University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Two decades of Soviet biographical film: from revolutionary romanticism to epic monumentalism

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Two decades of Soviet biographical film: from revolutionary romanticism to epic monumentalism

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Content TWO DECADES OF SOVIET BIOGRAPHICAL FILM:
FROM REVOLUTIONARY ROMANTICISM TO EPIC MONUMENTALISM
(1934-1953)

by Elena Vasilyeva

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES)

December 2009

Copyright 2009 Elena Vasilyeva

ii
Table of Contents

Abstract ii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1. Soviet Biopic as a Genre 15
1.1. Genre and Mode 15
1.2. Soviet Cinema and Genre. Is the Category of Genre Helpful 22
1.3. Ritual, Repetitiveness in Genre 23
1.4. Biographical Pattern 26
1.5. The Usable Past 31
1.6. Hollywood Biopic 36
1.7. Soviet Biopic: General Comparison with Hollywood 40
1.8. Soviet Film Characters of the Time and the Biopic 46

Chapter 2. Creating Soviet Epic 50
2.1. Epic History 50 55-70
2.2. Epic Aesthetic 64
2.3. Epic Narrative: Historic Conflict and “Dramatic Conflict” 68
2.4. Epic Realism 72
2.5. Conflict and Genre 73
2.6. Epic Character 90

Chapter 3. The Cases of Naturalism and Melodrama 99
3.1. Naturalism 99
3.2. Personal Life 103
3.3. Melodrama 116
3.4. Melodramatic Elements in Chapaev 117

iii
Chapter 4. Elements of the Biopic. Topoi and Cliches 129
4.1. Historical Topoi 135
4.2. Character Presentation 138
4.3. The Great Man and His People 153
4.4. Russian National Epic 162
4.5. Adversarial Forces 181

Conclusion 196

Bibliography 199

iv
Abstract

This dissertation examines the evolution of the Soviet biographical film between
the years 1934 and 1953, its stable recurrent elements and the major narrative changes
that began to develop in the late 1930s. The study demonstrates two distinct types of
narratives operative in the biographical films made before or around 1941 and those
made in the 1940s. Chapter One introduces the categories that frame the analysis of
Soviet film genre, an endeavor complicated by the fact that the Soviet critics openly
challenged the notion of “genre.” To avoid the confusion between the historical Soviet
understanding of the genre and the contemporary definition of genre in film a larger
distinction into epic and melodramatic modes of story-telling is introduced. Chapter Two
analyses Stalinist culture’s gravitation toward the epic sense of reality, particularly
evident in Soviet historiography and in theoretical statements on the development of
narrative in Soviet film. The chapter shows how the disappearance of internal conflict in
the protagonist, the loose episodic narrative structure and a static, austere, monumental
style were welcomed and rationalized by the critics, who pronounced these developments
welcome hallmarks of the epic film aesthetic. Chapter Three presents the case of one
specific major concern of the Soviet film critics in their pursuit of the perfect cinematic
realism, that of “naturalistic” tendencies that came to include a number of aesthetic
phenomena. Acceptable in the 1920s Soviet art, portrayals of violence, death and disease
still appeared in the 1930s’ biographical films but had been positioned inside strong
melodramatic collisions, and their affective power was leveraged for purposes of
character motivation and for negotiation of peace-time ethics. Chapter Four discusses the
narrative units that sustain the Soviet biopic, at various levels, like the elements that make

v
up the plot, determine characterization and recur in mis-en-scenes. The analysis shows
that some elements appear to metaphorically express the theses of Stalinist
historiography, while others may recur for no objective reason other than the fact that a
specific gesture becomes part of a “natural” perception of the past and is repeated from
film to film unreflectively.

1
Introduction
The typical biopic from the Stalinist 1940s opened on a calm, sunny day on the
road. Either on that road or in the immediate vicinity, e.g. on an adjacent meadow, the
already grown up Great Man met with either a representative of the common people or
with another Great Man and was deeply moved by that meeting. Having happened upon a
common man, the Great Man wasted no time establishing in positive terms his own
similarity with him – they either shared a name, were from the same region, had helped
each other in some way, or simply struck up a conversation, thus “establishing contact.”
This encounter helped dissociate the Great Man from his actual class – usually the gentry
– and bring him into connection with the common man, who was either in severe distress
at the time of the meeting or had performed a feat demonstrating the great might of the
Russian people and their undying spirit. Inspired by the meeting, the Great Man then
committed to either relieving the life of the Russian people or to multiplying the glory of
Russian music, literature, science, arms, etc., in the face of those who had doubts as to
Russians’ ability to succeed in those avenues. To that end the Great Man challenged
tsarist authorities or foreign enemies or both. However, even adversaries were regularly
compelled to admit the formidable qualities of the Great Man. With the help of an astute
servant, revolutionary student or a progressive younger assistant, the Great Man
succeeded in rescuing the Russian land, art or science from Western invasion. Close to
the end of the film the Great Man received endorsement from an even greater or simply
older Great (Russian) Man and established a school of followers. The tradition of Great
Russian proto-Soviet Men thus spanned the past, present and future. Although not very

2
young, if not quite old at the opening, the Great Man would finally pronounce a speech
that was directed both at the diegetic audience and at future generations, always from a
pedestal (such as a stage, ship, hill, ladder, shoulders of followers) and after that would
no longer be visible in his human form, now transformed into a monument. In contrast
with the narrative structure of print biographies or Hollywood biopic, not one of these
heroes had a childhood, a formative event or a diegetically meaningful death. Moreover,
the protagonist of the 1940s biopic no longer underwent the change that had been typical
of the earlier Socialist Realist narrative arc that demonstrated the triumph of
consciousness over spontaneity. The Great Man of the high Stalinist biopic arrived on
stage already a monument. Some of these films do not only end with actual sculptural
monuments that are there to summarize and commemorate the man’s role in history but
actually open with the image of the monument to the Great Man. Sometimes there are
voiceovers or titles introducing the great achievements of the man whose so-called “life”
one was about to see.
Repetitive in its major plot elements and in its minor visual details, the genre of
biopic calls attention both to repetition within the Soviet biopic and to the defining
features of the so-called Soviet “official” aesthetic. Repetition in the Soviet biopic calls
for analysis for a number of reasons. First, such an analysis allows a discussion of the
genre in formal terms, an endeavor long overdue in the case of this most ideologically
charged and state-controlled of Soviet film genres and in light of the fact that the notion
of genre itself became taboo in Soviet critical discourse. Second, repetition is at the core

3
of what one can now unmistakably identify as the official Soviet “normative aesthetic.”
1

Often taken for granted, the notion of easily recognizable official “propaganda” elements
deserves to be reconsidered. Is the aesthetic sustained by specific narrative elements that
are repeated more often than others? Are they immanent to the period and to its political
agenda or are they determined by the demands of the genre? Repetition in historical film
creates a powerful mechanism of naturalizing a certain vision of the past – the causal
ordering of events, the course of national development and destiny, etc. – whether or not
such efforts have a point of conscious origin.
Even after Soviet ideology has been exposed and seemingly rejected, one finds
among critics a sense of nostalgia for the films of the time, a nostalgia that may or may
not have to do with the glorious epic vision of the national past they offer. Invisibility of
ideological tropes is a complex issue, at least in part related to repetition that leads to a
naturalized vision of the past. When the script for what was to become Aleksandr Nevskii
was first published in 1937, it was severely criticized by a contemporary historian for
mixing freely all manner of folk elements, borrowings from 19
th
century works and epic
songs.
2
The main thrust of historians’ criticism was the promulgation of a view of the
ancient world as a mixture of stylized elements, a compilation of familiar tropes, mostly
because this practice led to historical inaccuracies. However, already the 1975 reprint of
Tikhomirov’s review was accompanied by a commentary defending artistic license and
emphasizing that a coherent vision of the past may excuse bringing together popular

1
This expression comes from Ognev’s short monograph on the Soviet biographical film, where the author,
like many others, treats the notion as self-evident (13).
2
See M.N.Tikhomirov, “O stsenarii Rus',” originally published in the journal Istorik-marksist in 1938.
Tikhomirov’s ctiticism was later approved by other experts in the field.

4
fictional characters and historical personages. In 2005 I.Danilevskii proved that the film
had created the erroneous thesis that Aleksandr had strategically decided to fight the
Livonian Knights before the Russians were strong enough to focus on the Tatars and that
the fallacy had infiltrated college-level history textbooks. Although Danilevskii seeks to
show that the thesis absolutely cannot be sustained, he, too, approves of the film as a
whole and rushes to excuse the visual inconsistencies and ‘woodcut’ representations of
common people, and to argue the validity of the historiographical thesis.
3

Another instance of this tendency to overlook smaller elements and visual
iconography is the 2008 suggestion by the celebrated director and chairman of Russia’s
Union of Film-makers, Nikita Mikhalkov, that the biopics of the 1940s, like Suvorov
(1941) and Kutuzov (1943), be remade: “If one were to take these scripts and remove the
ideology that is not intrinsic to the contemporary audience, but leave the historical facts
and a patriotic thrust, using new technologies and contemporary actors, these would be
wonderful pictures. People will go see them.”
4
Given the current rise of nationalism and
the belated “search for a national idea” such an opinion is not altogether shocking. What
is, however, not a little confusing is the suggestion that the scripts for the original movies
be utilized, not merely their concepts. The statement by Mikhalkov treats ideology as a
verbal political insert or a clear message that may be easily removed. This statement also
suggests the great potency of generic repetition in creating a naturalized sense of history.
Surely, we recognize that the inevitable jabs at autocracy are a hallmark of Soviet
pandering or that the vilification of the British in biopics coincides with the onset of the

3
See I.N.Danilevskii, Problemy istoricheskogo soznaniia ( 2005).
4
“Если взять эти сценарии и вывести не присущую современному зрителю идеологию, но оставить
исторические факты и патриотический заряд, с новыми технологиями, современными актерами, это
будут потрясающие картины, их будут смотреть.”

5
Cold War. Yet other elements, like the evaluation of the role of the individual in history,
or the visual characterization of the “common people,” or the degree of interest in the
personal lives of historical personalities, remain ignored by critical discourse even during
the more liberal periods in Soviet political life. The reasons for such omissions may be
related to a political atmosphere that finds late Stalinism’s agenda of state-building
acceptable or even commendable. As the studio notes from the Thaw period show, even
at the height of criticism of Stalin’s personality cult, only those repeated elements became
visible that were at odds with the ideological canvas of the later period.
5
While some of
these elements became “visible” in the 1950s as a feature of “the cult of personality,” the
specific Soviet historiography that had originated with The Short Course of the History of
the Communist Party and its theses narrativized in biopics remained largely
unchallenged. Historical films were no longer easily green-lit but when they were, their
take on the role of individual in history was similar to the films of the Stalin era: that role
remained determined by “historical necessity” and the character inevitably triumphed. In
other words, some repeated elements lost their connection with the essential view of
history and began to be seen for what they were – repetitions or clichés – and could be
rejected while others continued to be relevant and thus slipped from visibility.
Another important aspect of generic repetition is the effect it has on obscuring
narrative change over time. Many commentators have remarked on the Stalinist film’s

5
One discussion of such elements is A.Macheret’s remarks on the film Vasilii Surikov in 1959, that the
“numerous past biographical films” featured the episode of a Great Man “getting acquainted with the
people” at a fair. After much repetition, the episode, according to Macheret, eventually began to create the
impression that it was not the protagonist observing the people but the director’s assistant doing research
for the upcoming shoot. Mosfilm, 2453, op. 3, 583. Stenogramma zasedaniia khudozhestvennogo soveta po
obsuzhdeniiu kinokartiny “Vasilii Surikov”, 1959, L.3. A sincere discussion of flawed elements of the
Stalinist biopics can also be found during the development stage of the film Andrei Rublev (1963-1964).
Goskino, 2944, op.4, 794.

6
departure from the 1920s experimentation and on the rigidity of later cinematic
production when compared to the great range of styles at the dawn of Soviet film-
making. Yet what one can see between the biopics made from 1934 to 1954 is a large-
scale overhaul of revolutionary romanticism and a maturation of a monumental aesthetic.
To name some of the more obvious changes within the Stalinist biopic, the charismatic,
youngish, passionate characters of the 1930s gave way to the older, somber, wise
statesmen in the 1940s. Narrative changes also ensued: internal dramatic conflicts
atrophied, and as the protagonist merged into the very fabric of his “time,” the antagonist
also lost individual specificity and became a somewhat indeterminate representative of
non-Russian adversaries. Inexplicable today, this development in dramatic writing was
actually seen in the late 1940s as a logical and welcome course of maturation for the
Soviet film, also matched by a historiography that maintained that the contradictions in a
developed Socialist society gradually withered away.
Indisputably, political pressures affected the main subjects of the vigilantly state
sponsored and controlled biographical genre, but what often remains unseen is that the
structure of the later Stalinist film is fundamentally different from that of the 1930s.
Soviet film at large also underwent a transformation, whereby the highly genre-
conscious, formalism-influenced film-making of the 1930s metamorphosed into epic
chronicling in the more serious genres and did away with the “light” melodramatic genres
altogether.
This dissertation demonstrates the inauguration of the monumental epic aesthetic
within the biographical genre that occurred during late Stalinism and reached its pinnacle
in the late 1940s. I show that the process had been propelled forward both from within

7
the film-makers’ environment and from without – in the critical discourse of the time.
The argument does not attempt to reconcile the perspectives on the question of agency,
i.e. whether Soviet film-making was pushed in the epic direction by its leading
ideologues or whether change came about as the result of an internal logic of generic
evolution. A study of one specific genre of Soviet film-making over a course of two
decades allows us to achieve a number of goals. As one searches for repeated elements in
the Soviet films about the past, one obtains a kind of map, a visual landscape that has the
imprimatur of Stalinism regardless of the specific past period portrayed. While repetition,
once noticed, points in the direction of the culture’s core assumptions, more important
still is generic repetition that gets discontinued, because it draws attention to the changes
in larger structures, like the film industry, the regime’s ideological priorities or even ways
in which society reflects on itself.
The following instance exemplifies my procedure and its implications. Consider
the ideologically vested portrayals of the common people, or narod. Films from
Aleksandr Nevskii (1938) to Kompozitor Glinka (1952) display an abundance of clichéd
elements that reduce the narod to a rigid set of metaphors and characterizations. For
example, common people often appear in the mis-en-scene, sometimes as blind peasants
or as tired travelers who lean on sticks. They may briefly interact with the protagonist or
be part of the countryside reality that the protagonist finds unsatisfactory. The subject-
object relationship between the protagonist and nameless peasants throws the Great
Man’s efforts on their behalf into sharp relief. The point is obvious enough after one has
watched the biopics of the period but while the role of the Great Man remains unchanged
through the decades, the common men become cleaner and better dressed, and their

8
folksiness more and more stylized into a conventional lubok image of the Russian people.
In 1946 the CPSU’s Central Committee issued its famous decree on the film Bolshaia
zhizn’, followed by a series of articles in the industry’s mouthpiece Iskusstvo kino,
administering final blows to so-called ‘naturalistic tendencies’ in Soviet film and thus
showing that the purging of dirt from under the peasants’ fingernails was not a random
accident. It is through finding correspondences between the recurrence or disappearance
of generic elements and traces of critical self-reflexivity among film-makers and film
critics that I trace the evolution of the biopic from a dynamic romantic revolutionary
aesthetic to one that was epic and monumental.
Chapter One discusses the categories of generic definition that help explain the
trajectory of the biopic’s unusual development. Keeping in mind a basic understanding of
genre as a corpus of stories that share similar features I argue that a unique set of criteria
are relevant for the discussion of Soviet biopics, especially in the late 1940s. In
particular, in order to understand the narrative change one benefits from going beyond
issues of character, quest or visual setting. Similar in their basic narrative progression,
biopics made between 1934 and 1953 told the story of an exceptional individual who had
advanced his community in socially significant ways, yet the type of ethos they encoded
decidedly changed. Not only the code of values, but also the type of narrative ritual, often
seen as a category of genre assignment, changed in the later films. In order to understand
the shift towards a static film form that ignored dramatic affectation and shunned
uncertainty, I employ the categories of the epic and melodramatic modes. The distinction
between the two types of story-telling frames the shift in the types of dramatic problems
presented by the films and in the visual aesthetic they represented. A distinction based on

9
modes of story-telling such as “epic” and “melodramatic” is especially helpful due to the
fact that by the 1940s the term “genre” is all but rejected, especially whenever laws of a
genre, not message, were seen as determining narrative developments.
Biopic had two major reasons for becoming the leading Soviet genre, as it did in
the 1940s. A significant factor in the original proliferation of biopics and their popularity
was the fact that biographical pattern naturally accommodated the spontaneity
/consciousness dialectic.
6
However, beginning with late 1930s, purposes of historical
education and a top-down spread of nationalism began to take precedence over the goals
of narrative ritual. The increasing significance of History in Soviet public discourse
placed the discussion of the role of individual in the center of public discourse.
Regardless of whether or not this development was a direct outgrowth of the cult of
personality, conceptualization of the relationship between a remarkable individual and
History was at the core of contemporary Soviet historiography. Thus, lessons in historical
development superseded lessons in personal growth. This change of focus did not hamper
the proliferation of the genre, but it may have been related to the change in the type of
character that was chosen for the biopic. Like the print biographies of the same years,
films began to focus on great Russians from a more distant past. I argue that the change
in priorities in historical subject matter from the heroes of the revolution and the Civil
War to the generals and cultural figures of the past responded to a task of forging national
cultural continuity that was conceived of in essentially ahistorical terms. These tasks
become even more obvious when one compares the overall structure of the Soviet biopic
with that of its Hollywood counterpart. Where Hollywood expended considerable

6
K. Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (1981).

10
dramatic resources on creating a rooting interest in the audience, i.e. encouraged the
audience to want the character to succeed, Soviet film-making presented a character that
was markedly more difficult to relate to. Soviet protagonists were older men who had
achieved considerable success or respect of their peers by the time the narrative began;
once on the stage, they wasted no time on personal relationships or problems of self-
coherence. Instead, Soviet biopic focused on the character’s understanding of historical
necessity, which appeared as the main distinctive feature and talent of the Great Man.
In Chapter Two I look at the specific view of history that arose in the mid-1930s
and argue that the epic mode of story-telling presented an appropriate narrative vehicle
for mature Stalinist historiography. As historical development ceased to be envisioned
purely in terms of class struggle, the narrative sought to express the spirit of the nation
and a cyclical national continuity. The driving force of History, historical necessity rather
than the revolutionary masses, now determined the path of the remarkable man. Early
Soviet historiography had concerned itself with creating a genealogy of the Revolution
and thus put class struggle in the center of the narrative. The shift in emphasis toward the
“nation” that one sees in the early 1930s had several repercussions for biographical story-
telling. Instead of class, the key notion now was the people. I argue that rhetorical
conflation of different meanings inherent in the word narod is central to the conception of
the role of the Great Man operative in the biopic. Specifically, the Great Man of the
Stalinist era can be said to be both above the people (like the members of the Communist
Party) and co-created by the people as they invest their expectations in the Leader. This
co-creation of the Leader’s body by the people precipitates a change in the way Great
Man’s physicality is understood, and, more importantly, in the ways it can be depicted.

11
At the same time as we see a rise in the metaphors creating a sublime aura around Great
Men, film meta-discourse begins to frame and justify forceful taboos on portraying
physical weakness, decay or death.
The revised Stalinist historiography presented two fundamental challenges for a
historical film. The story of an individual whose historical role consisted in leadership
could no longer follow the Bildungsroman pattern. Fully conscious at the beginning and
often aware of his historical mission, this character only had external obstructions to
contend with. External conflict in this historical vision, however, was also fraught with
problems, allowing little space for an adversary and, as the later Stalinist historiography
turned away from the Russian popular rebels and focused on national continuity,
adversary could only be equivalent with foreigner.
While these developments can easily be explained by political pressures of the
regime, an examination of the critical discourse in the journal Iskusstvo kino reveals a
surprising degree of theoretical justification for the type of epic narrative we see in the
later biopics. Dramatic conflicts began to be rejected in critical, not political, terms. In the
name of undivided character, personal doubt, insecurity and minor human flaws were
expected to disappear, removing internal conflicts from the protagonist’s character.
Parallel to this epic integrity ran the discursive campaigns targeting vestigial formalism,
naturalism and generic thinking in 1946-1947. Socialist Realism in film emerges from
this discussion as a style constantly flanked by two perilous influences – the formalist
generic heresy, on the one hand, and naturalism, on the other.
It is impossible to determine the degree of sincerity in the theoretical discussion in
Iskusstvo kino but some of its themes – most notably, the rejection of naturalism – are

12
supported by the less arcane language of the studio notes for both released and
unproduced biopics from the Mosfilm studio. Regardless of the source of inspiration,
critics in Iskusstvo kino gave the loosening dramatic structure detailed attention, hailing it
and spilling much ink on describing its various aspects. Convergence and forcefulness of
theoretical statements from both critics and practitioners of Soviet film create a sense of
acceptance of the epic as the type of story-telling that best matched the cultural tasks of
the period.
On the visual front, as Chapter Three discusses, the main battle concerned the
highest form of “realism,” now understood as a more severe version of Socialist Realism,
i.e. a system of representation that shied away from overly spontaneous romantic
gestures, on the one hand, and from the more life-like but also treacherous naturalism, on
the other. Discussion in Iksusstvo kino shows that by naturalism critics meant emotional
affectation of various kinds, ranging from visually shocking to emotionally manipulative
elements. Surprisingly, opposition to naturalism and emotional affectation was not the
invention of the Communist Party ideologues, but, more likely, resistance to
“gimmickry” came from the “left-leaning” proponents of revolutionary aesthetic. In the
1930s, it appears, the pro-Hollywood faction won over and Soviet film sought to engage
dramatic possibilities, including the more affective ones, inherent in generic
understanding of film. In the post-war climate of nationalism and campaigns against
cosmopolitanism, the more dramatic, genre-based vision that did not shy away from
emotionally manipulating its audience and was not afraid to refer to Hollywood as its
model again found itself on the sidelines.

13
I show that the 1930s biopic, like other Soviet genres of the decade, made ample
use of melodramatic collisions as well as of melodrama’s ability to pose and test ethical
inquiries. An especially telling illustration of the 1930s use of melodrama is the 1934
film Chapaev. A film about the recent Civil War, it represents a case of subtle
questioning and a successful reaffirmation of the new, peace-time code of values. Based
on an earlier literary source, the film softened or re-framed the elements that were
acceptable in the 1920s but began to be seen as unnecessary “naturalism” in the 1930s,
such as mundane aspects of wartime violence, the unacceptability of insubordination and
lack of mercy for the enemy. The film achieved this reframing of naturalism into
melodrama by resolving its conflicts in the context of a nuanced negotiation that had been
markedly absent from the morally reductive world of the 1920s art. The manner of moral
resolution in Chapaev can thus be considered an intermediary stage between the frank,
matter-of-fact portrayals of violence in the 1920s and the total omission of any disturbing
material in the 1940s.
In Chapter Four I return to the issue of repeated elements in the Soviet biopic,
their relationship to each other and the order of their significance. It appears that some
repeated elements remain stable and invisible without being indispensable to the structure
of a work, even within a certain genre. I argue that these elements are special markers of
the genre, or, its topoi. Topoi can remain invisible because encoded in them are symbolic
messages that are meaningful and relevant for the viewing audience. Topoi do not need to
be realistic; they function as a marker of the genre and do not create disbelief even if they
contain a marked contradiction with common knowledge about the period. They merit
discussion because topoi create the sense of a naturalized past. It is in the analysis of

14
topoi that monumentalization of the narrative becomes especially visible and amenable to
analysis. Features like epically worded introductions, sculptural form preceding the title,
folk epic elements in the presentation of the common people support the idea that later
Stalinist biopics’ story-telling emphasized cultural continuity and a special leading role of
the Great Man.
A remarkable feature of the late Soviet biopics is the clichéd speech behavior of
its protagonists and antagonists. In keeping with the spirit of the epic, the Great Men
resort to periphrasis as they relate themselves to indisputable greats in other disciplines.
As leaders of their historical cycles, the Great Men create idioms and make prophetic
statements about the future.
The purpose of the analysis is to draw attention to film’s ability to relate complex
ideological statements through gestures that have become habitual and often invisible; to
reveal the workings of specific rhetorical maneuvers in Soviet biographical films; to
show the relationship between smaller units of signification and larger historiographical
theses. By following the genre’s development throughout the two decades we become
aware of the multiple cultural mechanisms that affect or participate in the process of the
evolution of a narrative. It is primarily through engaging with a multiplicity of political
factors and cultural entities that one can circumvent the ethical imponderables of
Stalinism like the questions of personal agency and responsibility, or of the aesthetic
evaluation of politically compromised art.

15
Chapter 1. Soviet Biopic as a Genre
1.1. Genre and Mode
This chapter frames the discussion of the Soviet biopic as a genre and of the
categories that are useful for understanding its sustainability and change. I argue that the
most helpful distinction is that between the modes of epic and melodramatic story-telling,
because in the 1940s the core story of Socialist Realism, the biographical pattern, began
to lose its influence in film; at the same time, the category of genre started to weaken as a
viable term. In other words, issues of audience’s identification with the protagonist, its
rooting for him and learning with him began to lose significance to the portrayal of
historiographical theses.
Genre in film is a widely contested category, defined alternately by visual
iconography, by the space of conflict enactment or by the type of plot collision. Genre
can also be defined, among other things, by the mode of storytelling, the type of affect in
the audience, or its function in the social ritual. The understanding of the word “genre”
itself varies from emphasizing form (“kind of composition”) to privileging content (“a
message or series of messages recurring within a medium”).
7
Literary genre distinctions
have heavily relied in their taxonomic efforts on what could be characterized as a mode
of narration. For neo-Classicism, which based its registers of genres on the original
Aristotelian distinctions given in Poetics, the main categories included comic, tragic and
lyrical. Mikhail Bakhtin’s distinction between the epic and the novel as well as Peter
Brooks’ formulation of ‘the melodramatic imagination’ seek to describe the type of

7
Davis Foulger, “Medium as Ecology of Genre: Integrating Media Theory and Genre Theory”
http://www.evolutionarymedia.com/papers/mediumAsEcologyOfGenre.htm

16
narrative organization that creates a distinct relation of text to reality. While it is
impossible to state a case for a pure realization of any one mode, or sense of reality,
during any one period in modern history, mature Stalinist culture appears to have
embraced the epic dimension of story-telling and an epic visual space as its primary
vehicle.
As the epic forges a unique relationship between the past and the present, epic
story-telling presents an array of unique opportunities. According to Bakhtin, the epic
operates within the “absolute past”, a temporal dimension that, in its spirit, does not and
cannot correlate with any historical period. “The absolute past” is separated from us by
an untraversable distance, a distance of not time or space, but a distance of quality.
Unlike the modern world we know, where internal conflict takes over the narrative, the
epic world is congruent with its values and what it may lack in goodness and mercy, it
makes up in integrity. The epic is an insulated value system, complete with an
unequivocal understanding of the sacred and the profane and although the epic events
could be unfolding in either distant or recent past, it is the sense of the final and
transcendent meaning they encode that makes that vision different from the “present,”
whose value has not yet been weighed against the perfect exemplary past.
In order to understand the distinction between the epic, hero-less chronicling of a
novel like A. Serafimovich’s Zheleznyi potok (1924) and the monumental epic aesthetic
of the 1940s biographical films it may be useful to keep in mind that Bakhtin’s
formulation of the epic may not have been describing Homer’s Greece but instead the
cultural imperatives of Stalin’s times (Griffith & Rabinowitz, Novel Epics 7-9). Bakhtin’s
epic is a narrative that utilizes the past in order to foreground a relationship with the

17
present, even as the present is unable to match the past ideal. As S. Eisenstein put it after
his meeting with A. Zhdanov, the past is summoned to serve the present by encoding a
similar problem and showing an outcome, whose directness has been avenged by
History.
8

Apart from their ideological differences, most clearly seen in their relationship
with History, the epic and the novelistic also pose different kinds of character problems.
G. Lukacs saw the congruence of the character’s inner essence and outer projection – the
soul’s demand for greatness and the actions directed at achieving that greatness – as the
main aspect of the epic character presentation.
9
The novel, on the other hand, arises out of
a split between the inner and the outer man; the novel’s very generic instability also
reflects the modern sense of subjective non-coherence. Implied in the Bakhtin-Lukacs
view of the novel is an absence of a final resolution, a sense of moral and intellectual
oscillation, for, in the modern world neither author, nor character, nor reader can be
rewarded by a complete integration of perspectives. When this distinction is applied to
the film character, the novelistic ideal is often unattainable in mass-oriented film, but the
dramatic principle that requires a matching of external and internal conflict puts the ideal
epic character at odds with biographical genre in film.
Mid-1930s Soviet films approach the conundrum of having to place a dramatic
character in an epic narrative by creating a visual space evocative of epic narratives, yet
treating the moral universe of the film in melodramatic, rather than epic terms. In Bogdan
Khmelnitskii, Pugachev, Chapaev the characters experience a clash with the very code of

8
E. Dobrenko, “’Istoriya naroda prinadlezhit tsariu.’ Dialektika narodnoi monarkhii.”
9
G. Lukacs, The Theory of the Novel (1971).

