Consumption, Markets and Culture

Vol. 7, No. 1, March 2004, pp. 53–68

Post-Soviet Russian Film and the

Trauma of Globalization
Yana Hashamova

In this paper the author discusses how in post-Soviet times, after years of communal
0hashamova@hotmail.com
Department
YanaHashamova
00000March
Consumption ofMarkets
2004
Slavic
10.1080/1025386042000168000
GCMC041003.sgm
1025-3866
Original
Taylor
712004 &Article
Francis Ltd Languages
(Print)/1477-223X and Literatures232 Cunz Hall, 1841 Millikin Road, The Ohio State UniversityColumbusOH 43210
and Culture
(Online)

property and existence, Russia has reacted and adjusted itself toward the global expansion
of Western capital with all the consequences of that process. The analysis focuses on three
films, Mikhalkov’s The Barber of Siberia (1999), Fruntov’s All That of Which We’ve
Dreamed So Long (1997), and Balabanov’s Of Freaks and Men (1998), which in differ-
ent, very desperate ways illustrate Russia’s economic and cultural ambivalence towards
Western economic and cultural growth. The paper pursues the cultural manifestations of
the cost of a psychological crisis exacted at the level of both society and the individual.

Keywords: Imagined World; Globalization; New Colonialism; Depression; Nostalgia for

the Past and Religion; Vulgar Economy; Rejection of Western Values; Westernization vs.
Russianization

Over the last two centuries, Russia has continually surprised the world. This country
produced Dostoevsky and Nabokov, Stravinsky and Shostakovich, Tarkovsky and
Mikhalkov—all alongside Lenin and Stalin. It implemented Marxist theories—the first
in the world to do so—much to Marx’s own disbelief in that country’s readiness for
revolution. Ready or not the October Revolution shook the world with its attempt to
liberate people from their idols (money, property, and religion) and in its own way
prepared the postmodern rearrangement of knowledge by questioning all traditions. In
this text I discuss how in post-Soviet times, after years of communal property and exist-
ence, Russia has reacted and adjusted itself toward the global expansion of Western
capital with all the consequences of that process. My analysis focuses on three films,
Nikita Mikhalkov’s The Barber of Siberia (1999), Rudol’f Fruntov’s All That of Which

Correspondence to: Yana Hashamova, Assistant Professor of Slavic, Film, and Comparative Studies, Department
of Slavic Languages and Literatures, 232 Cunz Hall, 1841 Millikin Road, The Ohio State University, Columbus,
OH 43210, USA. E-mail: hashamova@hotmail.com

ISSN 1025-3866 (print)/ISSN 1477-223X (online) © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/1025386042000212392
54 Y. Hashamova
We’ve Dreamed So Long (1997), and Aleksei Balabanov’s Of Freaks and Men (1998),
which in different, very desperate ways illustrate Russia’s economic and cultural
ambivalence towards Western economic and cultural growth.
Two remarks about terms and concepts used in this study should be made here.
First, I construct a working definition of the West as an imagined world—culturally,
politically, and economically imaginary—which the Russian collective mind situates
beyond the Iron Curtain.1 Second, globalization has been generally understood as the
unparalleled expansion of transnational capital advanced by the collapse of the Soviet-
style socialism (Kang 1998). But globalization also sets up the structural framework for
analyzing what happens in today’s world and therefore, it is used here in more precise
(dialectical) terms: it refers to an ideology of the global (capitalist) market dictated by
the West and mainly by the United States—the triumphant “winner” of the Cold War
and the unchallenged superpower in the world—which determines the regulations not
only for free trade but also for moral and cultural values (Kapur 1998).
Recently several scholars have addressed the overwhelming political, economic, and
cultural changes in Russian society since the reforms of 1991/92. Nancy Condee and
Vladimir Padunov, for example, describe the transformations of the city landscape
“from a totalitarian culture in ruins to a consumer culture in disarray” (Condee and
Padunov 1995, 131). They conclude that “the spread of visualization—together with
the culture of titillation” has now affected all aspects of Russian culture and society
(ibid., 151). In the introduction to the collection of essays, Consuming Russia, Adele
Marie Barker centers more on the recent situation Russia finds itself in vis-à-vis the
West: “Like Russia itself, this new popular culture finds itself torn between its own heri-
tage and that of the West, between its revulsion with the past and its nostalgic desire to
re-create the markers of it, between the lure of the lowbrow and the pressures to return
to the elitist pre-Revolutionary past” (Barker 1999, 5). While these scholars (among
others to whom I will refer later) discuss at length cultural and social changes caused
by the collapse of the Soviet system and the recent reforms towards democratization, I
focus primarily on how film represents Russia’s economic and cultural relationship to
the West, and more importantly, I pursue the cultural manifestations of the cost of a
psychological crisis exacted at the level of both society and the individual.2 The films
discussed below reveal Russia’s attempt to cope with these crises and uncover a set of
reactions that I identify as anxieties and defenses. These responses range from the
cautious acceptance of the West, to a nostalgia for Russia’s glorious past and the Dosto-
evskian return to religion, to the ultimate rejection of capitalist values.

The West and Russia: Globalization or New Colonialism?

