The Fate of Popular Soviet Cinema Under Stalin

The Fate of Soviet Popular Cinema during the Stalin Revolution
Author(s): Denise J. Youngblood

Source: The Russian Review, Vol. 50, No. 2 (Apr., 1991), pp. 148-162
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The Editors and Board of Trustees of the Russian Review
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/131156
Accessed: 16-02-2020 20:56 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Wiley is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Russian
Review
This content downloaded from 129.67.246.57 on Sun, 16 Feb 2020 20:56:20 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
The Fate of Soviet Popular
Cinema during the Stalin
Revolution
DENISE J. YOUNGBLOOD
In March 1928, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union held its first all-
conference on cinema affairs. The minutes were published in a hefty volu
more than 450 closely set pages.1 What strikes the reader of these pages mor
sixty years later, even one familiar with the institutional and theoretical evoluti
Soviet cinema in its first decade, is the obscurity of the debates and their rancor
tone. But what is equally surprising about the discussions is that most con
evinced little interest in movies. Cinema for them was a lifeless abstraction. That
movie-lovers like Commissar of Enlightenment Anatolii Lunacharskii and So

kino's deputy head Il'ia Trainin were clearly on the defensive was an omi
portent for the future of Soviet cinema as either art or entertainment.
The conference on cinema affairs marked the effective start of the Cultural
Revolution and the First Five Year Plan in cinema. The "scenario crisis" (meaning
the putative shortage of suitable movie scripts) had been a matter of concern fo
some time; the worst outcome imaginable became reality over the course of th
next four years as a diverse and flourishing film industry became one of man
casualties of the "Stalin Revolution." Cinema, both as art and industry, suffer
The research on which this article is based was supported in part by grants from the Americ
Council of Learned Societies, the International Research and Exchanges Board, and the Nationa
Endowment for the Humanities. An earlier version was presented at the 104th Annual Meeting of t
American Historical Association, 1989; my thanks to Peter Kenez and Laura Engelstein for their
insightful comments on that version. I am also grateful to Maya Turovskaya for information on h
current research into attendance patterns.
1 B. S. Ol'khovyi, ed., Puti kino: Pervoe Vsesoiuznoe partiinoe soveshchanie po kinematograf
(Moscow: Teakinopechat', 1929). Discussions of the conference can be found in: Richard Taylor, Th
Politics of the Soviet Cinema, 1917-1929 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 106-1
Denise J. Youngblood, Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, 1918-1935 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Researc
Press, 1985 and Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991), 155-61 [hereafter cited as SC]; Peter Kene
"The Cultural Revolution in Cinema," Slavic Review 47 (Fall 1988): 418-19.
The Russian Review, vol. 50, April 1991, pp. 148-162
Cinema during the Stalin Revolution 149
double jeopardy at this time and therefore provides us with an exceptional para-
digm for adding to our knowledge of the dynamics of the Stalin Revolution and its
impact on society and culture.2
Like other industries, cinema was expected to increase production and achieve
self-sufficiency during the First Five Year Plan. This mandate was complicated by
the fact that not only were the studios heavily dependent on imported film stock
and equipment, but foreign films were an important source of revenue for both the
theaters and Sovkino. Furthermore, the call for economic and technical self-
sufficiency came at a most inopportune moment, coinciding as it did with the
greatest technical breakthrough in cinema history-sound. Bringing sound to So-
viet cinema required a complete retooling of studios and reeducation of production
personnel, not to mention the expense of reequiping theaters with sound projec-
tors. When coupled with the unrealistic aesthetic and thematic demands for more
"realism" which were part of the Cultural Revolution, these economic and technical
pressures had a calamitous effect on production. By 1932 the flourishing film cul-
ture of the twenties had collapsed.
This film culture was a multifaceted one. Some aspects of it-the achievements
of the youthful avant-garde consisting of Aleksandr Dovzhenko, Sergei Eisenstein,
Grigorii Kozintsev and his codirector Leonid Trauberg, Lev Kuleshov, Vsevolod
Pudovkin, and Dziga Vertov-are reasonably well known. The Cultural Revolution
in cinema was directed in part against these men and their "formalist" art, a subject
which Peter Kenez in his recent article "Cinema and Cultural Revolution" has
discussed in detail.3 My concern here will be to explore the impact of the Cu
Revolution and the First Five Year Plan on the "other" Soviet cinema-the enter-
tainment films which ordinary moviegoers in the twenties strongly preferred.4
In order to gauge the effect of the period 1928-32 on Soviet popular cinema, I
have chosen the two years 1926 and 1927 as a benchmark, since this was the point at
which the industry both stabilized production and flowered as art and entertain-
ment. Despite the best efforts of the "cinefication" campaign to bring movies to the
2 The scholarly debate about the origins and course of the Stalin Revolution in the cultural arena is
one of the most lively in the field. The pioneering work was Edward J. Brown's The Proletarian Episode
in Russian Literature (1928-1932) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1953), but investigation of the
subject did not gather momentum until Sheila Fitzpatrick turned her attention to it in the seventies.
Fitzpatrick's articles on the Cultural Revoution are too numerous to list here, but I would like to make
particular note of the collection Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931, edited by Sheila Fitzpatrick