18
values that had propelled them to their leadership positions. This conflict is expressed in
their highly dramatized personal relationships, relationships that amount to the strongest
subplot of the narrative.
The 1930s Soviet film-making, with its general move toward the “live person,”
welcomed melodrama as one of the tools of effective generic story-telling.
10
While the
designation is often applied to a type of drama, melodrama keeps the fragmented
modernistic world away from the free fall of chaotic interactions and pushes for a moral
validation. Conceptualized as imaginative mode, rather than genre, melodrama, according
to Peter Brooks, permeates the post-sacred era due to its ability to succinctly articulate
and successfully enact conflict.
11
In the 1950s, Northrop Frye saw melodrama as a mode
that was dedicated to showing “the triumph of moral virtue over villainy, and the
consequent idealizing of the moral views assumed to be held by the audience” (46). The
melodrama of Frye’s formulation is well-positioned to re-enforce dominant cultural
values and therefore to uphold the practice and maintenance of power, but Frye saw
melodrama as so generically circumscribed as to practically void itself of any social
consequence and so he readily dismissed what now appears a foregone conclusion of its
ritual potential. For Frye, “it simply is not possible” to take melodrama seriously on the
grounds of convention-exposing excess.
12

And yet it is precisely the excess that inspires Brooks’ inquiry, the excess that
does not, as it does for Frye, determine the generic formula – conflict, setting, character –

10
L. Trauberg, “Osvoenie Ameriki” (“Reclaiming America”) 40-46.
11
P. Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination (1985).
12
Consider, for instance, Frye explaining how melodrama disavows its potential for social control by
distilling its conflict into a form that provokes disbelief in “the rest of us”, who are not “the subliminal
audience of cretins”: “Cultivated people go to a melodrama to hiss the villain with an air of condescension:
they are making a point of the fact that they cannot take his villainy seriously” (46).

19
but is so representative of “the contemporary psychic affect” that it can seep into any
narrative (xii). With its emphatic enunciations of simple truths and relationships, the
clarification of the cosmic moral sense of everyday gestures, the supra-generic
melodramatic mode makes “the real,” “the ordinary” and “the private” evoke broader
moral dilemmas “through heightened dramatic utterance and gesture that lay bare the true
stakes.” Melodrama was inaugurated by the epistemological shifts that had been
precipitated in the west by the French Revolution – the dismantling of the representable
Sacred and of the myth of Christendom, the dwindling illusion of a hierarchically
cohesive society and, by extension, of the genre system of that society, and of the very
registers of artistic practice, such as the high and the low (13-14).
In post-revolutionary Soviet culture, the absolute high of the tragedy seen in
narratives like Boris Lavrenev’s The Forty-first no longer matched the sense of reality, as
the code of “class struggle to the last breath” was no longer relevant. Melodrama then
becomes the logical choice of the mid-1930s as it usually “comes into being in the world
where the traditional imperatives of truth and ethics have been violently thrown into
question, yet where the promulgation of truth and ethics, their instauration as a way of
life, is of immediate, daily, political concern” (15). Even as Chapaev, the film, speaks of
wartime, it poses questions of ethics that were nowhere to be found in the art of the time
of the events or in the novel that the film was based upon. A character internalizing the
need for subordination, or the question of the limits of mercy and justice were a kind of
ethical luxury that had not simply been present from the bleak works of the 1920s’.
The category of melodrama understood as a mode of story-telling that seeks to
expose ethical issues in a highly dramatic form proves particularly helpful for this

20
analysis as it helps understand and account for the changes that occurred within the same
kind of genre, within largely the same political system. Between 1934 and 1956,
“Stalinist” biopic went through three roughly distinguishable stages: revolutionary
romanticism to melodramatic novelistic realism to what I term “the monumental epic
form.”
As I propose this distinction for the biopic, some of the findings are useful for
analyzing Soviet cinema of the period at large, like the use of melodrama as an effective
ideological tool and its subsequent withering away in the 1940s. Other shifts are specific
to the genre discussed here, but it is important to remember that biopic was a political
priority, the subject of the State commission and a survivor even during the “scenario
hunger” in the late 1940s. In part, biopic held such a privileged place because, as Clark
has argued, the core story of Socialist Realism followed a biographical pattern and its
choice may very well be explained by the fact that the new Soviet culture, above all,
aspired to encode historical theses in its story-telling practices. Thus, the overcoming of
spontaneity by means of consciousness becomes the principal narrative arc of 1930s
novels. In film, the same principle holds true for the decade of the 1930s, whereby the
personal flaws associated with spontaneity are encoded in melodramatic elements, even if
the rest of the narrative begins to lose the elements that speak of a revolutionary situation,
or an impending crisis or historical rupture in the making.
Natural as the ability to encode the ritual conferral of consciousness is to the
biopic, it is not limited to the genre and, as Clark demonstrated, became the reigning
narrative and symbolic principle of the culture. What historical film occasions, as
compared to the novel, is its special contract with reality and myth at the same time. As

21
A. Bazin pointed out, “the cinema in its essence is as incontestable as Nature and History
– not only because cinema’s meaning and persuasiveness is incomparably greater than
any other means of propaganda, but especially because the cinematic image is other,
seeming completely super-imposable with reality” (39). Bazin’s example of the
invisibility of the threshold between reality and “sense of reality” produced by a body of
films is relevant for this analysis. I. Stalin, who has in some scholarship been credited
with single-handedly creating the Stalinist sense of reality, for instance, had the
documented trait of believing in the myth of his own omniscience. As his successor N.
Khrushchev put it, “Stalin would say something about himself and immediately believe
it.” Stalin began to see representations of himself as matching reality, including the
cinematic portrayal of his role, foresight and acumen during the events of World War II.
Having thus closed the gap of disbelief through his personal myth, Stalin apparently also
drew his knowledge about Soviet rural life from kolkhoz films. Bazin’s analysis is
cognizant of the political structure that attended to the ascension of the loop-like
relationship between film and reality but nevertheless holds that film has unparalleled
facility in producing that loop (36).
With the importance Stalinist culture placed on the treatment and understanding
of History, it is no wonder that biopic became the most important genre in the most
important of arts. Stalinist biopic created and naturalized its own unique visual and
narrative iconography, fostering and reiterating the central conceit of Stalin’s
historiography: a series of cycles, history and all its agents – be they classes or
individuals – are driven and vindicated by historical necessity, an indefinable engine of
progress whose operating logic one can presumably glean from the lessons of the past.

22
1.2. Soviet Cinema and Genre. Is the Category of Genre Helpful?
If the genre of the biopic itself came to prominence, its designation as a genre in
the way modern film genres are defined can only be tentative. Hollywood genres are
deeply embedded in the material conditions of commercial film-making “whereby
popular stories are varied and repeated as long as they satisfy audience demand and turn a
profit for the studios” (Schatz 16). In Soviet cinema the status of genre is not reducible to
either the conditions of production, which would have studios excited about a genre’s
ability to generate box-office returns, or to the “propaganda factor,” which is often
explicit in the case of the biopic.
13
It may appear that genre in Soviet biopic performs a
clearly defined ideological function, as Soviet biographical films are often conceived of
as didactic or educational. Yet at the same time ever since formal terms began to be
purged from Soviet film criticism, the view of narrative dynamics that sustained the genre
and allowed for its designation became very different from anything seen in critical
reflexivity on genre.
A definition of the genre as “a familiar formula of interrelated narrative and
cinematic components that serves to continually reexamine some basic cultural conflict”
would have caused severe problems had it been suggested, as it has been in the West, as a
way to understand, analyze or appreciate a movie in the Soviet public discourse of late
Stalinism (Schatz 16). Appealing to the “internal logic of genre” in the late 1940s was
enough to be accused of couching genre in transcendent immanence as well as of

13
It was not until the late 1960s that the profit aspect of film-making became a factor, a developmet largely
attributed to the leadership style of the head of Goskino Filip Ermash. Thus, in the late 1960s the offer of
500,000 USD for the rights to international release appeared to have convinced the State Cinema
Committee to show Andrey Rublev at the Cannes festival. See A. Tarkovsky, Time within Time: the
Diaries, 1970-1986 (1993).

23
resorting to universal, non-national, ahistorical structures that were assumed to shape the
film process. As Chapter Two shows, in the 1930s dramatic story-telling made ample use
of the category of genre, but post-war critical thought refused to accept any formal
limitations and insisted that in the higher realism all and any content was to be
determined by “life itself.”
1.3. Ritual, Repetitiveness
A lapse in critical reflexivity about genre that first spread in the 1940s continued
to characterize Soviet critical understanding, whereby a clear generic assignment was
often seen as a feature of B-movies. In later analyses of Stalinist films, the thematic
repetitiveness of biopics distracted many a worthy analysis into the exclusive discussion
of content. Ognev notes that the 1940s -1950s films were made according to a mold, as
they were “homogeneous in their form, internal structure, perception of history and
ideological assumptions” (9). Amazing similarities among these pictures are not only
perceptible to modern critics. Contemporaneous film-makers complained that whole
scenes were copied and pasted from script to script, from film to film.
14
Ognev mentions
that these repeated gestures were later explained as “normative aesthetic,” but he does not
elaborate on the status of this term (13). Despite or possibly due to the very self-evidence
of the normative esthetics, as Ognev notes, the phenomenon of repetition “never received
a precise, passionless analysis,” or, one might add, a formal one.
In literature a number of studies have pointed out the predominance of a generic
narrative in Socialist Realism. Abram Tertz came to the conclusion that Socialist Realism
followed the 18
th
century Classicist model, whereby narrative development was

14
Mosfilm, 2453, op. 3, 206, L.1.

24
predetermined and the difference between narratives was rather insignificant.
15
In her
now-classic study of the Soviet novel, Clark charted out the algorithm that reigned
supreme in Socialist Realist esthetics. Treating the Soviet novel as a narrative of
historical ritual, Clark provided an overarching masterplot that utilized various cultural
sources and myths available in the Russian literary tradition. These sources, according to
Clark, varied from medieval hagiographic tradition via the narratives of the Russian
radical intelligentsia to the Futurist agenda of conquest over the elements. Thus, after a
period of experimentation and institutional struggle, the Soviet novel plot came to
illustrate a dialectical relationship between spontaneity and consciousness. The dialectic
was expressed through a number of recurrent elements, with the main accomplishment of
the narrative consisting in the re-education of the good but spontaneous character into a
highly conscious one, a character capable of seeing beyond the self and grasping the
direction charted out by the Party line.
The spontaneous hero, who was inevitably paired with a “commissar” to
politically educate him, was found in abundance in 1930s narratives as a shock-labor
worker (Stakhanovites), a fallen Civil War hero or an arctic pole explorer (Chkalovites).
The literary paradigm of the time had shifted its focus from the “little man” to the “new
man,” bigger than life, but definitely smaller than the “father/god” characters of
Lenin/Stalin and their stand-ins. Clark argues that a biographical pattern underlies the
exemplary texts of Socialist Realist literature, as it provides an easily accessible narrative
framework for working out the main philosophical thesis of early Soviet culture – the
consciousness/spontaneity dialectic. Having faced the problem of relating masses to

15
See A. Tertz, The Trial Begins and On Socialist Realism (1982).

25
leaders, the culture began to move away from over assigning value to raw revolutionary
feeling and shifting it towards rational, strategic and politically informed leadership.
Major Socialist Realist novels thus trace the political education of the character who
leans towards a spontaneous, inspired affinity with the ideals of the revolution/higher
productivity/better conditions for the larger community. Despite the high start the
character will face obstructions that arise out of his or her lack of political knowledge
(e.g., of Marxist doctrines or of the complexities of the current political situation) or out
of an insufficient ability to subordinate “private” feelings to the higher goals (that were
both more politically expedient and ultimately transcendent). It is through the path to a
superior “consciousness,” which in extra-literary reality was represented by the
Communist party, that the character grew to function at a superior level. The Communist
party itself was often present within the literary narrative as well, usually in the shape of
a commissar, like Fyodor Klychkov in Dm. Furmanov’s Chapaev, (“Furmanov” in the
film version).
In film, the pattern holds true for the earlier Soviet biopics, while in the later ones
we see a visual realization of the more abstract thesis, that of “quantity transformed into
quality,” usually associated with the narod but not taking place within the character.
Characters in the later films are fully conscious from the opening, waging only external
battles, and it is the external conflict that now bears the burden of expressing the central
thesis of Stalinist historiography: that the historical individual spearheads and expresses
the historic shift within his times.
1.4. Biography

26
Biography has a long history in Russia, where, for centuries, the lives of saints
were popular reading and instructional material. The hagiographical canon itself, from an
early stage, incorporated secular figures, including rulers of the state. Quite possibly
because the mixed piety-politics cannon offered lessons that were not only religious, but
also historical, national and political, saints’ lives, rather than the Bible, presented the
authoritative narrative that underwrote the ideas of national and historical continuity. In
the overwhelmingly illiterate country, lives remained the main source for the lower levels
of education until 1917. Not surprisingly, after direct political propaganda failed to
connect with the peasants in the 1870s, the radical intelligentsia groups turned to the
language, structure and imagery that was clear to the common man. Elements of
hagiography, like saintly asceticism, a spiritual commitment to eschatologically colored
projections into the future, seeped into the biographical narratives of prominent
revolutionaries long before the Bolsheviks seized power (Clark 83-84).
An even more obvious and powerful cultural source underlying the Soviet biopic
may have been the famous literary series “The Lives of Remarkable People” (“Zhizn’
zamechatelnykh liudei,” hereafter referred to as “ZhZL”). Widely perceived to have been
founded by M. Gorky in 1933, the Soviet biography series was, in fact, the restoration of
a pre-revolutionary cultural project. Initiated by the publisher F. Pavlenkov, the series of
the same title produced 200 volumes and 1, 5 million copies between 1890 and 1915. The
series’ selection principle was based on the role and imprint of the person in history; the
very first edition detailed the life of the founder of the Jesuit order Ignatius Loyola. The
Soviet incarnation of the series continued to be international in focus with the exception
of the years 1943-1945, when the series was briefly renamed “Great Russian People”

27
(“Velikie russkie liudi”). More than a thousand people’s lives were introduced to the
Soviet reader through this popular series over the seventy five years of its history. Unlike
the biopics, “The Lives of Remarkable People” showed the entire life of the protagonist,
carefully detailing his or her talents and following the character from achievement to
achievement and then to death. Despite the narrative differences there is a very close
correlation in the choice of characters for the literary series and the biographies on film.
Apart from Ivan Groznyi, Aleksandr Nevskii, Iakov Sverdlov, Nikolai Rimskii-
Korsakov, Salavat Iulaev and Chapaev, every historical figure in the sample had
previously (often very recently) appeared in the literary series. While the relationship of
antecedence between literature and film merits a note, it is more significant as a testament
to the organized cultural effort to address the past through the biographies of people of
varied professions and achievements. Even those of the Russian historical figures from
“ZhZL” who had not become subjects of eponymous films had inspired attempts at
producing biopics.
16
If one takes into consideration that, while the “ZhZL” characters
were both Russian and foreign (1943-1946 excluded), the overall number of these books
was relatively small: it ranged between 9 and 19 a year in the 1930s and between 3 and 9
in the 1940s (figures are unavailable for the years after 1950, when the number of
biographies was 7). Out of those numbers almost 41% of the Russians (or descendants
from the Russian empire) in print biographies were also subjects of biopics or attempts at

16
Beside the produced films, a great number of biographical projects reached one stage of development of
another. Thus scripts or synopses are available for Pushkin, Lomonosov, Sofia Kovalevskaia (eventually
made at Lenfilm in 1956), Tsiolkovskii. Films were also made about Ivan Fedorov (1941) and Mikhail
Frunze (both featured in “ZhZL”), for which copies were unavailable.

28
biographical films, always at a later date than the print version, except one (Pyotr Pervyi,
film in 1937-38, book in 1948).
17

In print biographies, as elsewhere, we see a growing gravitation towards Russian
characters after 1937. In the mid-1930s (1933-1937) out of 82 biographies, 26 (32%) are
of Russians. Remarkably, already at this point selected personalities are mostly “cultural”
heroes, with only one figure related to the revolutionary pantheon – the revolutionary
narodnik A. Zheliabov. 3 more (3.7%) come from the former Russian empire, with one
out of the 3 – the Civil War hero and Red Army commander G. Kotovskii (1937) – while
a Moldovan Bessarab can be counted in the international Soviet revolutionary pantheon.

18
The Russian canon also included one volume of assorted heroes in 1936 (Gorky’s
“Literary Portraits”) and in 1937 (a collection entitled “Soviet creators of machines”
(“Sovetskie tvortsy mashin”). After the watershed year of 1938 when the numbers of
Russians and foreigners were equal, Russians dominated the biographies until 1950 at 59
– 20 – 4 (with total exclusion of foreigners and Empire descendants in the years 1943-
1946 and no biographies published in 1941-42).
With its emphasis on the people who had left an imprint on history, “ZhZL”
seems out of place in the early 1930s. Despite the 1937 inclusion of the volume on the
“creators of Soviet machines,” a move in tune with the dominant literary form of the
previous decade – the production novel – most of the characters in the series are figures

17
This number of biopics based on a character previously featured in a literary biography is almost
certainly much higher than 41%. This calculation is based on archival resources limited to “Mosfilm” and “
Gorky” studios only. Two other large studios, “Lenfilm” and “Soyuzdetfilm” were also producers of
biographical works (based on people also featured in the “ZhZL”).
18
The ethnically Ukrainian writer N.Gogol’ is included in the Russian part of the sample, and hero of Civil
War G.Kotovskii among the descendants of Empire because their primary achievements that had warranted
their inclusion into the canon took place in Russia and Bessarabia/Ukraine respectively.

29
of the distant past.
19
Inventors, scientists, writers, composers and military leaders, the
strictly linear narratives of the lives of the famous Russians in “ZhZL” are in stark
contrast to the stories of exceptional contemporary heroes – shock workers and polar
explorers. In fact, the original emphasis of the early 1930s biographical tales was on
contemporary heroes, like the Stakhanovites and the Chkalovites, who were, according to
Gorky, to “rally by example.”
20
Inspirational stories of exceptional contemporaries,
however, give way to the heroes of national state-building beginning with the mid-1930s,
making it possible to relate the shift to the intensification of interest in the study and
promulgation of History.
The author of the only known monograph on the Soviet biographical film, K.
Ognev explains the popularity of the genre: “it stands to reason that the biography of a
major statesman, politician or military leader inevitably distilled in itself the significance
as well as the objectives of a social process,” “as the life condensed into a slice of
history” (5). This view of a biographical narrative as capable of representing the ethos of
a historical period, of highlighting in a life the meaning and place of the period in the
grand narrative of History illustrates the pervasive presence of the teleological view of
history, in perfect keeping with the direction that the Soviet historiography had taken
since the 1930s.
Understood as a succession of periods with a series of identifiable meanings,
History could not but affect artists whose primary function was to “express their epoch”

19
The rise of the “production novel” (proizvodstvennyi roman) began in the late 1920s and reached its high
critical point in the early 1930s. V.Kataev’s novel Vremya vpered! (“Time, Forward!”) was published in
1932, F.Gladkov’s Energiya (“The Energy”) in 1932 (considerably revised in 1933).
20
See K.F. Platt and D. Brandenberger, eds., Epic Revisions: Russian History and Literature as Stalinist
Propaganda. P. 6. Also D.Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation
of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931-1956. Pp. 27-63.

30
(vyrazit’ svoyo vremya, svoyu epokhu).
21
What this meant was that regardless of subject
matter, style or genre, the imperative to “express our time” acquired particular urgency in
revolutionary art and remained a slogan throughout the later decades in Soviet culture.
Needless to say, by itself the injunction to “express the times” means nothing, but there is
a tangible difference between expressing one’s times and expressing oneself, between
searching for the typical character and the atypical (even if still positive) one. The notion
of “expressing the times” often served as foil for seemingly random attacks on film
works, and the bickering between film-makers, critics and editors (not necessarily across
professions but often within) shows that what expressed the times well enough the year
before could be deemed bankrupt come this year’s conference between the film-makers
and the party. Yet despite the often contradictory criticism from outside forces
(channeled through the articles in Pravda, Sovetskaya kultura or Iskusstvo kino), film-
makers and film critics often appealed to “the times” as the objective plane of reference.
It is tempting to see “expression of the times” as a void marker that could be filled with
arbitrary meaning but careful consideration shows that there was indeed an earnest search
for an the aesthetic means to express “the epoch” and that such discussions produced an
eventual discursive coalescence around a current vision of the times and the
corresponding aesthetic means.
1.5. Usable Past

21
Eisenstein expressed the view that as an artist he could not but express “the actions and the will of the
masses who have carried out the revolution, who are continuing to carry it out”, that he could not but
express “the feelings and ideas that new Russia’s life is so rich with, in its very core, for I myself feel these
feelings, the feelings that own me and that neither poets, nor musicians, nor artists of all other areas of art
could refrain from without an [adverse] impact on their art. Is it not the nature of artists to express their
epoch?”(Quoted in N.Lebedev, Ocherki istorii kino SSSR. 118).

31
Scholars of Stalinism have attempted to explain why History and its correct
interpretation became crucial in defining the ethos of the epoch. It is often maintained
that the revival of “the usable past” was an ideological maneuver that attended to the rise
of the cult of personality.
22
It is indisputable that Stalinist culture operated by creating a
past that was replete with parallels to the present, whereby contemporary leaders could
recruit popular support for the purges by equating the present with the times of, say, Ivan
the Terrible’s rule. However, the turn toward the past had more than one political use.
Apart from justification of Stalin’s strong statesmanship, the sudden surge in official
popularity for characters, like Suvorov and Kutuzov, not to mention later heroes like
Glinka, Musorgskii, and Lermontov, suggests that the goals went beyond simply creating
political hierarchies and metaphorically valorizing communist leadership. As D.
Brandenberger has shown in National Bolshevism (2002), the valorization of the national
past that was in full force by the early to mid-1930s was seen by the communist
leadership as a means of social cohesion in an otherwise divided society.
It is hard to disagree that cinema had the leading role in “the creation and
sustenance of the myth of Soviet power,” especially during Stalin’s rule, but as one
theorizes the significance of the obligatory positive hero, caution must be exercised to not
over-privilege the cult of personality in foregrounding this structural element. The
dictatorship of the positive character is concomitant with totalitarian political practices
but the role of historical personalities was more multi-faceted than merely providing a
stand-in character for Stalin. One fallacy of this position, espoused by Taylor, is the
contention that biopics set far back in history were better positioned for more subversive

22
See L. Kozlov, “The Artist and the Shadow of Ivan.”

32
creativity thanks to the absence of concrete historical evidence. This, in Taylor’s view,
allowed Eistenstein “to create his own versions of both Aleksandr Nevskii and Ivan the
Terrible” (88). Moreover, the second part of Ivan the Terrible is cited as a masterful
instance of subversion, whereas other historical narratives seem to be “much more
straightforward and more obvious cultic representations of the Great Leader” (88).
While Eisenstein may have taken some artistic license in creating his own Nevskii
and Ivan, crediting the remoteness of the past with allowing for subversive messages
suggests that political control over the subjects of distant past was more relaxed, if only
out of necessity, for lack of unequivocal ideologically co-opted historiography. As recent
historical research on the subject has shown, historical subject matter in the arts in fact
was taken very seriously beginning with the mid 1930s.
23
Looked at as a genre,
biographical film under the three decades of the Stalin era reveals that the dominance of
the characters of the distant past coincided with the surge in public political narratives of
stability, continuity and Russian national supremacy. From that perspective, distant past
portrayals were just as advantageous as others, if not more so, for the regime as they were
for the film-makers’ artistic license. Re-articulating the Russian national past by placing
exceptional figures in the midst or at the head of historically determined movements
sought to affirm the vision of the Soviet Union as the natural successor of a glorious
national tradition. Historiography of the 1920s, presided by M. N. Pokrovskii, had
positioned the Soviet state as the result of a historic rupture, a breaking away from an
oppressive obsolete and irredeemable society.
24
The only legitimate objects of interest

23
See Platt, K. F. and D. Brandenberger, Epic Revisionism (2006).
24
The most influential Soviet historian between 1917 and 1932, Pokrovskii “was known for his advocacy
of materialism and his refusal to valorize patriotism, historical personalities or historical narratives

33
were instances of violent rebellions, like that of Emelyan Pugachev or Stepan Razin, seen
as the spontaneous outbursts that prefigured the 1917 October revolution.
The 1930s, however, re-imagined the past and created continuity between the past
and the present, an epic continuity. In this vision, the massive political ruptures brought
about by the revolution do not represent a contradiction to national continuity because
connections are made through ahistorical national values that were suppressed by some
autocrats yet correctly identified and reinforced by others. The most politically invested
genre of the time (and at times the only genre, with the number of releases dropping to as
low as thirteen per year), the biopic owed its survival and flourishing to this new cyclical
view of history.
Despite the prominence of Stalin himself in the discourse of the individual in
history and despite the inevitably towering positive character in the arts, the deviousness
of the regime may be most obvious in the absence of a clearly defined antagonist in the
presence of a strong protagonist. While the de facto righteousness of the positive
character can exert the pressure of submission to power, the remarkable ideological
potential of musical comedies (The Circus and Volga-Volga, dir. Aleksandrov), and
kolkhoz musicals (Tractor-Drivers and The Swine Herd and the Shepherd, dir. Pyryev)
lies exactly in their ability to exert social control through a lack of correspondence
between the strong ethical implications of the narrative and the absence of understandable
force of resistance. This development was noted and hailed as a positive shift at the film-

organized along national lines” (Brandenberger, “The Great Retreat: Stalin’s Cooption of Russian
Historical Myths in the Eyes of the Left Intelligentsia”). See also D.Brandenberger, “Who Killed
Pokrovskii (the second time)? The Prelude to the Denunciation of the Father of Soviet Marxist
Historiography, January 1936.”

34
makers’ conference in 1936 (Kapler 37). The negative character of these films is not
inherently negative, but one overcome with a temporary eclipse in the understanding of
Soviet policies, like a somewhat obtuse bureaucrat or an overzealous leader, is punished
by a temporary expulsion from the community. Comedic enactments of expulsion from
the collective had the potential of indirectly relating to the ongoing undefined threat of
physical disappearance in the purges. The relief of re-integration then reinforced the
correct values and choices of action and the rewards inherent in them.
Pervasive as the cult of personality in Stalin’s time was, the massive recruitment
of historical personages from the Russian imperial past for biopics is not explained by the
argument that all artistic production was subordinated to representing the narrative of
“the one positive hero,” “the red star of stars in the Kremlin, the focus of the personality
cult – Stalin the Red Tsar” (89). Moreover, a detailed analysis of the rhetorical and visual
specificity of biopics shows that there is a fundamental difference between portraying
fictional contemporaries and historical Great Men from a distant past; that even within
historical narratives mythical folk heroes like Vasily Buslai or Gavrilo Aleksich have a
fundamentally different role in the “usable past” than does Nevskii; and that even among
the historical heroes there are cultural, national and social hierarchies. Furthermore, in the
biopic, narratives of transformation gradually give way to narratives of
monumentalization. The biopic in the Stalinist cultural paradigm reflects a view of
history that is always advanced by a visionary with the correct sense of social
development. This turn towards the past and a cultic view of history in itself reflect the
growing gravitation towards social, cultural and national hierarchies that had been
considerably weakened in the decade after the Civil War. In Stalinist cinema the Great

35
Men of the past inhabit a pantheon that is literally elevated (as the Great Men spend a lot
of their quality screen time on staircases and other make-shift pedestals) and figuratively,
as the past is presented in the terms that glorify epic Rus’.
The cultic view of history, naturalized by the contemporary enthusiastic cult of
Stalin, promotes a sense of ahistorical history, of history that operates on the premise of
the eternal return, ostensibly teleologically, in the name of ultimate progress
(Communism). However, the trajectory towards that point can consist of uncoiling cycles
of similarly emplotted dispensations of class struggle and national triumphs until the next
decisive rupture. Perceived cultural continuity that drives legitimization of the present is
indispensable for the mobilization of Russian nationalism. It does support top-down,
nationalist, Imperialist hierarchies but it is also concerned with inserting Sovietness into a
larger system of reference, both temporally and culturally, and with being able to derive
meanings from a richer plane of signification, not merely with legitimizing itself. Where
earlier Soviet forays into history sought to create a genealogy of the revolution,
25
the
mid-1930s witness a shift to a treatment of history as the justification for the State
(Dobrenko 31). Beside the immediate political agenda that can be promoted through a
parallel with a previous “coil” of history, such bridges create the sense of “mastering
History” (Shklovskii), and of teleological progression.
26

1.6. Hollywood Biopic

25
Initially, this creation of mythology took place within “the peculiar Stalinist cosmology” of the 1930s:
amounting to a dual sense of time and reality, it frequently referenced a designated sacred Great Time (the
1917 Revolution, the Civil War, parts of Stalin’s life); the profane present always derived its significance
from the mythic past (Clark 40).
26
It is not accidental that V.Shklovskii described his goal in writing the script for Minin i Pozharskii as the
task of “mastering History” (“ovladenie istoriei”) (Dobrenko 32).