After Peter the Great, and especially in the nineteenth century, Russian intellectuals
engaged in heated debates over the construction of Russian identity in relation to
the West. The so-called Westerners and Slavophiles argued about the authenticity of
the Russian mind and spirit; the former advocated Western values as a way to
Russian modernization, and the latter rejected them in trying to preserve a unique
“Russianness.”3
 Consumption, Markets and Culture 55
The West did not have a very clear vision of Russia either. Karl Marx, for instance,
was very ambivalent in his attitude towards Russia. In the 1850s he reminded Europe
of Russia’s territorial gains since Peter the Great and warned that unless Russia was
stopped, it would engulf and barbarize the whole Continent (Bloom 1967, 154). At that
time he firmly denied the possibility for revolution in Russia because of its backward
economic development. Marx’s argument was entirely motivated by his hatred of czar-
ism and his theory of the revolution. Later on, however, in the 1860s Marx changed his
views and considered the possibility that a revolution could begin in the East and
spread westward (ibid., 160). He engaged in a drastic reevaluation of his early beliefs of
the natural phases of revolution and the natural historical process on the basis of the
Russian question.
Despite its backwardness and lack of advanced capitalism, however, the Russian
Revolution occurred and succeeded in eliminating private property and establishing a
new modern form of collectivism. The attempt to preserve Russian identity and
economic independence from the “pollution” of Western ideas and capital was revived
during the Soviet period in the form of economic isolation and ideological censorship.
After WWII the gap in the relations between the USSR and the West widened and
the Soviet Union mercilessly attacked Western wealth and economic development. The
West began to recover from the war and became more and more prosperous and
attractive, whereas the Soviet Union, even after having won the war, could not improve
living standards. Mikhail Epstein, describing Soviet economic development, points
out: “How we labored from the twenties to the fifties before becoming lazy in the
sixties! Day and night, to bloody blisters and an early grave, we burned to work, as they
used to say about zealous laborers. But this didn’t make us wealthy, even so” (Epstein
1995, 164). Under these circumstances Soviet ideology demonized Western
opulence—lustrous cars, elegant suits, and gleaming windows—because it was
perceived as signifying the immorality of an unjust society and because almost every
Soviet citizen living in a communal apartment, trying for years to save for a car,
dreamed of these Western standards.4 With undying energy Russian periodicals
pointed out the capitalist unemployment, poverty, and exploitation. And naturally the
more official Russian ideology demonized the West, the more ordinary Russians fanta-
sized about it.
The collapse of communism and the recent attempts to democratize Russia after
1991 brought both surprises and disappointments for the West and the former Soviet
countries. Slavoj Zizek writes: “The passage from actually existing Socialism to actually
existing capitalism in Eastern Europe brought about a series of comic reversals of
sublime democratic enthusiasm into the ridiculous” (Zizek 2000, 205). The West
impatiently waited for and instigated democratic changes in Russia and Eastern
Europe, because it wanted political pluralism and free-market economies, that is, new
territory for expansion of its capital. However, from the West’s perspective, it encoun-
tered only corruption, unstable economies, ethnic conflicts, and nationalist obsessions.
The Eastern Europeans in turn, after idolizing and dreaming of prosperous democra-
cies, have faced merciless unemployment and poverty as well as cultural and economic
colonization.
56 Y. Hashamova
After the collapse of communism, Russia’s glossy magazines, such as Money, Power,
and Career lure Russian readers with temptations of the “American Dream.” They
display commercials, which present to the Russian consumer all the enticements avail-
able in the West—imported cigarettes, fashionable clothing, cars, computers, mobile
phones, and cameras. Moreover, they tell stories of young successful Russians, almost
always males, who in their mid-twenties become millionaires; they enlighten Russians
on the pleasures of playing golf; teach them how to dress businesslike and obsess about
beauty, attractiveness, and style; rank the best European colleges and universities where
Russians could send their children to study; and offer Russians housing that could only
have been, not long ago, a distant dream. All the “achievements” of capitalism that were
demonized by the Soviet regime—thereby stoking the fantasies of the people for those
very things—now are aggressively made available via magazines, films, and the Inter-
net. Their dreams have almost come true.
Russian reality, however, pokes gaping holes in these fantastic magazine pictures
offering to fulfill the not long ago forbidden dreams of Western excess. Dreams, in the
