card was a good example of a film that showed Soviet reality as it is.10 The Party Card was released in the spring of 1936 in a country on the verge of mass arrests and executions, and thus proved to be tragically prophetic. The Political/Historical Epic: The Great Citizen After establishing himself as a reliable Party film-maker in the 1930s, Fridrikh Ermler made what proved to be one of his most significant films, The Great Citizen, which was a two-part political drama about the life of Sergei Kirov, the Party boss in Leningrad who was assassinated in 1934. According to Mikhail Bleiman and Manuel Bolshintsov, the authors of the script, the film would be built around two conflicting ideas: ‘The victorious path of the Bolshevik Party, implementing the Leninist-Stalinist teaching on the building of socialism in one country, and the path of the Trotskyite-Bukharin gangsters who have degenerated into an assault detachment of fascism, becoming spies, saboteurs and murderers’.11 Ermler himself had made his goal even clearer when he pointed out that the aim of the film was not to show how certain Party members eventually formed an opposition. On the contrary, he argued that ‘the cognitive strength [of the film] ought to be in the way that it shows people how some moved away from the Party and what this leads to’.12

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The completed two-part film begins in 1925 by showing how Pyotr Shakhov (who represents Kirov) stood firm during the struggle for Party leadership on the ‘correct’ side of the Stalinists who want to concentrate on building ‘socialism in one country’, as opposed to the Trotskyite opposition who are more concerned with the international arena of socialism. The first part concludes, indicating that the Stalinist agenda has won and that the opponents will now work secretly to undermine this programme. Part two has already moved to 1934 and the ‘Congress of the Victors’. The former opposition is now working in the underground where, in collusion with foreigners, they sabotage production at a tractor factory, try to ruin the construction of a canal and, eventually, murder the hero Shakhov.

Still of the hero Shakhov from The Great Citizen (1937-39).

The Great Citizen provides a more unusual illustration of the persuasive techniques used by many film-makers in the typical, Soviet ‘class enemy’ film during the 1930s. In most ‘class enemy’ films the saboteur tends to engage in physical destruction of grand Soviet projects, such as canals, dams, construction sites, which the people have created in very difficult conditions. For example, Sergei Gerasimov’s Komsomolsk, (1937) tells of how in 1932 a young army of Komsomol members are given the task of clearing a huge forested area to build a new town on the Amur river. Just

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as it appears that work is going to plan, a saboteur by the name of Chekanov, using a ticket stolen from a murdered member of the Komsomol, arrives during the construction process. He sets fire to storage facilities containing explosives needed to provide wood for construction work, placing the project in real trouble. However, the young heroes find a way of delivering wood down the Amur river. The saboteur, who has also killed some young people on his trail, is eventually unmasked by the NKVD and the town goes on to celebrate its achievements. This type of plot formula is central to a whole range of films produced in the 1930s and was intended to suggest to the viewer that all their efforts to build a new society were constantly under threat. However, in The Great Citizen the class enemy uses words (although physical destruction soon follows) as a key weapon.13 In The Great Citizen, the enemy mocks, undermines and denies the possibility of a fair and prosperous society under Bolshevik terms. The film appeals to the emotions of the audience by using the class enemy as the vehicle through which to say that not only are the Bolsheviks deluded, but the people themselves are taking part in a futile project. This is particularly evident in the tactics of Alexei Kartashov one of the key Trotskyite enemies. During a debate with Shakhov, he talks about the state of a ‘fat-arsed Russia’ with a starving, poverty-stricken population who are ‘engaged in trivialities’ in their efforts to construct socialism in one country. In contrast to the Trotskyites who are presented as only interested in the abstract ideal of world revolution, Shakhov is a practical man of action who is easily identifiable with the working masses. He constantly refers to the Bolsheviks and the people as one and the same, arguing along simplistic lines with emotional appeal. In response to Kartashov’s views, he describes the hardships that ordinary people went through during and after the civil war, either suffering from starvation and disease or dying. He says: ‘they [the people] believe that they are building socialism and you say that it is impossible to build’. Thus The Great Citizen attempts to use its class enemy characters to provoke resentment towards the idea that the Russian working class cannot achieve socialism without being part of a wider global process of revolution that will include the West. The saboteurs suggest that ideas from the West are superior when Kartashov, in a derogatory tone, says of Shakhov’s ideas: ‘this isn’t Marx it is Shchedrin’. This technique is intended to tap into the aspirational impulse of the Soviet viewer appealing to the competitive side of ordinary citizens.

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Although The Great Citizen can also be categorised as a ‘class enemy’ film it is the first real attempt at creating an epic, Soviet, political thriller that is heavily plot-driven and that attempts to make everyday Soviet politics entertaining. At a discussion of the script in the summer of 1936, six months before the final version was accepted, fellow director Sergei Vasilev warned that the film, which required a knowledge and interest in Party history, would not be accessible to the mass spectator.14 Indeed, the film provides a strong example of how the ‘cinema for the millions’ aspiration of a balance between entertainment and politics often leaned excessively towards the latter in the 1930s. Ermler’s production lasts for over four hours in total and almost entirely consists of Party conferences, speeches, meetings, political debates and so on. It offers little entertainment value for the viewer and is almost completely devoid of dramatic tension. The first part of the film is, on the whole, shot in murky lamp-lit rooms or large halls where political discussions take place, or the opposition and Shakhov vie to win over the people. The camera work largely consists of lengthy shots of these individuals standing in front of, or over the audience. Moreover, there is very little music in the film which merely highlights its arid nature. Despite obtaining the services of Dmitri Shostakovich, his work is barely featured except at the beginning of each part of the movie and at choice moments, such as Shakhov’s funeral. The absence of music is consistent with the plodding script. In Part two, the potential for more tension arises when the political enemies start talking about destroying construction sites and a canal. There follows the most dramatic moment as we see ambulances driving through the rain on a dark night to try to rescue survivors from a deliberate explosion at a canal construction site where we learn that nineteen people have been killed. However, the film instantly returns to a pedestrian pace, before reaching its dramatic highpoint: the murder of Shakhov. As with the incident at the canal, this is something of a non-event which takes place behind closed doors and has very little impact. It is important to note that Stalin gave orders that this part of the film should not be seen as the ‘centre’ or ‘highpoint’ of the script.15 The unfortunate result is that there is no highpoint at all. The overindulgence in politics means that The Great Citizen does not provide any form of mass entertainment, such as action, adventure, love interest or popular song. The film’s slow momentum is sustained on the basis of rather dry Stalinist slogans and the domination of Soviet speak. Unsurprisingly, some of the critics welcomed the film. A certain Rutes,

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writing for Kino, suggested that the movie was especially valuable for mass ‘education’ given the recent show trials, while, Abramov, a critic for the newspaper Vecherniaia Moskva (Evening Moscow) also praised the movie, describing it as a ‘new victory for Soviet cinema’.16 Nonetheless, there was also significant criticism in Iskusstvo Kino, as well as the mainstream newspaper Pravda, albeit restrained, of the film’s excessive reliance on political gatherings and its fundamentally tedious content.17 Nonetheless, while sources on general audience reaction to films in the 1930s are still emerging, it is fair to say that some class enemy dramas that made an effort to entertain, as well as educate, were popular. For example, Vaks, the critic for the newspaper Vecherniaia Moskva reported that a Moscow audience viewed Komsomolsk with ‘excitement’ and ‘cheerfulness’ especially at the arrival of 200 female Komsomol volunteers when the audience broke into ‘thunderous applause’.18 Nonetheless, the evidence suggests that even in a context where audience choice had been greatly reduced, viewers generally did not opt for films with excessive political content. By way of illustration, Maya Turovskaya has pointed out that, in terms of receipts per film copy, a little-known Armenian adventure film, reminiscent of Chapaev, entitled Karo (1937), was more than twice as popular as the movie Lenin in October, one of the typical politicised films of the late 1930s. It is almost certain that, when The Great Citizen was released in the late 1930s, the mass spectator would not have regarded the film as a memorable event. One avid cinema follower, by the name of Adrian Shaposhnikov, kept a diary in which he gave ratings to films of the era. Although he found some purely political films, such as Lenin in October and Lenin in 1918, to be ‘good’ movies, he described The Great Citizen as ‘mediocre’.19 The Political Aims of ‘Class Enemy’ and Purely Political Films Soviet cinema was above all a political and didactic medium, but what did these films ultimately hope to achieve in terms of persuasion or argument? It has often been argued that Soviet films of the Stalin era sought to ‘varnish’ reality, to present a life that did not exist, or to ‘avoid showing real hardships and conflicts’. Others contend that the films aimed to justify the hardships or political violence.20 Yet, although class enemy films undoubtedly seek to justify the actions of the Soviet government, their raison d’être is arguably more profound than a straightforward covering up or denial of reality. In these movies the shortcomings of

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‘socialist transition’ or ‘socialist construction’ do find their expression in the form of saboteurs. In other words, if the Soviet dream is not delivering, it is not due to the irreconcilable gap between Bolshevik aspirations and Russian realities, rather, it is a consequence of fanatical enemies of the Revolution who will stop at nothing to destroy the communist ideal. However, most of the Soviet film-makers who created these movies did not merely aim to shift the locus of reasoning for the problems of everyday life and wider economic development. More importantly, many of the films made in the 1930s also seek to transfer a large amount of the burden of political responsibility and compensation for the regime’s illegitimate foundations on to ordinary people. For example, as we have seen, in The Party Card Anna’s path to the good life is to be achieved through selfcontrol and discipline, but this is less about fostering the happiness of the individual and more about the cohesion and development of Soviet social and economic life. Similarly, the unmasking of the enemy is conveyed as a social duty necessary to protect the security and prosperity of the communist state and its citizens. In The Great Citizen Shakhov refers to the need for self-criticism (samokritika) as the ‘basic moral quality of the Soviet man’ as a means of ‘overcoming all the bad things in other people and in oneself ’. Again, the causes of wider political failure are often reduced to individuals’ capacity to exercise self-control and social vigilance. Thus real or perceived shortcomings are not only the responsibility of political rulers, but of the people who have failed in their participatory duties. In this way the films suggest that by playing a full role in both private and public life, the people make that system their own. After all, the Bolsheviks’ central argument was that communism was about the liberation of the toiling masses and that it was their polity. The ‘class enemy’ and other politicised films of the 1930s sought to make the Soviet system a success by suggesting that the USSR did not emerge merely due to the actions of a relatively small group of political fanatics, but because of the work of a wider mass movement. In The Great Citizen, Shakhov talks about ‘millions’ of Bolsheviks who are trying to build a new life and claims that ‘the people will destroy anyone who tries to stop our work’. Thus, on the screen at least, the film-makers sought to narrow the gap between the Soviet political elite and the masses in whose name it claimed to rule. Yet, as we have argued, the most important method of closing this gap was through the transfer of political responsibility. This was absolutely central to the political function of Soviet cinema during the Stalin years.

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Soviet Satire: Happiness Director Alexander Medvedkin’s most enduring legacy was his first feature film made at Mosfilm in 1934. Happiness (Schaste) tells of Khmyr and his wife Anna who are impoverished peasants living in both pre-Revolutionary Russia and shown later in the early 1930s during the collectivisation drive. Khmyr, who is the central character, dreams of a prosperous propertyowning life. This almost comes to fruition when he finds a purse full of money and he is able to buy property and a horse. This short-lived fortune is soon ended by thieves, a kulak and various representatives of the state who gradually expropriate his new-found wealth. In a state of despair Khmyr decides that he is going to die and proceeds to build a coffin for himself. Even this desire is thwarted by religious and military figures who claim that he has no right to kill himself. But his welfare is their last concern: rather, they want him to fulfil his responsibility to provide food for Russia. After being taken away by tsarist soldiers, Khmyr is suddenly transported into the early 1930s and a rural environment now collectively organised. Khmyr has still not lost his desire to be a landowner free from the constraints of the kolkhoz, but he is now downtrodden and dejected and fails to make a useful contribution to the collective farm. Meanwhile, Foka, a menacing kulak, is trying to cause havoc in the kolkhoz and eventually tries to burn the farm’s horses to death in their stable. Khmyr prevents this from happening and suddenly becomes a hero. At the end of the film Khmyr travels with Anna to town to buy a new suit, before he discards his old peasant costume, symbolising his final rejection of his old beliefs. The reception of Happiness by the critics was somewhat mixed. The main industry newspaper Kino understood that Medvedkin’s main aim was to criticise Khmyr’s individualist dream of great wealth and to show that this dream was an illusion. Kino’s critic, Boris Vetrov, argued that the weakness of the film lay in the second part where he felt that Medvedkin failed to show Khmyr as having made the transformation from the aspiring individualist to the honest collective farmer. Despite this perceived shortcoming, Vetrov recognised the director’s inventive style and concluded that the film was ‘valuable’ and ‘artistic’.21 A review in the general press was less critical. Boris Vaks, writing for Vecherniaia Moskva, praised Medvedkin’s bold use of folklore in the contemporary medium of cinematography and concluded that Happiness was a film of social and artistic significance from a ‘promising’ and ‘distinctive’ film-maker. Curiously, it was the reaction of a local newspaper which was to have such a negative impact on the film’s destiny. It appears that the film had

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Film poster for the film Happiness (1934).

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been released and was enjoying modest returns when suddenly the review appeared, criticising Medvedkin of slandering the Russian peasant, suggesting that the class war in the countryside had died off, and that the kulak had peacefully been integrated into the socialist project. The film was then withdrawn from distribution and was banned.22 Medvedkin later stressed that the point was to show that Khmyr’s dream and idea of happiness was unrealistic. Yet there is little about this remarkable film that could make it comparable with much of the formulaic cinema product of the same time. In the same way as Medvedkin’s previous work, the film gives a humorous and honest portrayal of country life. It focuses on individual experience and shows the harsh realities of this life as an endless struggle for resources and survival. Although the film is a statement against greed, the viewer is, to some extent, supposed to sympathise with Khmyr. There is an absence of the cliché of coming to consciousness or any real sense that Khmyr has fundamentally changed. The film’s uniqueness can also be found in a visually rich use of Russian folklore stylistic devices and a dark satirical humour which makes the film stand out from other popular Soviet comedies of the time. Khmyr’s failure ‘to die’ and lie in his coffin and the desperate nun’s attempt to commit suicide on a revolving windmill are among the humorous moments that convey Medvedkin’s comic skills. As Widdis points out, Medvedkin’s strategy of satirical exposure as a means of persuading people to improve their approach to work or social life may have been intended to work in favour of the Soviet regime, but the director’s biting comedy allied to his eccentric film-making style also threatened to undermine that regime, especially in the eyes of many Bolsheviks.23 Indeed, this is where Medvedkin differed from many of his fellow communists. As we have argued, the defensive outlook of political and administrative figures that had such a strong impact on Soviet cinema was about denial, about attempting to claim a legitimacy that simply did not exist. Medvedkin understood that the Bolsheviks had taken on an enormous task. Yet, while he too was an idealist who believed in the communist future, he also understood that the project would not have a chance of fruition without an open, honest dialogue about the realities of Soviet society. He realised that a problem could not be solved by pretending that it did not exist. The Apolitical Revolutionary Film: The Last Night Although well-established by 1937, Yuli Raizman acknowledged, that it was through the film The Last Night that he reached ‘professional maturity’. The director joined up with Yevgeni Gabrilovich, his contemporary from

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school, to develop a script version of Gabrilovich’s story Quiet Brovkin (Tikhii Brovkin, 1936). The script told of the last night of the tsarist system and the struggle between the old and new world. This clash is told through the experiences of the working-class Zakharkin family and the factoryowning Leontev family. Individuals from both families come into conflict with one another throughout the film. The heads of the families, Igor Zakharkin and Leontev, engage in a bitter dispute and Igor is shot dead. Subsequently, Ilia Zakharkin, the middle brother, and then Kuzma Zakharkin the young, naive schoolboy are shot by the Whites. But Pyotr, the oldest brother, survives and leads the seizure of the Briansk railway station. The revolutionary soldiers then make their way towards the Kremlin accompanied by the mother of the Zakharkin family. The Last Night received substantial publicity in the cinema press. The critics broadly praised the film and, according to Gabrilovich, it enjoyed ‘huge success’, with the cinema-going public.24 In Iskusstvo kino one article gave the film particular credit for its acting through which the critic believed that the film-makers had captured the glory of the Revolution. A review in Vecherniaia Moskva had more acumen and showed a deeper understanding of the film-makers’ intentions. The critic observed that the film was devoid of ‘far-fetched’ images and was ‘natural, truthful, humane, diverse like life’. The review also noted Raizman and Gabrilovich’s attention to the prosaic, everyday aspect of the Revolution and the possibility that the ordinary person could become a hero. The critic concluded that this very attention to the ordinary meant that the film differed from other films being produced in the USSR at the time.25 Indeed, both Gabrilovich and Raizman later acknowledged the difficulties that they had experienced after completing The Last Night. Raizman did not directly refer to the problems with censorship, but suggested that they had been attacked by those who advocated ‘monumentalism’ and grand ‘epic’ portrayals of the October Revolution. In the 1960s Gabrilovich pointed out that the film-makers were accused of failing to capture the ‘epic’ and ‘romantic’ nature of the Revolution and providing an accurate political emphasis. By monumentalism the film-makers were referring to films, such as Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potemkin, 1925) with its emphasis on the masses rather than the individual as the hero. Yet by the 1930s this sort of film was no longer the norm. The real conflict that the two men were referring to was between the idea of the Revolution as a glorified myth led by Party heroes, such as Lenin, and the idea of the Revolution from the point of view of the ordinary person which, during

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the late 1930s, could be an extremely controversial perspective. Raizman and Gabrilovich’s focus on the everyday and the ordinary was a pioneering step that foresaw later developments in Soviet cinema during the ‘thaw’ years. Of course, in The Last Night the film-makers were careful to suggest that the Bolsheviks were ‘correct’ and there are elements of minor glorification. Yet the film offers a believable characterisation of the ordinary man suddenly involved in a social revolution. Nikolai Dorokhin, who played the part of Pyotr Zakharkin, a rank-and-file sailor, did not match the traditional depiction of the muscular, smiling and confident revolutionary. On the contrary, Raizman deliberately selected an actor who could show that the average sailor empowered by the possibilities of the Revolution would be almost overawed by such an event.26 Pyotr is physically awkward and lacking in confidence, he is fully committed to the Bolshevik cause, yet it is clear that he does not really understand the political ideals which he is fighting for. Thus while the film-makers emphasised the righteousness of the October Revolution, their main hero did not correspond to Soviet heroic stereotypes of the time. The Last Night also points to the tragic and accidental aspects of the Revolution. This is explored through Kuzma, the youngest brother of the Zakharkin family. He is a grammar schoolboy who is naive and perceives the Revolution as a romantic adventure. He tells Lena, who is from the Leontev family, that he is a revolutionary ‘fighting for a wonderful new life’ to win her affections. As he wonders aimlessly through the Moscow streets he accidentally gets caught up in crossfire and finds himself among White soldiers who expect him to fight with them. When they discover that he is from a working-class family he runs away only to be shot. This particular element in the plot was included to show that the Revolution was not all about heroism and great feats, but also tragedy and loss of innocent life. Raizman’s distinctive approach of exploring the role of individuals in the midst of political and social change or upheaval proved to be an enduring theme of his career. His next film was an attempt to adapt Mikhail Sholokhov’s Virgin Soil Upturned (Podniataia tselina, 1939). This project enjoyed limited success and is rarely mentioned among Raizman’s classic works. It was overshadowed by Raizman’s subsequent production which has become one of his most popular movies. Reunited with Gabrilovich, Raizman made Mashenka, a story of love between the heroine, a post office clerk and Alexei, a chauffeur. Again the focus was on ordinary