36
Unlike writing, film was a new medium whose early development was
accompanied by debates as fundamental as whether or not shooting scripts were
necessary and whether or not the introduction of sound was a concession to theatricality
and an all but certain defeat for the masses’ desire for entertainment.
27
It was also a
medium that involved high production costs and required unique equipment, constant
training of specialists to service it and a functioning administrative environment that
could ensure smooth collaboration between the various branches of film production. In
those conditions, Hollywood was a frame of reference at least as significant as the native
literary sources. Director L. Trauberg’s report after the delegation he headed had come
back from the US in 1936 describes the yet unsatisfactory state of affairs in the USSR
when compared to America.
28
Soviet film-makers, critics and party representatives all
saw Hollywood as the unchallenged world champion of the medium and the master of
superior cinematic techniques.
29

As with any film genre, the Hollywood biopic reveals a set of ideological
pressures imposed on the narrative, most explicitly through the choice of material as well
as by making it fit a specific narrative pattern. G. Custen explicitly wrote of the
Hollywood classic era biopics that in producing a coherent, “nearly monochromatic
Hollywood view of history” out of disparate occurrences with historical credibility, film-
makers “cultivate the interests of their producers, presenting a world view that naturalizes
certain lives and specific values over alternative ones” (2-4). When Custen exposes the
“Hollywood view of history,” it is not out of concern for the issues of “realism” or factual

27
D. Youngblood, “Americanitis: American Film Influences in Russia” 149-150.
28
Ibid.
29
R.Taylor, “Ideology as Mass Entertainment: Boris Schumyatsky and Soviet Cinema in the 1930s.”

37
authenticity, but out of a recognition that what a biopic can achieve with regard to
“realism” is at best to “[convince] us of its own kind of authenticity,” while inevitably
presenting “an enormous engaging distortion” (Taylor 7). The “realism” of the biopic
comes out of conventions of characterization and not from recreating concrete events in
their specific causal connections. The issue of verisimilitude is the problem of
psychological verisimilitude, a believable representation of those types of behavior that
fit into a dramatic structure that the present finds befitting “history.” For instance,
sacrificing the interests of the family to the ideals of one’s vocation signifies differently
coming from John Adams (e.g., the 2008 HBO mini-series) and from an ER character.
When John Adams fires his secretary and son-in-law because Colonel Williams is
involved in speculations or when he disowns his alcoholic son Charles, his outrage with
both men is consistent with the ethos of his statesmanship, and he appropriately castigates
them with diatribes about their indulgence and lack of self-control. That moderation and
self-discipline are staples of early American bourgeois culture is obvious, but the degree
of passion and the choice in favor of those values over family relationships can only be
justified in the light of the later evaluation of the bourgeois ethos as a positive and
consistent drive of American history. This kind of passion of conviction is usually shown
in historical narratives only when presenting beliefs that have been borne out by History
and thus the trope of “passion of conviction” regularly delivers on two messages: the
power of staying true to one’s beliefs (exemplified by the trial of making a painful
personal decision) effects a change in the actual reality (leaders’ values are picked up by
larger groups); and demonstrates that historical figures are exceptional because they are
visionaries. Inserting man’s agency into the course of history retroactively reverses

38
psychological causality, as the narrative amounts to ascribing prophetic qualities to
historical figures, so that the Great Men both affect history and foresee its course. “The
visionary pattern” is clearly not limited to the Soviet biopic, but, as I argue below, its role
is central in determining the themes and the type of emplotment in the Soviet version of
history on film.
Custen has argued that central to the biopic of the classic Hollywood era (1927-
1960) was the theme of “fame and its relation to the ordinary individual”. Whether
compelling or alienating in reality, the narrated facts had to evoke in the viewer a
“rooting interest” in the character, i.e. they had to be interpreted in the categories relevant
to the audiences’ experiences or to be in agreement with the viewers’ beliefs about
famous people. Custen credits D. F. Zanuck, a writer at Warner’s and later head of Fox,
with imposing the dictate of psychological “motivation” that was to reign over
biographical narratives in the following decades. The rooting interest and motivation in
the classic Hollywood film created characters to which one could relate (through their
love interests, their personal lives, their simple or whimsical mundane desires), while
their achievements, thus explained through motivation, would still make them suitable for
audience veneration (Taylor 18-19).
Classic Hollywood biopics follow a pattern considerably different from the one
operative in previous biographical material and, in particular, in print biographies.
Modern literary biographies – both fictionalized and non-fiction – tended to show the
character from a very early age, sometimes from the moment of birth, and spent a
considerable amount of time discussing family background and sensibilities as a way to
contextualize or explain the inclinations of the future exceptional individual. In contrast,

39
in about sixty per cent of Hollywood biopics the age of the main character at the opening
of the film is that of a young adult – nineteen years or older – with only a small minority
of films showing childhood in detail. But it is not the age per se that determines the
opening moment but the fact that the narrative shows the birth of the talent – the moment
the character first discovers the gift or behavior that will distinguish him in history. Still,
the opening in medias res, which presents a character “past the age where his or her
values can be influenced by the family” precipitates a certain type of selection of material
that excludes patriarchal influence and sets up a model of causality that is consonant with
the American national mythology of self-invention (Custen 149).
The main dramatic conflict in the Hollywood biopic is between the individual and
the larger community, mostly because the feats the character attempts to perform are
thought of as undoable and so he or she has to overcome a resistance that is usually
spelled out in social terms. Whether or not the hero is vindicated, the film shows the
attempt to redefine the boundaries or to effect a paradigm shift within the field. The gift
of the famous is often their curse, as they strive but are unable to reach for normalcy,
usually represented by having a family.
Custen notes that only three out of hundreds of Hollywood biopics follow their
characters from birth to death. The death of the protagonist is often omitted and films end
with a monument or a commemorative icon, “a reminder of the veneration the character
has earned in the living narrative just seen” (153).
1.7. Soviet Biopic: General Comparison with Hollywood
At first glance, the Soviet biopic displays a number of similar themes, conflicts
and formal features as the Hollywood biographical film of the same period. In a sample

40
of 35 films only one character (in the 1946 Glinka) is shown from birth – an event in
itself presented as vastly meaningful, with signs of the infant’s inevitable greatness, not
unlike those surrounding the birth of a saint. Serfs appropriately sit around the house with
musical instruments on the day of the composer’s birth, praying for the infant to have “a
light hand,” and are ordered to start playing an overture as soon as the news of the first-
born boy is announced; the toddler Glinka is mesmerized by the sounds of the Russian
village. Both scenes prefigure not only his gift for music but also his role as the “father of
the Russian composing tradition.” An unproduced script Sofia Kovalevskaya
30
opens with
her as a child whose natural mathematical gift is being discovered. However, this
similarity with Hollywood – the absence of childhood and of the hierarchically presented
parental unit at the outset of the story – is deceptive: the crucial aspect in the Soviet
character introduction is that the character is not shown at the moment of the discovery of
their talent, but already has it and knows that, as often do his peers and adversaries.
Except for Yunost’ poeta, the 1937 film about the teenage years of Aleksandr Pushkin,
and, perhaps, the 1941 Valerii Chkalov there is no place for striking the community
(supporters or detractors) or the audience with a display of character, talent or skill. The
ramifications for audience identification are quite telling: the life of a great is an exercise
in asserting will over circumstances, not in vanquishing self-doubt or winning over the
community.
Many Hollywood biopics and about half of the Soviet films in the sample do not
trace the life from beginning to end, but focus instead on a well-known episode in the
career of the protagonist (Emelyan Pugachev, Stepan Razin, Kutuzov, Suvorov, Rimskii-

30
A different script was produced at “Lenfilm” a decade later and opened with Sofia Kovalevskaia as a
young woman.

41
Korsakov, Aleksandr Nevskii, Chapaev, Minin i Pozharskii, Admiral Ushakov, Admiral
Nakhimov, Bogdan Khmelnitskii). In the later Soviet films, in particular, the talent,
reputation or influence of the Great Man are assumed to be an indisputable given, barely
even questioned by enemies. The protagonist may have recently suffered a setback
(usually against the current regime in power) but there is a force that promotes the man as
the right person for whatever task is outlined as nationally or culturally crucial. Other
heroes, like the protagonists of Pirogov, Akademik Ivan Pavlov, Musorgskii, Aleksandr
Popov, Zhukovskii, Kompozitor Glinka, Taras Shevchenko, however, are shown over a
considerable portion of their life and the narrative follows a pattern of achievement
intensification.
Nevertheless, the character’s life spans a long period of time, and like the
Hollywood heroes, he engages in redefining the paradigm of what was considered
possible through a conflict with the community. In fact, most professionals among the
characters face unfriendly or outright hostile peer environments and their achievements
redefine the professional paradigm, although it is articulated in specifically national
terms. Thus, Glinka sparks a national musical tradition, Zhukovskii and Popov catapult
Russian science onto new levels, Pirogov pioneers new techniques and Pavlov ventures
into the study of brain and demonstrates to his English colleagues that materialism is a
superior worldview.
Soviet biopics, like their American counterparts, mostly open with introductory
historical titles or voice-overs. However, where Hollywood biopics with introductions
like “This is the true story … and it starts one fall afternoon near Wagner, Texas;” “You
might have read one of my books;” “My life was never my own,” or “This is the way I

42
remember it, definitely” may have worked to create an illusion of seamless entry into
reality, Soviet historical introductions function very differently.
31
Introductions focus on
inserting the narrative into a non-fictional, non-subjective view of History, often
establishing a specific causal relationship that had paved the way to the events shown.
For instance, “In 1762 noblemen put Catherine on the throne, having killed her husband
Peter with her assistance.” The rest of the introduction lists the injustices inflicted on the
peasants that had led to the peasant war that would be lead by Pugachev, but Pugachev is
not mentioned. While there is no causal relationship between Peter’s murder and the
increase in the oppression of the serfs, there is a connection between the war and Peter,
since Pugachev assumed the name of Peter III for the sake of mobilizing popular support.
In some films (such as Pugachev, Minin i Pozharskii, Stepan Razin), explanatory
titles continue through the film in ways that hearken back to the tradition of silent film
story-telling. This effect is further intensified by the unusually high incidence of folk
songs through the entire film but most often – in the opening. Soviet introductory titles
underscore genre – epic chronicling or commemoration –as well as introduce the
narrative into the corpus of folk-stylized national historiography.
A rather clear difference between Soviet and Hollywood characters is that Soviet
heroes never remain unvindicated. Not only are they always positive within a given
sequence, the heroes of the Soviet biopic either triumph or they are vindicated by History.
In Hollywood biopics, the lack of vindication amounts to a tragic sense of being at odds
with the community and failure to reformulate the boundaries of that community. In the
Soviet case, the character may appear to have failed in his endeavor or is vanquished by

31
Custen 51, 54-55. (The Stratton Story, 1949; The Magnificent Yankee; 1950; I’ll Cry Tomorrow, 1955;
Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956).

43
the powers he struggles against (like the rebels Emelyan Pugachev, Salavat Iulaev and
Stepan Razin), but vindication is granted directly from the future, by History itself. By
1940 even vindicated failure disappears from the narratives entirely. In Pugachev the
scene of execution creates a direct relationship between the hero’s courageously facing
his death and his wife telling their son to watch and remember, with the implication that
the death of Pugachev is just as useful for the unfolding of History as his life; Pugachev’s
death and the final pronouncement by his wife are shown as a direct antecedent to 1917.
Genius or extraordinariness may be articulated verbally in the Soviet biopic, but it
is rather a matter of “difference,” “daring” and “being underestimated” and is
consistently tied to Russianness in the 1940s-early 1950s. There is no tragic opposition
between the loneliness of the driven genius and the comforting “normalcy” of the
ordinary people, except for Ivan the Terrible and Michurin. The presence of a “normal”
personal life, i.e. having a wife or a love interest (as do Pavlov, Popov, Rimskii-
Korsakov, Michurin), never competes with the Cause. In Hollywood biopics, what the
characters lost in the absence of families, they made up in the ubiquity and significance
of friendships and heterosexual romance. What these relationships underscore in
Hollywood is the lovability of the character, as well as his or her ability to appear human.
More importantly, romance in Hollywood became the indispensable second line of
action, a requirement that overrode both facts and protests of the surviving historical
characters or relatives (Brigham Young – Frontiersman, 1940, Yankee Doodle Dandy).
In the Soviet case it is hard to distinguish families from heterosexual romance
because love interests do not come to figure as plot-forming elements and, as we see in
Chapter Two, were seen as distracting even with the secondary characters of the Soviet

44
biopic. Family members featured almost as often as wives are brothers and sisters
(Kompozitor Glinka, Zhukovskii, Pavlov), with no parent sightings except for the 1946
version of Glinka and Zhukovskii’s mother, but whether siblings or spouses, their
significance is indiscernible from that of other helpers, like students, disciples or junior
colleagues. The personal sphere is limited and the private life does not feature either
internal or external conflicts in the protagonist’s plot line. Even in Hollywood these
relationships are asymmetrical and the Great Man stands at the center of the universe,
human, but remote, taker not giver (Custen 159).
A requirement for the companionship of friends is a feature for both Hollywood
and Soviet biopic, although the American counterpart does have a small number (12%) of
friendless characters, which may have been part of the Romantic myth of a Great Man
(usually an artist) as a loner. Soviet characters overwhelmingly have a junior helper, or an
entire school of students or admiring young supporters. Moreover, the secondary plot
develops around the junior helper. The junior associate’s plot line features romance or
revolutionary/progressive activity or both. As becomes clear from the 1946 critical uproar
over the secondary romance line in Admiral Nakhimov, its function was to make the main
character more sympathetic, while at the same time casting the Great Man as a
sympathizer of progressive political movements.
As emerges from my analysis, the central theme of the Soviet biopic is the
defense of Russia or its honor, developed through a number of structural and
characterization devices that pertain to the realm of the national epic. In Hollywood
national chauvinism and jingoism is usually reserved for nations other than America.
Custen ironically notes that “’honor’ outside America is a tenuous thing salvaged from

45
destruction, every ten years or so.” The same obsession as drives the Soviet biopic befalls
the French in the Hollywood version of that nation, namely, a line of intense nationalism,
“obsessed with the foundation of a country on the proper terms and, later, its maintenance
through vigilance in a number of fields” (97). Custen’s explanation of France-in-tumult
as the backdrop (and a motivating force) for the Great Man’s accomplishments (cf.:
German phantom nationhood is never presented in comparable terms) is that the French
line engages in saving democracy under duress. Hollywood portrayals of France-in-
tumult present opportunities for identification through melodramatic emplotment, carried
out in universal terms (e.g. The Life of Emile Zola).
In the Soviet biopic, the constant theme of Russia’s besiegement (externally and
internally) and its unfailing push for survival and progress result in reiterations of the
myth of return (from the dead) and the reaffirmation of national historical viability. The
gravitation towards the epic mode is not only congruent with the theme – the epic
structure, typified folk tale elements in the visual iconography, heavily inverted pre-
modern language – it provides a merging between film and history, whose implications
go much further than the routine assignment of biopics to ideological inculcation and
political complicity. The illusion of “epic chronicling” that I discuss in the next section
may not have been as popular as melodrama on the subjective (identification) level of
psychological verisimilitude, but the insertion of text into a series of “folk national
narratives” is a powerful tool for naturalizing History, visually and politically.
1.8 Soviet Film Characters of the Time and the Biopic
Although biopic was a dominant and formulaic genre, it was not entirely in accord
with the tendencies for character representation of the new Soviet cinema. The typical

46
hero was a young Russian adult, whereas the main figure in the biopic was a mature to
elderly Russian male. In their 1955 study Babitsky and Rimberg came up with a
sociological analysis of the heroes and villains in Soviet films produced between 1923
and 1950, based on a corpus of four hundred films.
32
The study focused on the categories
of ethnicity, socio-economic class, age and sex; they were distributed into tables with
heroes vis-à-vis villains. Predictably, Russians accounted for the highest number of
heroes (45%), followed by Ukrainians and Caucasians (12% each group), with small
percentages falling to such groups as Asiatic characters, Byelorussians, Jews and
ethnically unidentifiable characters. Altogether heroes were 90% Soviet or Russian
Empire-born.
33
As for the socio-economic make-up in the sample, heroes were almost
evenly distributed between “specialists on violence” – police, armed forces, secret agents,
criminals – 23%; workers/employees (18%) and peasants (15%).
34

The class of Soviet Great Men in the 1940s in my sample is divided rigidly, for
obvious reasons: men active in the 19
th
century all belong to propertied classes, like
landowners. Men mostly active in the 20
th
century were either professional
revolutionaries or working men. Professional break-down falls into four categories:
1) military leaders (in Babitsky and Rimberg’s terms “specialists on violence”) -
Suvorov, Kutuzov, Admiral Nakhimov, Admiral Ushakov, Aleksandr Parkhomenko,
Kotovskii, Velikiy Voin Albanii Skandeberg.

32
The Soviet film industry, by Paul Babitsky and John Rimberg. Foreword by Alex Inkeles. New York,
Published for the Research Program on the U. S. S. R. by Praeger, 1955, 218-236.
33
In the sample of villains Russians constituted almost a third (31%), while foreigners accounted for 54%
of the villains, where Germans made up for 21% of the general sample and the British - for 7%. 223-224.
34
Villains in the sample were more heavily represented by “specialists on violence” (43%), followed by
politicians/administrators (23%) and capitalists/petite bourgeoisie (12%), 225-226.

47
2) Scientists/Doctors/Travellers - Michurin, Pirogov, Pavlov, Popov, Przhevalskii,
Zhukovskii.
3) Artists - Glinka, Kompozitor Glinka, Musorgskii, Rimskii-Korsakov, Belinskii,
Lermontov, Aleksandr Pushkin, Aleksandr Borodin.
4) Political Leaders - Lenin, Aleksandr Nevskii, Ivan the Terrible, Pyotr Pervyi.
While the gender make-up of heroes in the general sample is 76% to 24 %, the
Great Men series is a 100% male, the only exception being Sofia Kovalevskaia,
conceived at Mosfilm during the late 1940s, but eventually released at Lenfilm in 1956.
The early biopic to an extent followed the Chapaev pattern of the Socialist Realist
novel, as in films like Kotovskii and Valerii Chkalov and featured the spontaneous “son”
type characters, whose only lack was that of conscious self-control. These were either
contemporary heroes or heroes of the very recent past.
In comparison, the mid to late 1940s as well as the early 1950s saw movies about
characters from the more distant past, those who had been dead for a long time and had
turned into an icon. Soviet film could have easily followed Hollywood in recruiting more
real-life heroes from the newspaper headlines. War time reality would have proved a rich
source of inspiration for that, but this was not the path taken.
35
This later pattern can be
termed “film-monument” for a number of reasons. One is that both studio notes
(Aleksandr Pushkin) and films’ epigraphs articulate the desire to serve as a monument to
the person they portray (Pirogov). Monument in stone becomes the pivotal theme, visual
constant and an ideological construct. Several films open with physical monuments to the
titular character. This presentation of the petrified image before the appearance of the

35
The only exceptions were Aleksandr Matrosov and Zoia.

48
protagonist appears to undermine the very process of audience identification.
Dramatically, “film-monument” discards the reigning biographical pattern of
transformation, instead presenting a character that is fully conscious from the beginning.
Occasionally, the protagonist will play the role of the commissar to the supporting
characters.
Elements in visual iconography also change. 1930s biopics often open with either
a very dynamic scene relating a commotion or a portrayal of severe distress experienced
by ‘our’ side. In the 1940s, there is also often a sense of disharmony, but the adversity is
never extreme. Although many of the same elements infuse the visual iconography of
both patterns – like recurrent action on a road, crowds of displaced people, blind
homeless and beggars – these familiar clichés are encoded in different ways and serve as
accessories to differing effects. The protagonist who is engaged in highly dynamic
motion, often on horseback (Kotovskii, Chapaev, Shchors, Bogdan Khmelnitskii, Peter
the Great) gives way to a character that stands still, on a platform. The earlier characters
also deliver speeches from podiums but we always witness a change in axes. Separated
by almost three centuries Shchors and Khmelnitskii perform similar leaps onto their
platforms. Stepping up to speak from an elevation marks the moment of a seizure of
control over speech and over the attention of others. In the later films, a shot will feature
the protagonist in the already raised position. Moreover, the elevated position is not
always reserved for its logical function – that of addressing a group of people. In several
films (Admiral Nakhimov, Pugachev, Admiral Ushakov) the protagonist uses his platform
to observe, thus marking his perspective as a superior historical point of view.

49
In discussing the generic change in the Soviet biopic one faces a terminological
challenge, whereby even the very term ‘genre’, due to its Soviet re-formulation, does not
give justice to the processes of continuity and change. Using larger designations like the
epic and the melodramatic appears to offer a fruitful way of discussing the major shifts in
story-telling. As the next chapter shows, Soviet film discourse was hesitant to pin those
changes down to a specific set of formal terms and, nevertheless, what can be gleaned
from that discussion retrospectively is a consistent and enthusiastic gravitation toward an
‘epic’ aesthetic.

50
Chapter 2. Creating Soviet Epic
2.1. Epic History
Biopics’ prominence during Stalin’s rule owes itself to the public rise of History
that by the 1940s became synonymous with national history. In this chapter I discuss the
rise of national history, its historiographical theses and the ways in which the new
conception of historical development corresponded to epic story-telling. I discuss
multiple critical statements that pointed out and validated narrative changes in Soviet
film-making in general and in the biopic in particular. Most notably, the fading away of
conflicts that is reflected in the industry’s theoretical journal Iskusstvo kino, matches the
new historiography’s vision of the role of the individual. That role was now seen as
recognition of historical necessity as well as demonstration of leadership on the right side
of history. Soviet film narrative, as I argue, adopts the same model, reducing the
significance of dramatic elements like conflict and focusing instead on expressing the
spirit of the time and its historical necessity.
The none-too-subtle emphasis on Russian history in the 1940s has been attributed
to the nationalist Russian agenda, especially visible in the post-war anti-cosmopolitism
campaigns. Mobilization of Russian nationalism thus is seen to be related to the WWII
effort (Swayze 28). However, recent scholarship shows that the reversal of fortunes for
historical personalities began as early as the early 1930s.
36
Already in 1931 Stalin argued
that the opposition of the role of class to that of an individual in history that had hitherto
dominated Soviet historiography did not contradict the absorption of past historical
figures into the cultural canon. When asked by the German writer Emil Ludwig about

36
Platt, K.F. and D. Brandenberger, Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature as Stalinist
Propaganda (2006).

51
Marxism’s denial of the leading role of personality in history, Stalin described what
would soon constitute the change in attitudes towards the national past. Heroes, Stalin
maintained, had never been denied their role in history; in fact, theirs was a significant
one as long as they were considered instruments of progress within the context of a
specific generation (Platt & Brandenberger 3). As Brandenberger and Platt show, in the
previous decade the perception of the historical role of the individual in Soviet
ideological output had undergone dramatic changes.
While the original Marxist emphasis on the masses as the driving force of history
had been reflected in Eisenstein’s Strike and October and was endorsed through official
historiography presided over by M. N. Pokrovskii, this view was beginning to be affected
in the late 1920s by the burgeoning cult of Lenin. The glorification of the October 1917
Revolution brought forward stories of heroic participants in the events. The hero-less art
and a hero-less view of history were supplemented with a small internationalist pantheon
of heroes. As etatist tendencies in Soviet ideology began to gain strength, the Secretary of
the Central Committee of the Communist Party A.Zhdanov introduced corrections to
Shestakov’s history textbook in which rebels like Pugachev and Razin received less
enthusiastic treatment than they normally had in the 1920s (14). Furthermore, the
pantheon of heroes began to be supplemented by the heroes of the more distant past, like
Peter the Great, Aleksandr Nevskii, Ivan the Terrible, Suvorov, Kutuzov and others.
The overall exchange of proletarian internationalism for patriotic etatism has
recently been explained as part of attempting to achieve a stable socialist regime, rather
than as an aberration of the Communist Party’s course.
37
Once the radical re-shaping of

37
David Hoffmann, “Was There a ‘Great Retreat’ from Soviet Socialism? Stalinist Culture Reconsidered.”

52
all state institutions had been completed and socialism was established (officially
unveiled at the 17
th
Party Congress in 1934), the regime could rely on the above
institutions in their redefined meaning and functions. As another critic noted,
rehabilitation of the historical past and Russian national iconography was not a
contradictory move in the party’s policies but merely one that reflected an etatist concern,
albeit that of a socialist state (Kotkin 357).
Gravitation towards the choice of distant past heroes served a number of
purposes, both long-standing and immediate. One immediate advantage of distant past
heroes was their durability compared to easily disposable heroic contemporaries. The
frenetic pace at which purges sent ideologues into re-writing and correcting their texts in
the late 1930s made the heroes of the distant past a welcome choice for mobilization
propaganda (Platt & Brandenberger 5). The other reason for an intense interest in these
heroes was the 1930s agenda of state-building, which explains choices of proto-cultic
leaders as subjects as well as the rehabilitation of cultural classics, like A. Pushkin. Their
revival was to make Soviet culture a legitimate successor to the Russian tradition that had
also been recast and brought closer to the present. Yet, this was not merely a search for
legitimacy but also the creation of an argument for continuity. In this logic, the greater
the Russian national tradition, the higher the credibility of modern Soviet culture thanks
to its latter’s claim of direct succession. The more specific agenda of the revaluated
treatment of history in the 1930s appears to consist in representing Russian history as a
superior national tradition; in setting the epic Russian past as a source of origin and in
forging continuity with the past for the purposes of legitimization of a social and political

53
hierarchy. The turn towards the past was also instrumental in creating a coherent Soviet
identity as the heir to a newly re-invented Russian identity.
38

Stalinist uses of history, however, were not limited to practical tasks, like
mobilization of political support within the party. As E. Dobrenko noted, History in
Stalinism is the guarantor of legitimacy. Meaning and legitimization are granted through
the search and exposition of past prototypes (32). If the early to mid 1930s aimed at
creating a genealogy of the revolution (родословная революции),
39
by the end of the
decade, the past had come to grant legitimacy to the State. This later objective was
achieved through a particular Stalinist historiography in which history is seen as “an
eternal circuit of transformation” (Žižek, The Sublime Object 145).
According to the historiography foregrounded in The Short Course, the driving
force of social progress is not class struggle, but historical necessity.
40
Often indefinable
at the moment of history’s unfolding, it is usually related to the destiny of a People,
understood through the notion of narod – a class, an ethnicity and a historical continuum.
In the historical films of later Stalinism one sees these three meanings of the word narod
condense through metaphors and verbal alignment. As the basis for positive identity
shifted from the correct class to the Russian national character, constant cross-class

38
This glorification of the former class enemies caused surprise and concern both from the left
intelligentsia and the common people and was seen as the return of the Russian chauvinism and jingoism.
David Brandenberger, “The Great Retreat: Stalin’s Cooption of Russian Historical Myths in the Eyes of the
Left Intelligentsia”, unpublished ms, 9.
39
Serebryanskii, M. Sovetskii istoricheskii roman (Quoted in Dobrenko 33).
40
“Everything depends on the conditions, place and time. It is clear that without this historical approach to
social phenomena the existence and development of historical science is impossible, since only this
approach prevents the science of history from turning into a chaos of the accidental [хаос случайностей]
or into a pile of most ludicrous errors [груду нелепейших ошибок].” History of VKP (b): the Short
Course, 1938, 105.

54
fraternizing began to be enacted in the distant past.
41
As the enemy – no longer a class –
became associated with foreigners (already in the 1930s) and “forces of resistance to
progress” in general (tsarist officials, bureaucrats, colleagues obsequious to the West,
nature, time, aging) representatives of any class or any profession could claim Russian
greatness. In terms of generic ritual, biopics now prioritized national/cultural continuity
in ahistorical terms.
These fraternal encounters are usually positioned very early on in the film. Their
function is to rescue the Great Man from the “oppressor” identity and reposition him as a
representative of the Russian people. Through these episodes the Great Man identifies
with the Common Man. Once identification is established, the Great Man may proceed to
strengthen his identification with the common man as a Russian. This ethnic connection
is usually reinforced in a concluding statement of the Great Man on the nature of the
Russian people.
42
More importantly, as the Great Man proceeds to extol the amazing
qualities of the Russian people as a national cultural entity, he will operate with the word
narod and invoke it in the populist sense of the dispossessed classes. This rhetorical
move eliminates the obvious class disparity between the Great Man and the actual narod.
The cultural ethos of the 1920s and early 1930s would not have brought these
Great Men to the foreground on the basis of the fact that they belonged to propertied
classes and were, for the most part, actively involved in the service of tsarism. With the

41
The only exception for the 20
th
century is Lenin’s facility with the common man, but Lenin is shown in
class-less terms, with depersonalization in the physical aspects of his existence elevating him to the status
of pure logos. Although Bonch-Bruevich’s numerous anecdotes placed Lenin into humanizing personal
settings, the endless repetition of the anecdotes reduced them to the punch lines delivered by Lenin and the
anecdotes were known only as vehicles for the famous punch lines.
42
Pushkin in Kompozitor Glinka concludes by the end of one such encoutner: “Прекрасен народ наш,
особливо в беде.”

