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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
The NEP was an inherently unstable social and political system: It contained within itself the seeds of its own destruction. The Bolsheviks carried out policies in which they did not fully believe and with implications that worried them. Although the Tenth Party Congress in 1921 forbade factions within the party, the struggle for power during Lenin's final illness and after his death inevitably created factions. The struggle for power and the conflict between contrasting views concerning the future of society came to be intertwined. For the sake of economic reconstruction the party allowed private enterprise to reemerge. As time went on, many Bolshevik leaders came to be convinced supporters of the mixed economic system; others, on the basis of their reading of Marxist ideology, found such policies distasteful.
1. I gratefully acknowledge the support I received in writing this article. As a participant in theIREX/USSR Academy of Sciences exchange I worked at the Film History Institute in Moscow. Among the films discussed in this article I saw the following in Moscow: The Great Consoler, Counterplan, Ivan, Borderlands, The Conveyor of Death. A grant from the research committee of the University of California at Santa Cruz enabled me to see the following films at the Pacific Film Archives at Berkeley: Arsenal, By theLaw, The Forty-First, Katka's Reinette Apples, October, Bed and Sofa, Deserter, Road to Life, Enthusiasm, Earth, Zvenigora, Battleship Potemkin, Mother, The End of St. Petersburg. The description of other films are based on Sovetskie khudozhestvennye fil'my: Annotirovanny katalog, 4 vols. (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1960–1964).
2. The two most recent overviews of Soviet film in the 1920s are also the best: Youngblood, Denise, Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, 1918–1935 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI, 1985), pp. 156–161 Google Scholar, and Taylor, Richard, The Politics of the Soviet Cinema, 1917–1929. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979, pp. 106–118 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In addition also see chapter 9 in Kenez, Peter, The Birth of the Propaganda State; Soviet Methodsof Mass Mobilization, 1917–1929 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3. The number of films is taken from Sovetskie khudozhestvennye fit'my. Annotirovannyi kalalog, vol.1. (Moscow, 1960). This number does not include animated films. The number of tickets sold is from K. Mal'tsev, “Sovetskoe kino na novykh putiakh” Novyi mir. May 1928, p. 244.
4. Gromov, E., Lev Vladimirovich Kuleshov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1984, pp. 220–222 Google Scholar. Unfortunately Gromov does not say which institution carried out the surveys.
5. See, for example, K. Mal'tsev, “Sovetskoe kino na novykh putiakh,” Novyi mir, May 1928, pp. 243–250.
6. Between 1925 and 1929, 514 films were made. Out of these, 144 dealt with the history of the revolutionary movement. Kenez, Birth of the Propaganda State, p. 209.
7. S. Dymov, “Sovetizatsiia kino” in Zhizn’iskusstva, 8 March 1927, p. 9.
8. “K predstoiashchemu kino-soveshchaniiu.” Zhizri iskusstva, 27 September 1927, p. 1.
9. The proceedings of the conference have been published. These proceedings provide excellent materialfor the understanding of the mentality of those responsible for films. Ol'khovyi, B. S., ed., Puti kino: Pervoe Vsesoiuznoe soveshchaniepo kinematografii (Moscow: Teakino-pechat, 1929)Google Scholar. See also useful summaries of this important event in Youngblood, Soviet Cinema, pp. 156–161 and in Taylor, Politics of Soviet Cinema, pp. 106–118, and Rubailo, A. I., Partiinoe rukovodstvo razvitiem kinoiskusstva, 1928–1937 gg. (Moscow: MGU, 1976, pp. 29–36 Google Scholar.
10. See the comments of Krishon in Puti kino, ed., Ol'khovyi, pp. 76–80.
11. See, for example, Kosior's keynote address in Puti kino, ed., Ol'khovyi, p. 17.
12. Recently western historians have stressed that the cultural revolution was largely based on indigenous radicalism and that, therefore, it was not only a “revolution from above,” but also a “revolution frombelow.” See the essays in Sheila Fitzpatrick, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1931 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978). The experience of the film industry does not bear out such a generalization. Clearly, workers and peasants did not demand more revolutionary films. Nor were the film directors themselves interested in devoting their art to serving the twists and turns of the party line. While it would be naiveto think that the Politburo decided on the course of necessary changes in the film industry and then carriedout the decisions, events in this industry reflected the political struggle then devastating the country. Party functionaries who wanted to do away with the political order as it had existed in the NEP period influenced the developments in the film world.
13. Bagaev, B., Boris Shumiatskii (Krasnoiarsk, 1974), p. 186 Google Scholar.
14. See for example “Arkovets,” “ARRK nuzhno reorganizovat'” Kino i zhizn'. 1 February 1930.
15. See, for example, I. Naumov, ODSK v derevne,” Kino i zhizn', 20 December 1929, andM. Nikanorov, “Obshchestvo Druzei Sovetskogo Kino,” Kino i kul'tura, January 1929.
16. “Bol'she klasspvoi bditel'nosti!,” Kino i zhizn', 30 November 1929.
17. See for example K. lukov, the chairman of ARRK, denouncing Eisenshtein and Pudovkin. Hewrites: “In essence they bring in idealist, bourgeois ideas under the guise of sociology and Marxism. Theyall say that the essence of film is montage. But this is an anti-Marxist position “; “K bor'be za proletarskoekino,” Proletarskoe kino, no. 2, p. 26.
18. Zhizn’ iskusstva, 21 April 1929. p. 8.
19. See, for example, A. Piotrovskii, “Pravyi i levyi,” Zhizn’ iskusstva, 10 February 1929. Soon Piotrovskiibecame the object of bitter attack and his career as a critic ended.