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lives rather than grand historical events. The film, in a similar manner to The Last Night, did not resemble the general direction of films produced before and during the war with their emphasis on glorious Soviet victories. Raizman’s work reveals that it was possible to be relatively creative and independent during the 1930s when thematic planning and censorship made life very difficult for film-makers. Narrowing Variety and Experimentation in the 1930s: Film-maker Motivation As we have seen the 1930s saw a dramatic change in the way films were conceived, vetted at all stages, set into production, distributed and exhibited. The inevitable result of close political control at all levels meant a real reduction in content variety and the possibilities for free artistic expression. Although it is unfair to say the quality of certain movies was inferior to those produced in the 1920s, cinema was an art form for the masses and, therefore, while the strong reduction of experiment was to be lamented, there was a huge demand and a necessity to produce entertaining Soviet films that ordinary people could enjoy. We have argued above that Soviet cinema struggled throughout the 1930s due to lack of investment and a consequent absence of sufficient numbers of specialists in all areas. One of the major consequences of this situation was that newly trained personnel found it extremely difficult to establish meaningful long-term careers in the industry. In the 1930s the cinema studios tended to offer permanent employment mainly to well-established film-makers who were aware of the specific political demands of this era. However, it has been contended here that different film-makers reacted in various ways to this new political climate. Is it possible to identify why certain film-makers were unambiguously proSoviet and made mass feature films which leaned far more towards politics than entertainment, while others were less fully committed to political orthodoxy? As indicated, not all film-makers offered unconditional commitment to the demands of Soviet cinema in the 1930s, but most of them did. As this commitment was central to the direction of the industry in the 1930s we must ask what were the reasons for such apparent political loyalty? In the first place, we cannot discount the social background factor. Grigori Alexandrov and Ivan Pyrev were from working-class backgrounds. After the Revolution both men gained the opportunity to study in the Proletkult movement and moved to cinema from here as directors’ assistants.27

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Alexander Medvedkin also came from a poorer background. He was born in Penza and his family were largely of peasant origin. He attended school in his hometown before enrolling in a technical college. His brief stint in further education was abruptly halted by the October Revolution, but Medvedkin was politically committed, joining the Red Army in 1919 and the Communist Party in 1920. It was during his army years in the mid-to-late 1920s that Medvedkin was given the opportunity to enter cinema.28 Fridrikh Ermler, who was already an established director by the end of the 1920s, also took advantage of the opportunities provided by the October Revolution. Fridrikh Ermler was in fact an adopted name; he was born as Vladimir Markovich Breslav into a petty bourgeois Jewish family in 1898. By 1918, after a spell in the army, he had become a Bolshevik sympathiser and a spy (hence the pseudonym Fridrikh Ermler), later joining the Party and working for the Cheka where he was involved in the serious work of a Revolutionary military tribunal. In an unusual career change, Ermler managed to gain entry to the Leningrad Institute of Screen Arts to follow his love of acting, but he did not graduate and turned his attention to directing. His first real break in the industry came as a short-lived assistant to the director Pavel Petrov-Bytov and some early unsuccessful attempts at making his own films.29 Yuli Raizman was born in Moscow in 1903. The details of his early life remain somewhat obscure, but we can probably state that Raizman was from a middle or lower middle-class family. In contrast to directors such as Ermler or Pyrev, Raizman had a good education. He attended the pre-Revolutionary gymnasium which was essentially an elite secondary school intended to prepare students for university. After the Revolution, Raizman studied in various specialist art and theatre workshops, before entering Moscow University to study in the literary-artistic faculty where he graduated in 1924. His first job after graduation was as a literary consultant at the Mezhrabpom-Rus studio where he became interested in the work of the film director. Raizman got his first opportunity when he was appointed to work as Konstantin Eggert’s assistant on the film The Bear’s Wedding at that same studio. Raizman also worked as an assistant to Yakov Protazanov, but continued to dream of making his own film. Thus, excluding Raizman, for men like Alexandrov, Ermler, Pyrev and Medvedkin the Soviet system provided opportunities that they may not have benefited from under a tsarist regime. Yet, there is no simple correlation between the opportunities brought by the advent of communism

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and the production of ‘correct’ films. In the case of Medvedkin there was a firm commitment to the communist case, but on his own unique terms. We have also seen that very few of the proletarian and peasant cadres who entered cinema education in the late 1920s and early 1930s would forge any career at all for themselves in the film industry. Other filmmakers, such as Lev Kuleshov, were of aristocratic origins, but the majority were either from a middle or lower middle-class background and personal struggle or childhood poverty were not typical experiences for most of them. It has become something of a cliché to assume that the artist under the Soviet regime was generally locked in a persistent struggle with a repressive state. While there is some truth in this, it is not unreasonable to consider directors, such as Ermler and many others, to be true believers in the political ideal. However, there were other sources of motivation which were arguably even stronger. Certain directors, including Pyrev and Ermler, had experienced the difficulties of censorship early in their careers and knew that efforts to exercise full artistic licence could jeopardise their future. In the early 1930s both considered the idea of retiring early from cinema. If they wanted to continue to work in the industry it was clear that making films that fulfilled the utilitarian demands of a consolidated Stalinist leadership would make their lives far easier and their careers infinitely more secure. Moreover, the the promise of material wealth that the majority of the population could only dream about was also a key factor. In terms of salaries and other material rewards it was clearly profitable for film-makers to commit themselves to making films that glorified the communist state and its leaders. In a country where the majority of ordinary people led very difficult lives, the temptation to please in return for a comfortable and prestigious lifestyle was clearly too great for many artists. The ‘cinema for the millions’ agenda was compromised by a defensive mentality obsessed with reaching and persuading the people with its political ideas and messages, which all too often sidelined the entertainment aspect of cinema, essential in gaining the attention and sympathy of the mass audience. Films preoccupied with ordinary people coming to political consciousness, understanding, supporting and actively playing their part in the Soviet system revealed the desire among Party leaders, cinema administrators and some artists to see the illusion of widespread regime support to at least come alive on the screen, as it had not really happened in reality. We have argued here that a significant

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proportion of Soviet films produced in the 1930s sought to transfer a large amount of political responsibility for the regime’s shortcomings on to the ordinary person. This contributed to an excessive politicisation of Soviet cinema which meant that the ‘cinema for the millions’ did not reach the level of fruition that it could have done, even given the difficult structural circumstances.

CONCLUSION

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hen they seized power after the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks suffered from a substantial political legitimacy deficit due to their minority status and the irreconcilable gap between their promises of mass liberation from exploitation and toil and the impending harsh realities of collectivisation and industrialisation. These uneasy political foundations meant that the Bolsheviks were always on the defensive and cinema became a key part of the strategy not only as a means of education or mobilisation, but to defend the very existence and legitimacy of the Soviet regime. Defensive Bolshevik thinking manifested itself in different forms. In the first place I examined the role of government, Party and administrative decision-making, as well as the development of the Soviet cinema’s industry and infrastructure. The defensive mentality guided the form of state decrees, decision-making and administration. The 1930s sees a gradual shift from a preoccupation with narrowing the development gap in cinema to organising the cinema industry on centralised principles. This shift is both evident in official government and Party decision-making, as well as industry administration. At this time the administration came under increasing pressure not only to create an industry that was economically successful and independent of imports from the West, but also ideologically sound. However, the impact of defensiveness had unintended negative consequences. Boris Shumiatsky, the cinema chairman, reacted to increasing centralisation and his own decreasing autonomy by devising an individual defensive strategy to protect his position of power. This involved an attempt to prove his credentials as an ideal Bolshevik leader of Soviet cinema, in the course of which Shumiatsky became obsessed with micro-managing the industry. His everyday activities shifted from a concern with broader

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industry development to checking every film script before production, controlling individuals’ movements and writing letters to Stalin and Molotov, pleading for funds or approval of some sort. This made a huge contribution to stunting the growth and success of Soviet cinema. In this way, Bolshevik defensiveness had an effect on the day-to-day operation of the system, as well as its output. Paradoxically, the desire to defend and protect thus provided the source of the system’s paralysis as well as its chaotic aspects. It helped create elaborate structures of control while simultaneously undermining these principles of organisation by taking them to absurd levels. I also examined the system of film censorship that developed from the end of the 1920s until the outbreak of war with Germany in 1941. The analysis indicated that censorship was often inconsistent and ineffective. Nonetheless, in the 1930s it became increasingly draconian. It was argued that censorship tended to reflect the defensive mentality of those who made the decisions on whether films could be released. On the one hand, this led to an obsession with ideological correctness, whereby one institution of censorship would give way to another in the hope that a new body could be more effective at unearthing politically suspect scripts or films. On the other hand, defensive insecurity obliged the Bolsheviks frequently to denounce popular entertainment, both foreign and Soviet, and this had a negative impact on the fruition of the cinema for the millions project, as the priorities of politics were increasingly given more value. Despite the Bolsheviks’ elaborate efforts to defend their hold on power and hope that the masses would eventually come round to and support their way of thinking, as time wore on it became increasingly clear that the people were not with the Bolsheviks. To some extent, defensive frustration over their unpopularity and a complete lack of ideas were among the main reasons why the Bolsheviks turned to violence and increasingly coercive measures. Cinema, one of the key methods of gaining mass support, was subject to violent attack for the same reasons as other sectors of the economy. Nonetheless, it was argued that cinema, which had failed to produce under the command system, was particularly targeted following the turn of many industry figures to the West for ideas and production techniques. The frustrations of failure and the absence of mass support, to a great extent, resulted in a blame culture. Cinema was supposedly failing not because of inherent systemic faults, but due to class enemies, wreckers and saboteurs, who sought to undermine the system at every turn.

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The analysis also looked at the role of the thematic plan in the Soviet film industry. As a means of protecting their power and ideology, the Bolsheviks sought to maintain at least the illusion that they had secured mass consent. Thus controls over the content of film production were part of the process of regime legitimacy and an integral part of cinema industry development in the 1930s. This was evident in censorship, but also in the system of thematic planning whereby the Party would support the use of movie themes that were particularly relevant to government policy and which defended the history of the regime. For instance, the late 1930s saw the emergence of many anti-fascist films in response to the rise of the Nazis in Germany and, at the same time, a series of feature films indicating that the USSR should be prepared for possible war. These were accompanied by many films about the Revolution, its leaders or senior Bolsheviks. However, the strengthening of thematic planning after a weak start led, once again, to unintended consequences. Not only did thematic plans fail to provide a guarantee of ideological soundness, but they were organisationally weak and wasteful of scant resources. The obsession with defending and protecting the politically sacred and the need to defend current policy, which was always changing, brought the Soviet film industry to the brink of collapse. From Chapter Five, the emphasis shifted towards the role of the film-makers in the Soviet film industry at this time. I discussed the nature of unions and societies. It was pointed out that the efforts to involve the masses in the development of the industry were transitory, while the bodies responsible for representing the interests of film-makers and the broader workforce, as well as the organisations created to provide a forum for debate, increasingly failed to fulfil their tasks. Nonetheless, it was argued that a privileged group of film-makers had emerged by the second half of the 1930s for whom such representation was less vital. This group, which even had a significant degree of administrative and artistic decision-making influence for a few years, enjoyed living in spacious flats, driving nice cars, going abroad to Europe and America and having a high income, as well as access to production finances that were beyond the reach of most aspiring film-makers. Thus, while this elite still protested about the state of the film industry, they were often happy to make politically orthodox films in order to guarantee continued prosperity. Subsequently, I drew a comparison between the Mezhabpomfilm and Mosfilm studios in the 1930s. The chapter compared the manner in which

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the power shifted away from the studios and their directors from relatively significant administrative and economic power to a severe reduction in autonomy by the end of the decade. It also compared the nature of the film-making process in relation to this reduced independence and increasing bureaucratisation. This comparison gave us an insight into just how strongly the ingrained Bolshevik defensive mentality was, as well as indicating that the film-maker elite did not entirely subscribe to the dominant mode of political thought. At the close of the 1930s unexpected reforms included the establishment of artistic councils in the studios, aimed at giving the film-makers a significant say in the artistic and administrative decision-making process. Although most film-makers had produced politically ‘correct’ films in the 1930s, when they were given power in an administrative sense, they often supported productions that were at odds with political and ideological demands from above. Nonetheless, this power also helped to cement their position as part of the film-making elite. As already noted in relation to censorship, perceived weaknesses in filtering ideologically weak films led to a series of institutional reactions and, despite the promising signs of flexibility, the studios were no different. In the 1940s the film-makers, who were not trusted politically, were edged out of the councils in favour of Party representatives, thus a retreat had taken place. The defensive mentality had, once again, undermined a potentially fruitful direction. The analysis looked at film education, with particular attention to the State Film Institute. Part of the plan for the cinema industry as a means of ideological defence was the creation of a politically and artistically trained workforce that could ensure Soviet cinema would make the technical and artistic leap into the future. I argued that, while the Bolsheviks knew how important this was for the successful future of Soviet cinema, it failed to adequately manage and provide even basic investment, leaving film education in a parlous state. Consequently, the Institute lacked purpose, as a very small minority of its graduates would manage to carve meaningful careers in the film industry. Indeed, the young graduates’ struggle to break through was not helped by the fact that the privileged group of largely older, established film-makers occupied the top positions at most of the studios and were, perhaps, reluctant to give up their comfortable lifestyles to facilitate career mobilisation. The State Institute’s isolation from production realities can also be applied to its teaching. Dominated by political and artistic outsiders, the Institute leaned towards an open-minded and often avant-garde inspired teaching programme,

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which was denied any real practical application in the new mass-orientated cinema of the 1930s. We also considered the role of the film-makers and the films themselves. The final chapter looked at the broad range of films being produced during the 1930s. It contended that the fruition of a successful cinema for the millions agenda was compromised by a defensive mentality which demanded the fulfilment of a communist civilising mission and the heavy politicisation of popular film content. It was noted that there were exceptions to the formulaic movies of the time, especially the work of Alexander Medvedkin, who showed that satire and, sometimes, honest self-criticism might be a more effective political tactic than defensiveness and denial. Other film-makers, such as Yuli Raizman, committed themselves to the thematic formalities of the industry, but offered a more nuanced view of the revolutionary past. Nonetheless, while the 1930s offers more variety than one might expect, towards the end of the decade politicisation increases. It was contended that a significant proportion of Soviet films produced in the 1930s sought to transfer a large amount of political responsibility for the regime’s shortcomings on to the ordinary person. This contributed to an excessive politicisation of Soviet cinema which meant that the ‘cinema for the millions’ did not reach the level of fruition that it could have done, even given the difficult structural circumstances. The film-making elite were broadly complicit in this trend, although this varied from case to case. Some had experienced difficult early lives and the Soviet regime provided them with genuine opportunities. Others had later witnessed the barriers in the film industry and thus realised that creative independence had to be sacrificed to an extent. In all cases, however, financial gain, personal security and prestige were all undoubtedly central motivating factors. In the end the Bolshevik obsession with defending and protecting the regime and everything it stood for transformed Soviet cinema into a bureaucratic monolith in the 1930s. All the aforementioned policies and measures concerning the film industry and its films point to the fact that the Bolsheviks elaborate attempts to protect their illegitimate regime through cinema, paradoxically, undermined that industry and all their hopes for it, including the ‘cinema for the millions’ agenda which promised so much, but delivered so little.

NOTES Introduction 1

See Dwight McDonald, ‘Soviet Cinema, 1930–1940, A History,’ in On Movies (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1969). This work, originally carried out in the late 1930s, foresaw the development of later, more systematic ‘totalitarian’ accounts. The most influential of these is Peter Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society from the Revolution to the Death of Stalin, 2nd edn (London: I.B.Tauris, 2001). 2 See Richard Taylor, The Politics of Soviet Cinema, 1917–1929 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). 3 See Richard Taylor, ‘Soviet Socialist Realism and the Cinema Avant-Garde’, Studies in Comparative Communism, 3 & 4 (1984), 185–202. Richard Taylor, ‘Boris Shumiatsky and the Soviet Cinema in the 1930s: ideology as mass entertainment’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 6 (1986), 43–64. 4 The Film Factory: Russia and Soviet cinema in documents, ed. by Richard Taylor and Ian Christie (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1988). 5 Stalinism and Soviet Cinema, ed. by Richard Taylor, and Derek Spring (London: Routledge, 1993). 6 For the earlier theory, see Denise Youngblood, Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, 1919– 1935 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991). The amended theory is outlined in Denise Youngblood, Movies for the Masses (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 7 See Alentina Rubailo, Partiinoe rukovodstvo razvitiem kinoiskusstva 1928–1937 (Moscow: Moskovskii universitet, 1976). For examples of more recent Russian studies of the 1930s, See Kino: politika i liudi, ed. by Lidiia Mamatova (Moscow: Materik, 1995). See the bibliography for examples of recent published archival sources 8 Natacha Laurent, L’Oeil du Kremlin: cinéma et censure en URSS sous Staline (Toulouse: Privat, 2000). 9 Eberhard Nembach, Stalins Filmpolitik: Der Umbau der Sowjetischen Filmindustrie 1929 bis 1938 (St. Augustin: Gardez! Verlag, 2001). 10 See John Haynes, New Soviet Man (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003) and Emma Widdis, Visions of a New Land (London: Yale University Press, 2003). Evgeny Dobrenko, Stalinist Cinema and the Production of History: Museum of the Revolution (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008). The journal, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, is published by Intellect.

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11 Economic and technical matters are addressed in Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, pp. 118–24. An important recent examination of industry development during the first Five-Year Plan can be found in Vance Kepley Jr, ‘The First Perestroika: Soviet Cinema under the First Five-Year Plan’, Cinema Journal, 35 (1996), 4, pp. 31–53. Kepley offers an extremely detailed analysis, which focuses on the institutional changes in Soviet cinema in the late 1920s and early 1930s. For a Soviet perspective on industry development in the 1930s, see Dvadtsat' let sovetskoi kinematografii, ed. by N. Semenov and L. Cherniabskii (Moscow: Goskinoizdat, 1940). 12 The main English language exception is Vance Kepley’s pioneering article ‘Building a National Cinema: Soviet Film Education, 1918–1934’, Wide Angle, 9 (1987), 3, 4–20. 13 The first Soviet work on the purges of the cinema industry emerged at the end of the 1980s: see Anatolii Latyshev, ‘Stalin i kino’, in Surovaia drama naroda, ed. by Iurii Senokosov (Moscow: Izdanie politicheskoi literatury, 1989), pp. 489–511. In subsequent years, the following two articles were published: Arkadii Bernshtein, ‘Sochli vragami naroda’, Iskusstvo kino, 3 (1993), pp. 92–99; Anatolii Latyshev, ‘Poimenno nazvat'’, in Kino: politika i liudi, pp. 157–60. Denise Youngblood offers a rare Western account of the earlier purges between 1929 and the early 1930s in her Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, pp. 189–204. 14 See for example, Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. Siân Reynolds, 2 vols (London: Fontana, 1975) and Lucien Febvre, The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982). 15 For example, see Robert Tucker, Stalin in Power. The Revolution from Above, 1928–41 (London: Norton, 1990) and, more recently, Kevin McDermott, Stalin: Revolutionary in an Era of War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 16 See Marc Ferro, The Russian Revolution of February 1917, trans. J. L. Richards (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972) and Geoffrey Hosking, Russia and the Russians: From Earliest Times to 2001 (London: Allen Lane The penguin Press, 2001). 17 Peter R. Campbell, ‘The new History: the Annales school of history and modern historiography’, in Historical Controversies and Historians, ed. by William Lamont (London: UCL Press, 1998). 18 The summary of this approach is drawn from Colin Hay, ‘Structure and Agency’, in Theory and Methods in Political Science, ed. by David Marsh and Gerry Stoker (London: MacMillan, 1995), pp. 189–206. 19 Daryl Glaser, ‘Marxism and Democracy’, in Marxism and Social science, ed. by Andrew Gamble, David Marsh and Tony Tant (London: MacMillan Press, 1999), pp. 239–258. 20 Crawford Brough MacPherson, The Real World of Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 12–22. 21 See for instance Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). 22 Richard Sakwa, Russian Politics and Society, 3rd edition (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 341. Communist Political Systems: An Introduction, ed. by Stephen White, John Gardner and George Schöpflin (London: MacMillan, 1982), pp. 28–43.