55
1940s turn towards imperial nationalism this demonstration of mutual sympathy between
the Great Men and common men become a necessary step. The common men in such
episodes of recognition/acknowledgment are often literally blind, which fact makes such
recognition instinctive and natural in a way that fulfills the need to establish the Great
Man’s leading role vis-a-vis the historical sequence he is involved in.
In the Russian language the word “people” has multiple meanings, such as
“ethnicity,” “lower classes,” and, since the 1870s, “common people,” or “peasantry”
(Tynianov 98). The tension between the different meanings and the crossover between
them when applied to a single referent produce unexpected outcomes that can grant
inclusion into “the people” (as “revolutionary masses”) of elements that previously could
only be characterized as the class enemy. Even though Lenin cannot be fully credited
with the invention of the trope, he essentially paved the way for rhetorical maneuver. Iu.
Tynianov discussed Lenin’s facile use of the various meanings of slogan words as well as
his ability to switch from the main to peripheral meanings, to expose and void current
usage by applying quotation marks or by deriding the context in which a currently
powerful term is being invoked. Since many words possess a series of meanings, even
when a given word is used in its peripheral meaning, the main meaning will often
contaminate the usage. The word “people” (narod) in conjunction with “Russian” is
usually understood as ethnos, i.e. as a group that perceives its unity and uniqueness and is
perceived as such by others.
Russianness in this trope becomes essentially sublime and ahistorical, a
spontaneous quantity awaiting the appropriate historical forces to direct it. In an epic
narrative, the vision of history posits the ideal in a mythical, undivided “Rus’” (pre-

56
Petrine name for Russia) – symbolically equivalent but not historically bound to Kievan
Rus’ before the Tatar invasion. The forcefulness of the presentation of the Russian
origins of the Soviet state, culture, language and almost every other tradition becomes
heavy-handed in the 1940s, almost rendering it invisible, as it merges into the convention
in which “Rus’” is the sacred foundation for all later incarnations of the state.
In contrast, early Stalinist cosmology took up the October 1917 Revolution as
point zero, the referential plane, and relegated everything that had happened before to
preparation, and everything that came after – to a profane development, which only
recuperated significance via a relationship to the sacral moment (Clark 39). In the later
Stalinist vision of History it is “Rus’”, not the revolutionary ethos that is the site of
irreducible meanings and unquestionable values that all the ensuing cycles of history
derive their instantiations from. In the evolutionary vision of History that unfolds
between the epic point zero and the telos point the people serves as the vehicle, driven by
historical forces and enacting a series of steps towards the ultimate goal. At every stage
in History, at a pinnacle “historical moment” the people is directed by those who grasp
the logic of historical necessity. The foundations of the Marxist dialectic in relation to
history are detailed in The Short Course of the History of the Communist Party. This is
the text that sets in motion the famously unpredictable notion of “historical necessity” –
declared the main driving force of social development. Prepared under Stalin’s editorial
supervision, the course firmly established an absence of immutable laws, except for the
law of change. For instance, just as the demand for a bourgeois democratic republic in
1905 Russia was a progressive expectation, it would be ludicrous, not to mention,
counter-revolutionary, to clamor for a bourgeois democratic order in the year 1938.

57
The referent for the notion “the people” is also elusive, although the cross-class
fraternization trope detailed above illuminates some of the meanings that make it a
crucial step in the construction of a historical narrative. The reason this trope is crucial is
because it seeks to project into the past the relationship between the people and the party
as it was created by the discourse of totalitarian power. As Slavoj Žižek notes, in the
toralitarian paradigm the People, as it were, does not exist, except through representation
by the Party. The very moment a representative of the People criticizes the Party, he or
she becomes “the enemy of the People”:
The paradoxical functioning of the ‘People’ in the totalitarian universe can
be most easily detected through analysis of phrases like ‘the whole People
supports the Party’. This proposition cannot be falsified because behind
the form of an observation of a fact, we have a circular definition of the
People: in the Stalinist universe, ‘supporting the rule of the Party’ is
‘rigidly designated’ by the term ‘People’ – it is, in the last analysis, the
only feature which in all possible worlds defines the People” (The Sublime
Object 147).
One Communist document that theorises the oscillations within the term “people” was
Chairman Mao’s speech on February 27, 1957. As Mao Tse-Tung sought to address the
pressures that befell Socialist countries in the aftermath of the 1956 Hungarian
Revolution, he succinctly characterized the nature of contradictions between the
Communist Party and the people of China as non-antagonistic.
43
This implied that there
was a difference between non-antagonistic contradictions “within the people” and
antagonistic contradictions that are at the core of an irreconcilable class struggle. While
the speech aimed to establish a sense of possibility for dissent and paid lip service to the
dictatorship of the proletariat, it also posited a tension between the people and leaders and

43
B. Schwartz, “Ideological Shifts in China” Box 9, Folder 8, Report 63 Mao Tse-Tung And Communist
Ideology, 1957-7-1, China, Background Information, 2.

58
acknowledged the turmoil of the current worldwide de-Stalinization. Mao did not wander
fundamentally from Lenin’s distinction between the masses and the vanguard (and the
implicit justification of the leading role of the party). However, Mao’s speech is most
notable for its formulation of a distinction between an organically conceived “people”
(which can experience non-antagonistic contradictions) and “class struggle” that is
assumed to take place outside of the “people.”
44

Mao’s redefinition of class conflict is directly related to the oscillation between
inclusion and expulsion inherent in the multiple meanings of the term “people.” An
inclusive ethnic meaning of “people,” where one can claim membership through a more
or less determinate birthright is in contrast to the more exclusive “people” as “masses,”
which involves class identity when used in the Marxist-Leninist context of class struggle.
This multiplicity of meanings inherent in the word “people” allowed Mao to extend an
invitation to Chiang Kai-Shek, the Taiwanese government and to Chinese intellectuals to
join in the “people.” In a similar stretch of the word, Russian landowners could become
as progressive as the revolutionaries if they could be shown to match the proper
definition of “Russianness”. The carefully defined Russian spirit, whether it spoke
directly to revolutionary values or postulated an immanent national character, allowed
any well-meaning Russian to become part of the people. In Mao’s China, the
intermediary position that allowed for the crossover was the notion of “spiritual
transformation” through education and persuasion, with the resultant unity with the

44
“…While the people is an organic unity, it is still made up of four social classes -- proletariat, peasantry,
petty bourgeoisie, and national, bourgeoisie -- so that there are also "elements of disunity" in the people.
Each of these classes continues to exude its own characteristic ideology in spite of the great progress which
has been made in the ideological transformation of all the classes. Because they belong to the people, these
classes are educable” ( “Ideological Shifts in China” Box 9, Folder 8, Report 63 Mao Tse-Tung And
Communist Ideology, 1957-7-1, China, Background Information, 2).

59
“people” through a conscious choice. In the Soviet case, the implied intermediary
correlative was probably Lenin’s notion of vanguard: Lenin made a strong case for the
leadership of particularly conscious individuals – the Bolshevik party – and that case
could now be projected onto the past.
At first glance, this looks like a liberal improvement on the irreconcilable class
struggle, and yet, when coupled with the antagonistic/non-antagonistic conflict that
operates outside of the “people” but inside of “society,” the distinction is all the more
troubling because it makes the divide between “people” and “enemy” indefinable. As
Mao handed out a pass for occasional error to members of the different classes that
comprised the Chinese people and that were accorded a margin of dissent within the
“non-antagonistic” contradictions, he made a point that neither the content of dissent nor
the status of dissenters vis-à-vis the “people” were a stable value. For instance, a re-
educable intellectual was allowed to entertain an idealistic notion due to his status as a
“member of the people,” whereas the same stance on the part of an “enemy” or an
“unmistakable counterrevolutionary” would be unacceptable.
45
As the signifier “people”
became malleable, it was also bound to become the site of political signification, thus
giving rise to a sacralization of the elements that define a people’s specificity, like
folklore, geographical reality (nature) and the language.

45
As the Radio Free Europe commentator B.Schwartz notes, implicit in the speech is the understanding that
“the power of determining who is a member of the people and who is a counter-revolutionary lies firmly in
the hands of the people's government. What is more, there is no guarantee that a particular idea may not
prove, in the government's view, so noxious and so "revisionist" that it may remove its advocate from the
category of the people to the category of the enemy.” In his July 1957 report Schwartz wrote that the
rhetoric of the antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions is most likely borrowed from the Soviet
literary discourse that sought to theorize the role of conflict during socialism (5). Schwartz writes, “What is
novel in the Chinese case is not the concept but the use to which it has been put. The notion that the
contradiction between the national bourgeoisie (an exploiting class) and the proletariat are non-antagonistic
is a notion for which Soviet ideology does not provide.” Available online at
http://www.osa.ceu.hu/files/holdings/300/8/3/text/9-8-63.shtml
45

60
In the relationship between the leaders and the masses, the newly discursively
defined “people” was inseparable from the modified vision of exceptional individuals.
Central to the Stalinist understanding of historical progression, the Party/People
relationship has attracted the attention of many commentators. Clark’s study shows that
the main Socialist Realist narrative devoted itself to the integration of contradictory
impulses – a revolutionary rebellious drive and a realization of ‘conscious necessity’
(Lenin’s definition of ‘freedom’). What this exposes is the novelty of the leading role of
the political elite. The basis for belonging to the elite is discussed in Socialist narratives
that show a character becoming worthy of the investment of the expectations of other
people. Furmanov has to remind Chapaev that soldiers look up to their commander and
later films, like Admiral Nakhimov and Kutuzov introduce their characters as men who
already have hopes invested in them. While the later presentations of exceptionality
almost create a barin-like persona, his figurative elevation a given, Stalinist political
discourse in fact produced its own variation on the theme of personal excellence. Žižek
points to the subjective position of the Communist in relation to the People as the
principle that underwrites the totalitarian Leader’s power. Stalin’s pronouncement that
Communists are “men of a special mould,” “made of special stuff” metaphorically
elevates Communists above the rest. The phrase literally encodes a flight from
corporeality as it endows the Communist with a sublime body (The Sublime Object 145).
In the classic Socialist Realist novel Cement the Communist leader Chibis
invariably overwhelms the senses of the protagonist Gleb, dumfounding him and, by
extension, the reader, as he defies understanding, causes awe and a sense of a higher-
order Other. Since the revolutionary romantic heroes like Gleb in Cement or Maksim in

61
Maksim’s Youth slowly give way to the older, commissar-like characters, it is less
surprising that in the 1940s any reminder of a corruptible body becomes absolutely
unacceptable, seen to be ‘lowering’ the overall tone of the piece.
The concept of a leader’s sublime body as the rationale for his power is not new.
The pre-bourgeois King also had a transcendent aspect conferred on his body:
[it is] as if he possesses, beyond his ordinary body, a sublime, ethereal,
mystical body personifying the State. […] The transubstantiate body of the
classical Master is an effect of the performative mechanism…[whereby],
we, the subjects, think that we treat the king as a king because he is in
himself a king, but in reality the king is a king because we treat him like
one” (146).
Since the maintenance of the king’s power rests on a symbolic ritual performed by his
subjects, the very procedure must remain hidden; therefore, the locus of authority, the
referent of power, can only be situated outside of the social realm and in a transcendent
plane, like God, nature, or mythical past. Not so in the case of the modern leader, who,
unlike the Master, appears to be welcoming a de-sacralization of his own body. The
thesis of an elected leader’s power can be summed up as follows: “In myself I am
nothing, I am what I am only as an expression, an embodiment, an executor of your will,
my strength is your strength…” (145).
In a democracy, the position of power must remain symbolically empty, the
specific person in the highest office – always, by default, a temporary, non-signifying
executive. It is only the principle of election that is transcendent, never the elected
official. In the Soviet case, the procedure of election was that of fetishistic representation
of the People by the Party and its Leader – fetishistic because Party members were not
elected by the people but selected by the Party itself. Moreover, the gesture of reference

62
to the will of the people in a totalitarian state is fundamentally deceptive, because the
People does not exist outside of its relationship with the Party.
It is remarkable that the exceptional men – whether of the distant or recent past,
whether actual popular leaders or leaders in their field – are all treated as representatives,
not members, of the People (narod). In the 1930s the rhetorical procedure whereby one
man can grow to signify the State is frequently exposed. They come to be in that position
through a procedure that bears hallmarks of election but also those of selection.
Pugachev is chosen by the Yaitsk Cossacks, not the people he eventually leads and
speaks on behalf of. In Minin i Pozharskii, after an assassin makes an unsuccessful
attempt on Pozharskii’s life, the prince laughs it off and plans on letting the assassin go.
But that will not do for Minin, who reminds Pozharskii:
You, Dmitriy Mikhailovich, should appreciate [that] you were elected by
the whole land [tebya vsei zemlyoi vybirali], so it is not up to you to
forgive such actions. It would be fine if he aimed his knife at you alone,
but it was the State that he aimed his knife at.
Apart from a clear justification for the purges, this statement exposes the mechanism that
creates an equivalence between the body of one man (the Leader) and the State. To do
physical harm to the leader’s body is to create a physical threat to the nation. Later
Stalinist culture does away with the moment of election or even that of selection for
leadership positions. Unlike Minin i Pozharskii or Pugachev, no 1940s film exposes the
mechanism whereby the body of the Great Man has become transubstantiated, i.e.
become congruent with the State. Indeed, great artists, not merely leaders, are now often
reminded that they need to be mindful of their health, and that preserving their lives is a
matter of importance for the people and, by extension, for the State. It is certainly implied
that the historical value is the direct consequence of the man’s gift (Aleksandr Pushkin,

63
Lermontov) and that the gift belongs to the people. However, the relationship with the
people is neither that of the relationship with the Communist Party (that at least operates
on the pretense of electivity) nor that of the relationship with the King (where value is
underwritten by a transcendent referent). The Stalinist remarkable person is a hybrid of
the King and totalitarian Leader. His gift elevates him above the process of election, even
in its totalitarian understanding. After all, when “the Giant Pushkin,” and “the Magician
Glinka” (gigant Pushkin, volshebnik Glinka) from Stalin’s 1941 speech are contrasted
with the barbaric hordes of Germans, they are chosen to represent the people and its
positive essence, and their selection is based on the gifts that lie beyond rational, social
merits. Their bodies enter the order of sublime things, in which the body can only be
equal to a sublime work of art – somber and elevated, distant and unfathomable.
Since Stalinist historiography operates from the ‘perspective of the Last
Judgment’ (Lacan), “no act, no event falls empty; there is no pure expense, no pure loss
in history; everything we do is written down, registered somewhere as a trace which for
the time being remains meaningless but which, in the moment of final settling, will
receive its proper place” (142). Žižek writes that “the Stalinist perspective is that of a
victor whose final triumph is guaranteed in advance by the ‘objective necessity of
history’; which is why, in spite of the accent on ruptures, leaps, revolutions, his view on
past history is evolutionary throughout”(143). This view of the profound teleological
sense of Stalinism, also shared by authors like Tertz and Clark, helps explain the curious
operation of the popular Stalinist historiography whereby all facts can receive retroactive
value. History becomes depersonified God, not only because this historiography “implies
a Platonic heaven in the form of the big Other,” as Žižek points out, but also because

64
History becomes “objective” and “omniscient” and one can always appeal to the future to
underwrite current excesses. “The Perspective of the Last Judgment” is not unique to
Stalin of course. As Žižek points out, Kant’s reaction to the French revolution as a
historic even that featured a crime – the execution of the king – but was undoubtedly
fueled by progress is the founding statement of this school of historiography (On
Violence 55). Adapting Kant’s view of the objective force of History, M.Merleau-Ponty
wrote in 1946 that despite the all but indisputable innocence of those who were tried in
the Stalinist show trials, despite the resulting corruption of the revolutionary ethos, the
fact that the trials helped pave the current course of Socialism made them still a positive
development (55). Whatever the ethical implications of this reasoning, Merleau-Ponty
relied on Marxism and class struggle to underwrite the meaning of history. For Stalinist
historiography, it is historical necessity, not class or masses, that becomes the driving
force of History, while the people (narod) in the sense of a historical and geographic
continuum becomes its timeless and immortal vehicle.
2.2. Epic Aesthetic
Clark notes that in the Soviet cosmology the current dispensation is validated only
by a reference to sacral time which for early Stalinism is that of the revolution and civil
war (38-39). However, the later Stalinist relationship with History models the past on the
present situation. The oft-quoted summary of Eisenstein’s conversation with Zhdanov
that was essentially the commission for Ivan the Terrible – “to have the past serve the
present” – implies a search for ‘precursors’ in the past to create a sense of national
continuity.

65
It is of course not surprising that the new Soviet culture gradually arrived at the
choice of the epic mode as a vehicle for relating to reality. Not only did the character
treatment and the narrative arc of biopics gradually acquire epic dimensions but more
specific elements of the epic began to seep into cinematic culture in general: individual
epic and folkloric elements, explicit marks of the epic setup, like ultimate battles between
he good and evil, singularity of purpose and a sense of historical exceptionality. The
language used in films and in writing about them began to feature folkloric word order
inversions, a quality that would be entirely out of place in the essayistic writing of the
19
th
or early 20
th
century.
46
Epic language even creeps into studio memos. In working
papers for the film Zhukovskii, subtitled “Father of Russian aviation”, the author of a
review submitted to the script department resorts to expressions like “rozhdestvo
khristovo” (birth of Christ) to mark the birth of aviation. The syntax features inversions
characteristic of epic folkloric narratives.
47
What this language underscores is a theme of
paramount importance for the biographical films – the claim to be the “first” achievement
in the given field.

46
Consider for instance this passage from the review of the 1946 film Kliatva (dir. M.Chiaureli): «Three
main periods are portrayed in this film: Lenin’s departure and the ensuing years of struggling for the unity
of the party ranks, for the unity of the people, for the correct political path (pravil’nost’ politicheskogo puti
ego) ; after that a period of an unprecedented scale, a period that breathes epic (veiushchiy dykhaniem
eposa), the period of extensive socialist construction…and, finally, the period of the struggle of the armed
people with the grave forces of the fascist aggressor, the forces of barbarism and obscurantism…”
Chiaureli, M. “Voploshchenie obraza velikogo vozhdya,” Iskusstvo Kino 1 (1947), 8. Epic language in this
passage is explicit in the invocation of the folkloric large form (epos), in the periodization and in the
eschatological battle between the forces of darkness and the forces of light. The sentence also features epic
syntax with inversions (pronoun following the noun phrase) “politcheskogo puti ego” instead of “ego
politicheskogo puti”.
47
“Советские люди летоисчисление эпохи аэропланов винтовых ведут от первого полета самолета
Можайского, т.е. с 20 июля 1882 года.” (Soviet people start their chronicling of the epoch of propeller
airplanes with the first flight of Mozhaiskii’s plane, that is, from July, 20, 1882.)

66
Active use of folkloric elements also exposes the search for an appropriate
stylization of the narod. While the Leskov-like language of skaz could claim a certain
legitimacy due to its role as an intermediary between the popular tradition and the
Russian avant-garde, the narodnost’ of the late 1930s was a truly bizarre type of
mannerism.
One particularly bold and unexamined stylization of both narod and the past is
Eisenstein’s Aleksandr Nevskii. An impossible hodgepodge of unrelated cultural
borrowings and glaring anachronisms, it freely combines bylina characters (from a non-
Russian epos) with semi-historical characters who speak the language of the 19
th
century
playwright Ostrovskii’s quirky characters.
48
The most peculiar feature of the script is its
“faux epic” dimension that borders on the ludicrous in the script and, miraculously,
nearly succeeds in creating an organic world within the film. Despite caustic
contemporary criticism of the script by the historian M.Tikhomirov, the film shed only
some of the more ludicrous anachronistic elements, while retaining most of the others.
Consider just a few conflicting juxtapositions in the script and the film: for starters there
is the fictional bylina hero Vasilii Buslai, whose characterization and actions draw on an
epic source, which is likely to have been a foreign borrowing.
49
Next to him we find a

48
See M. Tikhomirov, “Izdevka nad istoriei: o stsenarii “Rus’.”
49
Тhe Buslai cycle dates to the two bylinas of the 14
th
-15
th
centuries. The shaft connection had a most
unusual after-life that testifies to the popularity of the film during WWII. Consider this war veteran
memoir, where the Buslai-Eisenstein shaft is endowed with symbolic power to fight the enemy: “С
первых же дней он проявил себя опытным, напористым и инициативным летчиком. За высокий
рост, большую силу и смелость в бою его, с легкой руки Пасынка, прозвали Буслаем. Летчики в
шутку советовали ему брать с собой в воздух оглоблю, оценивая мощь этого оружия по кинофильму
«Александр Невский»” (A.T. Tishchenko, Vedomye “Drakona”
(http://www.victory.mil.ru/lib/books/memo/tischenko_at/05.html).
The origin of the”shaft as weapon” motif is unclear, but a prominent bylina of the Buslai cycle features a
simple girl (“devka-chernavka”) saving Vasilii and his men by killing 500 of the enemies with a crossbeam.
The film also features a woman warrior who appears out of nowhere (like the girl of the bylina) and saves

67
historical character (who at the time of the event was already dead), the hero of the Neva
battle Gavrilo Aleksich. Furthermore, the mis-en-scene is borrowed from the 19
th
century
opera Sadko,
50
while the dialogue consists of proverbs, sayings and idiomatic expressions
characteristic of the nineteenth century “common” people.
51
With the exception of the

Vasiliy in battle (although with a saber) and who he later picks as his bride
(http://jarilo.ru/narod/ruhs/novgorodcy.html).
50
Tikhomirov believes that the description of the Novgorod fair – contradictory as it was to the sources –
mirrored a fair scene from the N. Rimskii-Korsakov opera Sadko. Sadko – one of the three most popular
characters of the Novgorod epos (bylinas) – is also featured in the script but does not make it into the film.
“'Новгород справляет пышный торг. Как в праздник, весел город. Шумят ряды. Купцы поют у
прилавков. Там перс бьет в бубен, там индус играет тягучую песню на странной дудке; там варяжин
поет, там швед выставил тройку певцов, за ним старается грек. Половчанин показывает
дрессированного медведя. Хором поют поволжане-хлебовики. Веницейский купец в атласе играет
на мандолине, поет серенаду. Иноземные купцы, сидя в кружале, пьют эль. Шумно, весело,
беспечно на ярмарке. Грудами лежат кожи, лисьи и собольи меха, зерно, плотничьи поделки.
Богомазы торгуют иконами и тут же пишут их на удивление всем проходящим. Кузнецы куют
кольчуги и, как портные, сняв мерку с покупателя, тут же изготовляют ему, что надо' (стр. 109).
Город, конечно, может быть, как 'в праздник весел', но кого только не привело в Новгород полное
невежество авторов сценария, и притом в 1242 г., когда вся Европа боялась татарского нашествия.
Приехал сюда венецианский купец, хотя Новгород не торговал с Венецией. Через пожарища
южнорусских городов добрался грек. Половчанин приехал тоже. Он привел с собой из безлесной
степи медведя, так как об этих зверях на лесистом севере вероятно и не слышали. Есть еще и какой-
то 'варяжин'. Не путайте его с варягом, ведь варяги - скандинавы, а между тем только что было
сказано, что швед уже выставил трех певцов, шведы же, как известно, - тоже скандинавы.
Зачем же явились эти разноплеменные купцы? Торговать? Нет. Они приехали в Новгород,
преодолев великие опасности, чтобы устроить дивертисмент в подражание соответствующему акту
из оперы 'Садко': веницейский гость с мандолиной, перс с бубном, индус с дудкой.”
It is remarkable that in 1938 Tikhomirov describes the possible historical figure that gave rise to the
character of Sadko but emphasizes that it is the fictional life of Sadko that made him a popular character.
This is indirect evidence of Sadko’s relative obscurity for the audiences of the 1930s, which means that the
audience would have had trouble distinguishing between a real historical character (prince Aleksandr),
semi-historical (Gavrilo Aleksich, dead in 1241, the battle takes place in 1242) and a properly epic fictional
(like Vasilii Buslai).
51
Tikhomirov compares the language of the dialogue to the language of the 19
th
century works that mocked
merchants’ sensibilities, like the sketches by N.Leikin and the plays by A.Ostrovskii
“Следует остановиться также и на языке сцен ария. Язык древней Руси отличался рядом
особенностей и не всегда поддается современной интерпретации. Авторы сценария вовсе не
обязаны были стилизовать язык, которыми говорят действующие лица, под язык XIII в….Они
решили, что древнерусский язык - это язык лавочников Лейкина и купцов Островского, сдобренный
кроме того жаргоном Остапа Бендера из 'Двенадцати стульев'. Так, например, Буслай говорит: 'Ну,
как так - не знаю: Чего вола за хвост тянуть' (стр. 110).” (retained in the film) “В сценарии находим
такие перлы: 'Нам, брат, война ни к чему' (стр. 111); 'У-у, оголец' (!); 'И мертвых нас не возьмете,
душу вашу язви' (стр. 127). А вот как разговаривает сам Александр Невский: 'В чем их секрет?' (стр.
121); 'Я князь-лапотник. Не как вы, эля (!) не пивал, сластей заморских не пробовал' (стр. 117); или
'войну воевать - не комедь ломать' (стр. 118). Что можно прибавить к этому языку, разве сказать
вместе с авторами: 'Сценарий писать - не комедь ломать'.” The language of the Tatars in the script,

68
less well executed Minin i Pozharskii, the film can be credited as the first successful
pastiche of highly stylized elements that tie together the notions “past,” “Rus’,” and
“narod.”
2.3. Epic Narrative: Historic Conflict and “Dramatic Conflict”
The debates of the 1940s over the “correct” aesthetic system, which included
methods of relating to reality, types of realism, issues of narrative satisfaction and
character development, reveal not only rapidly changing and often contradictory political
pressures but also a general gravitation towards an epic mode of story-telling. Bakhtin’s
epic describes a cultural mode that seeks an ideal, located in a special site, be it the
imaginary Soviet Union of the movies or a past that may have never existed. Largely
understood as “a process of tradition forming and cultural centering” (14), the epic was
uniquely positioned to create the new mythological plane of reference.
Detached from specific historical conditions, the insulated epic past lends itself to
the idea of national re-invention and thus offers up an instant link to past national glory.
The epic lends legitimacy and lays the moral/spiritual grounds for the current unfolding
of national destiny. Even if historically situated and factually verifiable, the epic is set up
as a moment of exceptional trials, tribulations and triumphs that have nothing to do with
time in historical sense, but with time in an eschatological sense, as a stage in the moral
development of humanity. To invoke that mode, especially when speaking about the past,
was to capitalize on both the historically verifiable factual past (historicized past) and to

which Tikhomirov calls “lifted from jingoistic jokes”, is minimally present in the film but features an
incredibly anachronistic line, “Poezzhai v ordu, bolshim nachalnikom budesh”.

69
connect with the past on a symbolic mythic level (the national de-historicized past,
conceptually co-existent with the present and predictive of the future).
Thus to invoke the epic and to project it onto the present is to create a sense that
the exceptional past had in fact been insulated heretofore and has just been revealed for
this special generation to connect with it. In this framework, the prophetic foreshadowing
one observes in the Soviet epic bridge the gap between previous centuries and Soviet
time through a shared spirit, without refuting the epic ethos of the past’s irreproducibly
exceptional moral stature. Rabinowitz and Griffiths have argued that the return to the past
is encoded into the very structure of epic, that the epic is a mode that has the potential of
dramatically reducing the distance between center and periphery, be it in time or space.
They present a compelling case for the epic as the ultimate survivor among genres, a
mode with extraordinary regenerative abilities. This propensity for survival, in their view,
has to do with the epic’s ability to encode in its very form and swiftly summon to life
huge amounts of cultural information. Epic is always conceived and perceived in
connection with its origins, where for example Virgil’s endeavor to master and rival
Homer is at least as essential to the work's form as Aeneas's role as the father of Rome.
Epic is a genre whose very form is structured by the act of literary derivation that has
generated it. Epic brings forward the entire tradition as the background for the current
unfolding of a recurrent cultural myth (Griffith & Rabinowitz 5).
Apart from this “ability to array All That Precedes as a foil for the current
dispensation,” the epic tradition provides an implied interchangeability of the first and the
last. Due to this double frame, “the epic tradition enables a culture that perceives itself as
somehow new, or that expresses itself in a yet unestablished literary language (…) to

70
claim spiritual authority beyond its years by involving itself in the very origins of this
migrating, self-regenerative culture that always flowers best on its latest frontier.” Since
cultural centrality is of particular concern to the cultures that exist on the borders (like
Joyce’s Ireland, or, Melville’s America), it is these cultures that provide rich ground for
the blossoming of “the heroic age” (7).
The ability of the epic to provide a bridge between “the latest frontier” and the
venerable antiquity of an established culture through its embedded genealogy is of
particular interest to this study. Although contemporaries referred to the narrative
changes in cinema as the rise of the kinoroman (cinematic novel) or kinopovest’
(cinematic short novel/novella), the movement towards an epic form is evident. On the
course to the perfect Soviet aesthetic – the one that would finally achieve the necessary
balance between subject and pathos, or between man (manifested in reality-based
realism) and higher ideals (manifested in heroics and future-oriented pathos) –critics and
film-makers appeared to be constantly negotiating the ongoing transformation of
cinematic realism. And yet, even as the aesthetic debates in Iskusstvo kino were couched
in negotiations over what constituted the correct form of realism, the main imperative
behind method and style, was of course not to achieve highest degree of mimicry, but of
the highest potential for transcendence.
The perfect “realism” was to bring the matter to life by infusing it with the spirit
of the epic transformation of reality. What Clark refers to as a “modal schizophrenia” –
the double expectation of realism and idealism – now apparent in a retrospective look at
the canon as a whole may have felt quite normal to contemporaries. And yet the double

71
imperative of both distilling the essence of the times and spelling out the future perfect in
the present tense – proved to have not been easily said, let alone done.
The line between realistic and fantastic, between realism and naturalism was not
as clear in film as it was in writing. Surprises lurked everywhere and even the most
faithful transfers from script to film were not foolproof. The critical discussion reflects a
sense of anxiety over critical terms and material conditions; a consistent surprise at the
insubordination of image to word; and unexpected appreciation of Hollywood from the
founders of nascent Socialist Realist film-making. The prescription to depict what is
really typical of the times – the distillate of the double imperative – was also articulated
for film but it took painstaking discussions and lots of trial and error to figure out how to
do it.
52
The eventual alignment of the Soviet aesthetic with the visual epic logically
bridged the gap between the two modes of the real and the prescriptive. Gravitation
towards a somber monumental aesthetic corresponded to the double dictum of the real
and the ideal, but the coalescence of Soviet critical discourse of the 1940s around the epic
as the single most appropriate form also matches many themes that had already been
present in the 1930s.
Paperny in his excellent study of Stalinist architecture provides one framework
for the change that occurred in the early to mid 1930s distinction into the kultura odin
and kultura dva given by. Paperny traces the mechanisms of the rather baffling evolution
of the Russian avant-garde into the culture of mature Stalinism. Kultura odin – the
culture of modernism that favored ruptures, horizontality, fragmentation, marginality and
Chaos – clamored for medium specificity in the arts. Paperny contextualizes the famous

52
See I. Krinkin, “Realizm i naturalizm v tvorchestve khudozhnikov kino.”

72
statement by V. Pudovkin, S. Eisenstein and G. Aleksandrov (1928) against the arrival of
sound not only as an instance of the purists’ desire to purge film of theatricality but, more
broadly and more significantly, of modernism’s assault on the narrative as the agent of
logocentric tendencies in cultural evolution (Papernyi 220). Kultura dva, however, is
unthinkable without the Word, understood both as narrative and Logos, as verbal
explanation and source of sacrality.
Between 1919 and 1929 Tynianov, Shklovskii and Shub made famous, oft-
repeated statements on the need to purge film from the “adjacent” arts, like literature,
theater and painting (219). Even though similar appeals were made by formalists on
behalf of other arts as well, in no art did they devote themselves to medium specificity
more zealously than in film – a fact that can be possibly accounted for by the 1934
statement in the journal Soviet kino that categorically proclaimed film the most backward
of the Soviet arts. But if the 1934 articles in Soviet kino simply stated that film’s
achievement was dwarfed by that of Soviet literature and theater and that literature
presented a great source of instruction in the field of creative work,
53
the 1953 Soviet
Encyclopedia entry, Paperny shows, described a causal relationship between early Soviet
film’s poor state and its tenuous relationship with the verbal.
54

2.4 Epic Realism
One striking feature of Soviet cultural life in the 1940s was its appeal to the
notion of realism as the ultimate measure of artistic success. Despite frequent
proclamations that film-makers were required to know Soviet life, to draw from it

53
Sovetskoe kino 1-2 (1934), 10.
54
“In the 1920s, film was still silent, deprived of the word – the main means of expressing the artist’s
thought” (Quoted in Papernyi 222).