light of certain realities, have a way of manifesting as nightmares: i.e. the big bellies and
stout necks of the former apparatchiks (members of the communist party apparatus)
and recent criminals, their BMWs and golden chains, the crime and violence in Russian
streets. The fulfillment of dreams does indeed come with a price. The stories of imme-
diate success and shiny extravagance usually obscure illegal manipulations, criminal
activities, crime, and violence. For most Russians such extravagance has become repul-
sive and alienating, and even worse, now it does not belong to “the other,” to the West;
it’s their own, a living, breathing part of Russian society.
In the second half of the 1990s consumer culture was settling steadily in Russia and
creating a class of “new Russians” who talk more about Toyota and Nissan than about
Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and who “are yearning not for tickets to attend a Tarkovsky
retrospective but for a vacation in the Bahamas” (Dondurei 1996, 275). At the same
time the majority of Russians, although watching a lot of Western soap operas and
Hollywood films on TV, can only dream of tasting a burger at McDonald’s and feel
threatened by global cultural flows.5 While the Russian elite can take full advantage of
global mobility and culture, most Russians can only imagine the rewards of globaliza-
tion and experience merely the frustrations presented by Hollywood films. Stiglitz, a
professor of economics who shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economic Science,
pinpoints: “the traffic jam of Mercedes in a country with a per capita income of $4,730
(as it was in 1997) is a sign of a sickness, not health” (Stiglitz 2002, 154). In this context
a majority of Russians perceive globalization as the new colonialism of economic and
cultural modes of life by Western corporations in complicity with corrupt Russian
politicians and businessmen. In reverting to traditional Russian values and national
passions the anxious Russian imagination finds security and rehabilitation of its
wounded existence.
According to Melanie Klein, against the overwhelming anxiety of obliteration, the
ego employs a variety of defense mechanisms, a main one being to introject the good
and to project negativity onto an object, creating a bad “hateful object.” If one analyzes
the Cold War situation in the light of Klein’s theory of splitting and projection, one can
 Consumption, Markets and Culture 57
see how, during the Soviet period, Russian official ideology projected negativity
towards the West and thus idealized its own society as adhering to the collective aspi-
ration of the ideals of socialism. Now with the processes of democratization, when
Russia opened its borders and welcomed Western capital, these negative attitudes and
aggression are withdrawn, even internalized. The projections have withdrawn and a
relatively more realistic picture of the world has developed. This internalizing of nega-
tivity, which Klein calls “the depressive position,” is painful and traumatic. It brings on
a kind of depression. Persuasively Hanna Segal analyzes the Western behavior of split-
ting and projection in her book, Psychoanalysis, Literature, and War. She pinpoints that
now after the end of the Cold War the West has internalized negativity too, but has
developed new manic defenses such as triumphalism and megalomania (Segal 1997,
157–69). To be able to cope with its trauma, Russian society has re-embraced tradi-
tional Russian values, the most significant of them being the transcendental power of
love, faith, and especially dukhovnost (spirituality). I argue that Russia is developing
different defenses from those of the West, namely, the retreat to traditional Russian
values.
Other scholars also have noted this nostalgic longing for the values of the past. In his
work on “cults” and postmodernism in post-Soviet Russia, Eliot Borenstein suggests a
similar social and cultural reaction. He argues that on the one hand the ideological
struggles of the new religious movements and the old establishment (the government
and the Orthodox Church) lead to further relativism, but on the other to an unex-
pected unity: “All parties to the debate speak the same language: a language that
combines nostalgia for a long-lost, mythical past and strong faith in the supernatural
…” (Borenstein 1999, 456). While I am in agreement with Borenstein’s observations
and findings, I insist that along this path of the nostalgic longing for the past Russia has
begun to construct a cultural space, manifested partly in the films discussed below,
which contains symbolic representations of national fears and anxieties, and which
helps in the process of adjustment in the context of global economy and culture. In
other words, I argue that this cultural space shaped in part by the films helps viewers
cope with the trauma of globalization. If one relies on Klein’s theory of the “depressive
position,” one would understand the importance of this symbolic space, which
emerges to contain the depression. These films, it seems to me, in various ways recog-
nize and deal with the depression.