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979).
3 Kenez, "Cultural Revolution," 421-30; for a discussion of the attack on the avant-garde with a
somewhat different emphasis, see Youngblood, SC, 194-214.
4 Recent work on Soviet popular cinema in the twenties includes: Richard Taylor, "Soviet Cinema
as Popular Culture: Or the Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. Nepman in the Land of the Silver Screen,"
Revolutionary Russia 1 (June 1988): 36-56; idem, "The Kiss of Mary Pickford: Ideology and Popular
Culture in Soviet Cinema" in The Red Screen: Politics, Society, Art in Soviet Cinema, edited by Anna
Lawton (New York: Unwin Hyman, 1991); Youngblood, "Cinema as Social Criticism: The Early Films of
Fridrikh Ermler," in Lawton, The Red Screen; idem, "The Return of the Native: Yakov Protazanov and
Soviet Cinema," in Inside the Film Factory, edited by Richard Taylor and Ian Christie (London: Rout-
ledge, 1991). I am presently finishing a book on popular cinema and society during the NEP which will
be published by Cambridge University Press.
150 Denise J. Youngblood
rural masses, throughout the twenties (and well into the thirties) cinema remained
an essentially urban phenomenon.5 While contemporary viewer studies indicate
that in cities movie-going ranked well after theater as first choice for an evening's
entertainment, films nonetheless enjoyed a significant following of crazed fans and
devoted cognoscenti (as the heavily publicized 1926 visit of Douglas Fairbanks and
Mary Pickford to Moscow demonstrates).6
Moscow was a city with a well-established film culture dating from prerevolu-
tionary days. Although it is not, therefore, a representative city, it set the standard
provincial capitals sought to emulate. The elaborate Moscow movie palaces fea-
tured orchestras or jazz bands playing in the foyers as well as during the show,
champagne buffets, and stands selling magazines, books, and other movie parapher-
nalia. Tickets were expensive (as high as one and a half rubles) and priced accord-
ing to seat location, so audiences at the "palaces" came mainly from the nouveau
riche: NEPmen and apparatchiki and their families and entourages. (The less fortu-
nate sat in the upper balconies.) There were at least two first-run theaters for
workers in Moscow, but the proletariat mainly saw films at clubs, after the first run,
which exacerbated working-class resentment against the privileges of the new bour-
geoisie. Later claims to the contrary notwithstanding, the cinematic preferences of
workers and NEPmen were indistinguishable in the twenties. People wanted to be
entertained, not edified.7
Anyone seriously interested in movies had to subscribe to a film journal or
newspaper, since the official press (Pravda and Izvestiia) and even the general press
(Vecherniaia Moskva, for example) covered movies infrequently and selectively. In
1926-27, there were four film periodicals from which to choose. The rather stuffy
Sovetskoe kino was published by the cinema section of the Commissariat of Enlight-
enment's Main Committee on Political Education; although one could occasionally
find good film criticism therein, it focused on the "cinema to the countryside"
campaign and on promoting the educational film (kul'turfil'm). The most intellectu-
ally interesting journal was Kino-front, a trade journal published by the Association
of Revolutionary Cinematography (ARK) which featured expert criticism and
lively debates. The other two periodicals were intended for a mass readership. The
popular weekly newspaper Kino, regularly ran readers' letters until mid-1926 and
provided comprehensive theater listings. Sovetskii ekran, sponsored by the state-
run theater and film press Teakinopechat, most approached the glossy Western
5 On the cinefication campaign, see Peter Kenez, "Peasants and Movies," paper presented at the
Indiana University, Bloomington, conference on NEP society and culture, 1986; and Youngblood, SC,
47-55 and 115-17. Kenez's evaluation of the overall success of the campaign is more positive than mine,
but this difference in interpretation does not affect the argument being made here.
6 The most thorough study of the movie-goer in the twenties is A. V. Troianovskii and P. I.
Egiazarov's Izuchenie kino-zritelia: Po materialam isseldovatel'skoi teatral'noi masterskoi (Moscow:
Gosizdat Narkompros, 1928). On the Fairbanks/Pickford visit, see "Ferbenks i Pikford v SSSR!" Kino
30 (1926), 1-2, and (better yet) Sergei Komarov's film Mary Pickford's Kiss (1926).
7 See, for example, Kletchatyi, "Kino-teatry Moskomprom," Kino 3 (1925): 4; "Moskovskie kino-
teatry," ibid. 4/5 (1926):7; "Po Moskovskim kino-teatram," ibid. 7 (1926):4. Moscow's first-run theatres
included the Ars, the Kolizei, the Tsirk, the Malaia Dmitrovka, the "Splendid Palace" (in English!), the
first and second Goskino theatres, and for workers-the Trud and the Rabochii.
TABLE 1
Biographies of Foreign and Soviet Film Stars Published in the USSR, 1926-32
Foreign Soviet
Years Titles Copies Titles Copies
1926-27 55 1,479,650 11 250,000

1928-29 22 416,000 14 265,000
1930-32 0 0 0 0
Source: Data based
movie maga
stars and co
Sovetskii ek
designed fo
business, fo
American st
1926-27, the
stars appear
million copi
ings, so it se
demand for
published b
titles in 250
comic actor
sixty thousan
cal manuals,
Table 2).
Of course, without the movies themselves there would have been no market
for these books and periodicals. Soviet film production reached its peak in this two-
year period with 246 new titles; while foreign imports were dropping, they were still
at a healthy two hundred titles (see Table 3). It was a point of pride for Soviet
cinema that in 1927, for the first time, Soviet productions topped the imports in
numbers of titles. Numbers do not, however, necessarily coincide with popularity
and they did not in this case, as Soviet film critics and directors were painfully
aware.
Most films of Soviet production never made it to first-

did, they usually lasted no more than two to three week
American movies, had runs of two to three months and m
8 Before April 1926 Kino-front was called Kino-zhurnal ARK.