73
directly and that they were regularly chastised for failing to “know” that life, it was of
course not life which required knowing and reflecting but mostly its spirit. In fact, overly
zealous “realism” was suspect already in the 1930s: although the ideal of the 1920s’ hero-
less art was abandoned and the appeals for a return to the zhivoi chelovek (live human
being) were sounded, the short-lived flirtation with a fully human character proved taxing
on the senses and by 1936 this “naturalistic voyeurism” became a subject of animated
critical discussion (Belitskii 17).
The dilemma of Soviet cinematic realism can be summed up as the struggle over
the correct ratio between the concrete and the abstract. On the one hand, born out of the
culture of permanent becoming and still operating with token modernist notions, the
Soviet conception of art required a projection of dynamism into every product so as to
capture the process of transformation from the old to the new. On the other, the 1930s
saw the system of cultural signification solidify around the themes of the Russian
national cultural legacy. The realism that was being sought had to be bound by the
notions of change and permanence at the same time. This debate shows the gradual
victory of aesthetic criteria that privileged the epical qualities that were oriented on the
past.
2.5. Conflict and Genre
Analyses of the place and type of conflict suitable for Socialist Realist film were
often tied to the discussion of genre. What kind of narrative development could take
place in a Socialist Realist drama as distinct from a Socialist Realist novel? What
compositional principle was appropriate for Soviet film? And were different genres of
Socialist Realist film to be dominated by different types of conflict?

74
As the discussion below shows, the very category of dramatic conflict was framed
with quotation marks, as audiences were to be alerted to the existence of a truer, real
conflict – the underlying historical conflict that covertly infused all life and art and that
barely needed to present itself explicitly. Objections that seemed fundamental to those
who raised them – like medium and genre specificity – suffered the same rhetorical fate,
their meaning purged either by the antecedent “so-called” or by quotation marks. As
some argued that specifically cinematic tools were being sidelined in favor of theater and
literature, the no-conflict proponents chose to unapologetically defend such practices. In
fact, many authors discarded such concerns by referring to medium specificity as “so-
called medium specificity” and announcing “formalist” concerns over uniquely cinematic
tools to be the reality of the past.
55

Looking back at the cultural climate of the decade that witnessed extremely low
release numbers, one finds it hard to understand the purpose of an ongoing debate about
an issue as obvious as whether or not Soviet screenplays needed to carry a dramatic
conflict. And yet one witnesses a head-on discussion between those who indirectly raised
the problem of conflict-less plays, something of an oxymoron – this group of authors
believed – and a number of critics whose writing redefined the very staples of
screenwriting, like dramatic conflict, character growth and the role of psychological
motivation. The second group may be seen as the one voicing the opinion of the party
because, in fact, it prevailed over the more ‘formalist’ approach and produced an
apologia for current filmic practice, or at least for the version that emerged after all the
official interferences and corrections. Nevertheless, many of the themes that become

55
See V.Sutyrin, “Za bolshuiu stsenarnuiu rabotu.”

75
“official” in 1940s critical discourse had been previously voiced by film-makers
themselves.
One can make sense of this re-definition of cinematic story-telling by applying the
perspective of “the epic” aesthetic, in which the epic is understood in the Bakhtinian
sense of a projected absolute. Although the disappearance of conflict does not seem to
agree with the epic world in which virtue and vice are usually well-defined and assigned
unequivocally, conflict itself was redefined so as to distinguish between large-scale
Conflict (e.g., fundamental conflict between “the old” and “the new”) and the everyday
problems that cause conflict but do not question the order of things.
There were two major aspects to the “conflict” discussion – an ideological and a
formal one. The ideological component questioned whether or not fundamental large-
scale conflicts still existed in Soviet society. The question was legitimate because society
had been consistently proclaiming “historical optimism” in every sphere of public life.
56

Major historical struggles had been completed: internal enemies executed,
industrialization and collectivization achieved, the fascist hydra vanquished and post-war
reconstruction on a steady course. And as the decree on Bolshaia zhizn’ showed, even on
the level of individuals that may have needed isolating and re-integration – the typical
pattern of Soviet 1930s comedy – there was no need to contrast backward-thinking
individuals with forward-thinking ones.
Formal discussions on the subject of conflict were often tied to the question of
whether screenwriting was closer in principle to drama or to prose. In 1946 I. Vaisfeld
suggested that it was time to address the generic transformations that had been under way

56
See Rashit Iangirov, “Onwards and Upwards: The Origins of the Lenin Cult in Soviet Cinema.”

76
in Soviet cinema. Vaisfeld noted that a number of films since 1935 (the year of the
release of Chapaev) went beyond the short, compact action of the earlier cinema. In their
structure these films were closer to the novelistic principle than to the dramatic one.
Vaisfeld’s understanding of the novel is far from Bakhtinian polyphony. Instead, what
characterizes the novel for Vaisfeld and many others at this time is “a big social problem,
historical events portrayed on a large scale, characters shown in development, -
sometimes over many years and, finally, the monumental form” (34-38).
The films credited with a pattern of generic narrative changes are longer,
serialized films, some centered on one fictional character (e.g. the Maksim trilogy
G.Kozintsev, L.Trauberg, 1934, ‘37, ‘38) and the thinly fictionalized biopic about Sergei
Kirov Velikii grazhdanin (F.Ermler, 1937), but mostly Vaisfeld cites biopics like the
Gorky trilogy (M.Donskoi, 1938-1939), Lenin v Oktiabre (M.Romm, 1937) and Lenin
v1918 (M.Romm, 1939), Georgii Saakadze (M.Chiaureli, 1942-43, two parts), Piotr
Pervyi (V.Petrov, 1937-38, two parts) and Oborona Tsaritsyna (Vasil’ev brothers, 1942,
two parts). As Clark pointed out for the literary case, exemplary Socialist Realist works
are a disparate collection and their common attributes can only be deduced
retrospectively. Although the list of exemplary films was not as fixed as the corpus of
works that made up the literary canon, there is a consistent thread running through the
issues of Iskusstvo kino in the 1930s and 1940s as they name “excellent” or “splendid”
Soviet films as well as the merely “educational” or “solid”. Vaisfeld’s selection,
dominated by biographical films, may simply point to an attempt at producing a
prescription for the correct vision, but the conclusions and language are nevertheless
remarkable.

77
Vaisfeld maintained that unlike the silent cinema that was centered around events,
the new Soviet cinema focused on the protagonist, the man who was organically
connected to the epoch he lived in, and the magnificence of those times could only be
expressed by the emerging new form, rather than the dramatic. Vaisfeld calls this
“narrative genre” (povestvovatelnyi zhanr) but this actually fits “epic” best (34). While
clearly a desirable development – one that, according to Vaisfeld, reflected the medium
and matched the grandeur of the times – the implementation of the novelistic principle in
cinema required significant changes in how cinema was conceived. In contrast to
Eiesenstein’s silent films, which were able to convey a sense of sweeping changes
through the montage of episodes and to express ideas without even resorting to actors, the
novel had at its center the character in development. Social relations, Vaisfeld reminds
one, are reflected in the novel through the portrayal of personal destiny. At first glance,
this focus on the individual calls to mind the novelistic principle of Bakhtin’s
formulation. But Vaisfeld’s vision of the narrative genre focuses on a grand scale of
representation and on a vision of “personal destiny” that is organically connected to the
sense of time, rather than to conflict and personal growth. Personal destiny in this vision
works itself out not through a character’s conflict with the environment but instead
through his expressing the spirit of the times, the manifestation and promise of a specific
moment in History.
In contrast to silent film which privileged tight dramatic time frames, Vaisfeld
believed the diegetic time span was bound to increase in contemporary cinema.
57
The

57
The 1949 Akademik Ivan Pavlov apparently covers sixty years – a fact that comes as a surprise from the
review, since the character looks and acts with little difference in the beginning and in the middle, and only
appears older at the end. This film also contradicts Vaisfeld appeals for “developing character”, as Ivan

78
very constituent elements in film – episodes, mostly dominated by medium and long
shots – were becoming lengthier. The episodes themselves were no longer mere
“snapshots” but contained sequences of action developing within them. The former
preference for fast-paced editing, often featuring sudden close-ups, was now seen as
suitable for emphasis but not for carrying ideological and thematic weight. Vaisfeld
claimed that the new narrative principle – the longer episode with its own internal
dynamic of conflict and development – was more challenging for the screenwriter. The
proposed measure of a screenwriter’s success in that case would be the ability to relate
high pathos in externally prosaic content, to glimpse germs of action in situations that
appeared static at first sight. The desired objective was to portray profundity and
solemnity of feeling as opposed to “affective trifles.”
Prosaic as opposed to dramatic writing of screenplays was also seen as preferable
because it could help actors understand their character better. Thus director and
screenwriter S. Gerasimov claimed prose was better suited than plays for director’s work
with actors (36). Most scripts in the 1940s themselves were written in prose that only
broke for dialogue, with metaphoric descriptions of landscapes and characters’ internal
states. Interpretation was thus encoded in the screenplay, as Vaisfeld claimed that the
essence of this “narrative” principle is making the author’s intent with regard to meaning
crystal clear in every word, gesture, intonation, in every mis-en-scene (37).
Since drama does not have an authorial voice, the “cinenovel” calls for the
explicit presence of verbal interpretation. Here we see anxiety over the ability to establish
a procedure that would yield consistent results in film. The presence of an author who

Pavlov of the opening scene exhibits perfect knowledge of his “destiny” and only worries about making the
best of his time.

79
would explicate the meaning and make visuals unequivocal would create a kind of “paper
trail” – a tangible chain of controllable verbal sequences. In the perfect Soviet world the
director would then be assigned to the project and follow both the approved literary script
and the director’s script.
Although wary of advocating flat descriptiveness and a privileging of verbal
content over specifically cinematic narrative principles, Vaisfeld presented an array of
expressive devices specific to the “narrative” genre that was very different from the
“tradition of fast editing of spurted out episodes.” For instance, the introduction of a first
person voiceover telling the audience about his or her life was deemed productive,
because if established from the beginning, its reappearance would help emphasize which
episodes bore particular significance later on in the narrative. This device, Vaisfeld
claimed, was most helpful for things like dramatic intensification and setting the tone, or
shifting it if required. The speaking character of course would be further characterized by
such speech and the device would therefore also play a dramatic role beyond the
informative one. Another device that Vaisfeld sought to redeem against its reputation of
being “archaic” and “old fashioned” was that of the flashback. The advantage was to save
time and effort in showing character development. Now one could open with a mature or
elderly character and then summon up the evolution of the character’s situation through a
flashback (as in Vaisfeld’s example of Michurin (A.Dovzhenko, 1949) (37). The
elements discussed by Vaisfeld all contribute to representing the protagonist’s
subjectivity as a suprasubjectvity that in literary works is often conflated with the voice
of the author and which is less characteristic of dramatic or cinematic work, where any
given character’s agency is limited by the absence of objective narration. Similarly, the

80
voice-over in Hollywood film has been interpreted to elevate one character to the
“objective” authorial position of agency and control over the narrative.
58

Vaisfeld’s tentative inauguration of the “narrative genre” is a succinct summary
of the transformation of cinematic narrative as well as a theoretical justification of that
transformation. Critics later issued correctives to the term, mostly negotiating definitions,
not the content of the phenomenon. The theoretical awareness of the issue in Vaisfeld’s
articles signals that narrative transformations were not an unobserved, spontaneous
phenomenon.
The emergence of the so-called prosaic cinema in biopics was seen in the
increasing number of narratives that unfolded over long stretches of time, sometimes
spanning several decades. The life of the character would in such films be seen as a
process of lengthy development, full of multiple plot lines and thematic units, with many
turning points – all characteristic of large prose forms, like novel or novella. Examples of
such “large prosaic form” included Trilogiia o Maksime (“The Maksim Trilogy”), Velikii
grazhdanin (“The Great Citizen”), Piotr Pervyi (“Peter the First”), Georgii Saakadze,
Kliatva (“The Oath”) and Sel’skaia uchitelnitsa (“The Rural Teacher”).
59

Prosaic cinema was even believed to be capable of making better use of cinema’s
potential. The previously favored so-called ‘dramatic principle’ had singled out the
exceptional, decisive, most “dramatic” episodes that were picked out of the characters’
lives. But prosaic cinema could make a very precise snapshot of life by relating numerous

58
Kaja Silverman has discussed the role of the male voice-over, which is “coded as occupying a different
order from the main diegesis.” Even when the voice-over is not sounded from the top, like the voice of
God, and occupies a place very close to the events, it is still endowed with greater authority and higher
knowledge (Silverman, The Acoustic Mirro 48).
59
See V. Sutyrin, “Kinematograf – isskustvo dramaticheskoe.”

81
details and using visual characterization to show the ambience, the environment,
behaviors; it was thus best positioned to present full-bodied, nuanced human characters,
known to us in their entirety. Finally, prosaic cinema was emerging from this discussion
as an innovative genre which freed itself from the dictates of dramatic conflict. To make
a film truly more “prosaic” or to make it similar to a novel in terms of multiple plot lines
and themes would involve even higher degree of dramatic intensity, a higher
condensation of imagery and concentration of action. Sutyrin credits Chapaev with such
a degree of concentration and density but notes that in contemporary films narratives are
often loose, with episodes being merely strung together.
60

Dissonant voices still occasionally appealed to the specificity of the objective
inherent in screenwriting and argued for dramatic unities and plot tightness. Iunakovskii,
soon to become a denounced kosmopolit, wrote that the plot needed to be concentrated in
time:
61
However the opposite side of the debate maintained that formalist arguments, like
that of Iunakovskii’s, largely ignored the achievements of the Soviet biographical and
historical films that had apparently resolved the problem of covering large spans of time.
Support of the large-form aesthetic continued through the late 1940s –early 1950s,
manifest in extolling a new form of Soviet film dramaturgy – cinenovel
(kinoroman/kinopovest’) (Iurenev 26). The central conflict of the cinenovel was redefined
into a theme rather than a dramatic problem, while the episodic structure became

60
Ibid.
61
V. Iunakovskiy, Postroenie kinostsenariia (1940): “The plot in which the action is fragmented by
frequent and lengthy time periods is unfavorable for a screenplay…Regardless of the artistic qualities of
this plot…large breaks during action make the construction of a sound, organically whole work impossible”
(Dmitriev 21).

82
acceptable “background” – a description that best characterizes historical chronicles
rather than drama.
Even the former proponents of tight dramatic structure, like the VGIK professor
V. Volkenshtein changed their idea on the most basic tenets of screenwriting. The author
of a formalist screenwriting textbook Dramaturgiia kino (1937), Volkenshtein
maintained in 1947 that contemporary screenwriting fell into two major modes – the epic
and the dramatic, with American films gravitating toward the dramatic and Soviet scripts
– to the epic mode.
62
Epic, in contrast to drama, involved large historical tableaus with
numerous secondary characters. The dramatic was seen as a type of writing that featured
a prominent central line, a tight connection of the supporting conflicts to the central one
and as having all circumstances affect the development of the central line of events.
Events in drama are motivated by the actions of characters, whereas in a novel one could
have “bare events,” or, in Hegelian terms, events that do not originate from the characters
but interfere with the narrative from the outside. Volkenshtein conceded that there were
indeed two different modes, not strictly separated but clearly at work when it came to the
narrative organization of a screenplay. Requirements that had been previously taken for
granted, such as tightness of action, a subordination of a secondary plot to the central
conflict, every scene propelling the conflict forward and/or foreshadowing the events to
come, were now merely options in a range of possibilities, and potentially gimmicky ones
at that.
Moreover, in an unexpected turn of rhetoric, what had been overwhelmingly seen
as the norm was now shown as atypical because it allegedly contradicted cinema’s

62
See A. Volkenshtein, “Drama i epos v kino.”

83
medium specificity. Since medium specificity is now understood as the ability to
capitalize on various possibilities, not on a unique repertoire of expressive means, film is
now understood as the broadest, most multi-faceted slice of life: “The action of a
screenplay always takes place against a broad background. This adds a certain epic scale
to the tightest (samyi tselnyi) and … the most intimate conflict in cinema. Cinema is the
art of broad spaces and broadly enacted/developed events” (Volkenshtein

16). The film of
“interiors” is an artificial limitation of the possibilities inherent in cinema. The dramatic
type screenplays seen as focusing on the more intimate aspects of human condition were
now rare but often to be found in Hollywood movies. Soviet screenplays were structured
according to the epic principle. In this reasoning, heroic epic (geroicheskaia epopeia) is a
cinematic genre par excellence because cinema is best suited for epic: the very scene-
setting always immediately creates new environments and new circumstances and evokes
new relationships between visual elements. The narrative arc does not need to be tight-
knit or brought into alignment with the main conflict because “the absence of unity in the
development of events is compensated for… by the dramatics of all the separate episodes,
all of the consecutive conflicts” (17).
The same author in his 1937 Dramaturgiia had called for density of conflict and
for the dramatic resolution of all episodes. Volkneshtein’s analysis of just a decade before
described the structural core of many successful plays and compared Russian and Soviet
plays with their western counterparts to show similarities in conflict development. This
earlier proto-structuralist exercise was severely criticized in 1949 in Iskusstvo Kino for
glossing over differences in content, historical conditions, social class context and
aesthetic modes (Grinberg 28).

84
But the most unpalatable aspect of Volkenshtein’s Dramaturgiya was the
conclusion that many Soviet plays (already in 1937) had lacked a developed conflict and
in essence were “chronicles,” “scenes,” or “tableaux” (28).
The new epic story-telling was seen as specifically Soviet and its paramount genre
was the biopic, “the product of the style of Socialist Realism” as well as the direct result
of the “unprecedented flourishing of human personality” in socialist society (Iurenev,
“Admiral Nakhimov” 15).
63
Curiously, as the critical discourse awarded the biopic a
special place in the culture, a number of authors sought to emancipate the historical genre
from subservience to facts. The overabundance of historical and factual material in life
was a challenge but there was no need to enslave oneself to so-called “factography”.
Privileging facts would result in the domination of anecdotal details (sluchainost’) and
inevitably lead to looseness (rykhlost’) in the plot. Guidelines for selecting material
remained vague but the presumable tyranny of the fact was dislodged with the help of
Gorky’s “formulation”: “Fact is not the entire Truth, it is mere raw material, out of which
one should mold, extract the genuine truth of art” (Eremin, “O nekotorykh zadachakh
kinodramaturgii” 5).
The importance of correct, guided selection of material therefore becomes
paramount. This is not a surprising conclusion since content selection in historical film is
scrutinized and contested elsewhere as well.
64
Critics of Hollywood biopics find that the

63
Iurenev repeated the same idea about the unique aesthetic principles of biographical film that are
characteristic only of soviet socialist realist cinema in his article “Tvorets” in 1949. See Iskusstvo kino 3
(1949). P. 25.
64
Leger Grindon discusses a number of ways in which a culture engages with the past to explain or
contextualize the present: “Motivated by a regressive impulse to return to the past, such a history implicitly
criticizes the present as deficient in the values and energy that fortify culture. The picnic at Tara that opens
Gone With the Wind (1939) presents a bucolic age before the outbreak of the Civil War. More recently,
JFK (1991) alludes to an age of innocence and integrity before the political shocks of the 1960s

85
gravitation towards a moment of transformation, of the discovery of one’s talent, or of
one’s agency tends to be the central dramatic point in many biopics of the classical era of
film-making in the United States. In Soviet critical discourse ca. 1947 one sees an attempt
to reconcile the epic and the dramatic within the narrative driven by a centripetal
movement towards the colossal feat of the character. Iurenev has claimed that:
[t]he principle of this selection is that at the core of this dramatic plot
should be the central event in the life of the character, an event to which
his entire lifetime’s activity had gravitated as well as all his thoughts and
all his efforts, all his daring and all his dreams – in a word, the lifelong
feat of the character (Iurenev, “Admiral Nakhimov” 15).
This view of the narrative development that foregrounds one major decisive life-and-
death battle or feat, an event that propels forward and is supported by historical
circumstances still allows for a dramatic collision. But of course the dramatic was already
a suspect in the post-Bolshaia zhizn’ fall-out: the notorious 1946 film Bolshaia zhizn’ cast
local party bosses as the obstructers of post-war reconstruction for what looked like the
want of a proper villain and in order to create dramatic opposition.
65
In the aftermath of
the decree we see an emerging distinction between a typical problem and an “accidental”
or untypical collision, which, even if nominally realistic, was potentially slanderous of

transformed the nation.” Thus, the search for the epic origins we observe in the case of the Soviet culture is
not in itself unique: “The search for origins seeks to discover the foundation of a civilization's achievement
and calls for a reaffirmation of the strengths of its forebears (as in Young Mr. Lincoln, 1939). The search
may also take a critical view, attempting to uncover the source of a current malaise or a discomforting
dilemma, such as the anxieties over colonialism, ‘the third world,’ and the post-World War II Western
hegemony apparent in Lawrence of Arabia (1962)” (3). However, the agenda of reaffirmation in the Soviet
case, is quite unparalleled in history both in its vigor and its unusual repertoire for representing the theses
of Dialectical and Historical Materialism.
65
For comparison in the 1936 article in Iskusstvo kino A.Kapler wrote of the new typical negative
character, whose rise he described in favorable terms, seeing this type as the appropriate vehicle for
addressing social problems in Soviet society. Kapler mentioned that he had recently read a large number of
scripts that had all featured [the type of negative character we see in Bolshai zhizn’], who was “not a harm-
doer, but quite a Soviet man – honest, educated, socially active engineer or technician, a trusted official
overseeing economics (khozyaistvennik-trestovik) or an economist”, who was temporarily struck by “a
blindness, a severe conservatism of thought, which would make him resist the new forms of work that were
taking place in the industry” (Kapler 37).

86
the character of the times. It is in this tone that the dramatic conflict began to be defined
in negative terms:
Even more irritating are the mistakes of those authors, who having
correctly selected their character’s life period, tear him away from the
main historical events that have determined the character’s life, as they try
to create dramatic conflict – not out of the main events, but out of
auxiliary situations, often invented by the authors themselves (Iurenev,
“Admiral Nakhimov” 15).
Commentators consistently attacked the contrived peripheral conflicts that they saw as
characteristic of the “bastardly bourgeois drama” and that, as the decree on Bolshaia
zhizn’ had pointed out, were now creeping into Soviet screenplays. As large-scale
ideological conflict within Soviet society was losing relevance, strangely, conflict on
personal grounds began to be tolerated even less than conflict with vanishing ideological
enemies.
66
In fact, “contrived conflict” (nadumannyi konflikt) became a code word for
dramatic problems that revolved around the personal and the intimate, like those having
to do with romantic rivalries, petty jealousies or any interpersonal problems.
The discourse in the wake of the 1946 decree on Bolshaia zhizn’ suggested that
the appropriate conflict was large and sweeping and had to do with the fact that “people
live on the divide of two different worlds.” Contradictions between these two worlds
created struggle so that “struggle and resolution of the core conflicts cannot but be the
basis for the plot” (Eremin, “O nekotorykh zadachakh kinodramaturgii” 5). The main
conflict of the epoch, A. Fadeev wrote in Literaturnaiaa gazeta No 42, 1946, is “the
conflict of all that is new and socialist with every manifestation of the old and of that
which is dying away.” Like others who sought to explain the lack of appeal of the
positive characters in contemporary dramaturgy, Fadeev remarks that the old has a

66
See D. Eremin, “O nekotorykh zadachakh kinodramaturgii.”

87
longer, richer tradition in terms of its depiction. Thus the conflict of the epoch is
articulated in epic terms, as the inherent conflict between good and evil. The further
implication for the narrative, however, is that no explicit conflict would be required. Not
being “slave to the conflict” but mastering it meant becoming “armed” with the energy of
the positive processes in contemporary life.
In 1949 the assault on tight dramatic conflict in the historical genre was fortified
by referencing none other than Pushkin himself. In an article entitled “Pushkinskie
zavety” (“Pushkin’s testament”, the Russian title reminiscent of the frequently referenced
“Leninskie zavety”) L.Pogozheva wrote that most of Pushkin’s contemporaries had not
understood the depth of Pushkin’s insight as they criticized the classic’s structurally
experimental works, like “Boris Godunov” and “Povesti Belkina.”
67
It was time,
according to Pogozheva, to determine how Pushkin’s ideas were developped in Soviet
art, “to analyze the patterns of continuation of some basic principles of pushkinian
dramaturgy, prose and lyrical poetry” (4). Pogozheva stated that the most important for
Pushkin were qualities like “content, true-to-life-ness and truth” (soderzhatelnost’,
zhiznennost’ i Pravda), and “that he was entirely dissatisfied with contemporaneous
drama, which was close to classicism with its traditional contrived plots.”
In his conception of “Boris Godunov,” Pushkin, according to Pogozheva, took
issue with both “classical play writing and the romantic Byronic aesthetic that rested on
the principles of subjectivism.” The new play was conceived as a consciously innovative
piece, in which historical truthfulness would reign supreme, “in which a traditional plot
would be absent, as would be absent any centering (gruppirovka) of events around one

67
See L. Pogozheva, “Pushkinskie zavety.”

88
character, in which the classical rules of the unity of time and space would be disrupted.”
Pogozheva then described a principle that practically was a word-for-word dictum that is
seen time and again in contemporary critics’ vision of Soviet art:
[Pushkin] decisively disapproved of the drive to construct the dramatic
plot around petty intrigues. Pushkin wrote his play “Boris Godunov” with
freedom and breadth, as a series of historical scenes, which he dates with
exact years with the precision of a chronicler, while constructing a conflict
that is taken directly from life – thus creating a dramatic work that was
entirely new for his time (4).
As the most progressive writer and “a deep thinker” Pushkin was not understood even by
Belinskii, who criticized the play as lacking in dramatic qualities. Without understanding
how complimentary such wording actually was and intending it as a criticism, Belinskii
characterized “Boris Godunov” as “not a drama at all, but rather an epic poem in
colloquial form.” Pogozheva notes that Belinskii also called the play “an epic drama”
elsewhere.
This powerful invocation of Pushkin fortified the case for dismissing dramatic
conflict and produced ammunition for appeals to engage with life directly by
circumventing the contrivances of conventional art forms. Pogozheva’s argument
continues that while psychological and the everyday realism found their way into Russian
classical drama of the late 19
th
century, Russian historical drama was considerably
lacking in that respect until the appearance of A. N. Tolstoy’s “Piotr Pervyi” (both the
play and the novel). Aleksei Tolstoy’s continuation of Pushkin’s tradition was argued in
the familiar terms of opposition between particular and general - the “accidental” and
“historically predetermined”. Thus, in reference to the plays “Piotr Pervyi” and “Ivan
Groznyi” Pogozheva wrote:

89
…following the requirements of Marxist aesthetics, [Aleksei Tolstoy] …
met Pushkin’s requirement for play writing, which, in Pushkin’s opinion,
… should base its conflicts not on the accidental and particular, but on the
human lives and on the nation’s destinies, look not for verisimilitude, but
for great historical truth (4).
Some authors tried to defend conflict-driven drama on the grounds that collision is a
generic requirement, at least for some genres, like comedy and melodrama (Eremin 3).
Such reasoning had been routine in the mid-30s, when critics took issue with film-makers
for not taking full advantage of generic possibilities and gimmickry. In a 1936 issue of
Iskusstvo Kino the editorial berates film-makers for watering down the thrills inherent
in the adventure film: “The adventure genre is exceptionally diverse in its themes; it
opens up enormous possibilities for screenwriters. [It is only lamentable] that in our
country the adventure genre keeps turning into a geological one.”
68

In the 1940s, however, support for psychological affectation and dramatic thrills
in any genre was fraught with a number of ideological dangers. In the wake of the anti-
cosmopolitanism campaign of 1949, to postulate that a screenplay was at all in a dramatic
genre and that it was under the universal pressure for dramatic conflict brought the
charges not only of formalism but also of idolatry to Hollywood. Formalism was now
seen as paving the way to an anti-patriotic agenda in the arts. To bow down to form was
no longer an assault on Socialist Realist method, but an assault on Russianness.
69

Formalism was targeted specifically for its emphasis on the so-called “universal”

68
Unsigned editorial, Iskusstvo Kino 1 (1936), 6.
69
In the unsigned editorial of Iskusstvo kino a group of “cosmopolitans” in Soviet cinema, allegedly led by
L.Trauberg, and including M.Bleiman, N.Otten and V.Sutyrin among others, were accused of advocating
formalist and naturalist tendencies. “Za sovetskoe patrioticheskoe iskusstvo – protiv kosmopolitov!” (1,
1949) The same authors were also charged with wanting “to remake contemporary soviet art according to
the American make … to deprive the soviet artist of the sense of national pride for his socialist motherland,
its powerful culture and art” (Shcherbina 14).