Chapter 1 1 2

Youngblood, Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, pp. 157–60. B. S. Ol'khovyi, ed., ‘Party Cinema Conference Resolution: The Results of Cinema

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9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

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Construction in the USSR and the Tasks of Soviet Cinema’, Document 83 translated in, The Film Factory, pp. 209–10. The Film Factory, pp. 210–11, 383–84. Postanovlenie TsK VKP(b), ‘O rukovodiashchikh kadrakh rabotnikov kinematografii’, document 44 in Sovetskoe kino (1917–1978): Resheniia partii i pravitel'stva o kino, sbornik dokumentov, ed. by Nataliia Volkova, Sergei Drobashenko and Rostislav Iurenev, Vol. 1 (Moscow: NIITIKG/TsGALI, 1979), p. 82. Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Literatury i Iskusstva (RGALI), ‘Stenogramma zasedaniia kommissii po chistke chlenov ARRK’, in The Association of Workers of Revolutionary Cinematography (Woodbridge, CT: Research Publications, 1999), microfilm reel 11, f. 2494, op. 1, delo. 295, l. 29. Nikolai Lebedev, ‘Kino-proizvodstvo – pod kontrol' rabochikh shefov’, Vecherniaia Moskva, 15 December 1930, p. 3. Postanovlenie Sovnarkoma (SNK) SSSR, ‘Polozhenie o kino-komitete pri Sovete Narodnykh Kommissarov Soiuza SSR’, document 45 in Sovetskoe kino, pp. 85–86. Vladimir Mikhailov, ‘Stalinskaia model' upravleniia kinematografom’, in Kino: politika i liudi, p. 14. Iz Postanovleniia TsIK SSSR i SNK SSSR, ‘O nalagovykh l'gotakh dlia kinopromyshlennosti’, document 46 in Sovetskoe kino, pp. 86–87. Iz Postanovleniia TsIK SSSR i Sovnarkoma SSSR, ‘O fondakh kinofikatsii’, document 47 in Sovetskoe kino, pp. 87–88. Postanovlenie SNK SSSR, ‘Ob usilenii proizvodstva i pokaza politiko-prosvetitel'nykh kino-kartin’, document 55 in Sovetskoe kino, pp. 92–94. Postanovlenie Sovnarkoma SSSR, ‘Ob obrazovanii obshchesoiuznogo ob''edineniia po kino-fotopromyshlennosti’, document 56 in Sovetskoe kino, pp. 94– 95. ‘Ustav gosudarstvennogo vsesoiuznogo kino-fotoob''edineniia “Soiuzkino”’, document 193 in Sobranie zakonov, 1930, pt. 2, pp. 567–73. RGALI, f. 2497, op. 1, d. 4, ll. 1–37. Mikhailov, ‘Stalinskaia model'’, p. 15. RGALI, f. 2497, op. 1, d. 1, l. 45. RGALI, f. 2497, op. 1, d. 1, l. 56. RGALI, f. 2497, op. 1, d. 20, ll. 22–27. RGALI, f. 2497, op. 1, d. 20, l. 61. RGALI, f. 2497, op. 1, d. 1a, l. 153. RGALI, f. 2497, op. 1, d. 22, l. 122. RGALI, f. 2497, op. 1, delo. 20, ll. 184–90. RGALI, f. 2497, op. 1, d. 22, l. 182. RGALI, f. 2497, op. 1, d. 22, ll. 182–83. Ippolit Sokolov, ‘Tekhnicheskaia baza Sovetskogo tonkino’, Kino i zhizn', 12 (1930), 18–19. Nikolai Anoshchenko, ‘Tekhnicheskaia pomoshch' zagranitsy nashemu kino’, Kino i zhizn', 9 (1930), 14. RGALI, f. 2497, op. 1, d. 3, l. 229. RGALI, f. 2497, op. 1, d. 20, ll. 269–273. RGALI, f. 2498, op. 1, d. 32, ll. 26–29. Boris Shumiatskii, ‘Signal trevogi’, Proletarskoe kino, 5–6 (1931), 5–7. See ‘Cinema Installations and Their Distribution in the Russian Empire and the USSR, 1914–41’, table 1, translated in The Film Factory, p. 423. M. Ryzhkov, ‘Kinofikatsiia SSSR’ in Dvadtsat' let Sovetskoi kinematografii, p. 170. I. Diakonov, ‘Ogromnye zadachi’, Kino, 11 February, 1939, p. 2.

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SOVIET CINEMA 26 ‘Iz otcheta Moskovskogo soveta o kinoobsluzhivanii naseleniia’, document 165 in Vo glave kul'turnogo stroitel'stva, Kniga 1, ed. by M. Akifeva and A. Sleshina (Moscow, Moskovskii rabochii, 1983), p. 310. 27 Bella Kashin, ‘The Cinema in Russia’, New York Times, October 15, 1933. 28 B. Kotiev, ‘Zvukofikatsiia sela’, Kino, 6 Nov 1935, p. 5. B. Bagrin, ‘Bol'nye voprosy kinofikatsii derevni’, Kino, 16 Feb 1936, p. 4. E. Sheval, ‘Kinoset’ i prodvizhenie fil'mov’, Kino, 22 Dec 1934, p.4. Anon.,‘Kino na severe’, Kino, 17 February 1939, p. 4. Diakonov, ‘Ogromnye zadachi’, p. 2. 29 N. Liadov, ‘Sledia za reklamoi’, Vecherniaia Moskva, 26 July 1933, p. 3. 30 Nembach, Stalins Filmpolitik, pp. 67–68. N. Ivanov, ‘Kinoobsluzhivanie derevni v zagone’, Kino, 22 June 1936, p. 3. Anon., ‘S prokatom plokho’, Kino, 22 December 1936, p. 4. 31 B. Kotiev, ‘Problema kopii’, Kino, 5 May 1935, p. 1. Kotiev also notes that the overall quantity of prints available in the USSR in 1934 was 24,355. This figure actually decreased over the next few years to 17,000 in 1938 and only returned to just over 25,000 the following year. This was probably due to the sizeable number of Soviet and foreign silent films that were gradually falling out of circulation and the failure of the copy factories to compensate by producing good enough quantities of new films. On later print runs, see Anon., ‘V komitete po delam kinematografii’, Kino, 3 November 1939, p. 4. K. Svetlanin, ‘Neskol'ko voprosov Soiuzkinoprokatu’, Kino, 11 October 1939, p. 4. For the American statistics, see Chester Bahn, ‘Industry Statistics’, in The 1941 Film Daily Year Book of Motion Pictures, ed. by Jack Alicoate (New York: The Film Daily, 1941), pp. 35–47. 32 Anon., ‘570 kopii’, Kino, 1 December 1939, p. 4. Svetlanin, ‘Neskol'ko voprosov. 33 S. Osipov, ‘Stolichnyi kinoteatr’, Vecherniaia Moskva, 7 September 1938, p. 3. 34 P. Tikhonravov, ‘O strannostiakh prokata’, Kino, 29 June 1939, p. 4. 35 A. Kaliuzhnyi, ‘Sovetskaia kinoplenka i ee nedostatki’, Proletarskoe kino, 17–18 (1932), 46–50. 36 RGALI, f. 2496. op. 2. d.1, ll. 1–10. Aleksandr Troshin, ed.,‘“Kartina sil'naia, khoroshaia, no ne Chapaev”. Zapisi besed B. Z. Shumiatskogo s I. V. Stalinym posle kinoprosmotrov 1935–1937 gg.’, Kinovedcheskie Zapiski, 62 (2003), 115–88 (p. 132). 37 Ivan Bol'shakov, ‘O prieme del novym rukovodstvom komiteta i o zadachakh vtorogo polugodiia’, Kino, 18 August 1939, p. 3. Anon., ‘Kino v zelenom teatre’, Vecherniaia Moskva, 20 February 1935, p. 3. 38 Aleksandr Troshin, ed., ‘“A driani podobno ‘Garmon’’ bol'she ne stavite?” Zapisi besed B. Z. Shumiatskogo s I. V. Stalinym posle kinoprosmotrov 1935–1937 gg.’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 61 (2002), 281–346 (p. 293). 39 Vladimir Verlinskii, ‘Ten Years of Soviet Films in The United States’, in The 1937 Film Daily Year Book of Motion Pictures, ed. by Jack Alicoate (New York: The Film Daily, 1937), pp.1170–71. 40 See endnote number 34, in Andrei Artizov and Oleg Naumov, Vlast' i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia (Moscow: Demokratiia, 1999), pp. 777–78. Paul Babitskii and John Rimberg, The Soviet Film Industry (New York: Praeger, 1955), p. 260. 41 Anon., Vneshniaia torgovlia SSSR za 1918–1940: statisticheskii obzor (Moscow: Vneshtorgizdat, 1960), pp. 126, 160. 42 Efraim Lemberg, Kinopromyshlennost' SSSR: ekonomika sovetskoi kinematografii (Moscow: Teakinopechat', 1930), p. 89.

NOTES

189

43 ‘Dogovor mezhdu aktsionernym obshchestvom “Amkino Korporeishin” i Soiuzintorgkino ob iskliuchitel'nom prave prodazhi produktsii sovetskoi kinematografii na territorii SShA, gosudartsv Latinskoi Ameriki i Kanady’, document 57 in Rossiia i SShA: ekonomicheskie otnosheniia 1933–1941: Sbornik dokumentov, ed. by G. Sevostianov and E. Tiurina, (Moscow: Nauka, 2001), pp. 124–27. Anon., Vneshniaia torgovlia, pp. 126, 160. 44 Postanovlenie Sovnarkoma SSSR, ‘Ob organisatsii glavnogo upravleniia kino-fotopromyshlennosti pri SNK Soiuza SSR’, document 74 in Sovetskoe kino, pp. 110–12. 45 Polozhenie ‘O glavnom upravlenii kino-foto-promyshlennosti pri SNK Soiuza SSR’, document 75 in Sovetskoe kino, pp. 112–14. 46 Anon., ‘V GUKF’ in Kino, 16 September 1934, p. 4. 47 Anon., ‘V GUKF’ in Kino, 16 September 1934, p. 4. Anon., ‘V GUK’ in Kino, 28 August 1936, p. 4. 48 Taylor, ‘Boris Shumiatskii and the Soviet Cinema’, pp. 48–54. Boris Shumiatskii, ‘Za tempy i ritm sotsialisticheskogo realisma’, Kino, 16 March 1935, p. 2. 49 Boris Shumiatskii,‘Rukovodit'po novomu’, Kino, 17 October 1935, p. 1. 50 Arkadii Bernshtein, ‘Gollivud bez kheppi-enda’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 60 (2002), 213–59 (p. 238). Boris Shumiatskii, ‘Za bol'shuiu Sovetskuiu kinematografiiu’, Kino, 16 December 1935, p. 1. 51 Troshin, ‘Kartina sil'naia, khoroshaia, no ne Chapaev’, p. 178. P. Millin, ‘Kinobaza na iuge’, Kino, 8 October 1934, p. 1. 52 Shumiatskii, ‘Za bol'shuiu’, p. 1. Taylor, ‘Boris Shumiatskii and the Soviet Cinema’, p. 59. 53 Shumiatskii, ‘Za bol'shuiu’, p. 1. The original estimate of 305 million roubles was put forward in his December 1935 speech, but this was amended to nearly 400 million roubles in a publication, based on this speech, that was issued in 1936. See Taylor, ‘Boris Shumiatskii and the Soviet Cinema’, p. 60. Anon., ‘V GUKF’ in Kino, 4 July 1936, p. 4. 54 Troshin, ‘Kartina sil'naia, khoroshaia, no ne Chapaev’, pp. 153–54. 55 Bernshtein, ‘Gollivud bez kheppi-enda’, p. 245. 56 Troshin, ‘Kartina sil'naia, khoroshaia, no ne Chapaev’, p. 179. 57 Postanovlenie TsIK SSSR i SNK SSSR, ‘Ob obrazovanii Vsesoiuznogo Komiteta po delam Iskusstv pri SNK Soiuza SSR’, document 90 in Sovetskoe kino, pp. 132–33. 58 Platon Kerzhentsev, ‘Za bol'shoe iskusstvo sotsializma’, Kino, 18 February 1936, p.1. 59 Platon Kerzhentsev, ‘Postanovlenie no. 39 Vsesoiuznogo Komiteta po Delam Iskusstv pri SNK SSSR’, Kino, 4 August 1936, p. 1. 60 Anon.,‘V GUK’, Kino, 17 August 1936, p. 4. Platon Kerzhentsev, ‘Prikaz No. 360’, Kino, 22 August 1936, p. 1. 61 ‘Dokladnaia zapiska predsedatelia Komiteta po delam iskusstv pri SNK SSSR P.M. Kerzhentseva V.M. Molotovu o konflikte c B.Z. Shumiatskim’, document 111 in Kremlevskii kinoteatr, 1928–1953, ed. by Kirill Anderson and others (Moscow: Rosspen, 2005), pp. 340–41. 62 ‘Dokladnaia zapiska B.Z. Shumiatskogo I.V. Stalinu, V.M. Molotovu I A.A. Andreevu o nedootsenke redaktsiei gazety “Izvestiia” sovetskogo kinoiskusstva’, document 159 in Kremlevskii kinoteatr, pp. 438–39. 63 ‘O priznanii utrativshimi silu riada postanovlenii SNK Soiuza SSR v sviazi s obrazovaniem Vsesoiuznogo Komiteta po Delam Iskusstv pri SNK Soiuza SSR’,

190

SOVIET CINEMA document 158 in Sobranie zakonov, 1937, p. 360. 64 ‘Dokladnaia zapiska B.Z. Shumiatskogo V.M. Molotovu o kinofikatsii bol'shogo Kremlevskogo dvortsa’, document 168 in Kremlevskii kinoteatr, p. 455. 65 ‘Zapiska B.Z. Shumiatskii I.V. Stalinu i V.M. Molotovu o kinoplenke dlia operatorov v Ispanii’, document 121 in Kremlevskii kinoteatr, p.363. 66 ‘Dokladnaia zapiska B.Z. Shumiatskogo I.V. Stalinu o pabote nad vtoroi seriei kinofil'ma Petr 1’, document 165 in Kremlevskii kinoteatr, pp. 449–50. 67 Troshin, ‘Kartina sil'naia, khoroshaia, no ne Chapaev’, p. 162. 68 ‘Pis'mo konsul'tanta GUK G.V. Zel'dovicha v KPK pri TsK VKP(b) o B.Z. Shumiatskom’, document 171 in Kremlevskii kinoteatr, pp. 472–73. 69 ‘Pis'mo predsedateliu komiteta po delam kinematografii tov. Dukel'skomu’, Kinovedcheskie Zapiski, 41 (2002), 7–22 (pp. 20–22). Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, p. 136. 70 Pis'mo konsul'tanta GUK G.V. Zel'dovicha’, in Kremlevskii kinoteatr, pp. 469–70. 71 Troshin, ‘Kartina sil'naia, khoroshaia, no ne Chapaev’, p. 162. 72 Postanovlenie SNK SSSR, ‘Ob obrazovanii komiteta po delam kinematografii pri SNK Soiuza SSR’, document 2 in Sovetskoe kino (1917–1978): Resheniia partii i pravitel'stva o kino, sbornik dokumentov, ed. by Nataliia Volkova, Sergei Drobashenko and Rostislav Iurenev, Vol. 2 (Moscow: NIITIKG/TsGALI, 1979), pp. 12–14. 73 A. Arakelov, ‘Nepravil'noe planirovanie’, Kino, 5 December 1939, p. 4. V. Balandin, ‘Upravlenie kinoset'iu nado perestroit'’, Kino, 17 May 1939, p. 3. V. Maklovskii, ‘Moguchee sredstvo propagandy’, Kino, 5 April 1939, p. 3. 74 Postanovlenie SNK SSSR, ‘Ob ulushenii organizatsii proizvodstva kinokartin’, document 3 in Sovetskoe kino, Vol. 2, pp. 15–18. 75 Mikhailov, ‘Stalinskaia model'’, p. 20. 76 Taylor, ‘Boris Shumiatskii and the Soviet Cinema’, p. 60. 77 Semen Dukel'skii, ‘Prikaz po komitetu po delam kinematografii pri SNK SSSR No. 56’, Kino, 29 January 1939, p. 2. Semen Dukel'skii, ‘Prikaz po komitetu po delam kinematografii pri SNK SSSR No. 57’, Kino, 29 January 1939, p. 2. 78 Mikhail Romm, Kak v kino (Moscow: Dekom, 2003), pp. 110–11. 79 Semen Dukel'skii, ‘Novaia sistema oplaty truda tvorcheskikh rabotnikov kinematografii’, Kino, 5 January 1939, p. 3. 80 Semen Dukel'skii, ‘Za vysokie tempy, kachestvo i proizvoditel'nost' truda’, Kino, 5 January, 1939, p. 3. 81 Zvezdnye gody Lenfil'ma. Dir. Natalia Urvacheva. RTR Planeta, 20 January 2005. 82 See Kino, 17 July 1939, p. 1. 83 Anon., ‘Na sobranii aktiva’, Kino, 18 August 1939, pp. 3–4. 84 Olga Iumasheva and Iurii Lepikhov, ‘Fenomen totalitarnogo liberalisma’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 20 (1993/94), 125–44 (p. 131). 85 Iumasheva and Lepikhov, ‘Fenomen’, pp. 134–35. 86 Iumasheva and Lepikhov, ‘Fenomen’, pp. 138–39. 87 Taylor, ‘Boris Shumiatskii and the Soviet Cinema’, p. 60. Bernshtein, ‘Gollivud bez kheppi-enda’, pp. 222–25, 231. Grigorii Aleksandrov, Epokha i kino (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo politicheskoi literaturoi, 1976), p. 183.

Chapter 2 1

Tatiana Goriaeva, Politicheskaia tsenzura v SSSR (Moscow: Rosspen, 2002), pp. 184– 86, 195–96.

NOTES 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

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Youngblood, Soviet Cinema, p. 162. Evgenii Margolit and Viacheslav Shmyrov, Iz''iatoe kino (Moscow: Dubl'-D, 1995), pp. 9–35. Goriaeva, Politicheskaia tsenzura, pp. 206–07, 213. RGALI, ‘Stenogramma po obsuzhdeniiu kinofil'ma “Dve materi”’, in The Association of Workers, microfilm reel 12, f. 2494, op. 1, d. 316, ll. 1–25. RGALI, ‘Protokoly diskussii po obsuzhdeniiu kinofil'ma “Stydno skazat'”’, in The Association of Workers, microfilm reel 12, f. 2494, op. 1, d. 316, ll. 1–10. RGALI, f. 2497, op. 1, d. 22, l. 119. B. Shepelev and D. Levin, ‘Kak partorganisatsiia pomogaet ukrepleniiu proizvodstva’, Kino, 17 September 1939, p. 3. RGALI, f. 2498, op. 1, d. 22, ll. 3–6. RGALI, f. 2498, op. 1, d. 26, l. 76. RGALI, f. 2498, op. 1, d. 26, l. 136. Nikita Lary, Dostoevsky and Soviet Film: Visions of Demonic Realism (London: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 22–28. Rubailo, Partiinoe rukovodstvo, pp. 134–35. Mark Tkach, ‘Postanovlenie tresta Ukrainfil'm o zapreshchenii fil'ma “Strogii iunosha”’, Kino, 28 July 1936, p. 2. V. Rebrov, ed., ‘Za moe opozdanie s otvetom vini B. Z. Shumiatskogo’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 24 (1994), 202–31 (p. 208–15). Margolit and Shmyrov, Iz''iatoe kino, pp. 43– 44, 58. Natacha Laurent, L’Oeil du Kremlin, p. 87. ‘Postanovlenie Orgbiuro TsK VKP(b) o poriadke utverzhdeniia i temakh kinofil'mov na 1933–1934 gg’, document 40 in Vlast' i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia, p. 202. Viktor Listov, ‘Iz istorii partiinogo rukovodstvo kinematografom’, in Iz istorii kino, ed. by Vladimir Mikhailov, vol. 11 (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1983), p. 14. Troshin, ed., ‘ “A driani podobno ‘Garmon'”’, pp. 292, 340–41. RTsKhIDNI, f. 77, op. 1, d. 827, ll. 7–12, published in Leaders of the Russian Revolution, text-fiche 330, pp. 7–12. Leonid Maksimenkov, Sumbur vmesto muzyki. Stalinskaia kul'turnaia revoliutsiia 1936– 1938 (Moscow: Iuridicheskaia kniga, 1997), p. 294. Grigorii Mar'iamov, Kremlevskii tsenzor (Moscow: Kinotsentr, 1992), pp. 3–9. Aleksandrov, Epokha i kino, pp. 104–06. Margolit and Shmyrov, Iz''iatoe kino, pp. 34–35. George Liber, Alexander Dovzhenko: A Life in Soviet Film (London: BFI, 2002), pp. 155–69. Aleksandr Dovzhenko, ‘The Artist’s Teacher and Friend’, document 148 in The Film Factory, pp. 383–84. ‘Zapiska I.V. Stalina nachal'niku glavnogo upravleniia kinematografii B.Z Shumiatskomu po povodu stsenariia kinofil'ma “Shchors”’, document 33 in Vlast' i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia, pp. 343–44. Margolit and Shmyrov, Iz''iatoe kino, pp. 43–44, 60–61, 66–68. ‘Postanovlenie Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) o kinokartine “Cheliuskin” ’, document 56 in Vlast' i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia, pp. 214–15. Maksimenkov, Sumbur vmesto muzyki, p. 242. Vladimir Nevezhin, ‘Fil'm “Zakon zhizni” i otluchenie Avdeenko: Versiia istorika’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 20 (1993/94), 94–124, (pp. 96–97, 120). ‘Nepravlenaia stenogramma vstupitel'nogo slova sekretaria TsK VKP(b) A. A.