9 The only other Soviet stars approaching Il'inskii in popularity, usi
Vachnadze and Vera Malinovskaia. Malinovskaia, who emigrated in 1928
surprise, but based on my reading of the Soviet cinema press of the twen
was phenomenally popular. As indicated in Table 1, this analysis is based o
Knigi o kino.
TABLE 2
Film Books Other than Biographies Published in the USSR, 1926-32
1926-27 1928-29 1930-32
Programs 19 14 0
Film History/Theory 11 6 5
Sov. Film History 1 4 2
Dramaturgy 3 1 1
Scripts 1 2 0
Directing 3 3 1
Acting 1 6 0
Camera 2 1 0
Art Direction 0 0 1
Total 41 37 10
Source: Knigi o kino. Pr

of 10,000-30,000 copies
starring Douglas
greatest domesti
tures in style, th
costume dramas
the Tsar (Vladim
wrought melodr
1926) dominated
popular success a
Million (Protsess
movie mania, Ma
serial Miss Mend
Armenian story
comedy about t
korobkoi, Boris B
Forty-First (Soro
mercially success
more of the test
humor, action, h
work of the avan
10 Kepley and Keple

1 These films and t
of The Case of the Th
is ample evidence atte
addition to the "best
Advertisements in Izvestiia, 9, 23, and 24 November 1926, claim it set a Soviet attendance record-
34,000 viewers in seven weeks. My estimates on typical runs are based on studying advertisements to
determine how long a film was playing; for confirmation, see N. Vol'kov, "Sovetskie fil'my," Izvestiia, 18
November 1929. Despite the successes of these movies, the popularity of foreign films was still being
acknowledged by Soviet critics as late as 1929; see Iu. Gardin, "Perspektivy kino-sezona," Zhizn
iskusstva 37 (1929):13. (A very good recent discussion of this "problem" may be found in Kepley and
Kepley, "Foreign Films.")
TABLE 3
New Films Shown in the USSR, 1926-33
Foreign Soviet Total

1926 128 105 233
1927 72 141 213
1928 62 148 210
1929 68 106 174
1930 43 146 189
1931 5 103 108
1932 0 90 90
1933 0 35 35
Sources (adapted): V
1922-1931," Quarterl
Kartseva, "Amerikan
Greiding, "Frantsuzs
N. Egorova, "Nemets
numbers of foreign
not be identified for
The figures for Sovi
cow: Iskusstvo, 1961-
tion has also been an
Journal 11 (1972): 18
Examined: Selections
which the Kepleys us
imports, however, in
This complete
Revolution. B
relied on Sovie
well establish
Russian cinem
newcomers lik
(Party membe
dissatisfaction
the film comm
"proletarianiz
regularly deno
were expended
Turning to t
considers film
increased sligh
130 titles-a si
campaign and
were taking th
fairly substa
greater negati
But good Sov
were very goo
make theme f
Protazanov's a
12 See, for exam

of Kino-front 4 (
correct politically, but was also one of the funniest Soviet films made in the silent
period. Fridrikh Ermler's The Parisian Cobbler (Parizhskii sapozhnik, 1928) is as
fine an example of the antiabortion melodrama as Abram Room's much-criticized
Bed and Sofa (Tret'ia Meshchanskaia, 1927) and had the added advantage of attack-
ing the Komsomol along with abortion. Don Diego and Pelageia and The Parisian
Cobbler demonstrated that it was possible to make films that were both topical and
entertaining; consequently they were well received by critics and apparently by the
public as well.13 This balancing act soon became almost impossible to perform as
the "social command" (sotsial'nyi zakaz) became ever more circumscribed. Themes
of industrial and agricultural sabotage were de rigueur by the final stages of the
Cultural Revolution, but because of the time it takes to produce a movie, even
those directors who followed contemporary developments closely could not immedi-
ately reflect them in their work.14
Although domestic film production did not immediately respond to the "gen-
eral line" of the Stalin Revolution, significant changes were underway which had an
immediate impact on viewers, especially those from the working class. From May
1928 to the end of the year, film libraries were purged of foreign and domestic
pictures thought to glorify "prostitution and debauchery . . . and criminal activ-
ity,"15 in other words, precisely those entertainment movies circulating the clubs
and second-run houses frequented by most proletarians. (We have no evidence that
this purge corresponded to the desire of the proletariat to see more "wholesome"
pictures.)
Sovkino's new production plan, announced in July 1928, was as ominous as
this purge of the film libraries. Although Sovkino was not as consistently success-
ful as the semi-independent studio Mezhrabpom-Rus in producing hits for the
mass market, it was the largest studio, responsible for approximately 40 percent of
Soviet production. In the past a healthy part of its budget had been apportioned
for entertainment films. Now Sovkino planned to focus on "new socialist rela-
tions, the struggle against the survivals of the past, the enlightenment of the
masses, economic and political problems, achievements of culture, class illumina-
tion of history, the organization of leisure . . ." etc.16 Based on what we know of
13 On Don Diego and Pelageia, see Youngblood, SC, 177-78, and idem, "Return of the Native;" on
The Parisian Cobbler, see SC, 182-83, and Youngblood, "Cinema as Social Criticism." An analysis of
the disastrous critical reception of Third Meshchanskaia Street (Bed and Sofa in American distribution)
can be found in Youngblood, "The Fiction Film as a Source for Soviet Social History: The Third
Meshchanskaia Street Affair," Film & History 19 (September 1989):50-60.
14 One of the first films on an industrial theme was Sergei Iutkevish's Lace (1928), a movie of great
formal beauty which takes place, as its title suggests, in a lace-making factory. For these and other
reasons, it did not serve as a prototype for the industrial film. See the discussion of it in SC, 184-85; a
good example of the contemporary commentary is Khrisanf Khersonskii, "Kruzheva," Sovetskii ekran
10 (1928):10.
15 "Davno pora," Kino 20 (1928); for other denunciations, see "Soobshcheniia Glavrepertkoma,"
Kino 20 (1928); "Eshche odna seriia sniatykh kartin," Kino 21 (1928); and "Udachnaia operatsiia: Ekran
ochishchen ot khlama," Kino 47 (1928).
16 Tematicheskii plan Sovkino na 1928/29 g. utverzhdennyi plenumom khudozhestvennogo soveta ot
11 zasedaniem pravleniia Sovkino ot 131VIII s.g. (Moscow, 1928), especially 3-6.
box office patterns throughout the twenties, films of this sort were unlikely to
attract audiences.
Antiforeign propaganda and unrealistic production schemes had been aired