90
principles of art. Even in the absence of explicit juxtaposition with Hollywood production
opponents, were apt to pick up on every formal element in critical reflexivity. Any desire
to pinpoint “motives” (both general and specific, e.g. “achieving a result”, “adultery
leading to death”, “struggling with God”) or “devices” (like a development leading to
finding something out, challenging someone, etc.) met with suspicion because the only
reason to introduce this type of discourse is to find “technological qualities” that are
common for both Soviet and bourgeois screenwriting and “thus to prove that our
inveterate enemies and ourselves come from the same formal basis” (Grinberg,
“Propovedniki mertvykh skhem” 28). The harmfulness of such universal principles is
obvious because to postulate such universal laws of art would mean that they are not
affected by history or the political and ideological struggle.
70

2.6. Epic Character
The type of characterization of the hero, issues of character transformation and
subject-object relationships within the diegesis also presented considerable theoretical
problems. Some of those problems were directly linked to the discussion of the type of
conflict. The consensus on the true Soviet hero was that he or she was single-minded,

70
A 1949 issue of Iskusstvo kino published a very critical review of the book Postroenie kinostsenariya
(1940) by the dean of VGIK’s screenwriting department, V.Iunakovskii. Iunakovskii believed that his book
addressed the very “nature of dramatic work”, as he spoke of “techniques” such as “preparation”
(podgotovka) aimed at achieving the strongest “psychological effect”(20). Although formalist analysis in
itself was at this point subject to criticism on the ground that it implied a universal understanding of the
narrative, it was Iunakovskii’s criticism of a historical film that caused true outrage with the critics.
Iunakovskii cited lack of suspense in Volochaevskie dni (dirs Vasilyev brothers) as a narrative failure,
whereby “the whole action of the script is constructed without taking into account the meaning of
preparation, …[where] dramatic action is built as a chain of episodes that are developing in chronological
order” (21).

91
committed and wise, or, in G. Lukacs’ description of the epic character, one whose
outward deeds matched the soul’s inner demand for greatness (35).
Dobrenko has shown that it was not until Ivan Grozny that a unique type of
historicism emerged that would characterize Soviet historical films. Here, as in aesthetic
debates, the peculiar relationship between the concrete and the abstract became central in
creating the complex allegorical fabric of history on film. Discussing the case of
Eisenstein’s Ivan, Dobrenko discovered that the principle of characterization relies on a
precarious balance between historicization of the character and its de-
historicization/generalization. Characterization was essentially crushed between the
Scylla of historical mundaneness (the accursed chaos of the accidental) and the Charybdis
of subservience to the present political moment that occasioned the very turn towards the
past. Historical character could not be shown in too concrete or too detailed a manner so
as to retain space for allusions, while placing the narrative into too generalized a
structure, like that of ‘the tragedy of power’ in Pushkin’s “Boris Godunov,” would open
one up to charges of extraneous, irrelevant, if not outright dissident, messages (Dobrenko
30).
It was no small enterprise bringing that kind of integrity to the character that had
been only two decades removed from the modernistic fragmentation of subjectivity and
who only a decade previously was steadily and successfully committed to a narrative
dynamic of change. In this discussion, as with that of formalist terminology, the rapid
reversal of values produced a great deal of dancing around and re-definition of existing
quotes from the classics of the previous era. The patriarch of the method, M. Gorky
himself, had written that the hero of the times is more contradictory than any character

92
has ever been before (Eremin, “O nekotorykh zadachakh kinodramaturgii” 5). In the late
1940s Soviet film critics repeated the quote but added that contradictions within the
character had nothing to do with his or her interiority, but with the complexity of the
times.
One critic wrote, “the complexity and ‘contradictoriness’ of this character come
not from the split between feeling and will, between intellect and heart, not from the
reflexivity that eats away at the soul, but from the complexity of the conflicts that may
not infrequently be bloody but that can be resolved in practical terms, the conflicts of the
epoch…” (Eremin 5) This is an explicitly epic character, whose inner demands for
greatness are revealed against the conflicts between stages of historical development. But
whither could conflicts like that come in the year 1947, when all the battles had been
officially won, all the steel tempered and all spontaneity transformed into consciousness?
Not one example of a conflict worthy of becoming the center of narrative development is
featured in the Iskusstvo kino articles of the late 1940s. Conflicts are branded “petty” and
“contrived,” accidental, unrepresentative – at best a compositional principle or connectors
for the otherwise unrelated episodes. One explanation for this could be that conflict had
to be externalized and projected onto the environment instead of individuals to fit the
Stalinist view of historical development. At the same time, a certain depersonalization of
the adversary also occurred as there could no longer be any individual villains, but only
opposing impersonal forces, like “the old” resisting “the new,” or “the backward”
hampering “the progressive.” The result of these two pressures – the need for an epic
showdown with its external battles and the impossibility of presenting a viable
personalized adversary – produced an increasing number of “trifling,” socially

93
insignificant conflicts, like those of the “comedy of errors” and “the love triangles” that
gravitated toward the ridiculous (Eremin, “O nekotorykh zadachakh kinodramaturgii” 6).
Conflict-less screenwriting therefore arose out of a number of pressures, including
the 1940s maneuver to eliminate character transformation. Consider, for instance, the
discussion of the state of screenwriting from I. Grinberg’s 1947 article “The Growth of
Character” (Rost Geroya). Hypothesizing about the perfect character, Grinberg, like
many others before him in search of answers to other questions, looks back to the 1934
movie Chapaev, a resounding domestic and international success and a film with
considerable inspirational potential. Contemporary critics noted that Chapaev and many
other films of the 1930s followed the narrative direction that was later described by Clark
as the ritualistic transformation of spontaneity into consciousness, whereby the
oppositional pair of the educator and the educated acted as the setup for character
transformation (perestroika geroia). Grinberg looks at the popular films like Chapaev,
Mat’, Konets Sankt-Peterburga, Vyborgskaia storona, Shchors and Velikiy grazhdanin
and notes that these films are driven by the central dramatic problem of the
transformation of character. Despite the seemingly similar underlying pattern in these
movies, Grinberg draws the reader’s attention to a significant difference between
characters like Nilovna in Mat’ and Chapaev. According to the author, a character like
Chapaev or Shchors or Sverdlov does not undergo the same transformation as those from
Mat’ and Konets Sankt-Peterburga. And even though the Chapaevs and the Shchorses are
not yet quite on the level of Furmanov, they also represent a more advanced stage in the
evolutionary chain of the Soviet positive character. Grinberg makes a case for this new,
static, Soviet character and locates the moment of his birth in the pre-war period. To give

94
weight to an argument for a character that does not need a transformation, the critic
quotes Gorky again: “There are people whose revolutionary class consciousness has
grown into an emotion, into the unbendable will to act (volya).”
In the writing of that time one senses a realization that although the pattern of
transformation had played a part, it was no longer viable:
[These] characters…do not undergo a crucial and decisive transformation
– for that is not the logic of their development. That logic consists in the
growth and strengthening of the qualities that are already in existence
[bold type mine], that have already been built into the character; in
revealing the characteristics and tendencies that have already been formed
and manifested, in overcoming external [E.V.] obstacles that are in the
way of the character’s goal (Grinberg, “Rost geroia” 12).

The goals and the means, the consciousness and the heart, are in concord from the
very beginning and the narrative only witnesses their consonance grow stronger under
external pressures. New methods and means then are necessary to portray these new
characters, and that remarkable wholeness of character which for Grinberg comes from
the elimination of the opposition between the personal and the public. As he discusses
Velikiy Grazhdanin, a film that achieves the goal of adequate character development,
Grinberg provides a succinct onslaught on the depiction of personal life that, as we shall
see, characterizes Soviet film-making in the 1940s:
[The authors] strove to break free from the traditional understanding of
character, who…is [usually] brought closer to the audience not through his
social activities (общественная практика), but through the [portrayal of]
absolutely unrelated “private life”. They strove to overcome the
incongruence and incoherence between the private and the public life of
the character that we so often find in the arts. And they succeeded
because they saw how the split between the private and the public, which
is also characteristic of capitalism, is actually removed from the Soviet
reality (Grinberg, “Rost geroia” 13).

95
At first glance it is not clear why Petr Shakhov is any different from others contributing
to the Socialist struggle and why he qualifies as an epic character. He does not take on
any epic deeds but instead appears plunged into “current affairs,” into the details and
particularities of running the economic machine. But his leadership is manifested in his
ability to grasp the true meaning of small things and the small events that reveal their true
significance for the future. It is the correct, prophetic understanding of the details, an
ability to make up a picture of the whole out of the particular, and a beam-like power of
instant analysis that constitute the main requirements for the character’s consciousness.
This vision echoes the type of historiography outlined by Stalin in his Short Course, the
arrangement of particular details into a pattern that is shaped by historical necessity.
The character’s ability to be in sync with the times as opposed to a search for
harmony with his own interiority was indeed a 1940s development. The 1937
Dramaturgiya kino by Volkenshtein had put forward a rather typical modernistic view
that the character’s complexity and individuality need to be revealed either through
nuanced intrigue (“хитросплетенная интрига”) or the facial expressions of the actor.
The complexity of the internal world was seen as a welcome force that would propel the
action, and even the most subtle movements of the soul were expected to be shown. By
1949 this assumption that the character’s internal conflict or “minute movements of the
soul” (“мельчайшие движения души” ) had to be part of the narrative was
contemptuously referred to as “rotten psychologism.”
71

71
“This rotten psychologism, this individualistic self-digging is one of the most characteristic aspects of the
bourgeois decadence. In the final account it is called upon to fragment the working humanity into “separate
individuals”, to tear regular people away from one another, to pit them against one another and to isolate
them” (Grinberg, “Propovedniki mertvykh skhem” 27).

96
What is important in this discussion is that a theoretical justification was issued
for the existence of a monolithic character, a character who is immune to transformation
and has nothing to overcome internally and that can only exist within a narrative
structured around an external conflict. In parallel with denying the character interiority by
insisting that the ideal character be a product of his environment, 1940s cinematic
discourse also denied any meaningful interiority to the authors by making a similar
argument. Thus Eremin classified Styron’s critical input on Dovzhenko’s work as
“harmful” because Sutyrin praised subjective elements in the director’s work (“Za
chistotu sovetskoi kinoteorii” 24). Sutyrin had commended Michurin for not being
dominated by scientific details and instead showing traits of the author-director himself.
For Sutyrin the author’s subjectivity cast over the objective material defined the process
of creation and was indispensable for the magic of art.
In his review of Akademik Pavlov, Iu. Lukin approvingly relates the opening
scene of the film in which the youthful Pavlov reveals to his brother that he is fully
conscious of his life’s purpose, and is only worried there might not be enough time to
fulfill his destiny’s call. Even though Lukin states that the film shows the process of “the
formation of [Pavlov’s] views and beliefs, those of the citizen of a socialist country” – the
Nobel prize-winning physiologist was born in 1849 and died in 1936 – the critic rushes to
point out that “Pavlov was not a spontaneous materialist” but “consciously pursued his
goal” to assert scientific materialism in the international academic arena. This argument
appears to confirm the concept of the character seen as a monolithic consciousness for

97
whom the conflict can only be external, as in Pavlov’s encounters with domestic and
British nay-sayers, which serve to assert the supremacy of Russian science.
72

It is not accidental that when Otten discussed the place of romantic revolutionary
pathos (revolyutsionnaya romantika) in the Socialist Realist method, he reserved fictional
intervention for the portrayals of young characters whose “personalities had not yet been
formed” (Eremin, Za chistotu sovetskoi kinoteorii” 25). Otten saw young characters as
not conscious enough and thus in need of a romantic touch to excuse the fact that they
were not monolithic. In general, in the absence of external social conflicts Otten stressed
internal struggle as the crucial source of narrative dynamics; the critic also saw
psychologism and internal struggle as compensation for the absence of fundamental
social contradictions in Soviet reality (26).
Summing up the debate over dramatic narrative in post-war screenwriting, one
can see that “conflict-less” screenplays did not arise out of a desire to avoid conflict. The
specific aesthetic pressures of the late 1940s, an expectation of an epic integrity within
the character, a de-personification of “evil” and a taboo on personal/low comedic
collisions made it impossible to create a narrative arc that would not appear flaccid.
Conflicts seemed affected by a double bind: a script with an external conflict slandered
society, a script with an internal one – slandered the character. External conflict allowed
for an epic showdown between the forces of good and evil, but the forces of evil could no
longer objectively exist. Internal conflict carried opportunities for the spontaneity-
consciousness dynamic but even the need for re-education of the protagonist was only
suitable for pre-revolutionary characters, illiterates or the very young. Translation of epic

72
See Iu. Lukin, “Zhizn’, posvyaschennaia narodu.”

98
into the terms of the present was failing and that failure was creating a sense of flat,
fragmented narratives.

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Chapter 3. The Cases of Naturalism and Melodrama
Purging “naturalistic tendencies” became a strange preoccupation of Soviet
cinematic discourse in the 1940s. The vehemence and breadth of the term’s application
may appear surprising considering the ubiquity of portrayals of the newly taboo subjects
just two decades previously. In this chapter I show that the art of the 1920s embraced a
matter-of-fact attitude to graphic representations of violence, sexuality and disease that
went along with a lack of interest in personal subjectivity. As the “live human being”
made a comeback in the arts, his or her physicality became a pressing aesthetic concern,
and issues like emotional manipulation, affectation, sensationalism and vulgarity began to
appear in the critical discourse. The presence of highly dramatic elements was first
welcomed as necessitated by the requirements of generic narrative arcs. The only
dissenters in the 1930s were left-leaning film-makers, i.e. those who believed in evoking
an intellectual rather than emotional response in the audience. In the 1940s, however, the
same appeals were made not in the name of a more experimental type of film-making but
in the name of national epic that could not concern itself with ethical inquiries based on
individual characters. I argue that the rise of melodrama understood as heightened
dramatization in the 1930s represented an intermediary stage in the transformation of the
revolutionary aesthetic into the monumental epic one.
3.1. Naturalism
The bulk of editorial suggestions during the bloodiest period in Soviet history are
not overtly political. The Mosfilm studio notes from the period contain very little more
than polite suggestions of one film-maker to another, with a consistent theme in these
discussions being the notion of taste, which appears in this context to point to an implied

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aesthetic system. The discussions of “naturalism,” of going against “taste,” of “lowering”
(prinizhenie) of either the image of the Great Man in the narrative or of the genre itself
abound in the studio notes.
Images of food consumption, blood, disease, poverty, marriage, untidiness,
wounds, signs of aging, dying – were progressively removed as time went on in the name
of taste and under the rubric of excessive naturalism. Anything that was seen as diffusing
the heroics of the genre had to go as “lowering” (prinizhaiushchee) the overall style. This
included anything from lines like “He’s eating your steak, Nelson” (Admiral Ushakov) to
showing supporting characters drinking alcohol (Surikov) to onscreen shooting of a
captured animal (Przhevalskii) to Pushkin playing cards. Disease and even heroic battle
wounds of a burnt officer in Admiral Nakhimov suffered the same fate. The language of
the editorial meetings in such instances features the word “disagreeable” or “distasteful”
(nepriyatnyi). Also disagreeable were financial deprivations of the Great Men, even
though they kept emerging in the scripts as the authors attempted to introduce some
dramatic developments and defended including the motif of financial ruin or struggling as
a political criticism of the social conditions under a tsarist regime.
73

Еvery single mention of money in Pushkin, Glinka and Alekhin ends up dropping
from view, as do drinking and disease. When someone meekly brings up the argument for
historical accuracy at studio meetings, the typical self-censoring objection is the iconic
image of the Great Man. Thus for Admiral Nakhimov one hears the following: “It is not

73
Aleksandrov wrote: “Вопрос о кризисе Глинки разрешается тем, что он исключается из сценария,
хотя обстановка николаевской России, доведшей до кризиса Глинку, Гоголя, Достоевского и
Грибоедова, искавшего смерти, убившая Пушкина, Лермонтова, дает возможность прославить наше
время” (Mosfilm 2453, op.3, 580, L.36).

101
of consequence whether or not Nakhimov had gout. In any event, this is not part of the
popular image of Nakhimov (narodnyi obraz Nakhimova)… [the way] Nelson’s missing
eye is.”
74
But of course the iconic image, the popular legend is but a mere excuse in this
instance. For, in the case of Pushkin and the family drama leading up to the duel the
popular legend was not the source but, in fact, the counter-source that needed to be
suppressed. Thus, financial concerns and card-playing as well as the entire marriage
drama have to be abandoned: “We need to show Pushkin always, without any ambiguity,
i.e. the way we would like to know him. And the rumor does trail him.”
75

Extreme vigilance over naturalism was nowhere as strong as in the case of
portrayals of death. In the same Aleksandr Pushkin project all of the scenes after the
Pushkin-Dantes duel had to go because there was no need “to naturalistically dwell on it,
since we all know what happened.”
76
The episode of Pushkin traveling and seeing the
carriage that is bringing Griboedov’s dead body (in itself an apocryphal legend) was
expunged as also “ill-fitting considering the context.” Lines like “I swear on the dead
body of my murdered sister” were changed in favor of “I swear on the memory of my
sister.”
However, unfavorable characterizations were also curiously deleted from the
portrayals of the adversaries. Thus, the kind of visual characterization that one sees for
the domestic and foreign adversaries of Ivan the Terrible and Aleksandr Nevskii (who are

74
“Stenogramma zasedaniia khudozhestvennogo soveta po obsuzhdeniiu materiala fil’ma V.I. Pudovkina
“Admiral Nakhimov,” Mosfilm 2453, op.5, 2, L.11.
75
Mosfilm 2468, op.2, 52. Stenogramma zasedaniia khudozhestvennogo soveta po obsuzhdeniiu
literaturnogo stsenariia Liubashevskogo i Gerasimova “Aleksandr Pushkin”. March 10, 1949, L. 22.
76
Mosfilm 2468, op.2, 294. Delo kinokartiny “Aleksandr Pushkin”, L.4.

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stooping, squinting, and somewhat degenerate looking) is no longer visible in the late
1940s. In fact, in Pushkin a character that is named Prince K (Prince Mikhail Dundukov-
Korsakov) is originally shown as degenerate and with exaggerated mannerisms, thus in
general showing Pushkin’s enemies as somewhat monstrous, and, more specifically,
referring to the fact that Prince K in reality was minister Uvarov’s lover. The artistic
council immediately picked up on that description and even though the historical
Dundukov was bow-legged as portrayed in the script, such characterizations were felt to
be lowering the biopic.
77

77
Przhevalskii: Принижение образа –.becomes temporarily confused over the question he receives from
the audience (over whether or not it is possible for a nation to develop physically and mentally (духовной)
in severe climate conditions).
“Разговор Пржевальского с монголами о расположении хребтов наивен, неубедителен и снижает
представление о научной деятельности великого русского географа.” Materialy po rezhisserskomu
stsenariiu S.I.Iutkevicha “Przhevalskii”. Mosfilm 2453, op.3, 932a, L.66-67. The film Vasilii Surikov is
seen as failing to praise the glory of the Russian artists. At an art council meeting Stolper objects because
he had thought that the goal of the film had been “to increase the glory and greatness of the artist Surikov,”
whereas it is doubtful the image of Surikov in the film achives that objective. Another objection refers to
the portrayal of artist Repin, whose image is seen as too “low” (nelepyi, samodovol’nyi, koketslivyi). When
someone retorts that the historical Repin appears to have been similar to that portrayal, Stolper argues, “But
apart from that he was also ‘Repin’. His entire image is somewhat different.” Academician Tarle forcefully
criticizes image of Suvorov in Admiral Uhakov-2 and specifically objects to the line “I pretend to be a fool,
because what can you expect from a fool?” (Pritvoriaius’ durachkom, a s durachka kakaia vziatka?) Too
vaudeville/comedic – Suvorov in Ushakov-2, Tarle also sees the image of Suvorov in the script (!) as
inexpressive and fussy. Mosfilm 2453, op.3, 93. Materialy po rezhisserskomu stsenariiu M.I.Romma
“Admiral Ushakov.” Same objection is raised regarding the image of Chapaev in Frunze: “Chapaev is
characterized almost vaudeville-like.” Materialy po literaturnomu stsenariiu L.V.Nikulina i
M.I.Berestianskogo “Frunze, ”Mosfilm 2453, op.2, 408, L. 35. When the first version of the film Admiral
Nakhimov is discussed, a lapse in heroics is pointed out by a number of council members: 1) В бою
Нахимов болтается и вдруг появляется статично в кадре. Это нужно убрать, потому что это
компрометирует образ и вызывает чувство досады и жалости. 2) Обидно, что Нахимов не совсем
героически умирает и хотя мы знаем, что по истории оно так и было, все же хотелось бы видеть его
смерть как-то иначе. Mosfilm, 2453, op.5, 1. Materialy po rezhisserskomu stsenariiu “Admiral
Nakhimov.”

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3.2. Personal Life
The decree on Bolshaya zhizn’ is best known for its criticism of the second part of Ivan
the Terrible and Admiral Nakhimov.
78
However, in its criticism of the banned title film
Bolshaya zhizn’, a film about the reconstruction of the facilities in the basin of the river
Don, the Central Committee of the Communist Party stated that “the main focus is given
to the primitive portrayal of all kinds of personal feelings (lichnykh perezhivanii) and
everyday (bytovykh) scenes.” Since there are no good reasons to include hints at
workers’ sexual liaisons and drinking parties, such episodes were seen as sensationalist
attention-catchers that the film-makers resorted to in order to hold the narrative
together.
79

This attack on depicting private lives was carried out in formal or aesthetic terms,
even as the idea of discussing the formal was being lambasted. As in the debate on
conflicts, what was being redefined was the generic structure of the politically significant
film, and therefore the expulsion of the private life had to be justified formally. Although
the question of whether or not the character’s private life should be in the picture appears
to relate to the vision of the positive character, for the post-war Soviet cinematic
discourse it was also often tied to the issue of realism. Depiction of private life becomes
incompatible with Socialist Realism, the kind of art that relied on a delicate balance
between revolutionary romantic elements and realism and sought to avoid the extremes of
spontaneity-touting romanticism on the one end and physical, detail-oriented naturalism
on the other. The specific aesthetic complaint against focus on private lives and the

78
Postanovlenie TsK VKP(b) of September, 04, 1946 “O kinofilme “Bolshaia zhizn’” published in
Iskusstvo kino 1 (1947). Pp. 1-2.
79
Ibid, 2.

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details of everyday life (byt) in the 1940s was that a literal approach to realism prevented
the work of art from getting to the bottom of the phenomena described. “Petty details”
pertain to “accidental” characterization (sluchainoe) as opposed to the typical and
reflective of the spirit of the time. When writing about the continuation of Pushkin’s
traditions, Pogozheva, for instance, also referred to F. Engels, who called for an art that
did not look for plots in the petty details of the private lives of historical personalities, but
in the historical meaning of their activity as statesmen (4).
One of the most frequently criticized areas of the personal life – the character’s
love life– was also often referred to in quotation marks. The critics would time and again
write as if they could not understand why anyone would bring romantic involvements
into a screenplay. As the critics wondered why the so-called “love collision” would be
used in historical plots, they could only explain it as a writer’s ploy used for the purpose
of tying together unconnected episodes. The failure of the first version of Admiral
Nakhimov to present the magnificent “tragedy” of Nakhimov’s voluntary self-sacrifice in
the siege of Sevastopol (the admiral was actually killed by a stray bullet) was said to owe
itself to the fact that the screenwriter (I. Lukovskii) chose to meticulously characterize the
admiral as a person, rather than a military leader (Iurenev, “Admiral Nakhimov” 16).
Episode after episode in which Nakhimov is shown as a patriot, a good comrade, a strict
but just educator of young naval officers, an advocate for sobriety, and a soft and
sensitive confidant to the younger officer Burunov and his fiancée Tania, are strewn
together with no crowning purpose and hence, Yurenev concludes, the turn for the trite
“love-laden” plot. The story line, in which the disciple figure, Burunov, receives
extensive burns to his face in combat and as a result goes blind, met with severe criticism

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and was cut from the later version: “Again deeds are ascribed to Nakhimov that would be
worthy of a kind uncle, and not an acting admiral”, apparently “due to an incompetent
attempt to characterize the protagonist with insignificant and fictitious episodes instead of
large historical events” (17-18).
Summing up the achievements of the Stalin prize recipients the unsigned editorial
in a 1947 issue of Iskusstvo kino continued the criticism of the insignificant, small
details.
80
The editorial explicitly endorsed large events spanning a lifetime as a specific
aspect of Socialist Realism as an aesthetic method. Soviet biographical film once again
was represented as the Socialist Realist phenomenon par excellence, a genre of film that
had not existed elsewhere and that, unlike any other genre, was brought to life by
“Leninist-Stalinist ideology.” Indeed, there were considerable generic differences
between the Hollywood biopics and the Soviet “historical biographical film” that to the
Soviet critics supported that claim. Critics themselves stated that “the hundreds of
American and western European pictures while endeavoring to portray the lives of
remarkable people from world history in fact discredit them and make their biographies
banal by focusing the viewer’s attention on the small, insignificant facts of life, lose track
of and often even distort what had glorified the man and his life achievement.
81
The
failure of the first version of Admiral Nakhimov is cited again as the result of “the
perverse method” of focusing on insignificant episodes pertaining to everyday realia.
Overall, the temptation of focusing on “affective scenes” from the historical character’s
“private life” was to be resisted and the sober tone to be maintained.

80
See “Laureaty stalinskikh premii,” pp. 1-3.
81
The same idea almost word-for-word is expressed in Iurenev’s “Tvorets.”