192

SOVIET CINEMA Zhdanova na soveshchanii kinematografistov v TsK VKP(b)’, document 64 in Vlast'i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia, pp. 470–72. 29 ‘Postanovlenie sekretariata TsK VKP(b) o zapreshchenii k vypusku na ekran kinofil'ma “Serdtsa cheterykh”’, document 66 in Vlast' i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia, p. 473

Chapter 3 1

2 3 4

5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Research into the victims of Stalinism is a massive and ongoing project. This chapter does not claim to offer a comprehensive account of the victims in the area of cinema nor does it provide specific and accurate numbers of those who fell victim. This would require further research beyond the scope of this work. Instead the aim is to provide a much clearer picture and attempt to establish why and how the cinema industry and those who worked in it were caught up in the purges. For examples of existing research see the introduction endnotes. The sources used here include archival documents, as well as recent publications of the remarkable ‘Memorial’ society. Many of these publications are now available on-line at www.memo.ru. The most comprehensive Russian factual source on the purge victims in cinema is Aleksandr Deriabin’s volume, Letopis' Rossiiskogo kino 1930–1945 which has been referred to here. RGALI, f. 2497, op. 1, d. 43, l. 36. RGALI, f. 2497, op. 1, d. 5, l. 4. Mikhailov, ‘Stalinskaia model'’, pp. 9–25 (pp. 15–16). RGALI, f. 2497, op. 1, d. 1, l. 45. Tsentral'nyi Arkhiv Federal'noi Sluzhby Bezopasnosti Rossiskii Federatsii (TsA FSB Rossii), ‘Iz doklada sekretno-politicheskogo otdela OGPU “Ob antisovetskoi deiatelnosti sredi intelligentsii za 1931 god”’, document 72 in Vlast' i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia, p. 161. Bernshtein, ‘Sochli vragami’, pp. 92–93. Arkhiv Prezidenta Rossiskoi Federatsii (APRF), ‘Pis'mo zamestitelia predsedatelia OGPU Ia. S. Agranova I. V. Stalinu ob areste N. R. Erdmana, V. Z. Massa i E. Germana’, document 45 in Vlast'i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia, p. 207. Vernite mne svobodu: deiateli literatury i iskusstva Rossii i Germanii – zhertvy stalinskogo terrora, ed. by Vladimir Koliazin and Vladimir Goncharov (Moscow: Medium, 1997), pp. 14– 20. RGALI, f. 2496, op. 2, d. 15, l. 39. RGALI, f. 2496, op. 2, d. 15, l. 51. RGALI, f. 2496, op. 2, d. 11, l. 7. RGALI, f. 2496, op. 2, d. 15, l. 34. RGALI, f. 2496, op. 2, d. 15, l. 51. Jay Leyda, Kino, A History of the Russian and Soviet Film (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1960), p. 280. Kino: Entsiklopedicheskii slovar', ed. by Sergei Iutkevich (Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 1987), p. 130. RGALI, f. 2496, op. 2, d. 15, l. 58. RGALI, f. 2497, op. 1, d. 43, l. 65. Stepan Keverkov, ‘V dni mira i voiny’, in Zhizn' v kino, ed. by O. Nesterovich (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1979), p. 78. RGALI, f. 2498, op. 1, d. 23, l. 96. Natalia Nusinova and Iurii Tsivian, ‘Aleinikov, M. Zapiski kinematografista’, Iskusstvo kino, 7 (1996), 104–06. Aleksandr Deriabin, Letopis' Rossiiskogo kino 1930–1945 (Moscow: Materik, 2007), pp. 106, 124, 126, 338. Boris Martov, ‘Declaration of the Association of Revolutionary Cinematography’,

NOTES

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document 35 in The Film Factory, p. 103. 17 Youngblood, Soviet Cinema, pp. 119–22. 18 RGALI, ‘Protokol No. 3’, in The Association of Workers, microfilm reel 8, f. 2494, op. 1, d. 200, ll. 20–31. 19 RGALI, ‘Stenogramma obshchego sobraniia chlenov ARRK po obsuzhdeniiu doklada K. Iukova o zadachakh organizatsii ARRK’, in The Association of Workers, microfilm reel 9, f. 2494, op. 1, delo. 233, ll. 1–14. 20 Rasstrel'nye spiski, ed. by V. Tikhanova, vypusk 2, Vagankovskoe kladbishche, 1926– 1936 (Moscow: Memorial, 1995), pp. 46, 159, 258. 21 RGALI, ‘Stenogramma obshchego sobraniia chlenov ARRK o vyvodakh komissii po chistke’, in The Association of Workers, microfilm reel 13, f. 2494, op. 1, d. 352, ll. 1–44. Youngblood, Soviet Cinema, 192. 22 RGALI, f. 2496, op. 2, d. 15, l. 9. RGALI, ‘Stenogramma obshchego sobraniia’, microfilm reel 13, f. 2494, op. 1, d. 352, l. 44. Youngblood, Soviet Cinema, p. 199. 23 Troshin, ed., ‘ “A driani podobno ‘Garmon'’”, p. 343. 24 Anon., ‘Ukrepit' rabochuiu kinoobshchestvennost'’, Kino i zhizn' (1930), 1. 25 Deriabin, Letopis' Rossiiskogo kino 1930–1945, p. 131. 26 Rasstrel'nye spiski, vypusk 2, pp. 40, 159, 228, 265, 268, 272. Aleksandr Deriabin, Letopis' Rossiiskogo kino 1863–1929 (Moscow: Materik, 2004), pp. 656–657. 27 Deriabin, Letopis' Rossiiskogo kino 1930–1945, p. 165. 28 Nikolai Lebedev, Ocherk istorii kino SSSR, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1965), p. 307. L.I. Zhukova, ‘Etnicheskii atlas Uzbekistana’ in Biblioteka tsentra ekstremalnoi zhurnalistiki http://www.library.cjes.ru/online/?a=con&b_id=416&c_id=4478 [accessed 1 August 2008]. Iutkevich, Kino: Entsiklopedicheskii slovar', pp. 200, 234–5, 524. 29 Deriabin, Letopis' Rossiiskogo kino 1930–1945, pp. 11, 13, 230, 246, 248, 295, 299, 303, 328. 30 < http://memorial.kiev.ua/expo/eng/1934_2.html> [accessed 1 August 2008]. 31 Deriabin, Letopis' Rossiiskogo kino 1930–1945, pp. 43–44. 32 Koliazin and Goncharov, Vernite mne svobodu, pp. 70–76. Deriabin, Letopis' Rossiiskogo kino 1930–1945, p. 580. 33 RGALI, f. 2496, op. 2, d. 15, l. 9. 34 RGALI, f. 2496, op. 2, d. 11, l. 7. Hans Rodenberg, ‘V Moskvu na kinorabotu’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 59 (2002), 136–53 (pp. 142–45). Elena Kuz'mina, O tom, chto pomniu (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1989), p. 321. 35 L.S. Ereminaia and Arsenii Roginskii, Rasstrel'nye spiski: Moskva 1937–1941, Kniga pamiati zhertv politicheskikh repressii (Moscow: Zvenia, 2000), p. 376. 36 Iosifov, ‘Sereznyi urok’, Kino, 28 August 1936, p. 1. ‘Dokladnaia zapiska chlena Komissii sovetskogo kontrolia pri SNK SSSR N. A. Petrunicheva predsedateliu KSK N. K. Antipovu o plane proizvodstva khudozhestvennykh kartin na 1936 g’., document 118 in Kremlevskii kinoteatr, p. 356. Ereminaia and Roginskii, Rasstrel'nye spiski, p. 371. 37 Anon., ‘Protsess byvshikh rabotnikov Vostokfil'm’, Kino, 28 October 1936, p. 2. During the 1990s Grigorii Mar'iamov wrote a book on Stalin’s close relationship with the Soviet film industry entitled: Kremlevskii tsenzor (Moskva: Kinotsentr, 1992). 38 Koliazin and Goncharov, Vernite mne svobodu, pp. 164–165. Ereminaia and Roginskii, Rasstrel’nye spiski, pp. 62, 153, 213, 284, 365, 412, 439, 455. Mar'iamov, Kremlevskii tsenzor, p. 9.

194

SOVIET CINEMA 39 Ereminaia and Roginskii, Rasstrel'nye spiski, pp. 61, 62, 179, 232, 363, 381, 386. Deriabin, Letopis'Rossiiskogo kino 1930–1945, pp. 472, 505, 543, 559, 573. 40 Ereminaia and Roginskii, Rasstrel'nye spiski, pp. 365, 381, Latyshev, Poimenno pp. 157–60, Oksana Golovnia, ‘Iz detstva (Boris i Liubov' Babitskie)’, in Kino: politika i liudi, pp. 186–92. Deriabin, Letopis' Rossiiskogo kino 1930–1945, pp. 481, 485, 487, 493, 494, 507, 518, 547, 590. 41 ‘Piatiletka po kadram’, ed. by S. Ishevskaia, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 68 (2004), 200– 209 (p. 209). ‘Etim tovarishcham pridetsia vykhodit' na proizvodstvo’, ed. Iuliia Zaitsevaia, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 68, 2004, 144–70, (p. 170). ‘Riadom s Eizenshteinom’, ed. Anna Gereb, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 25, 1995, 229–43 (pp. 242). Aleksander Yakovlev, A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 125. Deriabin, Letopis' Rossiiskogo kino 1930–1945, pp. 542, 580, 590. 42 Rebrov, ‘Za moe’, p. 208. 43 Latyshev, Poimenno, p. 158. 44 Deriabin, Letopis' Rossiiskogo kino 1930–1945, pp. 481, 495, 497. 45 Arkadii Bernshtein, ‘Aleksandr Kurs’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 52 (2001), 171–85 (p. 171). Rebrov, ‘Za moe’ , p. 207. Latyshev, Poimenno, p. 157. Koliazin and Goncharov, Vernite mne svobodu, pp. 46–76. Ereminaia and Roginskii, Rasstrel'nye spiski, p. 157. Deriabin, Letopis' Rossiiskogo kino 1930–1945, pp. 479, 501, 506, 515–16, 522, 564, 590. 46 Deriabin, Letopis' Rossiiskogo kino 1930–1945, pp. 416–17, 431, 461, 487, 488, 492, 495, 501, 516, 520, 540, 570. 47 Latyshev, Poimenno, pp. 158–159. Youngblood, Soviet Cinema, p. 134. Bernshtein, ‘Aleksandr Kurs’ p. 171. Ereminaia and Roginskii, Rasstrel'nye spiski, p. 157. 48 Akterskaia entsiklopediia, ed. by Lev Parfenov (Moscow: Materik, 2002), p. 143–144. Latyshev, Poimenno, pp.158–160. Bernshtein, ‘Sochli vragami’, pp. 92–99. Deriabin, Letopis' Rossiiskogo kino 1930–1945, p. 564. 49 Latyshev, Poimenno, p. 159. 50 Günter Agde, ‘Iskusstvo v emigratsii i fil'm “Bortsy”’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 59 (2002) 160–168 (p.164–65). Deriabin, Letopis' Rossiiskogo kino 1930–1945, pp. 415, 476, 539, 590.

Chapter 4 1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9

Rubailo, Partiinoe rukovodstvo, pp. 147–158. Vance Kepley Jr, ‘The First Perestroika, pp. 45–46. RGALI, f. 2498, op. 1, d. 26, l. 12. RGALI, f. 2496, op. 1, d. 30, ll. 1–3. G. Khol'mskii, ‘K voprosu o templane’, Sovetskoe kino, 6 (1932), 10–13 (p. 10). V. Sutyrin, ‘K soveshchaniiu po templanu’, Sovetskoe kino, 8 (1933), 1. RGALI, f.2498, op.1, d. 28, ll. 3–12. Postanovlenie Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) ‘O tematicheskom plane proizvodstva polnometrazhnykh khudozhestvennykh kinokartin na 1939 god’, document 23 in Vlast' i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia, pp. 425–426. Rubailo, Partiinoe rukovodstvo, pp. 153–154. Ekaterina Khokhlova, ‘Neosushchestvlennye zamysly’, in Kino: politika i liudi, p. 2. RGALI, f. 2496, op. 1, d. 31, l. 3. RGALI, f. 2496, op. 1, d. 30, ll. 1–9.

N OTES

195

10 RGALI, f. 2496, op. 1, d. 30, ll. 5, 12. 11 RGALI, f. 2497, op. 1, d. 5, l. 24. 12 V. Popov, ‘K itogam soveshchaniia po templanu 1935 goda’, Sovetskoe kino, 8–9 (1934), 25–30 (p. 28). 13 Efim Borisov, ‘Za proizvodstvennuiu kul'turu i planovost', Kino, 11 July 1936, p. 2. 14 RGALI, f. 2498, op. 1, d. 15, l. 1. 15 M. Kagan, ‘Za plan, za smetu’, Kino, 5 September 1935, p. 2. 16 Efim Borisov, ‘Za proizvodstvennuiu kul'turu’, p. 2. 17 Efim Borisov, ‘Za proizvodstvennuiu kul'turu’, p. 2. 18 Anon, ‘Vypolnenie kinostudiiami plana 3-go kvartala 1936 g’, Kino, 11 October 1936, p. 2. 19 O. Afanaseva, ‘Blagie namereniia’, Kino, 28 June 1936, p. 1. 20 RGALI, f. 2496, op. 1, d. 30, l. 10. 21 Leonid Maksimenkov, ‘Predislovie’, in Kremlevskii kinoteatr, pp. 35–37.

Chapter 5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Lebedev, Ocherk istorii, pp.150–52. Youngblood, Soviet Cinema, pp. 39–40 Boris Martov, ‘Declaration of the Association of Revolutionary Cinematography’, document 35 in The Film Factory, p. 103. Richard Taylor, ‘Introduction’, in The Film Factory, pp. 247–49. ‘RAPP Resolution on Cinema’, document 110 in The Film Factory, pp. 275–80. ‘An ARK Member’, ‘ARRK Must Be Reorganised’, document 112 in The Film Factory, pp. 286–87. RGALI, ‘Ustav’, in The Association of Workers, microfilm reel 8, f. 2494, op. 1, d. 201, ll. 2–10. RGALI, ‘V pravlenie ARRK’, in The Association of Workers, microfilm reel 8, f. 2494, op. 1, d. 200, l. 31. RGALI, ‘Protokol No 9’, in The Association of Workers, microfilm reel 8, f. 2494, op. 1, d. 200, ll. 27–29. Mikhail Grinberg, ‘Blizhe k massam, blizhe k proizvodstvu’, Kino, 16 September 1934, p. 1. Mikhail Grinberg, ‘Soiuz kinorabotnikov organizovan!’, Kino, 10 October, 1934, p. 2. RGALI, ‘Iz protokola obshchego sobraniia akterskoi sektsii ARRK’, in The Association of Workers, microfilm reel 8, f. 2494, op. 1, d. 202, ll. 5–6. RGALI, ‘Protokol No. 8 zasedaniia tekhnicheskoi sektsii ARRK’, in The Association of Workers, microfilm reel 8, f. 2494, op. 1, d. 210, ll. 10–11. RGALI, ‘Stenogramma ARRK po obsuzhdeniu doklada G.A. Arustanova o finansovom polozhenii organizatsii i perevyborakh pravleniia’, in The Association of Workers, microfilm reel 9, f. 2494, op. 1, d. 223, ll. 1–6. Vsevolod Pudovkin, ‘Sovetskaia kinematografiia i zadachi RosARRK’, Sovetskoe kino, 7 (1933), 1–7. Vsevolod Pudovkin, ‘O likvidatsii RosARRK’, Kino, 17 Jan 1935, p. 4. Youngblood, Soviet Cinema, pp. 48–49. Grigorii Boltianskii, ‘Cinema and the Soviet Public’, document 50, translated in The Film Factory, pp. 134–35. M. Nikanorov, ‘ODSK v rabochem klube’, Kino i zhizn', 4 (1930), pp. 4–5. L.Z., ‘Golos rabochego zritelia’, Sovetskii ekran, 20, 21 May 1929, p. 8.

196

SOVIET CINEMA 18 RGALI, ‘Stenogramma sobraniia chlenov ARRK o sviazi s obshchestvennymi organizatsiiami’, in The Association of Workers, microfilm reel 13, f. 2494, op. 1, d. 356, l. 13. 19 Ia. F., ‘ODSK v Voronezhe’, Sovetskii ekran, 20, 1 October 1929, p. 14. 20 Evgenii Andrikanis, O Presne, o Parizhe, o kino (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1988), pp. 59–61. 21 RGALI, ‘Protokol no. 5 zasedaniia prezidiuma tsentral'nogo soveta obshchestva za proletarskoe kino i foto’, in The Association of Workers, microfilm reel 13, f. 2494, op. 1, d. 349, ll. 3–6. 22 Anon., ‘Sovetskaia kinoobshchestvennost'’, Vecherniaia Moskva, 30 October 1929, p. 3 23 Anon., ‘Novyi profsoiuz kinofotorabotnikov’, Kino, 10 September 1934, p. 1. Mikhail Grinberg, ‘Soiuz kinorabotnikov’, p. 2. 24 Anon., ‘Postanovlenie pervogo plenuma TsK Soiuza kino-fotorabotnikov’, Kino, 16 October 1934, p. 1. 25 Alec Nove, An Economic History of the USSR 2nd ed. (London: Penguin, 1989), pp. 198–99. 26 Mikhail Grinberg, ‘Rabotat' po novomu’, Kino, 10 October 1934, p. 1. 27 Anon., ‘V TsK soiuza’, Kino, 4 April 1935, p. 2. 28 ‘Dokladnaia zapiska zav. Otdelom kul'turno-prosvetitel'noi raboty TsK VKP(b) A. S. Shcherbakova v Orgbiuro TsK VKP(b) o sostoianii kinoraboty na sele’, document 85 in Kremlevskii kinoteatr, p. 279. 29 ‘Postanovlenie Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) o material'nom pooshchrenii rabotnikov kinematografii’, document 27 in Vlast' i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia, p. 428. 30 ‘Pis'mo konsul'tanta GUK G.V. Zel'dovicha v KPK pri TsK VKP(b) o B.Z. Shumiatskom’, document 171 in Kremlevskii kinoteatr, pp. 472–73. 31 ‘Postanovlenie Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) o nagrazhdenii rabotnikov sovetskoi kinematografii’, document 76 in Kremlevskii kinoteatr, pp, 257–61. 32 Sergei Eizenshtein and others, ‘Pomoch' Institutu kinematografii’, Pravda, 6 October 1940, p. 6. 33 Mikhail Romm, Kak v kino (Moscow: Dekom, 2003), pp. 104–12. 34 ‘Pis'mo gruppy sovetskikh kinorezhisserov V.M. Molotovu s predlozheniem ob izmenenii zakona ob avtorskom prave’, document 189 in Kremlevskii kinoteatr, pp. 516–19. 35 ‘Pis'mo gruppy kinematografistov I.V. Stalinu’, document 44 in Vlast' i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia, pp. 446–48. 36 ‘Postanovlenie Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) o sostave stsenarnogo soveta pri predsedatele Komiteta po delam kinematografii pri SNK SSSR’, document 20 in Vlast' i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia, p. 424. 37 Deriabin, Letopis' Rossiiskogo kino 1863–1929, p. 616. 38 Mikhail Grinberg, ‘Tsentral'nyi dom kino nachinaet rabotu’, Kino, 28 August 1935, p. 2. 39 Leonid Trauberg, ‘Kak rabotaet tvorcheskaia sektsiia’, Kino, 28 August 1935, p. 2. 40 Rasporiazhenie B.Z. Shumiatskogo V.A. Usievichu i V.S. Bruku o prekrashchenii diskussii v Dome kino po voprosam kinematografii, document 126 in Kremlevskii kinoteatr, p. 370.