before in the cinema press, so by themselves they would not have been cause for
undue alarm. But the changes in the press were so sweeping that they would have
been immediately obvious even to the most casual fan. Although crude and strident
language had begun to make its appearance in reviews late in 1926, after the Party
conference on cinema affairs in March 1928, it became the rule rather than the
exception. Real criticism, while still possible, was rare; it had been replaced by
violent diatribes couched in the vituperative jargon which characterized the Cul-
tural Revolution.17
By the end of 1928, both Sovetskoe kino and Kino-front had been liquidated,
indicative of the trouble their respective publishers, the Commissariat of Enlighten-
ment and the Association of Revolutionary Cinematography, found themselves in.
The newspaper Kino was transferred to the control of the Society of Friends of
Soviet Cinema, an organization about which little is known.18 Although Kino sur-
vived, it no longer reflected audience concerns and cannot be considered a popular
organ. Sovetskii ekran, as indicated above the most "Western" of all Soviet film
periodicals, struggled on. Its publisher, Teakinopechat, which had been specifically
attacked at the March Party conference for its anti-Soviet "line," responded by
dramatically reducing both the space allotted to foreign films in Sovetskii ekran and
the numbers of biographies of foreign stars it printed. Nonetheless, the twenty-two
titles (416,000 copies) published in 1928-29 on foreign actors still surpassed the
fourteen titles (265,000 copies) that Teakinopechat devoted to Soviet stars in the
same period (Table 1).
Early in 1929, Teakinopechat's crisis came to a climax. V. P. Uspenskii, the Old
Bolshevik who had been Teakinopechat's director, was demoted to editor-in-chief
of Sovetskii ekran. Accusations and innuendos of financial mismanagement and
anti-Soviet activity continued, however, and in April 1929, Uspenskii committed
suicide. Sovetskii ekran was purged in November 1929 and transformed into Kino i
zhizn, a dismal mouthpiece for the rhetoric of the Cultural Revolution. The only
surviving organ of popular cinema in print culture was no more, and not surpris-
ingly, the purge of Teakinopechat soon followed.19 Both the reorganized Kino and
the new Kino i zhizn zealously served the cause of cultural revolution, which meant
they served cinema not at all.
Early Soviet film critics had never been particularly charitable. In the early
twenties, this could be rationalized as indicative of the brusque intolerance of
youth, and by the undeniably urgent task of rebuilding the shattered film industry.
17 The worst attacks were characteristically launched against people, not films; see, for example, N.
Bodrov, "Litso opportunistov," Kino 54 (1930):3.
18 See Grigorii Boltianskii, "Kino-kadry i ODSK," Kino i zhizn 8 (1930).
19 On Uspenskii's suicide, see A. Mil'kin, "Pod svoe tiazhestvo," Kino 15 (1929):3; and the untitled
obituary in Sovetskii ekran 16 (1929):4. On the purge of Teakinopechat, see the notices in Kino 2 and 26
(1930).
Yet despite their many failings, the first Soviet critics were a talented lot who
genuinely loved movies. However, as film criticism became part of the political
agenda, such attributes were no longer valued. Leading critics like Khrisanf
Khersonskii, Mikhail Levidov, Mikhail Shneider, and Ippolit Sokolov now found
themselves displaced by new "cadres." These men, exemplified by Boris Bek, I. F.
Popov, and Ia. Rudoi, knew little about film and couched what they did know in
execrable prose. It is also painfully obvious from their "reviews" how little they
liked movies.20
Considering that the new critics regarded movie reviewing as a kind of search-
and-destroy mission, detailing their denunciations of films both good and bad
would not be particularly illuminating about the future direction of Soviet cinema.21
More to the point is to describe one of the few films of this period that was singled
out for praise, Tanka the Bar Girl (Tan'ka Traktirshchitsa, Boris Svetozarov,
1928).22 At a time when even the film press devoted less and less space to movies
(writing instead about campaigns and "Bolshevik tempo"), Tanka the Bar Girl was
reviewed no less than five times in Kino.
Even keeping in mind that narrative content can be misleading when discuss
ing a movie, the story is laughably cliched and unfortunately, presaged future
developments. Tanka, the stepdaughter of a kulak, works at the tavern he owns.
The schoolteacher Sestrin, who is a Komsomol member and chairman of the
village soviet, tries to organize a drama club to wean the peasants away from
drink. The kulak, fearing the loss of profit from the tavern, naturally decides that
the only way to ruin the drama club is to kill the schoolteacher. Just as naturally,
there is a local "hooligan" who is only too ready to assist him. But wait! Tanka has
overheard the plot; horrified, she enlists the aid of a Young Pioneer. Too late! The
kulak captures Tanka, beats her, and throws her into a cellar to prevent her from
betraying him. But no! The Young Pioneer manages to warn Sestrin anyway.