106
While the 1940s perception of the appropriate arsenal of devices had come a long
way since the 1930s, the post-war aversion to “gimmickry” had been a decade in the
making. 1936 witnessed crucial debates over aesthetic method and the type of realism to
be pursued. The battle ground was demarcated between agitpropfilm on the one hand and
naturalism on the other, thus setting up Socialist Realism to emerge as the winner on
balance. For instance, Chapaev and Yunost’ Maksima appear to have been the obvious
beacons of Socialist Realism in retrospect, but in 1936 Iskusstvo kino had sought to
defend these films against the behind-the-scenes criticism. The detractors of the two
popular successes had charged them with “naturalistic tendencies” and “sentiment-
peddling” were now only referred to as those “draping themselves under the ‘left’ cloak”
(Belitskii 9).
In 1936 not all affect was deemed distasteful or superficial: a character could be
inspired to fight against of class that was responsible for the deaths of “progressive
people.” Inspired to fight oppression by the death of her mother (who is poisoned at the
factory thanks to the capitalists’ negligence), the female character of Podrugi joins the
civil war and dies a fighter. It might seem that no progress had been made, but the
difference between victimhood and conscious readiness for sacrifice is apparent to the
audience, implies the critic Belitskii. Deaths in cinema therefore could be intellectually
sound even if to some they evoked the manipulativeness of the popular bourgeois art
form.
Systematically negative in the late 1940s, the critical stance on personal life and
character subjectivity was not nearly as aggressive in the previous decade. For instance, a
1936 article in Iskusstvo kino drew a distinction between naturalism and realism in order

107
to assert the significance of subjective experience, feelings and the intimate sphere of life.
Decrying the aesthetic of agitprop in which characters were often reduced to walking
masks that represented class positions and communicated ideological talking points, the
author also takes aim at all too affective melodramatic moments. The author calls for a
balance between these two as he asserts the significance of the truthful representation of
intimate human feelings. The way things are at the moment, Belitskii writes, “it looks
like the soviet man does not love, does not suffer, does not feel jealousy, and does not
have any friendships. It’s been considered somewhat demeaning to ascribe to the Soviet
character such “low, ‘bourgeois’ relics” (19). Glossing over real human emotions,
Belitskii felt, was creating a sense that those characters were inferior to the characters of
classic literature in the scale of their feelings. Director Ermler even emphasized the
“education of human feelings” as a priority of Soviet cinema as he made a speech at a
creative conference.
Although a correct amount of emotiveness was welcomed in 1936 and its critics
seen as “formalist” zealots, another article in the same issue of Iskusstvo kino, entitled
“Realizm i naturalism v tvorchestve khudozhnikov kino,” sought to remind readers that
film art that would truly match the epic scale of the times was still a height to be
conquered (Krinkin 15). Films like Yunost’ Maksima, Letchiki (Pilots) and Krestyane
(Peasants) were seen as acceptable but by no means masterworks, in no small part due to
naturalistic elements like a close-up of Maksim’s muddied face, guttural melodramatic
shrieking, lengthy detailed beatings in the jail, a conscious rejection of music, a
soundtrack limited to the authentic folk songs of the time, stark editing, the strict
chronology of the narrative, and a fear of tight intrigue. Ermler’s Krest’iane, the critic

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continued, succumbed to naturalistic tendencies in an even more obvious manner.
Krinkin noted that in the past Ermler abused expressionistic tendencies that had
paradoxically kept him from overusing naturalism (16). Thus abstraction seemed pitted
against naturalistic realism, and while abstraction at least produced clear intellectual
conclusions, naturalism seemed to obscure them by distracting the audience from the
scenes that carried the meaning of class struggle. While in the 1930s charges of
“naturalism” did not rest on its definition as a psychology-based method of late 19th
century literary realism, criticism of naturalism was somewhat more specific than it
would become in the 1940s, as film-makers were progressively less likely to take their
chances on affectation. Whether it was the camera lingering its gaze over a dead body or
loud slurping at mealtime, Iskusstvo kino was specific in describing and clearly
identifying explaining why these details were not appropriate within the larger narrative
structure.
By contrast, references to naturalism in the later 1940s were considerably more
enigmatic, the only link to aesthetic terms being the relationship between the typical and
the petty, the heroic and the realistic, the high and the low. Tone of depiction became
paramount in the gentle art of preserving the balance of realism. In the article “Zametki o
revolutsionnom romantizme” Vaisfeld distilled the disparate concerns over naturalism
into a dictum as he wrote: “Another form of distorting the principles of Socialist Realism
in the art of cinema is replacing the genuine truth with small ‘truths’, with naturalistic
depictions of everyday reality, a substitution of ‘mole of view’ for the ‘point of view’.
Such art does not know generalizations, it is wingless and faceless” (…podmena
podlinnoi pravdy melkimi “pravdochkami”, naturalisticheskim bytopisatelstvom,

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podmena “tochki zreniya” “kochkoi zhreniya”) (Vaisfeld, “Zametki o revolyutsionnom
romantizme” 20). Vaisfeld countered the recent fascination with the Italian neo-realism
by saying that what appeared as a breakthrough to “our friends abroad” – referring to the
use of types (tipazh) instead of actors and a specifically cinematic naturalism – was a past
stage for Soviet cinema. Vaisfeld advocates moving away from the raw look of earlier
Soviet film and traces the current tradition of Soviet film-making to films like Shchors,
Velikiy grazhdanin, Aleksandr Nevskiy, Deputat Baltiki, Lenin v Oktyabre and My iz
Kronshtadta. Vaisfeld believed that neo-naturalism was creeping into the films of some
Soviet film-makers as they tried to avoid “heightened (pripodnyatyi) actors’ intonations,
sharp and unexpected composition, temperamental and philosophical dialogue” because
the film-makers saw these elements as a departure from truthfulness and authenticity
(21). And yet even when referring to specific examples of unpalatable naturalism, critics
most often chose not to explain why they considered something “naturalistic” in one
instance and “realistic” in another.
The Mosfilm studio notes for the film Przhevalskii, for instance, show how fuzzy
the line between what could appear realistic and naturalistic was: one commentator
complained that the cinematographer overdid the naturalism as he showed a bloodied
hand, but he also went on to point out a failure of establishing a realistic look, when
travelers in the film did not show sufficient signs of exhaustion.
82

Sometimes “naturalism” referred to what could be called “realism for realism’s
sake,” an overly nuanced portrayal of reality. For instance, when Sutyrin applauded

82
“В планах Егорова есть излишний натурализм. Крайне неприятное впечатление производит
окровавленная рука.... В лице нет необходимой изможденности, как следствия путешествия в
пустыне. Костюмы актеров черезчур чистенькие и также не имеют следов путешествия в пустыне.”

110
Dovzhenko for showing characters with their faults, another critic decried this “common
naturalistic drive to look for drawbacks” (Iurenev, “Tvorets” 23). Sutyrin praised the first
version of Michurin particularly for its resistance to scientific jargon and explanations,
for transforming Michurin’s scientific fight into a dramatic collision where different
personalities with their “earthly faults” confronted each other. 1949 issues of Iskusstvo
kino featured multiple attacks on Sutyrin’s critical statement and that one was no
exception.
The discussion around “naturalism” encapsulates the aesthetic evolution from
revolutionary romanticism (where “naturalism” was invisible) to the melodramatic
sensibilities (where it became noticed and discussed) to epic monumentalism (which
completely dispensed with it). While portrayals of violence and of sexually explicit
content were a habitual part of the 1920s-early 1930s aesthetic; the mid to late 1930s
witness a discussion and a careful, clearly purposeful, use of those tools, the late
Stalinism sees the near-absolute excision of all remotely graphic material and a high
degree of euphemistic and periphrastic activity.
The aesthetic of revolutionary romanticism celebrated both the sensibility of the
masses and their righteous although de-personalized hatred and as such it tended to take
violence for granted as part of the “class struggle.” Governed by the code of values
specific to wartime, violence occasioned detached, unemotional and often estranged
portrayals.
83
One could argue that it was the reality of mass executions, fratricide and

83
In the novel Chapaev the first execution ordered by the narrator, commissar Fyodor Klychkov provides
this account of the first execution order:
Blood rushed Fyodor’s head.
- Enough! Take him away! – he shouted.
- Shoot him? – Elan’ asked him upfront and with a terrifying simplicity.

111
bloody class struggle that made graphic descriptions possible. However, such depictions
were also acceptable on aesthetic grounds, their license underwritten by the call for a
dismantling of the bourgeois character’s subjectivity. The Iron Flood features endless
“naturalistic” descriptions of characters that teem with lice, execute minors who had been
drafted by the other side and impale captive Cossacks with swords until they come out of
their mouths that “reeked of vodka” and try to save a woman, who in her madness
continues to put her dead decomposing baby to her breast.
84

Émigré writer A.Averchenko described this shift of artistic paradigm and of the
underlying sensibilities in a short story called “Break up with friends”, in which the

- Yes, yes, take him away…
The officer was taken away. Two minutes later a discharge was heard – he was shot.
Although Fyodor experiences confusion following this event, he is soon reassured by Chapaev and Elan’
that it is only the first execution that is difficult and that the force of habit will take hold very fast. When
Klychkov asks to check if by “habit” Chapaev indeed means “habit to kill”, Chapaev “answers simply”,
“yes, to kill”. The narrator confirms that, indeed, already in the morning Fyodor calmly recalled that it had
only been the night before that he had ordered a man to be executed. Author-Fyodor has now internalized
the view that it would be strange to pause on this occurrence any longer when the image of one death is
constantly replaced by the images of thousands of “mutilated corpses, maimed bodies, burnt down villages
and their displaced starving to death inhabitants.”
84
Consider, for instance, a literary example of such hero-less art – Zheleznyi potok (The Iron Flood, 1924)
by A.Serafimovich. Composed of 40 episodes of the Red Army campaign in southern Russia – some are
impressionistic sketches or scenes and some full episodes with action – in total it amounts to a collection of
chronicles. Most characters are identified as “man”, “soldier”, “commander” and only a handful are
referred to by name. Full of geographical detail, the narrative does not seek anonymity or universality when
it operates with “man” or “soldier”, but instead appears to demonstrate a rigorous commitment to a
modernist sense of fragmentation, chaos and arbitrariness of meaning. The text makes a sustained gesture
to avoid pausing on any one person’s subjectivity as it makes no apparent difference for the treatment of
the named characters; their voices are just as generic as everybody else’s and no privileged access to their
interiority is granted. Although it is clear that Kozhukh is in charge of a troop division and appears already
in the second episode, zeroing in on him and following him appears almost random at first. One-third into
the narrative, as his military unit sustains losses, anonymous voices in different episodes raise questions
like “Who is this Kozhukh?” (Kto takoi Kozhukh?), or “Who has made Kozhukh commander?” (“Kto ego
postavil komandovat’?” “Pochemu Kozhukh komanduet?”) We never find out if “Kozhukh” was the last
name or the nickname of the character, although almost at the end we see him at home preparing to eat with
“Kozhukh’s wife” and “Kozhukh’s brother”. From a conversation in the headquarters we find out that
Kozhukh routinely disobeys superiors’ orders but his reasons for doing so are never given, although he is
directly questioned by his men. Eventually Kozhukh proves his military acumen and unwavering courage
as he single-handedly staves off the tidal wave of attackers by what looks like outsmarting and ambushing
the enemy in the all but lost battle. Neither a feat of heroism, nor the result of having superior
consciousness, it is presented as an act of instinct, the instinct to survive another day.

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narrator speaks of his inability to read the formerly beloved classics. The shift amounts to
an effective voiding of individual subjectivity under current conditions (the action
appears to take place ca 1920). Averchenko’s narrator mocks a narrator in the book he
tries to read for not being able to recover from the trauma of witnessing the suffering of a
wounded man whose eyes were becoming hazy and whose face was paling.
Averchenko’s narrator is outraged that the text was manipulating him into having a
profound reaction when he himself had recently witnessed the abrupt execution of eight
people in the middle of the street and could ascertain that in the presence of “such a
wholesale spectacle, you could not make out whose ‘eyes had glazed over with some
kind of veil’ or who was ‘gradually paling’.”
85

What is significant about this story is that the narrator announces the pre-
revolutionary aesthetic bankrupt in the face of the new reality as he himself capitulates to
the style of 1920s writing, to its de-personalized aesthetic that made no exceptions for
death or execution: “Please forgive me but I just can’t go on reading for fifty pages about

85
Translation is mine. Original: “Вели их, вели, потом перекинулись словом, остановили и давай в
упор расстреливать. Так уж тут, при таком оптовом зрелище, нешто разглядишь, у кого «глаза
затуманились какой-то пленкой» и кто «постепенно бледнел…” (Quoted in Averchenko, Tri knigi 85).
This de-sacralization of execution in the 1920s is also different from the treatment of the capital
punishment in the nineteenth century Russian cultural tradition, which treated capital punishment as a
spectacle and a distinct event in public life, with an attending agenda of issues like divine authority, moral
value and state’s agency over the physical and metaphysical experiences of its subjects. The poet V.
Zhukovskii saw the potential of creating a sacred symbol out of public execution, if only it could be given
an image that was magnificent and formidable, that would stir the soul and inspire terror in it (V.
Zhukovskii, “O smertnoi kazni”). The two notable failures that occurred at the execution sites in the
nineteenth century – the malfunction of the gallows in the Decembrists’ case and F. Dostoevsky’s near
execution experience – challenged the possibility of the divine state-populace interface sought for the
gallows by Zhukovskii and shifted representations into the realm of the melodramatic. Both events
represented the failure of mercy and possibly the failure of the divine top-down justice with the autocrat at
the top. The refusal of pardon after two out of five Decembrists survived the first hanging – ordinarily
treated as “divine intervention” – as well as the perceived moral failure of the state that subjected the
Petrashev figurants to the ordeal of facing the gallows even though they had already been pardoned drew
scrutiny to both the moral mandate of the authorities and to the subjective world of the sentenced. Despite
the differences in the treatments of execution, its status as a distinct spectacle with a unique space and
equipment worked to safeguard the transcendent meaning of ultimate punishment, especially apparent in
the expectation of pardon in the event of equipment malfunction.

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‘The death of Ivan Ilyich’. I am now used to it being so: sailor Kovalchuk pulled the
trigger and a dull shot went off…Ivan Ilyich flailed his hands and flopped on the ground.
‘Next!’ – exclaimed Kovalchuk in habitual tone of voice.”
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Not only had the language
become newspaper-like and matter-of-fact to suit the shift of emphasis from individual
subjectivity to the portrayal of typical destinies, but the administration of death had
become so habitual that it was no longer practical to pause on individual executions.
Determined to depart from the bourgeois focus on the individual, theorists of
revolutionary art sought to bring about an art form that placed masses in the center. In
this vision violence and the individual are rhetorically dissociated and the violence is
driven by external imperatives like class struggle. Even though the character who is
ordered to be shot may have been close to the protagonist, a mistake, not betrayal on their
part, is reason enough to kill them because it harms the advancement of the cause. It is
not that the characters of the 1920s enjoy violence, it is that the logic of History makes it
impossible to resist. No one is expected to give their life without thinking (and reckless
risk-taking is continually chastised in Soviet culture, as it is in Chkalov) and Kozhukh is
commended for saving his own and others’ lives, but it is obvious beginning with the
1920s that there are structures of meaning that make death sensible.
Chapaev of the novel, for instance, compares his own life with that of a louse and
calmly talks about not caring whether he would be killed or not.
87
The same monologue
however traces a change in Chapaev’s view of the value of life. Although no longer

86
. Original: “Простите вы меня, но не могу я читать на пятидесяти страницах о «Смерти Ивана
Ильича». Я теперь привык так: матрос Ковальчук нажал курок; раздался сухой звук выстрела…
Иван Ильич взмахнул руками и брякнулся оземь. «Следующий!» — привычным тоном воскликнул
Ковальчук” (Averchenko 85-86).
87
Chapaev 132.

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indifferent to death, Chapaev vouches to give his life for the cause. The cause (delo) in
these texts functions in the same way as ‘honor’ or ‘fate’ in the epic world. Although the
radical power of the “cause” to effectively end one’s life or give an unequivocally
celebratory tone to one’s death seemed to have been exhausted soon after the end of the
Civil War, nostalgia over the character integrity of the war heroes continued to cast a
shadow over the peaceful days of the late 1920s. Despite the height of the tragic
worldview, in which people are “wasted” for the sake of maintaining the code of virtue
and honor without an examination of their desires as the Red character of “The Forty-
First” has to shoot her lover when he shows an interest in re-joining the Whites. They act
correctly in the absence of any examination of their own interiority, ostensibly driven by
the “duty” and “cause”, but their adherence to the code does not elevate them above
typical Soviet people, no matter what their sacrifice is. In contrast, the growth of later
characters, like Ivan the Terrible and Michurin, Shamil’ (in Kalatozov’s unmade 1938
script) is structured around the sacrifices they make for the cause, and the sacrifices both
elevate and alienate them from their community of peers.
The public language of the Stalin era underwent a similar transformation. The
1920s saw a surge of euphemistic expressions to connote “execution”, including dozens
of regional versions.
88
What was remarkable about these expressions was that they
seemed to literalize the process as opposed to obfuscating it. For instance pustit’ v
raskhod (to waste someone, to make someone part of waste), postavit’ k stenke (“to put
someone to the wall,” “to slap someone up against the wall”), or expressions involving a

88
N. Poletika, Vidennoe i perezhitoe (1983).

115
noose, or sack all involve physical elements of the manner of death administered.
89
Such
euphemistic but literal expressions were often used in passive constructions (as in “He
was slapped up against the wall”) and, in part, worked to remove responsibility and defer
agency, but they nevertheless emphasized the physical end of life’s journey. In
comparison, the no less vigilant and no less bloody decade of the 1930s gave rise to a
number of expressions that worked to obscure the exact manner of death and couched the
punishment in the discourse of “disappearance.”
In the 1930s narrative portrayals of violence are implicitly rationalized as
motivation for the protagonist’s revenge and a tool for raising class consciousness. While
violence is seen as a vital part of the struggle and is shown on both sides of the trenches
in the 1920s, in the early 1930s it is reserved for rallying against the enemy. Even though
the same dynamic is present in Eisenstein’s 1925 film Strike (a worker’s death leads to
the strike), retaliation is shown in full force of violent imagery. In the films of the 1930s
that follow this rhetorical pattern (like Bogdan Khmelnitskii, Shchors) retaliation is
achieved but violence against the enemy is not shown. Thus, in Bogdan Khmelnitskii,
replete with descriptions of torture and abuse suffered by Ukrainians at the hands of the
Poles, when Bogdan Khmelnitskii strikes his saber at a previously shown Pole, one can
only assume that the Pole is defeated because no more is shown of him. Often retaliation
is presented through swift forceful military maneuvers whose success is made clear

89
Not only the numbers but also the detailed manner of mass murder is a recurrent feature in Iron Flood:
“And in the city fifteen hundred of our men fell, the officers dug them into the ground alove…”
(Serafimovich 87). “About ten men [Cossacks] were taken captive. They were impaled with sabers through
the mouth, which reeked of vodka” (147).

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because the righteous side has advanced and taken over the other side’s space in a top
view shot.
3.3. Melodrama
Writing about historical films of the 1930s, Dobrenko makes a passing remark
that the conspiracy plot and the melodramatic plot were the two types of putting historical
narratives together. While generic thinking is still strong at the time and film-makers
appear to be looking for a “genre spring” (zhanrovaya pruzhina), melodramatic elements
permeate the narratives in ways that are neither random nor obviously subservient to any
one ideological imperative. Dobrenko’s conclusion that the culture begins to search for
prototypes for the current dispensation of Historical development explains many of the
choices but explaining melodrama as the principle of narrative organization comes close
to the logic of the decree on Bolshaya zhizn’.
The characters of the 1930s, i.e. Pugachev, Razin and Khmelnitskii, make morally
questionable choices in their personal lives. Pugachev becomes a polygamist after taking
a second wife for political reasons, only to witness his first wife Sofia demonstrate
unparalleled loyalty to his principles, she carries the shot and the moral righteousness
after Pugachev is quartered. Razin famously befriends a captured Persian princess whose
charm ensnares a fellow Cossack and begins to cause jealousy and improper lustfulness.
The ensuing throwing of the princess off the boat into the water resolves the issue in
consonance with the popular legend. Bogdan Khmelnitskii’s relationship with his Polish
wife, Helena, presents the tension between law and mercy. As Bogdan is trying to bring
Ukraine in to what will result in “re-unification” with Russia, his wife’s Polish-ness is
dramatized in ways that contradict all available historical evidence. Once forgiven for her

117
infidelity, Helena persists in her wickedness and follows her Polish war-mongering
instigators’ lead as she attempts to poison Bogdan. The betrayal is foreshadowed for the
audience, but Bogdan, when asked by his man why Helena was forgiven after her all but
indisputable intimacy with the Polish landlord Chaplinskiy, Bogdan sighs and replies
with much emotion and torment, “I love her.”
90

3.4. Melodramatic Elements in Chapaev
1930s historical narratives appear to have an interest in convincing the audience
dramatically that the characters are on the right side before they are proven to be correct
by History. Psychological motivation, a sense of the need to figure out right and wrong,
regardless of the ideological end, and the perfect matching of the two – the diegetic
conclusion and the historical one – all appear to be a distinguishing feature of mid-1930s
Soviet film-making. No other historical film encapsulates these trends more fully than the
all-time classic Chapaev.
Based on the book, the 1934 film did not enjoy instantaneous critical acclaim but
already the following year a speech by Stalin set up the party’s expectations from Soviet
film-makers in terms of more Chapaevs (Smirnov, “Mirovoe priznanie” 5). Despite the
fact that Clark’s distillation of masterplot as “ritual conferral of consciousness” relies,
among other exemplary Socialist Realist texts, on the novel Chapaev, the 1934
eponymous film may have been one of the most ideologically subversive movies of the
Stalin era, all the while following the plot of the literary source. Having originally met

90
In one historical account she was actually executed by hanging after Khmelnitskii found out about her
relations with Chaplinskiy, in another – Chaplinskiy raided Khmelnitskii’s house in an attempt to collect
court assigned damage and took Helena with him. In this account Khmelnitskii is not married to Helena
and she chooses to remain with Chaplinskiy after Khmelnitskii tries to have her returned from
Chaplinskiy’s residence through the Polish senate court. In both accounts her departure causes depression
in Khmelnitskii.

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with lukewarm critical reception, the film gained a number of domestic and international
accolades and became a personal favorite of Stalin. That the film originally met with
suspicion and condescension from the cinematic left as pandering to theatricality and
naturalism, was quickly forgotten, and all sorts of explanations for the success of the film
came into being. In late 1940s the film Chapaev was announced to have never operated
on the premise of education and change and was referred to as founding rock of the
Soviet historical biographical genre, by then replete with characters already in possession
of a superior consciousness.
Whatever the dynamic, Chapaev has been placed into the canon of biopics by
more than one author. When director A.Tarkovsky, having recently finished shooting
Andrey Rublev, was asked about Pyotr Pervyi and its conception of history, the director
compared it unfavorably to Chapaev:
[Pyotr Pervyi] was some kind of gigantomania, there is something
inhuman in the character. On the contrary, the figure of Chapaev was
resolved in the manner of a genius. Just think, a man who doesn't even
know what the International is, who is in conflict with his commissar, who
declares that a commander shouldn't ride ahead on a war horse but should
remain behind his detachment and should die fighting only in his
underwear! Everything seems backwards compared to the ideal cinema
protagonist. And only because of this do we see him as a normal, everyday
man; he becomes immortal in our eyes.
91

The same undercutting of heroics appealed to Bazin, who referred to Chapaev as the
Soviet historical film masterpiece. Bazin hails the externalization of historico-political
objectivity (in the form of the commissar) as it allows for the psychological complexity

91
In the same conversation, however, Tarkovsky validates Taylor’s point in relation to the privileged status
of the historical character for the narrative: “Usually in historical pictures there is always some active
character: a tsar, a general, etc., whose will determines the course of events, who introduces some reforms,
in other words, who makes history. I think this is the coattails of a tradition that was formed under Stalin.”
Literaturnaya gazeta, 1988. (Original interview from 1967).

119
of the portrayal of man and history. No matter how much the film glorifies Chapaev, it
ultimately acknowledges the precedence of the longer term political goal over Chapaev’s
heroic actions (Bazin 33). Still, implicit in Bazin’s analysis is the tragic division between
the useful but dispensable spontaneity and the set course of History. The celebrated
Soviet director Gerasimov meditated on the success of the film in the preface to the 1966
publication of the script as a separate hard-cover volume. He credited the success of
Chapaev with spawning a number of “heroes from the people” characters, but he noted
that none had reached the same height as the 1934 Civil War film.
92

Chapaev operates within the visual space of the “romantic” biographical film. Its
protagonist though is singular in the history of Soviet biographical film-making, for the
dramatic presentation oscillates between occasional heroics and the radical, often
immediate lampooning of them. Although Chapaev regularly re-establishes his superior
position vis-à-vis his inferiors and the commissar, he also constantly lets it slip away. At
such points Chapaev looks as if he has to fight off a smile, as if this equivocation of
authority was in some way enjoyable to him and as if the secret of his power was directly
related to letting it momentarily slide away.
The relationship between Chapaev and Furmanov (the commissar) in the film is
expressed through dynamic banter with occasional threats of physical aggression.
Chapaev is a leader “from the people” who believes his veterinarian compatriot should be
allowed to take the exam to become a doctor and is upset that the doctor will have none
of it. To the drunk Chapaev it is but another instance of higher classes’ attempt to uphold

92
Chapaev (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1966), 6.

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their elite status by not allowing common men to enter professional ranks. Chapaev
places half the weight of his body on the staircase as he shouts at the “classist” doctor.
When he realizes that Furmanov “sides with the intelligentsia” on the issue, Chapaev
becomes flustered and physically agitated and starts referring to himself as “Chapaev” –
in a way that points to the sacredness of his persona, its significance as a special case –
“THE Chapaev” as it were – a position that only he can occupy, even if he momentarily
appears not quite in control of his faculties – thus positioning himself as a king.
For a short time Chapaev loses his temper, picks up a stool and raises it above
Furmanov’s head. The moment of rage quickly passes and Furmanov gets on his feet,
comes up to the now sitting Chapaev and looks down on him, while nonchalantly
mentioning the great Alexander of Macedonia. Chapaev’s curious mind becomes
distracted by the name of a great military leader unknown to him. Chapaev’s mood
changes, he turns away and asks Furmanov to tell him more about Alexander, as he
admits with an air of insecurity that he’d only learned to read two years previously.
Furmanov falls right into the trap. Chapaev’s humility in his request to be educated is
immediately undermined by his physical projection. Having climbed atop the staircase he
leans back on the banister, starts humming a song and rhythmically hammering with a
fist. The tune Chapaev is singing features lyrics about a sailor who falls for a young
maiden and the lines underscore the address of “you” (“You, the handsome sailor, all by
yourself...You have fallen for a maiden with all your soul// Ty, moriak, krasivyi sam s
soboiu…Poliubil devitsu vsei dushoiu) but from the look on Chapaev’s face can be
construed as a mocking innuendo addressed to Furmanov. The song’s content as well as
the diegetic singing precludes the telling of the heroic tale Chapaev had requested just a

121
minute before and clearly makes Furmanov feel awkward. Furmanov, now confused, and
by necessity positioned much lower than Chapaev, comes up with a desperate jab at
Chapaev’s less than spectacular attire and slouching posture, telling him these are
inappropriate for a commander of the Red Army who should be an example to the
soldiers.
93

Chapaev brushes it off with a joke (“Did, the Great Alexander then do battle in
white gloves?”) accompanied by a hand gesture in front of Furmanov’s face (still below
him). Furmanov is momentarily at a loss and attempts to compromise by saying, “at least
he was not walking around looking like trash.” But Chapaev ends the conversation with
joking disbelief and a patronizing poke at Furmanov’s stomach and makes a finger-wag
in Furmanov’s face.
Physical comedy and his physical location on the staircase match up in showing
Chapaev’s one-upmanship. However, Furmanov’s message of proper orderliness in attire
is not lost on Chapaev. Although Chapaev diffuses Furmanov’s challenge, Chapaev later
tells Pet’ka off in exact same words for his physical appearance, he in earnest becomes
aware of the importance of propriety and top-down discipline. Since the source of
conflict had been Chapaev’s insistence on challenging the hierarchy of education,
Furmanov achieves a discursive victory by bringing Chapaev into observance of that
hierarchy.
The exchange with Furmanov at the staircase pulls Chapaev into the rhetoric of
the Leader who is implicitly chosen by the people and is therefore accountable to them.

93
“Slushai, ty, moriak krasivyi sam s soboiu. Ya davno tebe khotel skazat’. Ty by podtianulsia, chto li,
malost’. Khodish vechno v takom zatrapeznom vide, a ty ved’ teper’ komandir reguliarnoi krasnoi armii,
dolzhen boitsam primer davat’.”