Chapter 6 1 2

Comintern, f. 538, op. 2, d. 52, ll. 76–77. Comintern, f. 538, op. 3, d. 104, l. 205. oborot. Comintern, f. 538, op. 3, d.104, l. 05.

NOTES 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

197

Comintern, f. 538, op. 3, d. 104, l. 156. Mikhail Arlazorov, Protazanov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1973), pp. 207–212. Comintern, f. 538, op. 3, d. 117, l. 17. Comintern, f. 538, op. 3, d. 127, l. 35. Comintern, f. 538, op. 3, d. 166, ll. 81–83. Vladimir Shveister, Dialog s proshlym (Moskva: Iskusstvo, 1973). pp. 87–91. RGALI, ‘Zakliuchenie po stsenariiu, “Volshebnoe zerno”’, in Mosfilm (1938–1945): Russia’s Propaganda on Film, (Reading: Primary Source Media, 1999) microfilm reel 5, f. 2453, op. 2, d. 19, l. 1. RGALI, ‘Zakliuchenie po stsenariiu, “Volshebnoe zerno”’, in Mosfilm (1938–1945), microfilm reel 5, f. 2453, op. 2, d. 23, l. 18. RGALI, ‘Zakliuchenie po rezhisserskomu stsenariiu, “Volshebnoe zerno”’, in Mosfilm (1938–1945), microfilm reel 5, f. 2453, op. 2, d. 19, ll. 6–7. RGALI, ‘Prikaz No. 719’, in Mosfilm (1938–1945), microfilm reel 5, f. 2453, op. 2, d. 87, l. 49. RGALI, ‘Nachal'niku glavnogo upravleniia po proizvodstvu khudozhestvennykh fil'mov tov. Kur'ianovu A. U.’, in Mosfilm (1938–1945), microfilm reel 5, f. 2453, op. 2, d. 23, ll. 12–13. RGALI, ‘Prikaz No. 216’, in Mosfilm (1938–1945), microfilm reel 5, f. 2453, op. 2, d. 23, l. 9. RGALI, ‘Nachal'niku glavnogo upravleniia po proizvodstvu khudozhestvennykh fil'mov tov. Polonskomu K. A.,’ in Mosfilm (1938–1945), microfilm reel 5, f. 2453, op. 2, d. 23, ll. 7–8. RGALI, ‘Prikaz No. 282’, in Mosfilm (1938–1945), microfilm reel 5, f. 2453, op. 2, d. 23, l. 30. RGALI, ‘Prikaz No. 282’, in Mosfilm (1938–1945), microfilm reel 5, f. 2453, op. 2, d. 23, l. 30. RGALI, ‘Prikaz No. 277’, in Mosfilm (1938–1945), microfilm reel 2, f. 2453, op. 1, d. 1, l. 5. RGALI, ‘Zakliuchenie po materialu kartiny, “Volshebnoe zerno”’, in Mosfilm (1938– 1945), microfilm reel 5, f. 2453, op. 2, d. 19, ll. 10–12. RGALI, ‘Predlozheniia k sokrashcheniiu rezhisserskogo stenariia “Volshebnoe zerno”’, in Mosfilm (1938–1945), microfilm reel 5, f. 2453, op. 2, d. 22, ll. 1–3. RGALI, ‘Protokol soveshchaniia po voprosu o khode s'emok po kartine “Volshebnoe zerno”’, in Mosfilm (1938–1945), microfilm reel 5, f. 2453, op. 2, d. 20, l. 2. ‘Zapis' besedy v GUK o rabote nad stsenariem’, document 158 in Kremlevskii kinoteatr, p. 437. ‘Dokladnaia zapiska narodnogo komissara Gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti SSSR V.N. Merkulova A.A. Zhdanovu o nedostatkakh v rabote khudozhestvennoi kinematografii v 1945 g.’, document 256 in Kremlevskii kinoteatr, pp. 718–722. Comintern, f. 538, op. 3, d. 166, ll. 23–28. Comintern, f. 538, op. 3, d. 104, l. 96 oborot. Vladmir Mikhailov, ‘Stalinskaia model' upravleniia kinematografom’, in Kino: politika i liudi, pp. 22–23. RGALI, ‘Predsedateliu Komiteta po delam Kinematografii pri SNK SSSR tov. Bol'shakovu I. G.’, in Mosfilm (1938–1945), microfilm reel 6, f. 2453, op. 2, d. 87, l. 12. Lev Anninskii, ‘Iz zhizni prodiusera’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 79 (2006) 41–120 (p. 52–91).

198

SOVIET CINEMA 28 RGALI, ‘Prikaz No. 302’, in Mosfilm (1938–1945), microfilm reel 2, f. 2453, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 26–30. Mosfil'm, ‘Prikaz No. 37’, in Mosfilm (1938–1945), microfilm reel 2, f. 2453, op. 1, d. 3, l. 15. 29 Anninskii, ‘Iz zhizni prodiusera’, p. 58–91. 30 RGALI, ‘Prikaz No. 17’, in Mosfilm (1938–1945), microfilm reel 5, f. 2453, op. 1, d. 3, ll. 15–16. 31 Comintern, f. 538, op. 3, d. 104. ll. 78–79. 32 RGALI, ‘Postanovlenie’, in Mosfilm (1938–1945), microfilm reel 9, f. 2453, op. 2, d. 505, ll. 4–5. 33 RGALI, ‘Kratkaia stenogramma po prosmotru otsniatykh materialov kinokartiny “Svinarkha i pastukh” rezhissera I. Pyr'eva’, in Mosfilm (1938–1945), microfilm reel 7, f. 2453, op. 2, d. 142, ll. 1–20. 34 RGALI, ‘Stenogramma zasedaniia khudozhestvennogo soveta po obsuzhdeniiu rezhisserskogo stsenariia K. K. Iudina “Serdtsa chetyrekh” (avtory literaturnogo stsenariia Granberg, A. i M. Faiko)’, in Mosfilm (1938–1945), microfilm reel 7, f. 2453, op. 2, d. 150, ll. 1–15. RGALI, ‘Protokoly zasedanii khudozhestvennogo soveta po rasmotreniiu otsniatykh materialov k fil'mu “Serdtsa chetyrekh” rezhissera K. K. Iudina’, in Mosfilm (1938–1945), microfilm reel 7, f. 2453, op. 2, d. 151, ll. 1–8. 35 ‘Postanovlenie Sekretariata TsK VKP(b) o zapreshchenii k vypusku na ekran kinofil'ma “Serdtsa chetyrekh”’, document 66 in Vlast' i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia, p. 473. 36 RGALI, ‘Stenogrammy zasedanii khudozhestvennogo soveta kinostudii “Mosfil'm” po obsuzhdeniiu podgotovki stsenariev i operatorskikh kadrov’, in Mosfilm (1938– 1945), microfilm reel 9, f. 2453, op. 2, d. 506, ll. 1–39. 37 Iumasheva and Lepikhov, ‘Fenomen’, p. 133. 38 See endnote number five, in Kremlevskii kinoteatr, 1928–1953, p. 610. 39 ‘Pis'mo M.I. Romma I.V. Stalinu o neterpimom otnoshenii rukovodstva Komiteta po delam kinematografii pri SNK SSSR k izvestnym rezhisseram kino’, document 229 in Kremlevskii kinoteatr, 1928–1953, pp. 647–650.

Chapter 7 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9

Iutkevich, Kino: Entsiklopedicheskii slovar', p. 193. Kepley, ‘Building’, pp. 5–16. For examples of this see K istorii VGIKa, ed. by Marat Vlasov (Moscow: VGIK, 2000), pp. 15–20, 202–204. Michael David-Fox, ‘The Assault on the Universities and the Dynamics of Stalin’s “Great Break”’ in Michael David-Fox and György Péteri (eds.), Academia in Upheaval (London: Bergin and Garvey, 2000), pp. 73–105. John Connelly, Captive University, (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), pp. 22–31. Postanovlenie TsK VKP(b), ‘O rukovodiashchikh kadrakh rabotnikov kinematografii’, document 44 in Sovetskoe kino, p. 82. Anon., ‘Itogi priema’, in K istorii VGIKa, pp. 138–39. Kepley, ‘Building’, p. 16. ‘Piatiletka’, Ishevskaia, p. 202. E. Vilenskii, ‘Goremychnyi VUZ’, K istorii VGIKa, pp. 173–75. Herbert Marshall, Masters of the Soviet Cinema, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), 193–194. ‘Dokladnaia zapiska sekretaria TsK VLKSM D.D. Luk'ianova

NOTES

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30 31

sekretariu TsK VKP(b) N. I. Ezhovu o podgotovke kadrov dlia kinopromyshlennosti’, document 108 in Kremlevskii kinoteatr, p. 331. ‘Dokladnaia zapiska sekretaria TsK VLKSM D.D. Luk'ianova’, p. 331. ‘Piatiletka’, Ishevskaia, pp. 202–204. Nikolai Lebedev, ‘Nashi zadachi’, Kino, 16 November 1934, p. 1. Nikolai Dostal’, ‘Pervyi v mire’, K istorii VGIKa, p. 174. Anon., ‘Skorostnoe stroitel'stvo VGIK’, Kino, 5 March 1939, p. 4. Moinov, ‘Razrytyi muraveinik GIKa’, in K istorii VGIKa, pp. 154–55. Lebedev, ‘Nashi zadachi’, p. 1. L. Levin, ‘Popolnit' oborudovanie tekhbazy’, Kino, 16 November 1934, p. 1. Nikolai Lebedev, ‘Na pod'eme’, Kino, 4 July 1935, p. 2. Eizenshtein and others. ‘Pomoch' Institutu’, p. 6. ‘Piatiletka’, Ishevskaia, p. 205. Zhivye golosa kino, ed. by Lev Parfenov (Moscow: Belyi bereg, 1999), p. 86. ‘Piatiletka’, Ishevskaia, p. 203. RGALI, ‘Protokol No. 8, Zasedaniia tekhnicheskoi sektsii ARRK’, in The Association of Workers, microfilm reel 9, f. 2494, op. 1, d. 210, l. 10. RGALI, ‘Spisok samostoiatel'nykh postanovshchikov i zagruska ikh v 1941 g.’, in Mosfil'm (1938–1945), microfilm reel 9, f. 2453, op. 2, d. 509, l. 3. ‘Etim tovarishcham’, Zaitsevaia , p.169. RGALI, ‘Stenogrammy zasedanii khudozhestvennogo soveta kinostudii ‘Mosfil'm’ po obsuzhdeniiu podgotovki stsenariev i operatorskikh kadrov’, in Mosfilm (1938– 1945), microfilm reel 9, f. 2453, op. 2, d. 506, ll. 1–39. Semen Orelovich, ‘Blizhaishie zadachi kievskoi studii’, Kino, 11 September 1936, p. 2. A. Azarin, ‘Prenebrezhenie k tvorcheskim kadram’, Kino, 17 September 1936, p. 3. See also the brief response to this article in Kino, 4 October 1936, p. 4. RGALI, ‘Prikaz No. 302’, in Mosfilm (1938–1945), microfilm reel 2, f. 2453, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 26–30. RGALI, ‘Prikaz No. 37’, in Mosfilm (1938–1945), microfilm reel 2, f. 2453, op. 1, d. 3, l. 15. See Sheila Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921–1934, (Cambridge: CUP, 1979). Kepley, ‘Building’, pp.15–17. Nikolai Anoshchenko, ‘Kak my rosli’, Kino, 10 February 1935, p. 2. The literature on Eizenshtein’s role in cinema education is fairly substantial. For an excellent starting point see Vance Kepley Jr, ‘Eisenstein as Pedagogue’, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 14 (1993), pp. 1–16. For more detail on Eizenshtein’s lectures see the English language book: Vladimir Nizhny, Lessons with Eisenstein, translated and edited by Ivor Montagu and Jay Leyda, (New York: Da Capo Press, 1979). Further lectures can be found in volume four of Sergei Eizenshtein, Izbrannye proizvdeniia v shesti tomakh, ed. by S. Iutkevich and others, (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1964– 1969). For the content of the director’s course at VGIK see Nizhny, Lessons, 143– 64. Nizhny, Lessons, pp. 19–62. Kepley, ‘Eisenstein’, pp. 11–14. S. Tal'skii, ‘Studenty na proizvodstve’, Kino, 4 July 1935, p. 3. A. Kruk, ‘Na prakticheskuiu uchebu’, Kino, 4 July 1935, p. 3. N. V., ‘Shkola masterstva’, Kino, 4 July 1935, p. 2. Richard Taylor, ‘Introduction’, in S.M. Eisenstein Selected Works, ed. by Richard Taylor,

199

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32 33 34 35 36 37

38

4 Vols, (London: BFI Publishing 1988–1995), 1, pp. 1–24. Indeed, Taylor argues here that Eizenshtein was consistently concerned with the ideological purpose of cinema throughout his career. ‘Riadom s Eizenshteinom’, Gereb, pp. 234–38. Koliazin and Goncharov, Vernite mne svobodu, pp. 70–76. Vladimir Nil'sen, The Cinema as a Graphic Art, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1959), pp. 125, 215–27. Nil'sen, The Cinema, pp. 153–73. Sergei Eisenstein, ‘GTK-GIK-VGIK Past-Present-Future’, in Film Essays with a Lecture by Sergei Eisenstein, ed. by Jay Leyda (London: Dobson , 1968), p. 72. Vladimir Nil'sen, ‘Programma kursa operatorskogo iskusstva’, Iskusstvo kino, 10 (1936), pp. 59–60. In this article Nil'sen provides a programmatic summary of his course which is also a summary of his textbook. For a student’s reaction and description of the course see N. Lisitsyn, ‘Studenty-operatory’, Kino, 10 June 1935, p. 3. Marshall, Soviet Cinema, pp. 16, 25.

Chapter 8 1

2 3

4 5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13

Beth Holmgren, ‘The Blue Angel and Blackface: Redeeming Entertainment in Aleksandrov’s Circus’, Russian Review, 66 (2007), 5–22. Rimgaila Salys, ‘Art Deco Aesthetics in Grigorii Aleksandrov’s The Circus’, Russian Review, 66 (2007), 23–35. Aleksandrov, Epokha i kino, pp. 196–97. Although The Circus has received more academic attention than other films of the 1930s, the music is rarely discussed. One notable exception is Richard Taylor’s article ‘Toward a Topography of Utopia in the Stalinist Musical’ in The Landscape of Stalinism: the Art and Ideology of Soviet Space, ed. by Evgenii Dobrenko and Eric Naiman (Washington: University of Washington Press, 2003), pp. 201–218. Aleksandrov, Epokha i kino, pp. 192, 200. D. Zaslavskii, ‘Khoroshii smekh’, Viktor Shklovskii, ‘Volga-Volga’, and Bratia Tur, ‘Volga-Volga’, Izvestiia, all reprinted in Istoriia sovetskogo kinoiskusstva zvukovogo perioda po vyskazyvaniiam masterov kino i otzyvam kritikov chast' 1 (1930–1941), ed. by Ippolit V. Sokolov (Moscow: Goskinoizdat, 1946), pp. 171–176. Vladimir Shneiderov, Moi kinoputeshestviia (Moscow: Biuro propagandy sovetskogo kinoiskusstva, 1973), pp. 62–63. Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, pp. 108–09. Maya Turovskaia, ‘Fil'my i liudi’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 57 (2002), 251–259 (p. 254). Ivan Pyr'ev, ‘Pomnit o nashem zritele’, Iskusstvo kino, 5 (1936), 7–11 (p. 7). O. Litovskii, ‘Fil'm o bditel'nosti’, Kino, 30 March 1936, p. 3. Aleksandr Macheret, ‘Fil'm o bditel'nosti’, Iskusstvo kino, 5 (1936), 3–6 (pp. 3–4). Fridrikh Ermler, Dokumenty, stat'i, vospominaniia (Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1974), pp. 127–28. Anon., ‘Utverzhdenie politicheskogo zhanra. Beseda s avtorami stsenariia “Velikii grazhdanin” M. Bleimanom i M. Bol'shintsovym’, in Kino totalitarnoi epokhi 1933– 1945, ed. by Artem Demenok and Ekaterina Khokhlova (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi kinofestival' v Moskve, 1989), pp. 43–44. One recent analysis of this film focuses on the wordy aspect of the movie. See Julie A. Cassiday, ‘Kirov and Death in “The Great Citizen”: The Fatal Consequences

N OTES of Linguistic Mediation’, Slavic Review, 64 (2005), pp. 799–822. 14 N. Gornitskaia and l. Shvarts (eds), ‘U nas za veshch'iu stoiali v kakoi-to stepeni “Besy” Dostoevskogo’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 63 (2003) 148–168 (p. 167). 15 ‘Zapiska I.V. Stalina B.Z. Shumiatskomu o stsenarii kinofil'ma “Velikii grazhdanin”’, document 135 in Kremlevskii kinoteatr, pp. 383–384. 16 M. Rutes, ‘Partiinyi fil'm’, in Kino totalitarnoi epokhi, p. 44. Al. Abramov, ‘Velikii grazhdanin’, Vecherniaia Moskva, 27 February 1938, p. 3. 17 S. Tsimbal, “Partiinyi fil'm”, Iskusstvo kino, 4–5 (1938), p. 27. A. Milovidov, “Velikii Grazhdanin”, Pravda, 17 February 1938. 18 Leo Vaks, ‘Fil'm o gorode iunosti’, Vecherniaia Moskva, 4 May 1938, p. 3. 19 Maia Turovskaia, ‘The Tastes of Soviet Moviegoers in the 1930s’, in Late Soviet Culture: From Perestroika to Novostroika, ed. by Thomas Lahusen, with Gene Kuperman (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), pp. 95–108. Adrian Shaposhnikov, ‘“Bol'shoi Val's”… zamechatel'nyi!!! smotrel 5 raz’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 45 (2000) 201–217 (p. 211). 20 Maia Turovskaia, ‘Totalitarnyi model' kinomifov 30-kh godov’, in Kino: politika i liudi 30-e gody, p. 60. Turovskaia regards The Great Citizen as one such film although her main contention is to argue for the existence of a totalitarian model of cinema. The idea of The Great Citizen acting as a justification for the purges has been supported by documentary accounts of the film; see Dokumentalnaia kamera, ‘The Great Citizen’, RTR Planeta, February, 2004. 21 Boris Vetrov, ‘Stiazhateli’, Kino, 16 February 1935, p. 2. 22 V. Demin, ‘Aleksandr Medvedkin’, in 20 rezhisserskikh biografii, ed. by I. N. Vladimirtseva (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1971), p. 255. 23 Emma Widdis, Alexander Medvedkin (London: I.B.Tauris, 2005). 24 Evgenii Gabrilovich, O tom, chto proshlo (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1967), p. 29. 25 L. Slavin, ‘Posledniaia noch'’, Vecherniaia Moskva, 21 January 1938, p. 3. 26 Mark Zak, Iulii Raizman, (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1962), pp. 101–04. 27 Aleksandrov, Epokha i kino, pp. 5–157. Rostislav Iurenev, ‘Ivan Aleksandrovich Pyr'ev, Biograficheskii ocherk’, in Ivan Pyr'ev v zhizni i na ekrane, ed. by Grigorii Mar'iamov (Moscow: Kinotsentr, 1994), pp 5–15. 28 Emma Widdis, Alexander Medvedkin, pp. 7–21, 35–57. 29 Denise Youngblood, Movies for the Masses; Popular Cinema and Soviet Society in the 1920s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 139–142.