Nostalgic Longing for the Past

The latest film by Mikhalkov, The Barber of Siberia, skillfully constructs the above-
mentioned symbolic space, which reacts to the trauma of globalization. The film
manifests a new stage of the incomprehensible love-hate romance between Russia and
the West. As a French-Russian production, the film reveals the French infatuation
with the exotic and unknown Russia and the inherent desire of Russians to impress the
West with Russia’s magnificence and unique “Russianness.” It is 1905, Springfield,
Massachusetts, and Jane Callahan (Julia Ormond) writes to her son, a cadet in a mili-
tary academy. Her memories take viewers 20 years back when she was in czarist Russia,
58 Y. Hashamova
circa 1885, on a mission helping the distressed inventor and her friend McCracken
(Richard Harris) raise funds to finish building a steam-driven forest-harvesting
machine, which he hoped would be successful and make him rich. There she met two
men, a passionate, sensitive, and handsome young cadet Andrei Tolstoi (Oleg
Menshikov) and a powerful almost tyrannical General Radlov (Aleksei Petrenko), who
are enchanted by her beauty. Andrei and Jane spend a passionate night of love. But
later Andrei overhears Jane denying her interest in him to the General who, she hopes,
will secure the finances for her friend’s forest-harvesting machine, the “barber.”
Distraught, Tolstoi attacks the General who arrests his young rival on false charges and
exiles him to Siberia. Years later Jane accompanies McCracken, whom in the mean-
time she has married, on a trip to Siberia and there she looks for Andrei.
This opening film of the 52nd Cannes International Film Festival, anxiously
expected by critics and audience, presents a not very complex or persuasive Russian-
style love story. The director Mikhalkov, who won an Oscar for his Burnt by the Sun,
and who is one of the most famous Russian directors in Russia and abroad, turned
the release of this film into a major media event. Julian Graffy writes about the high
hopes and intense anticipations: “Here was a film that would restore national self-
esteem and re-invigorate cinema-going in Mikhalkov’s native land, as well as explain
the enigmas of Russian identity to expectant Western audiences, perhaps even pick-
ing up the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film on the way” (Graffy
2000, 39). Despite the fact that the film did not meet all these expectations, it
became very popular in Russia and offers interesting material for the purpose of this
analysis.
At times Mikhalkov’s visual work is spectacular: presenting for instance the
Russian spring festival, Maslenitsa, voluptuously celebrating life, and capturing a
sense of magnificence and mayhem that best defines the soul of Mother Russia.
Following his undying desire to boost the Russian national self-esteem and to
impress the Western audience with Russia’s wonders, the director presents beautiful
scenery consisting of birch forests (recognized from folklore and literature as a
Russian national symbol) and historically famous Moscow landmarks. But he fails to
incorporate these shots into the story, and even though stunning, they remain distant
and even unnecessary.
Mikhalkov portrays the love story a little better, for his talent lies in building
dramatic tension and focusing on details—all features of his previous, more successful,
films. In their honest feelings and misunderstandings Andrei and Jane represent not
only two human beings disparately seeking happiness, but also two countries in search
of a happy relationship.6 Even though the comic adventures of the American inventor
interrupt the love romance, they suggest a different kind of romantic adventure, a
scientific and economic one. Years later when Jane goes to Siberia she and her husband
are there to test his “barber.” She wants to see Tolstoi but realizes that it is too late to
enter his life. Though the love story fails, there is hope for an economic adventure
between Russia and the West. The film hints at the vast opportunities that Russia can
offer to the West. McCracken brings his invention exclusively to Russia with hopes that
there his dreams would materialize and he would become rich.7
 Consumption, Markets and Culture 59
Despite Mikhalkov’s desire to promote romantic love and ideals, this almost fairytale
love story between the West and Russia does not end in a happy marriage. Viewers
detect here the desire of these two worlds to blissfully unite but at the end they see on
the screen only soldiers: the Russian cadet, Andrei Tolstoi, and his son from the
passionate night spent with Jane, the American cadet, Andrew. It seems, however, that
Andrew has inherited from his Russian father the love for Mozart and remarkable
integrity evident in his refusal to lie about his beliefs. He is punished to run all day with
a gas mask because he refuses to denounce Mozart, similar to his father who was exiled
for his love for Jane.
In the attempt to please the West and America on one hand and to idealize the
Russian past, Orthodoxy, even czarism on the other, Mikhalkov creates some uncon-
vincing characters and confusing episodes. The film is dedicated to the Russian cadets’
high morals, their heroism, and loyalty to the czar and the country. The Russian cadets,
friends of Andrei Tolstoi, are fluent in English and exhibit excellent ball manners but
their function in the film is reduced merely to that—ball manners. More attentive
viewers notice that the American military officer is more considerate—admitting
defeat and declaring “Mozart is a great composer”—and treats his cadets better than
his Russian counterpart, General Radlov, who sends Tolstoi to Siberia on false charges
and who is portrayed as a narcissistic idiot and a drunk. Not surprisingly, the film
received mixed and even contradictory responses. Julian Graffy states: “[i]ts greatest
appeal will surely be to Russian audiences so exhausted by their recent troubles that
they will embrace any lazy reiteration of warmed-over cliché” (Graffy 2000, 40). It is
true that the wonderful scenery and period detail of Mikhalkov’s work proved popular
in Russia. However, some Russian viewers were angered by the evident desire of the
director to create a film not so much for Russians but for Americans.8 These contradic-
tory expectations and responses actually reinforce the feeling that the imaginary desire
to bond both worlds still stumbles onto the real.
Mikhalkov situates the presentation of positive national ideals in the historical
context of the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. Not
infrequently he has expressed his disappointment with the recent state of Russian film
production, which focuses on violence, sex, prostitutes, and killers. He insists that
cinema should promote ideals and create heroes as he refers to Lenin’s famous defini-
tion of cinema as the most important art: “Cinema was nominated as the most impor-
tant of all arts because it was capable of shaping the consciousness of the masses. It was
an art, because it was clear even then that it was not only a document, but an artistic
illusion, a myth, if you like, capable of facilitating the creation of a model for a new soci-
ety, and for a hero which the state and the authorities needed at a particular time”
(Mikhalkov 1999, 50). Mikhalkov continues clarifying that serving the Fatherland does
not necessarily mean serving a regime.
Homi Bhabha aptly articulates the importance of the presentation of the nation as a
temporal process (Bhabha 1999, 211–19). Bhabha directs attention to Bakhtin who
also emphasizes “the necessity of the past and the necessity of its place in a line of
continuous development … finally the aspect of the past being linked to the necessary
future” (Bakhtin 1986, 36). Mikhalkov, being disappointed in the dark hopeless film
60 Y. Hashamova
representation of Russia’s current reality, not only offers aspects of the past but ideal-
izes this past in order to construct a more optimistic necessary future. Tony Wood is
frustrated by this idealization of the past and writes: “The Barber of Siberia is [also]
marred by its failure to confront the unpleasant aspects of the period in which it is set,
the reign of the reactionary Alexander III” (Wood 2000, 22). In Mikhalkov’s own
words, this film is “not about how things were but about how things should be”
(quoted in Graffy 2000, 40). Positive characteristics, such as faith, honor, and self-
sacrifice, ascribed to the past are evoked for the purpose of the necessary future. One
senses the director’s desire to view the West in a positive romantic light (or perhaps to
flirt with it) and only the distance of the glorious Russian past makes this possible.