Cleverly disguised, Sestrin exposes the villains, frees Tanka, and turns the tavern
into a tea house.
The praise lavished on this film in 1929-as great pictures like Dovzhenko's
Arsenal, Kozintsev's and Trauberg's New Babylon, Ermler's The Fragment of an
Empire (Oblomok imperii), and Vertov's The Man with the Movie Camera were
being savaged in the same press-is startling. It provoked vociferous protests from
the already embattled Association of Workers in Revolutionary Cinematograph
(ARRK, the newly "proletarianized" name of the former Association of Revolu-
tionary Cinematography) as well as from critics like Mikhail Levidov. But despite
the fact that there were still some in the film community who were brave enoug
20 B. Alpers should probably be included in this list as well, but from time to time he exhibited
insights about film that were completely beyond the ken of Bek, Popov, and Rudoi. See, for example
Alpers, "Arsenal Dovzhenko," Sovetskii ekran 16 (1929):5.
21 The history of criticism at this time remains relatively unexplored; to get a flavor of what passed
as criticism, see Kenez, "Cultural Revolution," and Youngblood, SC, 194-217.
22 The film was released early in 1929; its alternate title, which is more descriptive of its content,
was Against Father (Protiv otsa).
(and foolhardy enough) to defend cinema's honor, the Tanka the Bar Girl affair lay
to rest any remaining doubts that an era was ending.23
By the end of 1930, although a final great "formalist" picture-Dovzhenko's
swansong, Earth-graced the screen that year, it was abundantly clear that the era
had in fact ended. The cinema culture of the twenties, a vibrant amalgam of
entertainment films of Western and domestic production and native avant-garde
classics, was no more. It would take decades for Soviet cinema to recover from the
debacle; many of the best directors of the twenties saw their reputations destroyed
and never rebuilt their ruined careers.
Production figures tell the story best: 146 films were made in 1930, 103 in 1931,
90 in 1932, 35 in 1933. As startling as this last figure is, its true meaning becomes
apparent only when one looks at the figure for foreign imports at this time: zero
(see Table 3). After the purge of foreign films and the demise of Sovetskii ekran,
which had championed the Western entertainment picture, the cessation of importa-
tion was a foregone conclusion. One of the goals of the First Five Year Plan in
cinema had been achieved; Soviet movies now accounted for 100 percent of the
pictures on Soviet screens. The victory, however, was a pyrrhic one.
The decline in production, while striking, does not tell the entire story of the
change in "line" that was part of the Stalin Revolution in cinema. The representa-
tion of specific genres also shifted quite noticeably. In 1926-27, five genres domi-
nated, in rank order: contemporary melodrama (usually about domestic problems),
revolutionary/Civil War film (in popular cinema, a substitute for adventure), com-
edy, historical costume drama, and adaptation of literary classics (see Table 4).
Melodramas had been quite popular throughout the twenties, averaging 21 percent
of Soviet production in 1926-27, a figure which does not take into account the large
numbers of German and American melodramas imported or the fact that the con-
tent of most Soviet historical pictures was primarily melodramatic.24
In 1930-31 we see a very dramatic change both in content and numbers. The
contemporary melodrama was redefined at this time in a significant way. Depiction
of the concerns of private life (the typical content of melodrama) was anathemized
as bourgeois, and the new Soviet "melodrama" focused on public life. Like Tanka
the Bar Girl, the cinematic melodramas of the early thirties were simplistic tales
involving heroic exploits to expose evil saboteurs, wreckers, and other opponents of
23 Although Tanka is extant, I have not seen it, so my description is based on Sovetskie
khudozhestvennye fil'my 1:298. For reviews and accounts of the heated controversy surrounding the
film, see "Obsuzhdaem Tan'ku," Kino 35 (1929); Ashmarin, "Tan'ka-Seredniachka," and
"Rezoliutsiia disputa v dome pechate," Kino 37 (1929); and "ARRK o Tan'ke," Kino 41 (1929). For a
moderate review which does not allude to the controversy over the film's quality, see N. Vol'kov, "Po
moskovskim ekranam," Izvestiia, 25 January 1929.
24 Based on my analysis of Egorova, "Nemetskie nemye fil'my" and Kartseva, "Amerikanskie
nemye fil'my," there were 442 German and American melodramas imported in the period 1921-28,
almost double the highest possible figure for Soviet-produced melodrama (which would include literary
and historical pictures with melodramatic content, as well as "pure" melodrama). For a discussion of
Soviet historical pictures, see Youngblood, "'History' on Film: The Historical Melodrama in Early
Soviet Cinema," paper presented at the Inter-University History Film Consortium Conference, London,
1990.
TABLE 4
Soviet Production by Selected Genre, 1926-33
1926-27 1928-29 1930-31 1932-33
Comedy 38 (15%) 34(13%) 23 (9%) 11 9%)