201

BIBLIOGRAPHY Direct and Published Archival Sources The main direct archival sources used in this thesis were drawn from RGALI (Russian State Archive for Literature and the Arts). Fond 2496: Vserossiiskoe fotokinematograficheskoe aktsionernoe obshchestvo ‘Sovkino’. F. 2497: Vsesoiuznoe gosudarstvennoe kinofotoob''edinenie ‘Soiuzkino’. F. 2498: Kinofabriki Vserossiiskogo fotokinematograficheskogo aktsionernogo obshchestvo ‘Sovkino’ i Vsesoiuznogo gosudarstvennogo kinofotoob''edineniia ‘Soiuzkino’. This thesis also employed microfilmed collections of the ‘ARRK’ and ‘Mosfil'm’ fonds also drawn from RGALI: The Association of Workers of Revolutionary Cinematography (Woodbridge, CT: Research Publications, 1999). Mosfilm (1938–1945): Russia’s Propaganda on Film, (Reading: Primary Source Media, 1999). For the chapter on the studios I investigated the Comintern Archive which is based at the Russian State Archive of Social-Political History (RGASPI) and is available electronically. An important publication emerged in 2005, providing a wealth of archival documents largely drawn from the RGASPI and the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF). It includes the fonds of the Communist Party’s Central Committee, the Politbiuro, Orgbiuro and Agitprop: Anderson, Kirill and others, eds, Kremlevskii kinoteatr, 1928–1953, (Moscow: Rosspen, 2005). The thesis used the microfilmed Andrei Zhdanov fond for information on censorship: Jana Howlett, ed., Leaders of the Russian Revolution: Pt 5. Andrei Zhdanov, (Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey in Association with the State Archival Service of the Russian Federation, 1994). Further significant items concerning cinema can be found in the following two collections of documents: Andrei Artizov and Oleg Naumov, eds, Vlast' i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsia (Moscow: Demokratiia, 1999). Oleg Khlevniuk, Stalinskoe Politbiuro v 30-e gody (Moscow: Airo-XX, 1995). Documents from the VGIK archive, as well as newspaper articles are gathered in: K istorii VGIKa, ed. by Marat Vlasov, (Moscow: VGIK, 2000). Much information concerning the fate of cinema industry employees during the purges was found in the following publications which are drawn from central and local former secret police archives:

204

SOVIET CINEMA Ereminaia, L.S., and Arsenii Roginskii, Rasstrel'nye spiski: Moskva 1937–1941, Kniga pamiati zhertv politicheskikh repressii (Moscow: Zvenia, 2000). Tikhanova, V., ed., Rasstrel'nye spiski, vypusk 2, Vagankovskoe kladbishche, 1926–1936 (Moscow: Memorial, 1995).

Published Collections of other Documents Akifeva, M. and A. Sleshina, eds, Vo glave kul'turnogo stroitel'stva, Kniga 1 (Moscow, Moskovskii rabochii, 1983). Demenok, Artem and Ekaterina Khokhlova, eds, Kino totalitarnoi epokhi 1933–1945, (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi kinofestival' v Moskve, 1989). Koliazin, Vladimir and Vladimir Goncharov, eds, Vernite mne svobodu: deiateli literatury i iskusstva Rossii i Germanii – zhertvy stalinskogo terrora (Moscow: Medium, 1997). Sevostianov, G. and E. Tiurina, eds, Rossiia i SShA: ekonomicheskie otnosheniia 1933–1941: Sbornik dokumentov, (Moscow: Nauka, 2001). Sobranie zakonov i rasporiazenii raboche-krest'ianskogo pravitel'stvo SSSR Sobranie postanovlenii i rasporiazenii SSSR Sokolov, Ippolit, ed., Istoriia sovetskogo kinoiskusstva zvukovogo perioda po vyskazyvaniiam masterov kino i otzyvam kritikov chast' 1 (1930–1941) (Moscow: Goskinoizdat, 1946), pp. 171–176. Sovetskie khudozhestvennye fil'my: Annotirovannyi katalog (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1961). Taylor, Richard and Ian Christie, eds, The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1988). Volkova, Nataliia, Sergei Drobashenko and Rostislav Iurenev, Sovetskoe kino (1917–1978): Resheniia partii i pravitel'stva o kino, sbornik dokumentov, Vols 1/2 (Moscow: NIITIKG/TsGALI, 1979).

Books, Journal and Newspaper Articles Abramov, Al., ‘Velikii grazhdanin’, Vecherniaia Moskva, 27 February 1938, p. 3. Afanas'eva, O., ‘Blagie namereniia’, Kino, 28 June 1936, p. 1. Afanas'eva, O., ‘Neobosnovannyi optimism’, Kino, 11 September 1936, p. 1. Agde, Günter, ‘Iskusstvo v emigratsii i fil'm “Bortsy”’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 59 (2002) 160–168 (p.164–65). Aleksandrov, Grigorii, Epokha i kino (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo politicheskoi Literatury, 1976). Alicoate, Jack, ed., The 1936 Film Daily Year Book of Motion Pictures, (New York: The Film Daily, 1936), pp. 1130–31. Alicoate, Jack, ed., The 1937 Film Daily Year Book of Motion Pictures (New York: The Film Daily, 1937). Alicoate, Jack, ed., The 1941 Film Daily Year Book of Motion Pictures (New York: The Film Daily, 1941). Andrikanis, Evgenii, O Presne, o Parizhe, o kino (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1988), pp. 59–61. Anninskii, Lev, ‘Iz zhizni prodiusera’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 79 (2006) 41–120. Anon., ‘Sovetskaia kinoobshchestvennost'’, Vecherniaia Moskva, 30 October 1929, p. 3. Anon., ‘Ukrepit' rabochuiu kinoobshchestvennost'’, Kino i zhizn', (1930), 1. Anon., ‘Kinoprokat na sluzhbu kul'turnoi revoliutsii’, Kino i zhizn', 12 (1930), 3. Anon., ‘Novyi profsoiuz kinofotorabotnikov’, Kino, 10 September 1934, p. 1. Anon., ‘V GUKF’, Kino, 16 September 1934, p. 4. Anon., Postanovlenie pervogo plenuma TsK Soiuza kino-fotorabotnikov, Kino, 16

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October 1934, p. 1. Anon., ‘Kino v zelenom teatre’, Vecherniaia Moskva, 20 February 1935, p. 3. Anon., ‘V TsK soiuza’, Kino, 4 April 1935, p. 2. Anon., ‘Sovetskie kinematografisty vyekhali za granitsu’, Kino, 22 May 1935, p. 2. Anon.,‘V GUK’, Kino, 17 August 1936, p. 4. Anon., ‘V GUK’, Kino, 28 August 1936, p. 4. Anon., ‘Vypolnenie kinostudiiami plana 3-go kvartala 1936 g’, Kino, 11 October 1936, p. 2. Anon., ‘Protsess byvshikh rabotnikov Vostokfil'm’, Kino, 28 October 1936, p. 2. Anon., ‘S prokatom plokho’, Kino, 22 December 1936, p. 4. Anon., ‘Kino na severe’, Kino, 17 February 1939, p. 4. Anon., ‘Skorostnoe stroitel'stvo VGIK’, Kino, 5 March 1939, p. 4. Anon., ‘Na sobranii aktiva’, Kino, 18 August 1939, pp. 3–4. Anon., ‘V komitete po delam kinematografii’, Kino, 3 November 1939, p. 4. Anon., ‘570 kopii’, Kino, 1 December 1939, p. 4. Anon., ‘Sovetskoe kino v tsifrakh’, Iskusstvo kino, 1–2 (1940), 82–83. Anon., Vneshniaia torgovlia SSSR za 1918–1940: statisticheskii obzor (Moscow: Vneshtorgizdat, 1960). Anoshchenko, Nikolai, Obshchii kurs kinematografii (Moscow: Teakinopechat', 1930). Anoshchenko, Nikolai, ‘Tekhnicheskaia pomoshch' zagranitsy nashemu kino’, Kino i zhizn', 9 (1930), 14. Anoshchenko, Nikolai, ‘Kak my rosli’, Kino, 10 February 1935, p. 2. Arakelov, A., ‘Nepravil'noe planirovanie’, Kino, 5 December 1939, p. 4. Arlazorov, Mikhail, Protazanov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1973). Azarin, A., ‘Prenebrezhenie k tvorcheskim kadram’, Kino, 17 September 1936, p. 3. Babitskii, Paul and John Rimberg, The Soviet Film Industry (New York: Praeger, 1955). Bagrin, B., ‘Bol'nye voprosy kinofikatsii derevni’, Kino, 16 Feb 1936, p. 4. Balandin, V., ‘Upravlenie kinoset'iu nado perestroit'’, Kino, 17 May 1939, p. 3. Bernshtein, Arkadii, ‘Sochli vragami naroda’, Iskusstvo kino, 3 (1993), p. 92–99. Bernshtein, Arkadii, ‘Aleksandr Kurs’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 52 (2001), 171–85 (p. 171). Bernshtein, Arkadii, ‘Gollivud bez kheppi-enda’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 60 (2002), 213– 59 (p. 238). Bluvshtein, V., ‘V poiskakh za utrachennym vremenem’, Proletarskoe kino, 21–22 (1932), 62. Bol'shakov, Ivan, ‘O prieme del novym rukovodstvom komiteta i o zadachakh vtorovo polugodiia’, Kino, 18 August, 1939, p. 3. Borisov, Efim, ‘Za proizvodstvennuiu kul'turu i planovost'’, Kino, 11 July 1936, p. 2. Cassiday, Julie A., ‘Kirov and Death in “The Great Citizen”: The Fatal Consequences of Linguistic Mediation’, Slavic Review, 64 (2005), pp. 799–822. Deriabin, Aleksandr, Letopis' Rossiiskogo kino 1863–1929 (Moscow: Materik, 2004). Deriabin, Aleksandr, Letopis' Rossiiskogo kino 1930–1945 (Moscow: Materik, 2007). Diakonov, I., ‘Ogromnye zadachi’, Kino, 11 February, 1939, p. 2. Dobrenko, Evgeny, Stalinist Cinema and the Production of History: Museum of the Revolution (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008). Dukel'skii, Semen, ‘Novaia sistema oplaty truda tvorcheskikh rabotnikov kinematografii’, Kino, 5 January 1939, p. 3. Dukel'skii, Semen, ‘Za vysokie tempy, kachestvo i proizvoditel'nost' truda’, Kino, 5 January, 1939, p. 3. Dukel'skii, Semen, ‘Prikaz po komitetu po delam kinematografii pri SNK SSSR No.

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56’, Kino, 29 January 1939, p. 2. Dukel'skii, Semen, ‘Prikaz po komitetu po delam kinematografii pri SNK SSSR No. 57’, Kino, 29 January 1939, p. 2. Eisenstein, Sergei and others, ‘Pomoch' Institutu kinematografii’, Pravda, 6 October 1940, p. 6. Eisenstein, Sergei, ‘GTK-GIK-VGIK Past-Present-Future’, in Film Essays with a Lecture by Sergei Eisenstein, ed. by Jay Leyda (London: Dobson , 1968). Ermler, Fridrikh, Dokumenty, stat'i, vospominaniia (Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1974). F. Ia., ‘ODSK v Voronezhe’, Sovetskii ekran, 20, 1 October 1929, p. 14. Gabrilovich, Evgenii, O tom, chto proshlo (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1967). G. A. M., ‘Obuchit' kinomekhanika’, Kino, 11 July 1935, p. 2. Gereb, Anna, ed., ‘Riadom s Eizenshteinom’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 25, (1995), 229–43 (pp. 234–38). Gladkov, K. ‘Etapy razvitiia zvukovogo kino v SSSR’, Proletarskoe kino, 5–6 (1931), 56. Goriaeva, Tatiana, Politicheskaia tsenzura v SSSR (Moscow: Rosspen, 2002). Gornitskaia, N., and l. Shvarts, eds, ‘U nas za veshch'iu stoiali v kakoi-to stepeni “Besy” Dostoevskogo’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 63 (2003) 148–168 (p.167). Grinberg, Mikhail, ‘Blizhe k massam, blizhe k proizvodstvu’, Kino, 16 September 1934, p. 1. Grinberg, Mikhail, ‘Rabotat' po novomu’, Kino, 10 October 1934, p. 1. Grinberg, Mikhail, ‘Soiuz kinorabotnikov organizovan!’, Kino, 10 October, 1934, p. 2. Grinberg, Mikhail, ‘Tsentral'nyi dom kino nachinaet rabotu’, Kino, 28 August 1935, p. 2. Haynes, John, New Soviet Man, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003). Holmgren Beth, ‘The Blue Angel and Blackface: Redeeming Entertainment in Aleksandrov’s Circus’, Russian Review, 66 (2007), 5–22. Ishevskaia, S., ed.,‘Piatiletka po kadram’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 68, (2004), 200–209 (p. 202). Iumasheva, Olga and Iuri Lepikhov, ‘Fenomen totalitarnogo liberalisma’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 20 (1993/94), 125–44 (p. 131). Iutkevich, Sergei and others, eds, Sergei Eizenshtein, Izbrannye proizvdeniia v shesti tomakh (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1964–1969). Iutkevich, Sergei, ed., Kino: Entsiklopedicheskii slovar' (Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 1987). Ivanov, N. ‘Kinoobsluzhivanie derevni v zagone’, Kino, 22 June 1936, p. 3. Kagan, M., ‘Za plan, za smetu’, Kino, 5 September 1935, p. 2. Kalistratov, Iu. ‘Uluchshit' kinoobsluzhivanie sela’, Kino, 23 November 1939, p. 2. Kaliuzhnyi, A., ‘Sovetskaia kinoplenka i ee nedostatki’, Proletarskoe kino, 17–18 (1932), 46–50. Kashin, Bella, ‘The Cinema in Russia’, New York Times, October 15, 1933. Kenez, Peter, Cinema and Soviet Society from the Revolution to the Death of Stalin (London: I.B.Tauris, 2001). Kepley Jr, Vance, ‘Building a National Cinema: Soviet Film Education, 1918–1934’, Wide Angle, 9.3, (1987), pp. 5–16. Kepley Jr, Vance, ‘Eisenstein as Pedagogue’, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 14, (1993), pp. 1–16. Kepley Jr, Vance, ‘The First Perestroika: Soviet Cinema under the First Five-Year Plan’, Cinema Journal 35, 4, (1996), pp. 31–53. Kerzhentsev, Platon, ‘Za bol'shoe iskusstvo sotsializma’, Kino, 18 February 1936, p. 1. Kerzhentsev, Platon, ‘Postanovlenie no. 39 Vsesoiuznogo Komiteta po Delam Iskusstv

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pri SNK SSSR’, Kino, 4 August 1936, p. 1. Kerzhentsev, Platon, ‘Prikaz No. 360’, Kino, 22 August 1936, p. 1. Khol'mskii, G., ‘K voprosu o templane’, Sovetskoe Kino, 6 (1932), 10–13 (p. 10). Koliazin, Vladimir and Vladimir Goncharov, eds, Vernite mne svobodu: deiateli literatury i iskusstva Rossii i Germanii – zhertvy stalinskogo terrora (Moscow: Medium, 1997). Kotiev, B., ‘Problema kopii’, Kino, 5 May 1935, p. 1. Kotiev, B. ‘Zvukofikatsiia sela’, Kino, 6 Nov 1935, p. 5. Kruk, A. ‘Na prakticheskuiu uchebu’, Kino, 4 July 1935, p. 3. Kuleshov, Lev, ‘Pis'mo predsedateliu komiteta po delam kinematografii tov. Dukel'skomu’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 41 (2002), 7–22 (pp. 20–22). Kuz'mina, Elena, O tom, chto pomniu (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1989). Lahusen, Thomas and Kuperman, Gene, eds, Late Soviet Culture: From Perestroika to Novostroika, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993). Laurent, Natacha, L’Oeil du Kremlin: cinéma et censure en URSS sous Staline (Toulouse: Privat, 2000). Lebedev, Nikolai, ‘Kino-proizvodstvo – pod kontrol' rabochikh shefov’, Vecherniaia Moskva, 15 December 1930, p. 3. Lebedev, Nikolai, ‘Nashi zadachi’, Kino, 16 November 1934, p. 1. Lebedev, Nikolai, ‘Na pod'eme’, Kino, 4 July 1935, p. 2. Lebedev, Nikolai, Ocherk istorii kino SSSR, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1965). Lemberg, Efraim, Kinopromyshlennost' SSSR ekonomika sovetskoi kinematografii (Moscow: Teakinopechat', 1930). Levin, L. ‘Popolnit' oborudovanie tekhbazy’, Kino, 16 November 1934, p. 1. Leyda, Jay, Kino: a History of the Russian and Soviet Film (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1960). Liadov, N., ‘Sledia za reklamoi’, Vecherniaia Moskva, 26 July 1933, p. 3 Liber, George, Alexander Dovzhenko: A Life in Soviet Film (BFI: London, 2002). Lisitsyn, N., ‘Studenty-operatory’, Kino, 10 June 1935, p. 3. Litovskii, O., ‘Fil'm o bditel'nosti’, Kino, 30 March 1936, p. 3. Macheret, Aleksandr, ‘Fil'm o bditel'nosti’, Iskusstvo kino, 5 (1936), 3–6 (pp. 3–4). Maklovskii, V., ‘Moguchee sredstvo propagandy’, Kino, 5 April 1939, p. 3. Maksimenkov, Leonid, Sumbur vmesto muzyki. Stalinskaia kul'turnaia revoliutsiia 1936–1938 (Moscow: Iuridicheskaia Kniga, 1997). Mamatova, Lidiia, ed., Kino: politika i liudi 30-e gody, (Moscow: Materik, 1995). Margolit Evgenii and Viacheslav Shmyrov, Iz''atoe kino (Moscow: Dubl'-D, 1995). Marshall, Herbert, Soviet Cinema, (London: Metcalfe and Cooper, 1945). Marshall, Herbert, Masters of the Soviet Cinema, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983). Mar'iamov, Grigorii, Kremlevskii tsenzor (Moscow: Kinotsentr, 1992). Mar'iamov, Grigorii, ed., Ivan Pyr'ev v zhizni i na ekrane (Moscow: Kinotsentr, 1994), pp 5–15. Mikhailov, Vladimir, ed., Iz istorii kino (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1983). Mikhailov, Vladimir, ed., ‘Nazvanie kazhdoi kartiny utverzhdaetsiia komissiei Orgbiuro’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, Vol. 31 (1996), 108–130 (p. 114). Mikhailyk, V., ‘O kachestve osvetitel'noi apparatury’, Kino, 16 August 1934, p. 4. Millin, P., ‘Kinobaza na iuge’, Kino, 8 October 1934, p. 1. Nembach, Eberhard, Stalins Filmpolitik: Der Umbau der Sowjetischen Filmindustrie 1929 bis 1938 (St. Augustin: Gardez! Verlag, 2001).