Resurrection of Old Values

The presentation of Russian Westernization is not idealized but mercilessly unveiled
in Fruntov’s All That of Which We’ve Dreamed So Long, a much more modest and
not so popular film, which nevertheless offers its interpretation of the Westernization
or rather the realization of Russian dreams of the West. The theme of the seductive
and destructive power of money lies at the heart of this film. It tells a story about a
young man (Nikolai Dobrynin) who after military service is torn between life devoid
of opportunity and his dreams of success, money, and Western cars. Unexpectedly he
meets an old friend who offers him a huge amount of money to do a “job.” The
young man, overconfident in his abilities, jumps at the opportunity to fulfill his
dreams. He is given a new car and is asked to drive it from Germany to Russia with-
out stopping on the way. But while still in Germany he is lured off-course by the first
striptease bar he sees. After a while he picks out a girl (Anna Terekhova) who by his
estimation is 100 percent German. The “hero” pays for her and enters her room to
discover that she is actually Russian. Very disappointed at this, he wants his money
back. He begins to fight and is arrested. The drugs discovered in his car make his
situation worse. The prostitute, determined to help him, often visits him in prison,
and develops a plan for his escape. After some adventures they reunite in the free
world and he falls in love with her. The viewer learns that she has become a prosti-
tute not of her own choice but is a victim of trafficking in women.9 More impor-
tantly, she is religious and leads the young man to the local Orthodox Church. He
has a cathartic experience at his first church visit and is then baptized. The audience
witnesses his transformation: through the prostitute’s love, he discovers the path
toward happiness and God. In one of the rare media discussions on the film the
Russian journalist, Elena Volkova, unmistakably unveils the main protagonist’s
search for religious faith and love as she alludes to the Russian youth’s similar
pursuits (Volkova 1996).
The film intrigues with its numerous references to Crime and Punishment, references
at work on multiple levels. The director seems to promote the very unique Dosto-
evskian religious philosophy that the path to God, salvation, and peace is found only
after committing crime and suffering because of it. The story line offers a modern inter-
pretation of Raskolnikov’s crimes and Sonia’s spiritual and healthy influence over him.
 Consumption, Markets and Culture 61
After committing crimes they’re tormented by, Raskolnikov and Sonia both begin their
journey on the true path to God. In this film the young characters are both victims of
the dim Western reality, and, after having sinned, they, especially the young girl, find
spiritual strength and salvation in Orthodox faith. The film discretely juxtaposes tradi-
tional Russian Orthodox values to Western ethics. In a small German town, the Russian
Orthodox Church morally supports and guides the characters and the Russian priest
acts as their spiritual leader. Several scenes show the young girl’s visits to the church,
her prayers, and her consultation with the priest who is portrayed calm, friendly, and
accepting. The viewer is persuaded of the noble and innocent nature of the Russian
characters. They have merely become victims of the corrupt Western world. Also, the
final scene of the film begins with a long shot of a seacoast and continues with a
medium shot of the male protagonist standing at a high shore. The camera shows him
contemplatively looking at the sea and then throwing his gun in the water. The reader
recalls here the Epilogue of Crime and Punishment in which Raskolnikov stands on the
high bank of a river and thoughtfully looks at the “wide deserted river.” The film ends
with a close-up of the character’s eyes and his voice-over saying: “Forgive us you all
whom we have caused pain. Blessed is your sleep and the joy of your awakening.”10
Here the viewer is reminded of the scripture asking for forgiveness and salvation, which
appeared after the first scene showing military exercises. The scripture moment is
sudden and out of context and can easily be missed, but with the last voice-over the
director noticeably establishes a religious framework and situates the problem in
the realm of Russian Orthodoxy and Dostoevsky. The final moment is a long shot of
the rippled water circling the sinking gun. The visual representation of the character’s
determination to break with his criminal life and the voice-over connecting this deter-
mination to religious wisdom evokes the final paragraph of Crime and Punishment:
“And here begins a new story, a story of the ongoing renewal of a man, a story of his
continuing rebirth …”
At the beginning of the film the influence of Western money is presented as corrupt-
ing the souls and bodies of young Russians. The young man offers himself for sale and,
with the money he receives, pays for the girl in the bar. Clearly the capital (money)
coming from the West turns the Russian spirit and the Russian people into commodi-
ties. The transformation of capital to money follows Marx’s formula M(oney)-
C(ommodity)-M(oney), in which people stand for commodity. To this vulgar economy
Russians answer with Dostoevsky, with their faith in “Russianness” and in salvation.
Marx argues that in the capitalist mode of production, there is a veil of mystery over
commodities that hide their true character. In religion the same thing occurs. Men
create Gods and then so much mystery surrounds these Gods that men become domi-
nated by Gods (Marx 1886, 32–34). It seems that in this film the characters attempt to
escape or avoid the mysterious and corruptive nature of the commodities relation, but
they seek other mysteries, those of God and spirituality. In both cases—the world of reli-
gion or commodities—appearance and illusion pose as reality, whereas reality becomes
hidden. In the passage from the conditions of vulgar economy to religious faith one
notices the denial of the real, which becomes too unbearable and traumatic after the
rapid Westernization and capitalization.
62 Y. Hashamova
Russia and a World Crisis