Contemporary Melodrama 52 (21%) 72 28%) 117 47%) 52 42%)
Historical 32 (13%) 17 7%) 3 (1%) 6 (5%)
Revolutionary 48 (20% 42 17%) 28 (11%) 17 14%)
Literary Adaptation 31 (13% 19 (7%) 2 (11%) 2 (2%)
Source (adapted): Youngblood, SC, appendix 2, which is based on Sovetskie khud

Number of titles is followed by percent of total production in parentheses.
Soviet industrialization and collectivization. These h

nearly half of Soviet film production-making for
the public (Table 4). Not surprisingly, there was n
cinema.
The periodical press now consisted of Kino, Kino i kul'tura, and Proletarskoe
kino, the journal of the Association of Workers in Revolutionary Cinematography.
(Proletarskoe kino bore as little relation to Kino-front as the old ARK bore to its
new incarnation, the militantly proletarian ARRK.) These periodicals discussed
movies as little as possible; "campaigns," purges, and slanderous personal attacks
on critics, directors, and scenarists were foremost. When cinema was a topic, it was
usually in the form of a scientific-technical treatise on sound or a tendentious
"sociological" discussion far removed from reality.25 It seems almost superfluous to
add that in 1930-32 the sum total of popular biographies, whether on Soviet or
Western stars, was also-zero. (There were, however, ten titles printed on other
film subjects at this time; see Tables 2 and 3.)
These were dismal days indeed for Soviet cinema, but there were some faint
signs of life. That Dovzhenko's Earth survived, despite the vociferous criticism
directed against it, showed that miracles were still possible. Miracles of a lesser sort
than Earth, but more instructive for understanding the future of Soviet cinema, are
the two genuinely funny comedies that also appeared at the height of the Cultural
Revolution-St. Jorgen's Feast Day (Prazdnik sviatogo Iorgena, Iakov Protazanov,
1930) and Forward (Khabarda, Mikhail Chiaureli, 1931). Although these films were
commissioned as part of the campaign against religion (and Forward is also clearly
an attack on bourgeois specialists), their approach to the mean-spirited material is
less tendentious than light-hearted.
Adding to the interest these films hold as case studies for Soviet cinema in
transition is the fact that their directors could not have been more unalike. Iakov
Protazanov was the scion of a well-to-do Moscow merchant family and the quintes-
sential "bourgeois specialist." An important director in the prerevolutionary cin-
ema, Protazanov emigrated in 1920 and spent three years in France and Germany
making films. In 1923 at the age of forty-two, he returned to the Soviet Union to
25 Kino i kul'tura, however, did not outlive the year 1929. (The only complete run of these journals
available in the U.S. is Proletarskoe kino, which may be found at the Library of Congress.
become the leading director of the Mezhrabpom studio, which specialized in enter-
tainment films. Mikhail Chiaureli, on the other hand, symbolized the opportunities
the Revolution had opened for new talent, especially from the ethnic minorities.
Born in 1894 and educated in Tbilisi, Chiaureli was first a sculptor, then a film
actor, and finally a director.26 The clues as to how two directors from such different
backgrounds survived the upheaval that shattered the lives of so many of their
cohort can be found in these two movies, St. Jorgen's Feast Day and Forward.
St. Jorgen's Feast Day, a charming farce, is based on the Danish writer Harald
Bergstedt's story about a phony miracle two escaped convicts stage at a religious
festival. One of the most versatile (and elegant) actors of the Soviet silent screen,
Anatolii Ktorov, plays the debonair thief Corcoran, who decides to add some zest to
the high holy days by making an appearance as St. Jorgen and claiming the saint's
"bride," the daughter of the local cleric. (The phenomenally popular comedian Igor
Il'inskii was Ktorov's sidekick.) While this picture is not among Protazanov's best, it
is a sophisticated satire that still entertains. The movie was well received, despite its
overt "Westernism," and must have been especially welcomed by audiences.27 The
importance of St. Jorgen's Feast Day in terms of cultural politics is that it demon-
strates that a "bourgeois" director like Protazanov managed to adapt to the Stalin
Revolution, as he had to the Bolshevik Revolution, by careful selection of material,
not by changing his style. The film fits the context of his oeuvre effortlessly.28
Forward provides a different example of popular film-making in transition. It
was Mikhail Chiaureli's second independent feature, the first being his very interest-
ing melodrama Saba (1929), a convincing and moving story of an alcoholic's de-
cline. Forward is even funnier than St. Jorgen's Feast Day, quite amazing consider-
ing that its story line is uncomfortably realistic in the context of the Cultural Revolu-
tion: "reactionaries" attempt to save a church from being razed for a public housing
complex. From an ideological perspective, Forward has the added advantage of
being anti-intellectual as well as antireligious (historians and pseudo historians are
pitted against the "people"). Yet despite this, Forward's characters are so sharply
and wittily drawn that the movie, for the most part, avoids nasty stereotyping, and
Chiaureli displayed a genuine gift for good-humored satire.29 Both Forward and St.
Jorgen's Feast Day succeeded with critics (and presumably with audiences) because
of the skillful way the political theme was combined with conventions of narrative
realism.
As Soviet society began a short-lived period of stabilization and reconstruction
26 Chiaureli was a capable actor with a great deal of screen presence. One of his most famous roles
was Arsen in Ivan Perestiani's first Soviet hit, Arsen Dzhordzhiashveli (1921).
27 Maya Turovskaya and other scholars at the All-Union Scientific Institute for Research in Film