208

SOVIET CINEMA Nesterovich, O., ed., Zhizn' v kino, (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1979). Nevezhin, Vladimir, ‘Fil'm “Zakon zhizni” i otluchenie Avdeenko: Versiia istorika’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 20 (1993/94), 94–124, (pp. 96–97, 120). Nikanorov, M., ‘ODSK v rabochem klube’, Kino i zhizn', 4 (1930), pp. 4–5. Nil'sen, Vladimir, ‘Programma kursa operatorskogo iskusstva’, Iskusstvo kino, 10 (1936), pp. 59–60. Nil'sen, Vladimir, The Cinema as a Graphic Art, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1959). Nizhny, Vladimir, Lessons with Eisenstein, translated and edited by Ivor Montagu and Jay Leyda, (New York: Da Capo Press, 1979). Nusinova Natalia and Iurii Tsivian ‘Aleinikov, M. Zapiski kinematografista’, Iskusstvo kino, 7 (1996), 104–06. Osipov, S., ‘Stolichnyi kinoteatr’, Vecherniaia Moskva, 7 September 1938, p. 3. Oren, Itskhak, and Naftali Prat, eds, Kratkaia evreiskaia entsiklopediia, vol. 7 (Moscow: HUJ, 1996). Parfenov, Lev, ed., Zhivye golosa kino (Moscow: Belyi bereg, 1999). Parfenov, Lev, ed., Akterskaia entsiklopediia (Moscow: Materik, 2002). Popov, V., ‘K itogam soveshchaniia po templanu 1935 goda’, Sovetskoe kino, 8–9 (1934), 25–30 (p. 28). Pudovkin, Vsevolod, ‘Sovetskaia kinematografiia i zadachi RosARRK’, Sovetskoe kino, 7 (1933), 1–7. Pudovkin, Vsevolod, ‘O likvidatsii RosARRK’, Kino, 17 Jan 1935, p. 4. Pyr'ev, Ivan, ‘Pomnit' o nashem zritele’, Iskusstvo kino, 5 (1936), 7–11 (p. 7). Pyr'ev, Ivan, O proidennom i perezhitom (Moscow: Biuro propagandy sovetskogo kinoiskusstva, 1979). Rebrov. V. ed., ‘Za moe opozdanie s otvetom vini B. Z. Shumiatskogo’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 24 (1994), 202–31 (p. 208–15). Rodenberg, Hans, ‘V Moskvu na kinorabotu’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 59 (2002), 136–53 (pp. 142–45). Romm, Mikhail, Kak v kino (Moscow: Dekom, 2003), pp. 104–12. Rubailo, Alentina, Partiinoe rukovodstvo razvitiem kinoiskusstva 1928–1937 (Moscow: Moskovskii Universitet, 1976). Salys, Rimgaila, ‘Art Deco Aesthetics in Grigorii Aleksandrov’s The Circus’, Russian Review, 66 (2007), 23–35. Semenov, N., and L. Cherniabskii, eds, Dvadtsat' let sovetskoi kinematografii (Moskva, Goskinoizdat, 1940). Senokosov, Iurii, ed., Surovaia drama naroda (Moscow: Izdanie politicheskoi literatury, 1989). Shaposhnikov, Adrian,‘ “Bol'shoi Val's”…zamechatel'nyi!!! smotrel 5 raz’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 45 (2000) 201–217 (p. 211). Shepelev, B., and D. Levin, ‘Kak partorganisatsiia pomogaet ukrepleniiu proizvodstva’, Kino, 17 September 1939, p. 3. Sheval, E., ‘Kinoset' i prodvizhenie fil'mov’, Kino, 22 Dec 1934, p. 4. Shneiderov, Vladimir, Moi kinoputeshestviia (Moscow: Biuro propagandy sovetskogo kinoiskusstva, 1973), pp. 62–63. Shumiatskii, Boris, ‘Signal trevogi’, Proletarskoe kino, 5–6 (1931), 5–7. Shumiatskii, Boris, ‘Za tempy i ritm sotsialisticheskogo realisma’, Kino, 16 March 1935, p. 2. Shumiatskii, Boris, ‘Prikaz No. 127/032’, Kino, 30 April 1935, p. 1.

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Shumiatskii, Boris, ‘Za tochnyi adres’, Vecherniaia Moskva, 14 Oct 1935, p. 3. Shumiatskii, Boris, ‘Rukovodit' po novomu’, Kino, 17 October 1935, p. 1. Shumiatskii, Boris, ‘Za bol'shuiu Sovetskuiu kinematografiiu’, Kino, 16 December 1935, p. 1. Shveitser, Vladimir, Dialog s proshlym (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1973). Slavin, L., ‘Posledniaia noch'’, Vecherniaia Moskva, 21 January 1938, p. 3. Sokolov, Ippolit, ‘Tekhnicheskaia baza sovetskogo tonkino’, Kino i zhizn', 12 (1930), 18–19. Sutyrin, V., ‘K soveshchaniiu po templanu’, Sovetskoe kino, 8 (1933), 1. Svetlanin, K., ‘Neskol'ko voprosov Soiuzkinoprokatu’, Kino, 11 October 1939, p. 4. Tal'skii, S., ‘Studenty na proizvodstve’, Kino, 4 July 1935, p. 3. Taylor, Richard, The Politics of the Soviet Cinema 1917–1929 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). Taylor, Richard, ‘Soviet Socialist Realism and the Cinema Avant-Garde’, Studies in Comparative Communism, 3 & 4 (1984), 185–202. Taylor, Richard, ‘Boris Shumiatskii and the Soviet Cinema in the 1930s: Ideology as Mass Entertainment’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 6 (1986), 43–64 (pp. 48–54). Taylor, Richard and Ian Christie, eds, The Film Factory: Russia and Soviet Cinema in Documents (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1988). Taylor, Richard, ed., S.M. Eisenstein. Selected Works, 4 Vols (London: BFI Publishing 1988–1995), 1, pp. 1–24. Taylor, Richard, ‘Soviet Cinema, The Path to Stalin’, History Today, July (1990), 43–48. Taylor, Richard and Derek Spring, eds, Stalinism and Soviet Cinema (London: Routledge, 1993). Taylor, Richard, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, 2nd rev. ed. (London: I.B.Tauris, 1998). Taylor, Richard, ‘Toward a Topography of Utopia in the Stalinist Musical’ in The Landscape of Stalinism: the Art and Ideology of Soviet Space, ed. by Evgenii Dobrenko and Eric Naiman (Washington: University of Washington Press, 2003). Tikhonravov, P., ‘O strannostiakh prokata’, Kino, 29 June 1939, p. 4. Tkach, Mark, ‘Postanovlenie tresta Ukrainfil'm o zapreshchenii fil'ma “Strogii iunosha”’, Kino, 28 July 1936, p. 2. Trauberg, Leonid, ‘Kak rabotaet tvorcheskaia sektsiia’, Kino, 28 August 1935, p. 2. Troshin, Aleksandr, ed.,‘“A driani podobno ‘Garmon'’ bol'she ne stavite?”, Zapisi besed B. Z. Shumiatskogo s I. V. Stalinym posle kinoprosmotrov 1935–1937 gg.’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 61 (2002), 281–346 (pp. 292, 340–41). Troshin, Aleksandr, ed., ‘ “Kartina sil'naia, khoroshaia, no ne Chapaev” zapisi besed B. Z. Shumiatskogo s I. V. Stalinym posle kinoprosmotrov 1935–1937’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 62 (2003), 115–88 (p. 178). Vaks, Leo, ‘Fil'm o gorode iunosti’, Vecherniaia Moskva, 4 May 1938, p. 3. Vaks, Leo, ‘Na sobranii aktiva kinorabotnikov’, Vecherniaia Moskva, 4 August 1938, p. 3. Vaks, Leo, ‘Uspekh fil'ma’, Vecherniaia Moskva, 14 September 1938, p. 3. Verina, Z., ‘Zabotit'sia o molodezhi’, Kino, 22 May 1935, p. 4. Vetrov, Boris, ‘Stiazhateli’, Kino, 16 February 1935, p. 2. Vladimirsteva, I.N., ed., 20 rezhisserskikh biografii (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1971), p. 255. Widdis, Emma, Visions of a New Land (London: Yale University Press, 2003). Widdis, Emma, Alexander Medvedkin (London: I.B.Tauris, 2005).

210

SOVIET CINEMA Yakovlev, Aleksander, A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). Youngblood, Denise, Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, 1919–1935 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991). Youngblood, Denise, Movies for the Masses (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Z. L., ‘Golos rabochego zritelia’, Sovetskii ekran, 20, 21 May 1929, p. 8. Zaitsevaia, Iuliia, ed., ‘Etim tovarishcham pridetsia vykhodit' na proizvodstvo’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 68, (2004), 144–70, (p.169). Zak, Mark, Iulii Raizman (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1962).

Websites http://www.library.cjes.ru http://www.memo.ru http://www.memorial.kiev.ua

211

FILMOGRAPHY Aerograd. Dir. Aleksandr Dovzhenko. Mosfil'm and Ukrainfil'm (Kiev). 1935. Alexander Nevsky (Aleksandr Nevskii). Dir. Sergei Eisenstein. Mosfil'm. 1938. Arsenal. Dir. Aleksandr Dovzhenko. VUKFU. 1928. Battleship Potemkin, The (Bronenosets Potemkin). Dir. Sergei Eisenstein. Goskino. 1925. Bear, The (Medved' ). Dir. Isidor Annenskii. Belgoskino. 1938. Bear’s Wedding, The (Medvez'hia svad'ba). Dir. Konstantin Eggert. Mezhrabpom-Rus'. 1926. Bezhin Meadow (Bezhin lug). Dir. Sergei Eisenstein. Mosfil'm. 1937. Chapaev. Dir. Sergei and Georgii Vasil'ev. Lenfil'm. 1934. Circus, The (Tsirk). Dir. Grigorii Aleksandrov. Mosfil'm. 1936. Dubrovskii. Dir. Aleksandr Ivanovskii. Lenfil'm. 1935. Dzhulbars. Dir. Vladimir Shneiderov. Mezhrabpomfil'm. 1935. Earth (Zemlia). Dir. Aleksandr Dovzhenko. VUKFU. 1930. End of Saint Petersburg, The (Konets Sankt-Peterburga). Dir. Vsevolod Pudovkin. MezhrabpomRus'. 1927. Extraordinary Adventures of Mister West in the Land of the Bolsheviks, The (Neobychainye prikliucheniia Mistera Vesta v strane Bol'shevikov). Dir. Lev Kuleshov. Goskino. 1924. Feast of Saint Jorgen, T he (Prazdnik Sviatogo Iorgena). Dir. Iakov Protazanov. Mezhrabpomfil'm. 1930. Fed'ka. Dir. Nikolai Lebedev. Lenfil'm. 1937. Fifth Ocean, The (Piatyi okean). Dir. Isidor Annenskii. Ukrainfil'm (Kiev). 1940. First Cavalry, The (Pervaia konnaia). Dir. Efim Dzigan. Mosfil'm. 1941. Flyers (Letchiki). Dir. Iulii Raizman. Mosfil'm. 1935. Fragment of an Empire (Oblomok imperii). Dir. Fridrikh Ermler. Sovkino. 1929. Friends (Podrugi). Dir. Leo Arnshtam. Lenfil'm. 1935. Girl in a Hurry, A (Devushka speshit na svidanie). Dir. Mikhail Verner. Belgoskino. 1936. Girl with Character, A (Devushka s kharakterom). Dir. Konstantin Iudin. Mosfil'm. 1939. Girl Without a Dowry (Bespridannitsa). Dir. Iakov Protazanov. Mosfil'm. 1936. Golden Years of Lenfil'm (Zvezdnye gody Lenfil'ma). Dir. Natalia Urvacheva. RTR Planeta, 20 January 2005. Great Citizen, The (Velikii grazhdanin). 2 parts. Dir. Fridrikh Ermler. Lenfil'm. 1937–39. Great Consoler, The (Velikii uteshitel'). Dir. Lev Kuleshov. Mezhrabpomfil'm. 1933. Great Glow, The (Velikoe zarevo-orginal US release title : They Wanted Peace). Dir. Mikhail Chiaureli. Tbilisskaia kinostudiia. 1938.

212

SOVIET CINEMA Great Life, A (Bol'shaia zhizn'). Dir. Leonid Lukov. Ukrainfil'm (Kiev). 1940. Happy Guys, The (Veselye rebiata). Dir. Grigorii Aleksandrov. Moskinokombinat. 1934. Happiness (Schast'e). Dir. Aleksandr Medvedkin. Moskinokombinat. 1934. Hearts of Four (Serdtsa chetyrekh). Dir. Konstantin Iudin. Mosfil'm. 1940. House of the Dead, The. (Mertvyi dom). Dir. Vasilii Fedorov. Mezhrabpomfil'm. 1932. Iakov Sverdlov. Dir. Sergei Iutkevich. Soiuzdetfil'm. 1941. If War Comes Tomorrow (Esli zavtra voina). Dir. Efim Dzigan. Mosfil'm. 1938. Komsomol'sk. Dir. Sergei Gerasimov. Lenfil'm. 1937. Lad from the Taiga, The (Paren' iz Taigi). Dir. Ivan Pravov and Olga Preobrazhenskaia. Mosfil'm. 1941. Last Night, The (Posledniaia noch' ). Dir. Iulii Raizman. Mosfil'm. 1937. Law of Life, The (Zakon zhizni). Dir. Aleksandr Stolper and Boris Ivanov. Mosfil'm. 1940. Lenin in October (Lenin v oktiabre). Dir. Mikhail Romm. Mosfil'm. 1937. Lenin in 1918 (Lenin v 1918). Dir. Mikhail Romm. Mosfil'm. 1939. Magic Pearl, The (Volshebnoe zerno). Dir. Valentin Kadochnikov and Fedor Filipov. Mosfil'm. 1941. Man with a Gun, The (Chelovek s ruzh'em). Dir. Sergei Iutkevich. Lenfil'm. 1938. Mashenka (Mashen'ka). Dir. Iulii Raizman. Mosfil'm. 1941. Miners (Shakhtery). Dir. Sergei Iutkevich. Lenfil'm. 1937. Mother (Mat' ). Dir. Vsevolod Pudovkin. Mezhrabpom-Rus'. 1926. My Grandmother (Moia babushka). Dir. Kote Mikaberidze. Goskinoprom Gruzii. 1929. October, (Oktiabr'). Dir. Sergei Eisenstein. Sovkino. 1927. Old and the New, The (Staroe i novoe). Dir. Sergei Eisenstein. Sovkino. 1929. Old Jockey, The (Staryi naezdnik). Dir. Boris Barnet. Mosfil'm. 1940. Party Card, The (Partiinyi bilet). Dir. Ivan Pyr'ev. Mosfil'm. 1936. Peter the Great (Petr pervyi, 1938). 2 parts. Dir. Vladimir Petrov. Lenfil'm. 1937–38. Prometheus (Prometei). Dir. Ivan Kavalaridze. Ukrainfil'm (Kiev). 1935. Pugachev. Dir. Pavel Petrov-Bytov. Lenfil'm. 1937. Return of Maksim, The (Vozvrashchenie Maksima). Dir. Grigorii Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg. Lenfil'm. 1937. Radiant Path, The (Svetlyi put' ), Dir, Grigorii Aleksandrov, Mosfil'm. 1940. Revolt of the Fishermen (Vosstanie rybakov). Dir. Erwin Piscator. Mezhrabpomfil'm. 1934. Rich Bride, The (Bogataia nevesta). Dir. Ivan Pyr'ev. Ukrainfil'm (Kiev). 1937. Sailors (Moriaki). Dir. Vladimir Braun. Ukrainfil'm (Odessa). 1939. Shchors. Dir. Aleksandr Dovzhenko. Ukrainfil'm (Kiev). 1939. Stepan Razin, Dir. Ivan Pravov and Olga Preobrazhenskaia. Mosfil'm. 1939. Storm, The (Groza). Dir. Vladimir Petrov. Soiuzfil'm (Leningrad). 1934. Strict Youth, A (Strogii iunosha). Dir. Abram Room. Ukrainfil'm (Kiev). 1936. Suvorov. Dir. Vsevolod Pudovkin and Mikhail Doller. Mosfil'm. 1941. Swineherdess and the Shepherd, The (Svinarka i pastukh). Dir. Ivan Pyr'ev. Mosfil'm. 1941. Three Comrades (Tri tovarishcha). Dir. Semen Timoshenko. Lenfil'm. 1935. Tractor Drivers, The (Traktoristy). Dir Ivan Pyr'ev. Mosfil'm. 1939. Turksib. Dir. Viktor Turin. Vostokfil'm. 1929. Virgin Soil Upturned (Podniatoi tseliny). Dir. Iulii Raizman. Mosfil'm. 1939. Volga Volga. Dir. Grigorii Aleksandrov. Mosfil'm. 1938. Vyborg Side, The (Vyborgskaia storona). Dir. Grigorii Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg. Lenfil'm. 1938.

FILMOGRAPHY We are from Kronstadt (My iz Kronshtadta). Dir. Efim Dzigan. Mosfil'm. 1936. Youth of Maksim (Iunost' Maksima). Dir. Grigorii Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg. Lenfil'm. 1934.

Unseen Soviet Films Ashamed to Say, (Stydno Skazat'). Dir. Pavel Armand. Soiuzkino. 1930. Cheliuskin. Dir. A Shafron. Soiuzkinokhronika. 1934. Conveyor Belt of Death, The (Konveier smerti). Dir. Ivan Pyr'ev. Souizfil'm. 1933. Dark Reign, The (Temnoe tsarstvo). Dir. Aleksandr Gavronskii. VUFKU. 1929. Fighters (Bortsy). Dir. Gustav von Wagenheim. Mezhrabpomfil'm. 1936. Gay Canary, The (Veselaia kanareika). Dir. Lev Kuleshov. Mezhrabpomfil'm. 1929. Guest, The (Gost' ). Dir. Herbert Rappoport. Lenfil'm. 1939. Ivan. Dir. Aleksandr Dovzhenko. Ukrainfil'm (Kiev). 1932. Karo. Dir. Artashes Ai-Artian, Armenkino, 1937. Khaz Push. Dir. Amo Bek-Nazarian. Armenkino. 1928. Large Wings (Bol'shie kryl'ia). Dir. Mikhail Dubson. Lenfil'm. 1937. Marriage, The (Zhenit'ba). Dir. Erast Garin and Khesia Lokshin. Lenfil'm. 1936. Miss Mend. Dir. Fedor Otsep. Mezhrabpom-Rus'. 1926. My Homeland (Moia rodina). Dir. Aleksandr Zarkhi and Iosif Kheifits. Rosfil'm (Leningrad). 1933. Path of the Enthusiasts, The (Put' entuziastov). Dir Nikolai Okhlopkov. Sovkino. 1930. Quiet Flows the Don (Tikhii Don). Dir. Ivan Pravov and Olga Preobrazhenskaia. Soiuzkino. 1930. Salamander (Salamandra). Dir. Grigorii Roshal'. Mezhrabpomfil'm and Prometeusfil'm (Berlin). 1928. Simple Case, A (Prostoi sluchai). Dir. Vsevolod Pudovkin. Mezhrabpomfil'm. 1932. Strange Woman, The (Postoronniaia zhenshchina). Dir. Ivan Pyr'ev. Sovkino. 1929. Tanka the Bar Girl (Tan'ka traktirshchitsa). Dir. Boris Svetozarov. Sovkino. 1929. Theft of Sight (Krazha zreniia). Dir. Lev Kuleshov. Mezhrabpomfil'm. 1934. Twelfth Night (Dvenadtsataia noch' ). Dir. Ian frid. Lenfil'm. 1955.

Unseen Non-Soviet Films Band Concert, The. Dir. Wilfred Jackson. USA. 1935. Blue Fox. Dir. Duke Worne. USA. 1921. Chicago. Dir. Frank Urson. USA. 1927. Moulin Rouge. Dir. Ewald André Dupont. UK. 1928. Peculiar Penguins. Dir. Wilfred Jackson. USA. 1934. Three Little Pigs. Dir. Burt Gillet. USA. 1933.