20. See S. Podol'skii, “Puti sovetskogo kino,” Zhizn’ iskusstva, 19 May 1929.
21. V. Nedobrovo, “Pochemu net geroia v sovetskom kino?,” Zhizn’ iskusstva, 16 August 1927.
22. V. Sutyrin, “O sotsialisticheskoi rekonstruktsii kinematografii,” Proletarskoe kino, December 1931, pp. 6–16.
23. Ibid. p. 18.
24. Ibid. pp. 2–3
25. Taylor, Richard makes this point in “Boris Shumyatsky and the Soviet Cinema in the 1930s: Ideologyas Mass Entertainment,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 6, no. 1 (1986): 50–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
26. P. A. Bliakhin, “K itogam kino-sezona,” Kino i kul'tura, January 1929, pp. 3–24.
27. John David Rimberg, “The Motion Picture in the Soviet Union, 1918–1952: A SociologicalAnalysis” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1959), p. 72.
28. Kino-eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov. ed. Annette Michelson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 71.
29. There is a large literature on Eisenshtein. The best works in English are Seton, Marie, Sergei M. Eisenstein (New York: Grove Press, 1960 Google Scholar; Barna, Yon, Eisenstein (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1973 Google Scholar; Aumont, Jacques, Montage Eisenstein (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987 Google Scholar.
30. See the review of A. Matskin in Izvestiia, 21 September 1933. Also, Youngblood, Soviet Cinema, pp. 228–229.
31. On Dovzhenko see Barabash, Iurii, Dovzhenko (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1968 Google Scholar, and Kepley, Vance, In Service of the State: The Cinema of Alexander Dovzhenko (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986 Google Scholar.
32. Izvestiia, 29 March 1930.
33. Kino i zhizn', 24 April 1930, pp. 5–9.
34. Kino i zhizn', November 1930, p. 7.
35. Dovzhenko, Alexander, The Poet as Filmmaker: Selected writings, ed. Carynnyk, Marco (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1973, pp. 15–16 Google Scholar.
36. Grossman-Rashchin, B., “Mysli ob Ivane,” Sovetskoe kino, no. 9 (1933): 4 Google Scholar
37. Kuleshov, , “Art of the Cinema” in Kuleshov on Film, ed., Levaco, Ronald (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974, p. 48 Google Scholar. Among the many denunciations see Iukov, K., “K bor'be za proletarskoekino,” Proletarskoe kino, no. 2 (1932): 2 Google Scholar.
38. See a detailed description of the film in Gromov, Kuleshov, pp. 209–215. Gromov's study is by far the best on Kuleshov.
39. Kuleshov, L., Gody geroicheskikh poiskov (Moscow, 1969)Google Scholar.
40. Bliakhin, “K itogam kino-sezona,” pp. 10–11.
41. “Burzhuaznye vliiania v sovetskom kino,” Kino i zhizn', no. 2 (1930).
42. There was a rather extensive discussion of the film in the cinema press. Critics pretended that the film was about the United States and criticized Kuleshov for not revealing the social background of Valentine and not dealing with the social contradictions in America (V. Rossolovskaia, “Velikii uteshitel” “ Sovetskoe kino, November 1933, p. 48). Rossolovskaia adds with perhaps unconscious irony: “There is no reason to think that the historical O. Henry was bothered by censorship at all.” V. Voloshchenko writing in the next issue of the same journal says explicitly, “In front of us is one of the most alien films to a Soviet viewer that ever appeared on the screen.” He regarded the film as reactionary because “if it is about capitalist society, then it gives a picture of hopelessness, for there is no room for protest” (Sovetskoe kino, December 1933, pp. 26–28).
43. In the course of the 1930s it became a common practice for artists to denounce each other to save themselves. There is a blemish even on Kuleshov's record, who by and large behaved better and more courageously than others did. In 1926 a critic named M. Shneider wrote him a personal letter in which he praisedBy the Law and added that Kuleshov would be better appreciated in France than in the Soviet Union. Later Shneider joined Kuleshov's critics, denouncing him for formalism and for similar offenses. At a meeting of ARRK in 1931 Kuleshov read aloud Shneider's letter, which led to the critic's exclusion from the organization.The exclusion, however, did not end Shneider's career as a critic. See two versions of this incident: Youngblood, Soviet Cinema, pp. 199–200, is not sympathetic to Kuleshov and Gromov, Kuleshov, pp. 251–253, takes Kuleshov's side.
44. Youngblood, Soviet Cinema, p. 244.
45. Proletarskoe kino, no. 5–6 (1931), pp. 25–29. One wonders if Mikhailov's critique was influencedat all by the fact that he himself had recently been denounced in Kino i zhizn’ (11 April 1930, p. 7) as “eclectic and un-Marxist. “
46. Kozintsev, G., Glubokii ekran (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1971 Google Scholar.
47. Iukov, K., “Konveier smerti,” Sovetskoe kino, no. 12 (1933): 16 Google Scholar. Iukov correctly noted that them any themes of the film do not support each other. He also complained that the director “did not analyze the problem of over production in capitalist societies. “
48. For an attack on the ideological assumptions, see Balash, Bela, “Novye fil'my,” Sovetskoe kino, nos. 3–4 (1933): 19–24 Google Scholar. Lebedev, N. A., Ocherki istorii sovetskogo kino, 1917–1934. vol. 1 (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1956, p. 336 Google Scholar.
49. Grossman-Rashchin, , “Vstrechnyi” Proletarskoe kino. nos. 221–222 (1932): 4–9.Google Scholar
50. L. Ginzburg, “Fil'm o liudiakh, stroiashchikh sotsialism” Pravda, 27 November 1932.