Art (VNIIK) have begun a large-scale study analyzing long-unavailable box office records, so we may
soon have definitive information on the subject of viewer preference.
28 For reviews of this film, see B. Alpers, "Prazdnik sviatogo lorgena," Kino i zhizn 25 (1930):7-8;
and A. V., "Prazdnik sv. Iorgena," Kino 51 (1930):4. For more detail, see Youngblood, "Return of the
Native."
29 A description of Forward can be found in Youngblood, SC, 216; see also Al. Borisov's review
"Khabarda," Proletarskoe kino 4 (1931):57-59.
during the Second Five Year Plan, so did Soviet filmworkers attempt to regroup and
start anew. Avant-garde filmmaking, abstract and intellectual, was no more. Some
members of the avant-garde-Eisenstein, Kuleshov, Pudovkin, and Vertov-saw
their careers disintegrate. Others, like Kozintsev and Trauberg, Room, and
Dovzhenko-managed to adapt to narrative realism and struggled on, enjoying
intermittent successes.30
The popular directors of comedies and melodramas made the transition to
"postrevolutionary" culture and society much more easily than did the avant-garde.
Considering that their work already embodied many of the characteristics of Social-
ist Realism (such as plots, heroes, and realistic techniques), this is not surprising.
While musical comedy provided a safe haven for some (like Eisenstein's assistant
director Grigorii Aleksandrov), others found refuge in the "return to the classics,"
now part of the new "traditionalist" credo of Stalinism. True, the Cultural Revolu-
tion did finish off some of the "bourgeois" old guard, such as Vladimir Gardin, Petr
Chardynin, and Cheslav Sabinskii, who had been active filmmakers since the earli-
est days of Russian cinema. But the king of the bourgeois screen, Iakov Protazanov,
proved himself the consummate survivor-he continued to enjoy great popularity
as an adaptor of literary classics, most notably his 1937 version of Ostrovskii's
Without a Dowry.31
Other directors of popular films in the twenties enjoyed success in the thirties
as well. Boris Barnet, the former member of the Kuleshov collective who directed
spirited little comedies and the satirical adventure serial Miss Mend in the silent
period, made the transition to sound and the new socialist reality look effortless
with his rousing tale of World War I, Borderlands (Okraina, 1933).32 Fridrikh
Ermler, who ended his silent film career in a blaze of notoriety and glory with the
"formalist" masterpiece The Fragment of an Empire, had made his name directing
realistic, contemporary "social problem" melodramas. After the false start of his
first sound film, Counterplan (Vstrechnyi, 1932, codirected with Sergei Iutkevich),
Ermler continued to make powerful and disturbing films on contemporary subjects,
including Peasants (1935) and the infamous The Great Citizen (1938-39).33 The
30 For descriptions of the later work of these directors, see Jay Leyda, Kino: A History of the
Russian and Soviet Film (New York: Macmillan, 1960); and Kenez, "Cultural Revolution." For a very
interesting and provocative reinterpretation of Dovchenko, see Vance Kepley, Jr., In the Service of the
State: The Cinema of Alexander Dovzhenko (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986).
31 Gardin, Chardynin, and Sabinskii receive respectful mention in Soviet film histories in the post-
Stalin period. See, for example, their biographies in the recent reference work Kino: Entsiklopedicheskii
slovar' (Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 1986). Protazanov's secure place in the history of Soviet
cinema is reflected in a full-scale biography, Mikhail Arlazorov, Protazanov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1971)
and in most references to his work in standard Soviet film histories.
32 See the discussion of Borderlands in Kenez, "Cultural Revolution," 431, as well as M. Kushnirov,
Zhizn' ifil'my Borisa Barneta (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1977).
33 On Counterplan, see Kenez, "Cultural Revolution," 432. Kenez notes what a departure Coun-
terplan was from Ermler's previous work; Ermler himself was very unhappy with the theme and very
nearly swore off filmmaking after he completed the picture. See Ermler, "Kak ia stal rezhisserom,"
Iskusstvo kino 7 (1969):133-34, and "Vstrechnyi: Iz dnevnika," Fridrikh Ermler: Dokumenty, stat'i,
vospominaniia, edited by I. V. Sepman (Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1974), 121. (These accounts are discussed
in Youngblood, "Cinema as Social Criticism.")
relative newcomer Mikhail Chiaureli, whose film, Forward, was discussed above,
became one of Stalin's favorite directors, and so represents quite a different kind of
"success story." The course of his later career is well known, and it is almost
impossible to believe that the director of the cinematographically illiterate panegy-
ric to Stalin, The Fall of Berlin (1950), and the director of Saba and Forward, were
one and the same.
A few of the popular directors did, therefore, survive the cataclysm which
befell cinema during the Cultural Revolution and the First Five Year Plan. They
carried on the tradition of the narrative entertainment film. And yet, despite the
fact that "light" films continue to be made in the darkest days of Stalinism-
Grigorii Aleksandrov's pictures, Circus (1936) and Volga Volga (1938), are usually
cited in this regard-it would certainly be an exaggeration to speak of a popular
cinema culture in the USSR from the mid-thirties to the mid-fifties.34 Film-goers no
longer had any real choice; they now saw what the state wanted them to see.35
The lack of diversity was also reflected in film criticism and film history, which
were as debased as filmmaking in the High Stalinist period. Differences of interpre-
tation were simply impossible; those who deviated, like Nikolai Lebedev in his
brilliant 1948 history of the Soviet silent film, were denounced.36 Until Gorbachev
in fact, serious critiques in Iskusstvo kino (which replaced Proletarskoe kino in the