In his film, Of Freaks and Men, Balabanov suggests a more realistic and mature picture
of the economic and cultural relations between the West and Russia. This is not to say
that this picture does not hide surprising twists and insights, which I will disclose in the
analysis that follows. The director deliriously combines the perverse themes of sado-
masochism, the sex-life of Siamese twins, and the early production of pornography into
a style that evokes both the Russian literary tradition and cinema pastiche.
The beginning of the porno cards industry at the turn of the twentieth century in
St. Petersburg is launched with a few episodes reminding the viewers of the silent-film
and soon shifting to sepia-tinted sound. The life of two Chekhovian families is gradu-
ally introduced. Dr Stasov has adopted Siamese twins—the boys, Kolia and Tolia—and
lives with his blind wife, Ekaterina Kirillovna, and their maid, Daria. Radlov, a wealthy
widowed engineer, lives with their maid, Grunia, and his quiet daughter, Liza. There is
also Johann, secret-brother of Grunia, who has lived in the West and returned to
Petersburg where he kick-starts the porno industry. Imperceptibly the story lines
merge and Balabanov’s film shifts from Chekhov’s tranquil tone to the fiendish mode
of important Russian novels of that time, Solugub’s Petty Demon (1905) and Bely’s
Petersburg (1913–14). Johann’s lucrative pornography business expands and he
embraces the innovation of moving pictures, after which his industry makes an evolu-
tionary leap. After the engineer dies of a heart attack his daughter, determinedly curi-
ous, is coerced by Johann into starring in the homemade porno films in which Johann’s
nanny plays the dominatrix, while Viktor Ivanovich, Johann’s henchman, seduces
Ekaterina Kirillovna to participate in the same porno-pictures. The twins are also
moved into the apartment after being photographed in the nude by Viktor Ivanovich
and are forced into performing a musical novelty act. The story of carnality and cruelty
continues. One of the twins, Kolia, becomes Liza’s lover and the other one, Tolia, takes
to drink, to die of it at the end of the film. Johann has an epileptic fit at the death of his
nanny, and the twins kill Viktor Ivanovich. Putilov, Johann’s photographer, and Liza
separately head for the West and the twins for the East.
In this grim black comedy with outrageous turns of events it becomes immediately
clear that the male power abuses the female and the child’s body and transforms human
relations into relations of things. Marx defines this transformation as commodity
fetishism and insists that it occurs when social relations between men assume the
fantastic form of the relation between things (Marx 1886, 27). In this film ominous
human nature and money come together to expose the mechanisms of capitalist rela-
tions aided by human drives for both domination and, paradoxically, submission.
The gaze of power orchestrates the field of vision and victimizes women and children
whose bodies and pains produce surplus value. Johann quietly and impassively enjoys
the results of his perverse industry. He photographs people, corrupts their souls, and
kills those that obstruct his deeds—with all of these acts taking on the shared signifi-
cance of murder.
There is complexity at work in the situation of the victimized women in Of Freaks
and Men. The film explores the exploitation of women and children but the male gaze
 Consumption, Markets and Culture 63
remains strangely distant. In the porno-pictures women actually beat other women.
Many scenes suggest homoerotic pleasures. The only time Johann enjoys the objects of
his production is when he observes the twins. Neither Johann, nor any other of the
male characters expresses any desire for physical contact or engages in any sexual rela-
tion with the naked women. Pleasure, if any, is experienced only voyeuristically. The
men in power are fatally weak. Johann reveals a pathological attachment to his half-
senile nanny and her death causes his epileptic fit. Viktor Ivanovich in turn shows a
dubious curiosity about the conjoined “freaks.”
Oddly, women willingly participate in their own victimization. Ekaterina Kirillovna
dislikes her husband, Dr Stasov, and meets Viktor Ivanovich’s pitiless sexual advances
with quiet acceptance. She quickly becomes one of the characters on the porno-
pictures. Liza also takes part in the pictures without being physically forced into it, and
when Putilov confesses his love to her and tells her that he will save her, she firmly
replies, “It’s too late.” Women readily engage in this exploitive enterprise and willingly
remain there. There is another ironic twist here: the marginalized women in life like the
nanny and the maid Daria, assume the dominating position in the pictures; they are the
dominatrixes. The film distressingly implies that women derive masochistic pleasure
from the humiliation and abuse to which they are subjected before the gaze.
Not surprisingly, as in the film All That of Which We’ve Dreamed So Long, characters
in Of Freaks and Men unmistakably recount Dostoevsky’s dark and ruptured world.
One discerns the presence of the imponderable and emotionally sterile Stavrogin in
some of Johann’s manifestations; of the kind soul of Prince Myshkin imprisoned in the
corrupt dealings of the world in the character of Putilov; of Svidrigailov, the violator of
young girls in both Johann’s and Viktor Ivanovich’s abuse of female bodies; and of
Grushenka from Brothers Karamazov, who is at times soft and teasing and at times
malevolent in the character of Liza. Sergei Astakhov’s sepia-photography also helps to
paint a dark picture of the world sunk in archaism and primitive drives.
The nostalgic longing for the past and the resurrection of old values are not only
abandoned here but undoubtedly mocked. This film reminds the Russian viewer not
of Dostoevskian faith and salvation but of his discoveries of the dark and irrational
sides of human nature. Balabanov masterfully destroys all expectations. He ironically
subverts social structures: servants take over the households and control the lives of
their masters; the emerging profane proletariat takes over the production of culture
and replaces the educated class; freaks reveal more human characteristics than people
who express freaky nature; high culture is transformed into low culture.11 Balabanov
decisively reduces the high canon of Russian culture to the level of cinema, employing
the music of Musorgsky and Prokofiev, and showing sinister and ugly monstrosities
under the veil of some of the most magnificent St. Petersburg buildings. The music
score also undermines traditional expectations. While the musical motives belong to
the Russian classical tradition, Prokofiev’s melodies belong to a later period of the
twentieth century, which is associated more with the Soviet period.
One can argue here that such a subversive state of Russian society and culture
emerged both at the beginning and at the end of the twentieth century. With this
critique of social structures Balabanov revisits Marx’s idea of the capitalist mode of
64 Y. Hashamova
production as a historically determined form in which definite social relations emerge.
The film uncovers social relations which are far from definite and determined. The
explicit presence of subversive social structures also connects the two periods of
Russian history. The first decade of the collapse of the Soviet system produced unex-
pected changes in the social structure of Russian society. Here Homi Bhabha’s insis-
tence on the study of nation as narration again sheds light on this repetitive return to
the past and the desire to unite past, present, and future as knowledge of cultural signi-
fication. However, in this film the past is not idealized but presented very real with its
dark and destructive manifestations. Of the three films discussed in this paper Of Freaks
and Men is the only one that attempts acceptance of the traumatic real without denial
and escapism.
Narrative title cards, very much like those of silent films tie all characters and events
together. Only scenes showing the persistent oncoming train interrupt them. The
image of the train is so persistent that the viewer is not only invited but forced to think