213

INDEX Note: Where there are several page numbers against a heading, those in bold indicate major treatment of the topic. Abramov, Al. 167 Abrikosov, Andrei 132, 133 actors 87–88, 101, 102, 132, 145 administration, film 15–22, 60, 179 (see also Soiuzkino; Sovkino) administration, studio 121–29 Aleinikov, Moisei 75–76, 128, 129, 134 Alexander Nevsky 28, 103 Alexandrov, Grigori 23, 41, 107, 135 background 146, 174, 175 (see also Circus, The; Happy Guys, The; Volga Volga) All-Union Committee for the Arts 37–40 All-Union Party Conference on Cinema 16 America 22–23, 28, 31–32, 33, 35– 36, 116 Andrievsky, Alexander 122 Andrikanis, Yevgeni 111 Andronikashvili, Kira 86 Annales school 4–5 Annensky, Isidor 147 Anninsky, Alexander 131, 132

Anoshchenko, Nikolai 22 Antikol, Rafail 85 Antipov, Nikolai 62 Ardatov, Anatoli 77 ARK (The Association of Revolutionary Cinematography) (see ARRK) Armand, Pavel 57 Armenia 54, 85, 88 Arnshtam, Leo 87 ARRK (The Association of Workers of Revolutionary Cinematography) 56–57, 76– 78, 105–9, 112 Arsenal 64 artistic councils 47, 52, 59, 121, 127, 133–37 Arts Committee 37–40 Arustanov, Grigori 75–76 Ashamed to Say 57 Atarbekov, Vadim 83 Audio-Cinema, New York 22–23 Azerbaijan 85–86, 88 Babel, Isaac 87 Babitsky, Boris 49, 85 Bakunts, Aksel 88 Barnet, Boris 146 Barskaia, Margarita 41 Battleship Potemkin 172 Bear, The 147 Bear’s Wedding, The 87, 175 Bek-Nazarian, Amo 26

216

SOVIET CINEMA Belgoskino 76, 81, 88 Belorussia 54, 86, 88 Bezhin Meadow 41, 60, 67, 87, 150– 51 Bilinsky, Miron 45 Black Consul, The 150 Bleiman, Mikhail 128, 163 Blium, Karl 86 Blue and Pink 45 Bluebird 131 Bolshakov, Ivan 46–48, 52, 60, 116, 126, 131 and artistic councils 47, 134, 137 Bolsheviks 4, 5–12, 56, 179–83 Bolshintsov, Manuel 163 Boltiansky, Grigori 109 Breslavsky, Mikhail 85 Brik, Osip 134 Brokman, Yevgeni 79 Bronshtein, Lev 87 Brother Hero 80 Bruk, Veniamin 83 Bubnov, Andrei 61, 62 Bufeev (head of sales, Sovkino) 74 cadres, cinema 16–17, 142–43 cameramen 146, 147, 151–52 cameras 31 career prospects 145–49 cells, Party 57–58 censorship 2, 40–41, 53–70, 123– 29, 176, 180 Chameleon 61 Chapaev 46, 94, 98, 159 Charentz, Yeghishe 88 Charot, Mikhas 88 Cheliuskin 67 Chelli (artist, Uzbekgoskino) 80 Chertulov, Mikhail 86 Chiaureli, Mikhail 117 Chicago 54 Christie, Ian 1 Chubar, Yeghia 88 Chuzhin, Yakov 83 cine-city 35–37, 50 cinefication 18, 23–33, 42–43, 50, 111

Cinema Committee (1929) 18 Cinema Committee (1938) 29, 42– 48, 128, 147–48 (see also GUPKhF) ‘cinema for the millions’ 16, 48–49, 61–62, 159–60, 176–77, 183 Cinema Institute 78–79, 86, 116, 140–45, 149–53, 182 cinema, role of 13–14, 93–98 cinemas 23–30, 40, 63 (see also cinefication) Circus, The 81, 98, 152, 154–59 ‘class enemy’ films 160–68 classic literature, films based on 96 Conveyor Belt of Death, The 58 critical realism 6 ‘cultural revolution’ 72, 96, 141–42 Danashevsky, Anatoli 76 Dark Reign, The 73 decrees 16–19, 33–34, 42–44, 47– 48, 61, 67 defensive mentality 5–12, 14, 103, 138, 179–83 censorship 53, 54, 69 Dukelsky 44 Shumiatsky 51 Demutsky, Danylo 89 Diky, Alexei 87 Dinamov, Sergei 61, 62 directors, film 41–42, 45–46, 87, 115–17, 123, 146 (see also individual directors) directors, studio 129–30, 131 Dirin, Nikolai 87 discipline, workplace 21, 34–35, 44, 50–51, 114, 132 distribution, film 23–29, 42–43 Dobrenko, Yevgeni 3 Doller, Mikhail 45, 74–75 Dorokhin, Nikolai 173 Dosvitny, Oles 80 Dovzhenko, Alexander 64–65, 89, 115, 151 Dubrovsky 96 Dubrovsky-Eshke, Boris 136 Dubson, Mikhail 41, 66, 87, 88

I NDEX Dukelsky, Semyon 29, 44–46, 51– 52, 90, 115, 116 Dunaevsky, Isaac 156 Dunaiats (chief accountant, Vostokfilm) 83 Dylo, Osip 81 Dzherpetian, Maria 88 Dzhulbars 131, 159–60 Dzigan, Efim 102, 146, 160 economic accountability (khozraschet) 130 education film-makers 139–45, 149–53, 182–83 role of cinema 13–14, 93–98 Eggert, Konstantin 87, 88, 175 Eisenstein, Sergei 23, 107, 116, 127, 128, 146 at Cinema Institute 79, 141, 142, 143, 149–53 (see also Bezhin Meadow; October) Ekelchik, Yuri 115 Ekk, Nikolai 131 End of Saint Petersburg, The 74 Enei, Yevgeni 88 Engels, Viktor 79 Engineer Goff 88 Envy 102 Epik, Grigori 80, 81 equipment film-making 20, 22–23, 31–32, 145 projection 23–24, 31, 111 Erdman, Nikolai 73–74 Ermler, Fridrikh 28, 41, 98, 99, 175, 176 The Great Citizen 163–67 executions 77, 79, 80–89 exports 32–33 factories 30, 34–35 Feast of Saint Jorgen, The 122–23, 124 Fedka 46 Fifth Ocean, The 160 Fighters 89 Filippov, Fyodor 124, 136, 146

217 film education 139–45, 149–53, 182–83 film-production 121–29, 131–32 film stock 30–31 finance 21–22, 40, 45, 48, 101–3, 130 Cinema Institute 144–45 First Cavalry, The 102, 103 Flyers 87, 160 foreign films 25–26, 54 foreign influences 22–23, 31–33, 35–36, 116 reaction to 71–72, 85, 88–89, 90 Fragment of an Empire 99 Frid, Ian 147 Friends 57, 87 Fyodorov, Vasili 59 Fyodorova, Zoia 89 Gabrilovich, Yevgeni 171–73 Galka, Mate 111 Galperin, Alexander 151 Gardin, Vladimir 87 Gavronsky, Alexander 73 Gay Canary, The 87 Georgia 47, 54, 86, 88 Gerasimov, Sergei 164 German, Emil 73–74 Gessen, Daniil 80 GIK (State Institute of Cinematography) (see Cinema Institute) Ginsburg, Samuil 85 Girl Rushes to a Meeting, A 87, 160 Girl with Character, A 160 Girl Without a Dowry 60 Girniak, Osip 80 Glavrepertkom (see GRK) Gold (see Lad from the Taiga, The) Goldin (head of trade, Sovkino) 74 Goltsman, Yevgeniia 83 Great Citizen, The 28, 89, 98, 163– 67, 168 Great Consoler, The 87 Great Glow, The 96 Great Life, A 137 Great Terror 71, 81–89, 148

218

SOVIET CINEMA Grinberg, Mikhail 113 Grinfeld, Natan 82, 85 GRK (Glavrepertkom) (State Repertoire Committee) 53–55, 56, 62, 122 Groshev (director, Mosfilm) 128, 135 GTK (State College of Cinematography) 139–40 Guest, The 103 GUK (State Directorate for the Film Industry) 39–40, 62–63, 83, 85, 118 GUKF (State Directorate for the Film and Photo Industry) 33– 34, 37, 38–39, 114, 140 GUPKhF (Main Administration for the Production of Feature Films) 125–26, 127, 130, 136 GURK (Main Administration for the Control of Shows and Repertory) 39, 55 Gusev, Viktor 58 Gusman, Boris 87, 89 Happiness 169–71 Happy Guys, The 49, 62, 73, 81, 154 Hearts of Four, The 68–69, 135 Hollywood, Soviet (see cine-city) Holmgren, Beth 155 House of the Dead, The (Home and Community) 58–59 houses of cinema 117–18 ideological concerns 19, 21, 35, 38, 43–44, 151 (see also censorship; thematic planning) If War Comes Tomorrow 97 Ignatenko (head of production, Uzbekgoskino) 80 Institute of Cinematography (see Cinema Institute) intentionalism 6 Intorgkino (see Soiuzintorgkino) Iogansen, Mikhailo 88

Iosilevich, Viktor 83 Irchan, Miroslav 80 Ivanov, Alexander 131 Ivanov, Boris 66, 67, 146 Ivanov, Viktor 147 job prospects 145–49 journalists 78, 80, 86 Kadochnikov, Valentin 124, 136, 146 Kadysh, Alexander 85 Kagan, M.A. 85 Kaliuzhny, Alexei 88 Kapler, Alexei 87 Karo 167 Katsnelson, Leonti 39, 85 Kavaleridze, Ivan 40–41, 60, 66 Kei-Kheru 86 Kenez, Peter 3, 4 Kerzhentsev, Platon 38, 39 Kheifits, Joseph 64 Khersonsky, Khrisanf 78 Khomutov, Vasili 85 khozraschet (economic accountability) 130 Kiev (see Ukraine) Kino 86, 110, 114–15 Kirshon, Vladimir 111 Kiva, Nikolai 126, 127, 130 Klado, Nikolai 80 Koffman, Joey 23 Komsomolsk 164–65 Konsovsky, Dmitri 87–88 Korolev, Konstantin 83, 84 Kosior, Stanislav 62 Koval-Samborsky, Ivan 87 Kozinstev, Leonid 41 Kremlin cinema 63 Kucherovsky, Alexander 85 Kudriavsteva, Antonina 77 Kuleshov, Lev 41, 61, 79, 87, 149, 176 Kulik, Ivan 88 Kultpros 62–63 Kunin (Uzbekgoskino) 80 Kuprashvili, Bachua 88

I NDEX Kurianov, Alexander 126 Kurs, Alexander 87, 89 Kyrlya, Yvan 87 Lad from the Taiga, The 127 Large Wings 66, 87 Last Night, The 62–63, 100, 171–74 Laurent, Natacha 2 Law of Life, The 66, 67 Lazurin (Kiev studio) 60 League of Militant Godless 122 Lebedev-Kumach, Vasili 156 Lebedev, Nikolai 46 Lebedev, Stepan 79 lecturers 141, 143, 149–53 Lenfilm (Leningrad studio) administration 39, 114, 132 artistic council 47, 134 and censorship 57 purges 82, 85 Lenin in 1918 28, 87, 95–96, 98, 115, 167 Lenin in October 82, 167 Lenin, Vladimir 8, 9 Leonidov, Boris 80 Lezhnevich, Ales 81 Lialina, S.S. 78–79 Litovsky, O. 163 Lokot, Vasili 87 Lopatinsky, Faust 87 Lukashevich, Tatiana 146 Lukov, Leonid 147 Macheret, Alexander 163 Magic Pearl, The 124–26, 127–28 Malkin, Boris 134 Man with a Gun, The 115 Mansfeld, Ernst 89 Manukhov, Konstantin 79 Maretskaia, Vera 89 Mariamov, Grigori 83–84 Martirosian, Amasi 88 Martov, Zhosef 115 Marxism 7–8, 9, 150 Mashenka 125, 173–74 Mass, Vladimir 73–74 Maxim Trilogy 94

219 Medvedkin, Alexander 47, 175, 176, 183 Happiness 169–71 mentalities 4–5 (see also defensive mentality) Mezhrabpomfilm administration 17, 19, 121–23, 126, 129, 130, 148 artistic council 133–34 and censorship 59 purges 74–75 Mikaberidze, Kote 54, 131 Mikhailyk, Vasili 85 Miners 96 Misiano, Francesco 129 Molchanov, Alexander 83, 84 Molotov, Viacheslav 24 Monosson, Lev 86 Mordokhovich, Mikhail 86 Moscow cinemas 24, 25–26, 29– 30 Moscow Society of Cinema Personnel 105–6 Mosfilm (Moscow studio) administration 101, 114, 124–26, 127–28, 130–32 artistic council 47, 134, 136 and censorship 57, 58 film directors 146 purges 85 Mother 74 Moulin Rouge 54 musicals 156–58, 159 My Grandmother 54, 131 My Homeland 64, 87 Nazar Stodolia 88 Nefedov, Vasili 79 Nembach, Eberhard 2 Nikanorov, M. 110 Nilsen, Vladimir 37, 141, 149, 151– 53 arrests and execution 81–82, 83, 86 NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) 82, 83, 90

220

SOVIET CINEMA October 64, 81, 151 Odessa (see Ukraine) ODSK (Society of Friends of Soviet Cinema) 56–57, 78, 109–12 Okulov (building sector deputy) 85 Old and the New, The 81, 151 Old Fortress 45 Old Jockey, The 74 Olesha, Yuri 102 Orelovich, Solomon 85, 147 Orgburo cinema commission 60– 62 Party Card, The 160–63, 168 Path of the Enthusiasts, The 99 Pazin, Anton 77 peasants (see working class) Peasants 28 Pechalin-Perez, Grigori 85 Penzo, Ida 82 Pepo 88 personnel management (see discipline, workplace) Peter the Great 40, 46 Petrov (engineer) 85 Petrov-Bytov, Pavel 94, 175 Petrov, Vladimir 46 Piatigorsky, Yuli 85 Pilniak, Boris 86 Piotrovsky, Adrian 85 Pipinashvilli, Konstantin 146 Pirogov, Pyotr 87 Piscator, Erwin 87 Podobed, Porfiri 74 Poet and Tsar 87 Polishchuk, Valerian 80, 81 Politburo, censorship role 66–67 political films 93–98, 160–68 Polonsky, Konstantin 125–26, 131 Portnov, Viktor 87 Pravov, Ivan 132, 146 Preobrazhenskaia, Olga 132 projection equipment 23–24, 31, 111 projectionists 111, 112, 114 proletarians (see working class) Prometheus 41, 59, 60, 66

Protazanov, Yakov 60, 61, 122–23, 122–23, 134, 175 Pudovkin, Vsevolod 77, 108–9, 117, 146 films 45, 74, 75 Pugachev 94 purges 17–18, 71–90, 148 Pyrev, Ivan 46–47, 77, 108, 176 background 146, 174, 175 films 98, 135, 159, 160–63 Queen of Spades 45 Quiet Flows the Don 99 Rabis 107–8, 112 Radiant Path, The 98 Rafes, Moisei 98 Raizman, Yuli 130, 146, 175, 183 films 62–63, 87, 100, 125, 160, 171–74 RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers) 106 Rappoport, Herbert 103 Return of Maxim, The 94 Return of Nathan Becker 88 Revolt of the Fishermen 88 Rich Bride, The 98, 159 Riutin, Martemian 20, 73 Road to Life, The 87 Romm, Mikhail 41, 44–45, 46, 48, 58, 115, 117, 137 arrest of Slivkin 82 background 146 Room, Abram 59, 77, 79, 149 RosARRK (Russian Association of Workers of Revolutionary Cinematography) 109, 118 Rosiner (actress) 108 Rossnabfilm 28, 42 Rossolovskaia, Vanda 86 Rubailo, Alentina 2 rural cinemas 24, 26, 43 ‘Rus’ 75 Rutes, M 166–67 Sailors 97 Sakharov (alleged terrorist) 83

I NDEX salaries 45–46, 113, 114, 115, 129, 176 Salys, Rimgaila 155–56 Satel, Yevgeni 85 satire 169–71, 183 script production 43–44, 46, 57– 59, 61, 102, 122, 123–25, 128 scriptwriters 87, 92–93, 100, 115, 146, 147 Semyonov, Nikolai 124 Shaposhnikov, Adrian 167 Sharifzade, Abbas 88 Shchors 64–65, 115 Sheffer, Lev 56 Shklovsky, Viktor 58–59, 78 Shkolnik, Matvei 85 Shneider, Mikhail 78, 79, 149 Shneiderov, Vladimir 131, 159 Sholokhov, Mikhail 173 Shorin, Alexander 22 Shpis, Boris 88 Shukailo, Pavel 86 Shumiatsky, Boris 15, 20–22, 34– 37, 38–42, 48–51, 179–80 arrest and execution 83–84 and censorship 60, 61–62, 118 and cinefication 29, 31–32 Shutko, Kirill 86 Shvedchikov, Konstantin 20, 82, 99 Shveitser, Vladimir 74, 123 Sibtekhfilm 86 Sidorenko, Ivan 79 Sidorov, Ivan 83 Sidorov, Nikita 79 Sillov, Vladimir 77 Sinclair, Upton 76, 86 Slivkin, Albert 82, 83 Smirnov, Yakov 83, 85 Soiuzdetfilm 47, 148 Soiuzintorgkino 33, 85 Soiuzkino 18–21, 22–23, 75–76, 112 and censorship 57, 58 and Cinema Institute 140, 141, 142–43, 144 thematic planning 99

221 Soiuzkinoprokat 29, 42, 43 Sokol, Valentin 83 Sokolov, Fyodor 85 Sokolov, Ippolit 22, 23, 78 Sokolovskaia, Elena 85, 131 sound 22–24, 22–24, 28, 30, 31, 145 Sovkino 16, 58, 74, 82, 108 thematic planning 98, 101, 102 Stalin, Joseph 37, 42, 61–66, 61– 66, 67, 166 and Danashevsky 76 and Riutin 73 Staritskaia-Cherniakhovskaia, Liudmila 80 State Film Institute (see Cinema Institute) Stepan Razin 131, 132, 133 Stepanov, Vladimir 85 Stetsky, Alexei 61, 62 Stolper, Alexander 66, 67, 146 Storm, The 96 Strange Woman, The 108 Strict Youth, A 59–60, 102 Stroganov, Stepan 79 structuralism 6 students 141–44, 150–51 studios administration 121–29 artistic councils 47, 52, 59, 121, 127, 133–37 and censorship 57–60 directors 129–30, 131 (see also individual studios) Sultanov, Gulam 85–86 Suvorov 45 Sverdlov, Samuil 83 Svetozarov, Boris 78 Swineherdess and the Shepherd, The 98, 135, 159 Tager, Pavel 22 Tasin, Georgi 88 Tauschenbach, Walter 89 taxation 18 Taylor, Richard 1, 3 teachers 141, 143, 149–53

222

SOVIET CINEMA theatres (see cinemas) Theft of Sight 61 thematic planning 91–104, 180–81 Three Comrades 87 ticket prices 30 Tikhonov (director, Mosfilm) 132 Tisse, Eduard 23, 79, 107, 149, 151 Titberidze, Amvrosi 86 Tiutiunnik, Yuri 80 Tractor Drivers, The 159 trade unions 107–8, 112–15, 116– 17, 118, 119–20 training (see education, film-makers) Trauberg, Ilia 41, 117, 136 Trauberg, Leonid 118 Tretiakov, Sergei 87 Tulub, Zinaida 88 Tur brothers 158 Turin, Viktor 131 Turksib 131 Turovskaya, Maya 167 Twelfth Night 147 Two Mothers 56–57 Udarnik cinema, Moscow 24 Ukraine 47, 54, 59–60, 80–81, 85, 87, 88, 102 film education 139–40, 147 Union of Cinema Personnel 112–15 unions, trade 107–8, 112–15, 116– 17, 118, 119–20 urban cinemas 24, 26, 43 Urusova, Yevdokiia 88 USA (see America) Usievich, Vladimir 83 Uspensky, Viacheslav 79 Uzbekistan 79–80 Vainshtok, Vladimir 136 Vaks, Boris 169 Vaks, Leo 167 Vasilchikov, Yuri 80 Vasilev, Georgi 46, 94, 159 Vasilev, Sergei 46, 94, 159, 166 Vasileva, Raisa 87 Verner, Mikhail 160 Vertov, Dziga 41

Vetrov, Boris 169 VGIK (All-Union/Higher State Institute of Cinematography) (see Cinema Institute) Virgin Soil Upturned 173 Vlysko, Oleks 80 Volchek, Boris 115 Volga Volga 49, 74, 81, 98, 152 Volny, Anatol 88 Volpin, Mikhail 74 Vorony, Mark 80–81 Vorony, Nikolai 88 Vostokfilm 77, 83, 148 Vovsy, Grigori 86 Vyborg Side, The 94 Vyshinsky, Andrei 67 wages 45–46, 113, 114, 115, 129, 176 We are from Kronstadt 160 West, relationship with 10 (see also foreign influences) Widdis, Emma 171 Without a Dowry 96 working class audiences 56–57, 109–11, 112 cinema personnel 17, 142–43, 148 Yalovy, Mikhail 80 Yashin, David 80 Yegorova, Galina 88 Youngblood, Denise 2, 3 Youth of Maxim, The 94, 95 Yudin, Konstantin 68, 135, 146, 160 Yukov, Konstantin 83 Yutkevich, Sergei 41, 115, 128–29 Zaitsev, Yakov 87, 89 Zarkhi, Alexander 64 Zeldovich, Grigori 125 Zhdanov, Andrei 62, 67, 68–69, 135 Zhilin, Vasili 83 Zhzhenov, Georgi 89 Zlatogorova, Tatiana 87 Zvenigora 80

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