thirties) were so rare that it is difficult to imagine that anyone actually read the
journal.37
Whom did the Stalin Revolution in cinema serve? Was this a "revolution from
below?"38 It certainly did not serve the urban audiences who formed the majority of
the movie-going public; all evidence of viewer preferences that we have strongly
indicates that both working-class and "bourgeois" audiences liked the same enter-
34 Richard Taylor, who is presently working on a history of popular cinema in the thirties, disagrees.
For some of his preliminary findings, see "A 'Cinema for the Millions': Soviet Socialist Realism and the
Problem of Film Comedy," Journal of Contemporary History 18 (July 1983):439-61; and idem, "Boris
Shumyatsky and the Soviet Cinema in the 1930s: Ideology as Mass Entertainment," Historical Journal of
Film, Radio, and Television 6 (1986): 43-64.
35 Despite the drastic decline in film production, movie attendance during the thirties rose quite
dramatically. According to Maya Turovskaya, it was not uncommon for viewers to see the same film six
or more times.
36 Nikolai Lebedev, Ocherk istorii kino SSSR, vol. 1, Nemoe kino (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1948).
Lebedev, one of the founders of ARK and a documentary filmmaker in the twenties, was denounced for
"cosmopolitanism," and the second volume of the history, which was to have dealt with the sound
period, never appeared.
37 Of course, there have been exceptions. In addition to Lebedev, cited above, see T. F. Selezneva,
Kinomysl' 1920-kh godov (Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1972); and Neia Zorkaia, Na rubezhe stoletii u istokov
massovogo iskusstva v Rossii, 1900-1910 (Moscow: Nauka, 1976). A number of valuable documentary
collections have also appeared in the past thirty years, both in Iskusstvo kino and in book form.
38 This is a hotly debated issue for the period as a whole. Sheila Fitzpatrick, of course, has argued in
Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921-1934 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1979) and The Russian Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982) that the Stalin Revolution
received massive support "from below," from those members of the working class who expected to
benefit from increased opportunities for social mobility. For one of the most recent discussions of the
question, see the commentary by Fitzpatrick, Stephen F. Cohen, Peter Kenez, Geoff Eley, and Alfred
G. Meyer in The Russian Review 45 (October 1986): 357-413.
the movie-going public; all evidence of viewer preferences that we have strongly
indicates that both working-class and "bourgeois" audiences liked the same enter-
tainment films. We see no "revolution from below" among this admittedly select
segment of the Soviet population.
The Stalin Revolution just as certainly did not serve the directors who were
"big names" in the twenties. Those who did retain their positions, like Protazanov
and Ermler, seem to have had little taste for the ideology of cultural revolution. The
Stalin Revolution did, however, enable directors like Grigorii Aleksandrov, Sergei
Gerasimov, and many others to advance. It was supported, therefore, by some of
the less talented in the film community who resented the money given to bourgeois
directors like Protazanov and the glory accorded avant-garde directors like Eisen-
stein. It is also important to remember that many members of the cinema avant-
garde supported the attack on entertainment films and urged greater centralization
and control over the arts throughout the twenties-assuming, wrongly as it turned
out, that they would be the beneficiaries. In this very qualified sense, then, the
Stalin Revolution in cinema could be considered a revolution "from below."39
The First Five Year Plan and the Cultural Revolution had a profoundly nega-
tive effect on Soviet cinema. Not only the immortals like Eisenstein were victims.
Those directors who made the entertainment pictures that were truly for the masses
were affected in equal measure, and the audiences that loved these films suffered
accordingly. The progressive and persistent devaluation of cinema that occurred at
this time-epitomized by the catastrophic decline in production and importation
from 233 new titles in 1926 to 35 in 1933-gives lie to Lenin's frequently repeated
dictum that "cinema is for us the most important of all arts."
39 This represents a modification of my earlier view. In SC, I argued that the evolution of Soviet
cinema in the twenties supported the belief that the Stalin Revolution was a revolution "from below," as
well as "from above," based on considerable support from film industry rank-and-file for the changes.
That conclusion, while justifiable within the context of the film industry, ignored the spectator almost
entirely.

The Fate of Popular Soviet Cinema Under Stalin

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Fate of Popular Soviet Cinema Under Stalin

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Fate of Soviet Popular Cinema during the Stalin Revolution

Author(s): Denise J. Youngblood

movie-lovers like Commissar of Enlightenment Anatolii Lunacharskii and So

The Russian Review, vol. 50, April 1991, pp. 148-162

1926-27 55 1,479,650 11 250,000

Source: Data based

Most films of Soviet production never made it to first-

8 Before April 1926 Kino-front was called Kino-zhurnal ARK.

Film Books Other than Biographies Published in the USSR, 1926-32

1926-27 1928-29 1930-32

Source: Knigi o kino. Pr

10 Kepley and Keple

New Films Shown in the USSR, 1926-33

Foreign Soviet Total

12 See, for exam

Antiforeign propaganda and unrealistic production schemes had been aired

Soviet Production by Selected Genre, 1926-33

1926-27 1928-29 1930-31 1932-33

Comedy 38 (15%) 34(13%) 23 (9%) 11 9%)

Source (adapted): Youngblood, SC, appendix 2, which is based on Sovetskie khud

Soviet industrialization and collectivization. These h

You might also like