of the Western industrial advancements and the Russian position toward Western
expansion. Not accidentally, the film begins with Johann’s returning from the West
and entering St. Petersburg through Russian immigration. In all his recent films
Balabanov has implied his attitude towards St. Petersburg but in this film this attitude
is finally voiced: it is a “dead city.” And there are Liza’s melancholy whispers, “I hate
this city.” Petersburg functions in the Russian mind and culture as a symbol of Russia’s
Westernization. Peter the Great founded it as Russia’s “window to the West.” This film
in its own turn makes a statement about the “Russianness” positioned between West
and East. Again, it is no accident that Dr Stasov’s adopted Siamese twins are Asian. The
beginning and the end of the twentieth century were times of more aggressive Western
expansion. In this way these two periods of Russian history are very similar in the
intensified relations between Russia and the West. Balabanov creates the film about a
period in Russian history, which in various economic and political ways resembles the
present situation in Russia. These two periods, the beginning and the end of the
century, were periods in which Russia’s conservatism and hostility toward Western
capital changed to welcoming. This rapid acceptance of the West, which was previously
denied, causes hesitations, ambivalence, and traumatic feelings in the Russian collec-
tive mind.
With the train comes Johann to produce pornography also, and in so doing to
exploit and corrupt Russians, mainly women and the Asian twins. The dream of West-
ern might and freedom is problematized from the start. With Johann’s arrival, relation-
ships between people are immediately transformed into relationships between
commodities. An excessive production of commodities and surpluses ensues. Johann’s
business flourishes quickly following the basic formula of supply and demand. Marx
illuminated the paradoxical mechanism according to which the more supply is offered
the more demand there will be for it, and thus pointed toward the phenomenon of the
global expansion of capital. Zizek reminds the reader of Lacan’s connection of capital-
ism with the reign of the discourse of the hysteric: “This vicious circle of a desire, whose
apparent satisfaction only widens the gap of its dissatisfaction, is what defines hysteria”
(Zizek 1993, 209). Marx insists that the greater the circulation of commodities the
 Consumption, Markets and Culture 65
greater the need of money for this circulation which is secured by a greater economy in
the use of a circulating quantity of money. In other words the more needs are satisfied,
the greater the needs to be satisfied. As the plot unfolds it becomes clear that Dr Stasov’s
maid, Daria, and Radlov’s daughter, Liza, secretly purchase the photos from Viktor
Ivanovich, and they are his only customers. It appears Russia becomes an object and
arguably a victim of Western economic expansion, but paradoxically Russia is also
inviting and feeding on this invasion. The film presents a Russian attitude sensitive to
Western might, and uncovers the freaky nature of both people and capitalism.
Yet another interpretation of this film suggests Russia’s own perception of its position
in today’s globalization. In the time of global capitalism and cultural flows, when every-
thing is for sale, women have become more so than ever objects of desire and money.
In the post-Soviet era numerous Russian popular magazines such as MaKhaON,
Medved (Bear), and Novyi Dzhentl’men (The New Gentleman) lament about a crisis in
male identity amidst the anti-feminist movement. There are conscious attempts to
boost men’s self-esteem and prepare them for the new global world.12 Money and desire
are intrinsically connected in the pages of these magazines. Men, who can buy the adver-
tised commodities, including women, are assured social status and sexual identity.
Above all, these magazines intend the Westernization of Russian men. At the same time
hundreds of Internet sites offer Russian women to Western men for love, friendship,
and marriage. These websites have categorized the “objects” for sale according to
appearance (blonde or brunette), age group, and communicative skills—knowledge of
English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. More interestingly, the analysis of these
websites reveals that female characteristics are often linked to national characteristics
and Russian women are advertised as different and exotic. The site “East Meets West,”
for example, presents links such as “New Ladies,” “Price List,” and “Apartments” along
with “Mother Russia Photos.” Pictures of a female warrior statue—Mother Russia—
rotate with smiling Russian women photos. This seemingly unanticipated connection
follows a long cultural tradition of the myth of Mother Russia. For centuries Russians
have called the land “Mother” and her physical features were given feminine/maternal
epithets.13 “If nature was mother, so too were the very monuments built to testify to a
measure of human power—cities, roads, churches” (Hubbs 1993, xiii). The myth nour-
ishes the idealization of womanhood in fiction, which however is not what happens in
reality.
It appears Balabanov’s film addresses similar undercurrents, portraying Russian
women exposed to Western capital. The film, however, suggests a perception of today’s
globalization, and the Russian position in it, which is a bit unexpected. Russian women
in the film, and perhaps Mother Russia if one accepts the above cultural tradition, are
perceived as victims of the Western expansion. However, they are not the only victims.
The Asian twins are exploited too by the same economic Westernization. In this
context Russia perceives itself, it seems to me, not as a unique victim of the West, but
rather as a part of a world crisis, which positions the West as the ultimate beholder of
power and subjugates the rest of the world. Moreover, the twins are not positively
affected by Russian culture either. They seem well assimilated into Russian culture:
they sing Russian songs, Kolia becomes Liza’s lover, and Tolia takes to drink. But at the
66 Y. Hashamova
end Tolia dies of alcohol and Kolia is alone in the East having lost much more than
Tolia. In a way they become victims of Russianization.
The very last few scenes of the film present still another twist. As Jonathan Romney
says about the end of the film in a review in Sight and Sound: “Even Lynch and Green-
away have rarely left an audience with such a bitterly ironic punch line” (Romney 2000,
57–58). Liza’s dreams and her journey to the West lead her to walk depressively
deserted autumn streets, and she cleanses her sadness with a spanking session at the
hands of a curiously androgynous creature. In the West Putilov celebrates his fame
pursued by a crowd of enthusiastic young women. The viewer very soon realizes that
he has gained this fame solely on the basis of his porno-films. He has learned and
mastered the Western skills of pornography and has brought them back to the West
with vengeance. The West in its wild and blind expansion is facing nothing but the
return of its repressed. Or as Lacan pointed out the “sender [always] receives his own
message back from the receiver in an inverted form” (Lacan 1977, 85).14
The analysis of the three films presents all the competing tendencies of Russian reac-
tions to the process of globalization and suggests hesitations and ambivalence experi-
enced by the Russian cultural mind. The Barber of Siberia idealizes the past and
attempts to promote a hopeful and glorious Russian future open to Western proposals.
All That of Which We’ve Dreamed So Long is much more reserved and even hostile to
the West and evokes Dostoevskian faith and salvation as a defense against the corrup-
tive power of money. Of Freaks and Men discloses the most realistic presentation of the
cultural condition and Russia’s perception of its place in today’s global world. The film
implies that Russia perceives itself not as a unique victim of the West, but rather as a
part of a world crisis, which positions the West as the ultimate beholder of power and
subjugates the rest of the world.

Notes
[1] In this definition I am influenced by Arjun Appadurai’s idea that imagination, building on
technological changes and global flows, has become a collective, social fact. This development
in turn causes the plurality of imagined worlds (Appadurai 1996).
[2] Susan Larsen offers an interesting analysis of post-Soviet Russian film but she is concerned
mainly with Russian national identity in relation to the past (Larsen 1999, 192–217).
[3] Neumann studies the Russian collective identity formation in relation to Europe in detail
from the Napoleonic wars and the Decembrist uprising to the present and finds evidence of
the Russian debate about its relation to Europe as early as mid fifteenth century (Neumann
1996).
[4] Here I should point out that every ideology uses the same mechanism of denouncing the
other. Both the West and the Soviet Union employed similar mechanisms for constructing the
other as an “evil empire.” For more on American political demonology see Michael Rogin’s
study on the subject (Rogin 1987).
[5] For the use of the concept “global cultural flows” see Appadurai (1996).
[6] Critics are divided in their perception of the love-story. Moskvina, a Russian film critic,
considers the love-story line better integrated in the film than the epic scenes, although she
has her reservation about the casting of the main actors and their acting (Moskvina 1999).
According to Graffy, the romance is deprived of any psychological characterization and fails
 Consumption, Markets and Culture 67
to symbolically represent the relationship between Russia and the US (Graffy 2000). These
opinions, however, do not question Mikhalkov’s desire to promote such a relationship, albeit
unsuccessfully.
[7] Susan Larsen argues that Mikhalkov denounces the American inventor and his forest-harvest-
ing machine presenting him as a “demonic imperialist” and creating “a hellish vision of
murderous foreign technology.” By contrast, the director favors the values and “the traditions
of Russian rural life” (Larsen 2003, 501). Larsen’s impression of the film’s critical representa-
tion of America is possible but only as one side of the complex, often contradictory, film
images and scenes representing America. One should not forget the reverence Mikhalkov
makes to the English-speaking world: 70 percent of the film’s dialogue is uttered in English, a
remark Larsen makes but concludes nothing. Also, some American characters are created
more sympathetic than their Russian counterparts, which will be discussed later in the article.
[8] The Russian film critic, Aleksandr Arkhangel’skii, has written one of the most negative
reviews (Arkhangel’skii 1999). Some viewers have also vehemently expressed their disappoint-
ment on the Internet. See, for example, http://www.exler.ru/films/18-05-2000.htm.
[9] Trafficking in women is organized crime, which has rapidly increased after the collapse of
communism. Young women from former socialist countries are being lured, cheated, and
sold out for involuntary prostitution in the West.
[10] All translations from Russian are mine unless otherwise stated.
[11] Birgit Beumers notes this subversion of social structures in her study on contemporary
Russian film (Beumers 1999, 86).
[12] Helena Goscilo offers an insightful gender analysis of Russian society based on popular maga-
zines. She points out, “amidst voluble feminist bashing and laments about a crisis in male
identity, the 1990s have witnessed the emergence of several magazines patently intended to
boost men’s morale and supply guidelines for their image construction in the brave new
world of market machismo” (Goscilo 2000, 27).
[13] This is not an exclusively Russian tradition. Other nations also symbolize themselves by
women.
[14] See also Zizek who offers a similar argument about the post-communist relations between the
West and former socialist countries (Zizek 1993, 208).

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