122
In this case, it is “the soldiers,” a number of individual soldiers, not a collective unity as
“the people.” That is why this realization by Chapaev that he is not completely free to do
as he wishes with his body, that, in a sense, it already belongs to a collective of others,
needs to be dramatized and figures as a small but melancholy defeat for his charismatic
anarchical tendencies. This episode is not detailed in the book (except as a passing
mention of Chapaev’s temper) and the dynamic representation of the confrontation, its
pace and its swift eye-line “level” shifts are not dissimilar from those that depict the
dynamic characters of the 1930s films like Iunost’ Maksima.
Before the conferral of consciousness takes place, Chapaev and Furmanov go
through another “dance of power”: Furmanov places Chapaev’s man Zhikharev under
arrest, which undermines Chapaev’s authority: “Whatever he (fellow) had authorized
only I can revoke (Chto on razreshil, tolko ia mogu zapretit’).” Despite being outraged,
Chapaev senses his powerlessness – the commissar’s represents the higher control of the
Party – and so the commander grows silent and pensive as he sinks down on a low step in
the room. Furmanov looks down on him from above. The power has shifted to Furmanov
and the low physical positioning of Chapaev makes the shift more dramatic. Enter a
peasant looking for Chapaev. After Chapaev identifies himself, the man’s gaze and ours
first follow the eye-level trajectory between the peasant and Furmanov. Since Furmanov
is the one standing, he is perceived as the one who should be in charge, but after the
peasant’s eyes meet Furmanov’s, the camera follows Furmanov’s gaze and as he lowers it
with a smile – down to the slouching Chapaev. Back to the peasant, his gaze drops now
and he smiles incredulously as he says, “Aren’t you lying?” (The entire camera
movement sequence (peasant-Furmanov-Chapaev//peasant-Chapaev) is gratuitous

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because Chapaev had already identified himself as the person in charge and the peasant
did not need to search the room for him, except for the purpose of underscoring that the
Chapaev we see in front of us does not always live up to the status of “THE Chapaev” he
likes to appeal to.
After the peasant and Furmanov dramatically look down on Chapaev, he gets up,
straightens up his back, buttons up his shirt, walks across the room, finds the highest
sitting platform, which happens to be a table, and makes himself visibly comfortable on
this new throne. He has regained power, but not without Furmanov’s tip on the
appropriate posture and professional attire.
While, as we shall see, elevated platforms serve as the inevitable site of
performing Great Men’s subjectivity in the form of speech-making addressed to specific
audiences and to the future, elevations are engaged differently in Chapaev. In later films,
the act of stepping up on to an elevated platform is never shown, instead they present a
character already on a podium, not unlike a monument. In Shchors and Bogdan
Khmelnitskii characters are also shown jumping up to a platform before giving important
statements as if to signify the takeover of power; and so it is only logical that they never
switch to a lower plane. Chapaev, on the other hand, can line up his men and then step
back to a lower point on the hill, and, from there, remind the soldiers that they will be
shot for looting.
Chapaev presents a highly compelling protagonist who combines deceptive
simplicity, good-natured but intense physicality and military acumen in ways that appear
contradictory and unpredictable. The contradiction is dramatized in each scene, often
humorously. For instance, when he explains military maneuvers with the help of potatoes

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and apples, the shifts between abstract and concrete terms are almost jester-like, stripped
of the somber seriousness of leadership portrayals that one sees in later films. After
Chapaev demonstrates the moves that will defeat adversarial apples, he violently brushes
them off the table, only to pick one up from the floor and loudly bite into it in a close-up
of his face. The high (of strategic thinking) and the low in its visualization, not to
mention comic biting, freely intermingle in the film. Chapaev faces the need to constantly
reestablish his authority in the world where he himself has to submit to a higher order of
abstract power after having reigned supreme in his unit in his pre-Bolshevik days. This
re-negotiation of the contract becomes a back and forth game and the character, although
extraordinary in his military leadership, is granted a chance to face the challenges of
interpersonal relationships.
Another highly equivocal instance of Chapaev’s power and the status of his
decisions is the scene where Chapaev orders the court-martialing of his favorite
henchman Pet’ka who had taken pity on a captive informant and let him go. The episode
presents a melodramatic reversal of the high tragic vision of the Civil War: Pet’ka has
captured his counterpart, the white general’s henchman Petrovich who possesses vital
information about the enemies’ plans. Petrovich appeals to Pet’ka’s mercy – Petrovich
was fishing to make some soup for his expiring brother. Pet’ka makes a decision that is
obviously wrong politically but that privileges human justice over the heretofore
unquestioned vengeance against those who are on the wrong side of history. The
narrative takes pains to excuse Pet’ka’s political mistake by making Petrovich later defect
to Chapaev’s side, thus granting Pet’ka the moral victory of winning a commoner over to
the Red Army’s side.

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This episode also reflects the ambiguity of Chapaev’s authority. Although very
quick to tell Pet’ka he is going to be court-martialed for his decision, on seeing Pet’ka’s
body go slouched and limp, Chapaev merely tells his henchman off for the untidy outfit,
in the exact same wording Furmanov had used on Chapaev earlier. The shifting of tones
is extreme – Furmanov’s line repeated word-for-word and makes for a humorous
alleviation of tension, for the untidy outfit can hardly matter after a de-facto death
sentence has been issued. Lest it appear that Petka would get away with mere buttoning
up his shirt, Chapaev re-iterates, “yes, court-martial.” Pet’ka appears in later scenes,
occupied with his usual tasks, and no explanation of the lack of follow-through on the
order is given.
In a rather novelistic move, the very coherence of the narrative is suspended in
this event, which is repaired morally with Petrovich’s defection, but with a significant
time delay. Until Petrovich joins the Chapaev side, the plot line “Pet’ka’s bad judgment –
court-martialing verdict” just hangs in the air. Although the defection does not shed any
light on why Pet’ka was not subjected to court-martial, it proves the moral foresight of
Pet’ka’s seemingly frivolous decision. While the logic of the 1920s ethos would have
Pet’ka shot on the spot, the episode tellingly does not appear in the 1923 text by
Furmanov. This 1930s dramatization of figuring out the correct ethical decision in
interpersonal terms does achieve a perfect validation from the extra personal point of
reference – the historical class struggle, as the perfect congruence of the worldview is
achieved exactly at this point of coincidence between the humane choice and the course
of History.

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Not only does Pet’ka’s avoidance of punishment without any explanation depart
from the text and the ethos of the 1920s, in the scenes following Chapaev’s “court-
martial” verdict, Pet’ka continues his attempts at courting the female machine gun
operator and singing love-sick songs in chorus with Chapaev himself. The song that the
two sing for a full minute of screen time with considerable emotional intensity features a
son turning his saber on himself to prove the existence of love to his father. When they
finish, Chapaev sighs and comments with emotion on the unfortunate outcome in the
song’s scenario. Although the Chapaev of the novel is upset when describing his wife’s
unfaithfulness, these emotions are consigned to the past and are distinct from the time of
war. The Civil War in the book is a separate experience, practically impermeable to
melodrama and to questioning right and wrong, governed instead by its own unequivocal
code of honor. Characters reiterate that they cannot afford to waver even if shooting
people is not their preferred pastime.
In the film, the code of war is complicated by the intrusion of peace time values in
the form of melodramatic subversions and equivocations of meaning. It is eventually the
departure from the Civil War code that secures moral victory in the instance of
Petrovich’s defection. The contrast of the law of war vs. the law of mercy is striking:
Petrovich’s white general master refuses to abandon the letter of the law as he explains
that he cannot lift the death sentence for Petrovich’s brother who had attempted to desert.
The white general pretends to yield to Petrovich’s pleas but in fact merely strikes out
“shooting” and writes “subject to execution” on the verdict.
The constant spillover of the rules of peacetime into the world of Chapaev creates
the effect of a split between the battlefield Chapaev and the Chapaev of the interior

127
spaces.
94
Not hesitant to shoot a rebel soldier in the field, as soon as Chapaev steps into a
room, he loses himself – to amazement (with emotions, as in the song scene), to laughter
and even to pranks. Chapaev likes attention but he does not wince at the occasional
radical reduction of his status to that of a clown. The orders he gives in interiors, at first
undermined by Furmanov, and then by what can only be assumed to be Chapaev’s own
affection for people around him, like Pet’ka, eventually start looking like pranks.
Chapaev summons Anka to hand her a note of commendation but he first makes her and
others around him believe he is critical of her battlefield performance, only to lampoon
the solemnity of his own admonishing tone – to the laughter and amusement of Pet’ka
and others. When he and the commissar find a caricature of Chapaev’s troops in enemy
headquarters, Chapaev smiles widely, seemingly flattered by having been made the
subject of an artful drawing. The rhyming inscription above the caricature compares the
reds with lice and Chapaev’s soldiers with fleeing, cowardly rabbits. The commissar frets
over the comparisons, but Chapaev keeps the drawing as a memento. Like the later
biopics that feature solemn trepidation for the protagonist, even – and most importantly –
from adversaries, Chapaev has the white general bow down to the popular leader’s
military acumen. And yet the fact that Chapaev alternates so freely between referring to
himself as “the Chapaev” and chuckling at the caricatures destabilizes the notion of ‘the
remarkable historical personage’.
When Pet’ka directly poses the central underlying question of the Stalinist cult,
namely, how such exceptional people as Chapaev could be understood with the modest

94
Chapaev pronounces the exterior/interior split – Ya vam gde kommandir? Tolko v stroyu! A na vole ya
vam tovarisch! … Ty prikhodi ko mne v polnoch, za polnoch (Chapaev 69).

128
rational capacities of the average man, it is not clear whether Chapaev acknowledges his
greatness in earnest or not. Pet’ka says, “You are a man beyond the reach of my
reason…You’re just a Napoleon.” Chapaev replies, “Worse, Pet’ka, worse.”
95

“Worse than Napoleon” here of course means “better,” more formidable than Napoleon –
after all, as Chapaev explains, Napoleon only had infantry to worry about.
Chapaev desists from creating an unequivocal sense of authority or of an
unequivocal moral code. Neither the 1920s nor the 1940s-50s biopics present their
characters with such complications as moral choice, equivocation between empathy and
duty or song singing that reflects the characters’ yearnings in symbolic ways. It appears
that these melodramatic dramatizations are inseparably tied to the instances of naturalism,
making the latter an acceptable aesthetic choice because, as instances of hyper-
enactment, naturalistic episodes serve to articulate and narrativize moral questions of the
new society.

95
“Nedostupnyi ty moemu razumu chelovek…Pryamo Napoleon.”- “Khuzhe, Petka, khuzhe.”

129
Chapter 4. Elements of the Biopic. Topoi and Clichés
In this chapter I list and analyze repeated elements of the biopics under
consideration, their function and significance in the historical narratives of Stalinism. I
distinguish between the repeated elements that have transcendent value for the audience
and clichés whose banality has been exposed. Unlike clichés, or, in Russian film jargon,
shtampy, topoi can remain invisible as long as their ideological and symbolical relevance
is felt by the audience.
I argue specifically that a great number of topoi served to create an epic tableau
that saw Leaders as agents of national continuity. The ahistorical qualities of the Russian
national character were presented as universal values that were accessible for
understanding and enactment to people of different classes as long as they could be
identified as part of the Russian people. Moreover, Great Men of the Soviet pantheon
were portrayed as progenitors of major national traditions like Russian music or Russian
military science. The list is not exhaustive and the connection between the tasks of the
party and their rhetoricization is not always tangible, but in their multiplicity the recurrent
elements present a picture of the genre and its development over two decades.
At first glance, Soviet biographical film operates within a set of visual and
narrative constants, yet these constants are not the only determinants of meaning or
affect. Despite their ability to create an historical look, their significance varies
depending on their place in the overall narrative structure. How does one approach these
constants, the elements of generic visual iconography? Greg Carleton notes that the
repetitiveness of structures, themes and narrative dynamics in Socialist Realist production
has called for a number of terms and categories with which to analyze the formal units of

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repetition, as well as to characterize their relationship to political and material conditions
of production. In his discussion, “topos” is preferable to a number of familiar terms often
used to discuss similarity and repetition. For instance, in comparison to “topos,” “the
obligatory motif” does not reflect “the transgeneric nature of the rhetorical tropes,”
whereas the commonly used “myth” refers to models of the world, not models of
composition as does “topos.” Together with topos, the hugely productive notion of the
Socialist Realist “masterplot” emphasizes the structure, progression and resolution of the
narrative and its fundamental allegorical relation to

the Soviet political culture.
96

What distinguishes “topos” from the other categories is that in the practice of
Socialist Realism it may have a special relationship not only with the aspect of repetition,
but also with that of prescription and convention. For instance, the notion of “set topoi”
helps understand how elements that may be incongruous with reality found their way into
“historical” accounts. Texts that have been routinely dismissed as fabrication – like the
English medieval texts that appeared to be overall credible historical accounts but
inexplicably featured olive trees, lions and tigers – were not attempting to define
themselves through a correspondence to reality. Instead they were used to frame the logic
of events within a predetermined set of literary conventions, which the reader perceives
through the topoi.
97
Similarly, with a film genre and even more so in the historical genre,
one could speak of an “appropriate landscape”, a visual slice that need not be entirely
realistic in order to establish a convention, a look and feel that situates the film in a
particular corpus of texts that are known to be historical. It is through considering the

96
See G. Carleton, “Genre in Socialist Realism.”
97
Ibid, 1000.

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expectations of “appropriate landscape” of the past that we can begin to understand both
the visual iconography of the Soviet biographical film and its narrative repetitions. It
seems that in discussions of the Soviet ideology, scholars have often focused on verbal
messages – especially so with less “interesting” films – without accounting for the
compulsive inclusion of certain visual/narrative or purely visual elements. As one
ponders the metaphoric or rhetorical significance of repeated elements such as opening
pans across a field, a carriage approaching the audience in the beginning and leaving at
the end, groups of people wandering across fields, the blind showing up to represent the
people and so on, one senses at times that they carry an apparent, topical political
meaning, while at others they work as convention-markers that frame the landscape of the
past.
In their position of mediation between aesthetic convention and ideology, “topoi”
have higher semiotic value compared to the common label for banal iteration – cliché –
or its Russian version shtamp. Commonly used in Soviet criticism for attacking oft-
repeated gestures, shtamp carries with it the connotation of jarring banality, a lack of
imaginative connection with the sublimely essential. Unlike clichés, topoi cannot be
dismissed as “visual fillers”, or inevitable features of embodying the past, because they
have encoded in them a symbolic, transcendent component that evokes additional
meaning but in the specific contexts of contemporary narratives topoi function as agents
of the conventions of representation.
98
It is exactly at the moment of the topos becoming
“stale” or trite that it becomes visible and is announced a cliché or shtamp. For instance,

98
G. Carleton has argued that socialist realism does not need to rely on genre for the text to be deemed
successful, as long as it operates with a number of crucial topoi. The reader identifies the text as relating to
a plane of reference that is higher than genre.

132
it was not until the 1960s that the cliché of stormy weather accompanying subversive
political activity became the butt of jokes in Soviet public discourse.
99
Shtamp is a dead
topos, for only that which has emphatically lost its transcendent component for the
culture and whose repetition no longer communicates the convention of representation, is
discursively subjected to castigation on the grounds of banality. This is not to say that all
repetition is symbolic, transcendent and invisible. Clichés can be successful gestures
toward the general but they do not rise above representing the typical, nor do they create
an excess of meaning. Having never carried non-referential meaning (or, in other words,
an ideological function) clichés can disappear quietly without incurring the wrath of the
critic.
Topoi may carry a metaphorical value but their prime function is assigning a
different genre, whereby history can become literature, and film – history. Medieval
English authors and their readers had to be aware that lions and tigers did not inhabit their
island and yet the “substantive” part of those accounts had been consistently deemed
credible – a fact that points to the perception of convention that both voided the
immediate meaning of “olive trees, lions and tigers” and at the same time endowed the
narrative with the added value and authority of “literature.” Topoi work to make the
convention perceptible but they do so in ways that do not question the validity of content,
instead disguising themselves as legitimate and even inevitable elements of the genre. In
the Soviet context, for instance, even as the critics become aware of the frequency with
which films appeal to views of the land, the discursive intention is not to question their

99
In a letter to the satirical journal Krokodil one viewer questioned the editorial if it was at all “possible to
stir revolutions on a fine day.” The viewer referenced Dir. Dzigan’s 1956 Prolog (a tale about the 1905
revolution) (Mosfilm, 2453, op. 3, 258).

133
status or function, but to correlate the perceived atemporal “sacred” meanings of such
practice with the nuanced political agenda of the year 1946.
100
After all, having seen
many Soviet films did not make one feel either convinced that Soviet kolkhozniki spent
their days dancing around in their color-coordinated outfits or became outraged by the
exorbitant square footage of a worker’s apartment. Instead the convention of
representation works to engage the general and the personal at the same time –
somewhere in the Soviet Union life is good, which, in accordance with the top-down
model of mature Soviet culture, means that life will eventually become better
everywhere. On the level of convention, the presence of the dancing and singing
kolkhozniki – no less fantastical than the lions and tigers in the medieval England –
introduces the text into a rhetorical sequence that urges the audience to compare the
dancing peasants with the inevitably blind, haggard and displaced serfs of the 19
th

century. In other words, it is the active perception of convention that forces one to
compare the cinematic life of kolkhozniki with the cinematic life of their grandparents’
generation.
101
The downright disbelief caused by the visual iconography of the kolkhoz
movies protects the audience from making any comparisons with reality, instead allowing
the cinematic image to be “other,” while articulating the conflict of the film in
melodramatic enough terms for the audience to identify with. Many commentators have
been puzzled or outraged by the scale of cynicism of the Stalinist representations of rural
life (P.Kenez goes so far as to argue that Stalinist films created “an artificial reality,” thus
perpetuating the view which has all Soviet citizens duped into believing they lived in a

100
See G.Grigoryev, “Vidy zemli sovetskoi.”
101
See dir. I. Pyryev’s Traktoristy (1939), Kubanskie kazaki (1949), I.Raizman’s Kavaler zolotoi zvezdy
(1950).

134
perfect country), but in the logic of the transgeneric reach of topoi, exposure of
convention is of the highest necessity to the ruse of ideology. The more fantastical the
topoi of convention, the more successful the inclusion of the image of contemporary
peasants into both the synchronic and diachronic series of images about peasants.
Not only can topoi be both single units of signification (epithet of
characterization, a type of shot) and narratives (an emplotted topos or type of narrative
development), the two kinds can morph into each other. Over time, topoi-narratives can
become condensed and reduced to one-element “objects,” whereby their readability relies
on the inherent symbolic or transcendent element and on the previous repeated
assignment of meaning to the topos-narrative.
102
These changes in narrative meanings
reflect both generic evolution and the condensation of meaning to smaller units which are
not universally recognized symbols but have a depository of signification easily available
within them. This signification relies both on the cultural understanding of the image
(like a blind common man) and on the previous uses of the image within the genre.
103

The topoi-objects can also unfold into narratives, as they do in these instances:
when the relationship between the Great Man and a monument to him is explicated
verbally or visually; when the habitual blind man extra unexpectedly takes up the stage

102
Monumentalization of great men through film takes up the entire narrative in the 1930s and early 1940s,
the films culminating in a visual equivalent of or sometimes a physical representation of the monument to
the Great Man. By the 1950s a film can open with the image of the monument to the Great Man and
proceed from there, because the appreciation of the metaphor of the monument had already been enlisted
by previous similar narratives. The new film then enters into a cultural sequence of narratives that have
illustrated greatness in their narratives. From that point on, the burden of proof (that the man is great) is
deferred to the previous films in the series of similar films via the icon. Such episodes as ones with blind
singer or the fair can also extend and contract and their significance relies on the convention of the past
representations.
103
Both Soviet film-makers and their critics often referenced previous works of the same genre when
describing their current choices – both in positive and in negative terms.

135
and sings a song that is illustrated to us by a mis-en-abime narrative; when the elevated
podium from which all Great Men operate beginning roughly with mid-1930s can be
included into a dramatic scene in the 1940s and be drawn attention to in ways that expose
the formerly invisible elevation but reinforce the correctness of such positioning. Such
repeated elements can bear immediate political meaning but the fact of their very
repetitive presence is not determined by the political situation of the day as much as by
the generic convention. It is in the continuation of the convention, in the visual space of
the habitual past whose artifice for the most part goes unnoticed, that the immediate
political situation is able to narrativize itself into a story.
4.1. Historical Topoi
Introductory Titles
Soviet films traditionally have all of their credits before the main body of the
picture. Biopics often have an insert of text before the first scene. In Hollywood biopics
such titles may also lay claims to authenticity of some kind (historical, psychological or
true to the historical person’s own testimony). A number of films open with an
introductory title that simply states the time and place of action (Stepan Razin), but in
some even stating the historical context takes place in unusual visual settings.
Transformation of quantity into quality
While openings of most biopics present a crisis – either national or natural – in
which the Great Man will act, some put forward nuanced historical-dialectical theses. A
number of titles explain the critical situation through the thesis of the transformation of
quantity into quality. The crisis arises as the struggle of two opposing forces and they
usually describe an amassing of the force opposite to what the character stands for (a

136
foreign invasion, autocracy’s oppression). However, they also often present the germ of
the new quality of action that is about to emerge. This type of introductory titles sets up
the historical period as ripe for change – the conditions on which the historical person is
apt to pick up. The titles typically describe the actions of the adversary and thus set up
the agenda of conflict and the need for counter-action.
1. Pugachev (1937). The first sentence of the titles explaining that “In 1762
noblemen put Catherine on the throne, having killed her husband Peter with her
assistance” has very little logical connection with the second page of titles, which discuss
the nobility’s oppression of the serfs that led to the peasant war. Although there is a
connection between the coup that led to the death of Peter III and the installation of
Catherine II, the nobility’s support of the new autocrat and the increasing oppression of
the serfs, the murder of Peter III is brought in to vilify Catherine and to foreshadow the
narrative of Pugachev’s own family conundrum, in which he, unlike Catherine, strikes
some kind of balance between power and betrayal.
2. In the 1941 film Bogdan Khmelnitskii the titles set up both the agenda of the
adversarial actions – the suffering of Ukrainians under the cruel Polish yoke – and,
through the folkloric elements in the language, the epic tone of a chronicling narrative:
“Many times did the people rise against the Rzech Pospolita but it was unable to cast off
the Polish yoke.”
104
The titles both point to a crisis and provide a sense of mounting
resistance from an opposite force, offering an axiomatic explanation of historical change.
3. In the second part of Admiral Ushakov (Korabli shturmuiut bastiony dir.
Romm, 1956) the titles set up the historical problem in the terms of a naturalistic

104
“Не раз восставал народ против Речи Посполитой, но иго польское не мог сбросить.”

137
evolutionary understanding of History. Covering a shot of sailing ships, a voice-over
announces that “the 18
th
century was drawing to a close” and mentions Napoleon’s
bloody campaigns that turned from liberation to plunder. This sequence implicitly sets up
a causal relationship whose development we then witness in the film. The mounting
tension in the voice listing all the countries occupied by Napoleon who now poses an
imminent threat to England and Russia describes the crisis and prepares the audience for
the protagonist’s resistance to the adversary. It is not strictly necessary to announce that
Napoleon’s wars went from progressive to aggressive, since there is no chance of the
audience perceiving Napoleon positively considering the centrality of the 1812 invasion
to Russian culture. The transformation of one socio-political process into its opposite, of
action into reaction, is a salient theme in the Soviet Marxist historiography, and the titles
underscore the ever-present possibility of the revaluation of every socio-political process.
With the titles (or the opening scene) exposing a crisis, the picture then often goes
on to present the leader, who is equipped with a correct historical vision to control and
direct the change. In Korabli shturmuiut bastiony, however, the voice-over concludes
with setting up false hopes for the resolution of the crisis: “In Russia, Paul I has just been
inaugurated.”
4.Kutuzov, 1943. After the year “1812” is written over the first shot, the narrative
begins to show a frequent image of crisis – burning towns, roads, barren land.
Introductory titles then cut into the diegesis with an explanation of Napoleon’s invasion.
The titles essentially provide a recap of the events of 1941: “Having amassed an army of
600 thousand…on the 24
th
of June Napoleon breached the Russian frontiers …The
French took Vil’no, Polotsk [and a number of other cities enumerated]…The Russian

138
army, without giving a general battle was retreating into the depth of the country.” The
retreat is presented ambigouously enough, so as to create the sense of an intentional
strategy and a parallel to the events of WWII.
4.2 Character Presentation
Age at Opening
Historical titles for a film that bears the name of the protagonist may work to set
up the particular stage of his life to be shown in the film and to let the audience know that
this sequence will focus on a decisive moment in an already established career.
1. Suvorov, 1940. The image of Suvorov inserted into the frame is followed by a
verbal summary of Suvorov’s achievements: “Za plechami mirovaia slava…” (He has
already gained world fame…), dozens of victories and, unprecedented in its daring, the
storming of the fortress of Ismail. The titles as well as the film credits are presented as
single pages that roll in and out of the screen in a manner that evokes military decrees
rather than pages of a book. The page with the portrait of Suvorov and his name does not
roll out but is dimmed instead. The name and the specific iconic image of the man (as in
the case of Aleksandr Popov) is thus distinguished from the other credits and images.
2. Admiral Nakhimov, 1946. The film opens with a shot of calm sea, which is
followed with titles that raise as many questions as they provide informative clues: “In
the fall of 1853 admiral Nakhimov’s fleet, having fought at Sukhum to reinforce the
defense of Caucusus, the troops were returning to their base in Sevastopol.” While this
introduction refers to the events immediately preceding the battle of Sinop, it is safe to
state that the events of the Russo-Turkish war were far from having been part of popular
myth. What this title does for the introduction of the narrative is establish that Nakhimov

139
is already a commander and prepare for the opening scene, which features a crisis on a
ship during a storm. (Nakhimov’s ships in fact sustained considerable damage during the
fall storms on the eve of the Sinop battle)
The Protagonist as Monument
As many as fourteen films feature monumental forms (a medal, plaque, bas-relief,
monument, mentions of monuments). A monument at the end of a biopic may serve as a
stand-in for showing the character’s death. The monument or the commemorative icon
provides closure to the narrative and a summary of hero’s achievement (For instance, in
The Young Mr. Lincoln, the hero walks out of the final shot and into the Lincoln
Memorial in Washington D.C.). What differentiates the Soviet biopic from its Hollywood
counterpart is that its character does not turn into a monument at the end of the film, but
arrives already a monument.
Frequent appearances of monumental forms in these films serve to visually
strengthen several meanings. These topoi summarize and therefore remind the audience
of the achievements of the Great Man, as they incorporate symbols of the late man’s
profession. Monuments are erected in order to serve as sites of commemoration that
transcend time and reach into the nation’s future. Every version of the script for
Aleksandr Pushkin ends at the contemporary Pushkin monument.
105
The opening titles in
Zhukovskii unroll over the close-up of a bust, preceded by the commemorative inscription
“To the Father of Russian Aviation.” The line sets up the theme of Russian achievements
– a central theme in the Cold War era – and indicates the epic pathos of the first and the

105
The ending of the first version of the script features Lermontov repeating “И вы не смоете всей вашей
черной кровью/Поэта праведную кровь.” The scene fades out to fade in onto a pioneer girl reciting the
same lines. The girl proceeds to read a poem of her own composition. In later versions there is simply a
group of pioneers laying flowers on the monument.

140
best. The title of Aleksandr Popov appears over a medal bearing the image of Aleksandr
Popov.
Taras Shevchenko both opens and closes with images of Shevchenko monuments.
in the opening a bas relief, and in the finale a triple monumental nod: 1) a girl reading his
poems; 2) a statue; 3) a stone plaque with an inscription bearing the name, the years of
life and the summary description.
This recurrence of such static images in the “movies” is almost self-reflexive of
the type of character produced by 1940s biopics. Unlike the narratives of the 1930s,
where some dynamics were operative– after all, Chkalov and Kotovskii needed to
overcome a certain personal recklessness – characters now were completely static at all
times and the appearance of a monument in the opening titles almost announced what one
was about to see, a live monument, and not merely one who metamorphosed into an
image of stone at the end of the film/life. The film becomes a lengthy, semi-dramatized
inscription to accompany the monument.
“Monument” of course has an additional resonance in the Russian/Soviet culture,
one that is related to a monument tradition in poetry. The pre-Soviet tradition of extolling
monument in the sense of legacy/immortality, the nerukotvornyi (not man-made)
monument is appropriated by materialistic Soviet culture that seizes on the opportunities
inherent in the idea of immortality through the legacy of good deeds. Moreover, by
heavily referencing actual physical man-made monuments the Soviet biopic collapses the
two meanings of the monument. While Pushkin’s poem “Monument” (1836) speaks of
his creative legacy as the monument to his life, most Russians’ familiarity with the poem
makes it possible for Russians to perceive the physical monument to a Great Man as the

141
symbol of that man’s contribution to culture. In Pirogov this solidification of lifetime
achievement into a physical object is spelled out in the epigraph: “Peoples put up
monuments to their Great Men/ But the deeds of the Great Man/ Constitute the
monument he puts up for his people…/A hundred years ago.”
106

This invocation of a monument of course corresponds to the sense in which
Pushkin uses it in the poem, the monument as the body of work that survives in cultural
memory.
107
Appropriation of this meaning of monument as well as showing Pirogov
turned into stone is not accidental. Pirogov was in fact intensely preoccupied with the
problems of life’s transience and the life of the soul after death. In the film uncanny
remnants of his religiosity survive into his ‘credo’ (верую) even though it is applied to a
communist idea of immortality. Thus, when a fellow doctor asks Pirogov why work so
much when no one is going to remember, Pirogov boldly states, “No, they won’t forget. I
believe in our fatherland. A scientist’s glory is the glory of our country…For I believe it
is a man’s deeds that make him immortal” [emphasis added].
108

A mystic in life, Pirogov becomes a staunch materialist in the film, and his
preoccupation is transferred to another character. Instead of posing the questions that
concerned the historical Pirogov, the surgeon of the film provides stock answers about
immortality that he envisions as survival in the future generation’s memory. In the
context where collective memory is one’s best bet for immortality, physical monuments
facilitate public memory and thus become the measure of immortality and official

106
“Hароды ставят памятники своим великим людям, а дела великого человека – памятник,
поставленный им его народу.”
107
“Нет, весь я не умру - душа в заветной лире/ Мой прах переживёт и тлeнья убежит.”
108
“Нет, не забудут. Я верю в наше отечество. Слава ученого – слава нашей страны.…Верую,
делами своими бессмертен человек.”

142
admission into the national pantheon. Immortality, nationhood and memory are the main
players, as they are in Pushkin’s poem.
The two topoi – “national commemoration” and “man-turn-monument” – work to
strengthen symbolic hierarchies. Furthermore, they foreground an ethnicity-based
national continuity, expressed in terms of civilizational progress. The title embodies the
notion of monument in the Horace-Pushkin tradition, where one’s monument becomes
the physical expression of the sum total of socially significant deeds.
Monumentalization of Great Men in film, their performances from elevated
platforms and their striking poses while on pedestals first appear in the 1930s. However,
the famous monument that opens the 1939 Minin i Pozharskii for example merely
introduces the story topic and genre, without seeking to create an equivalence between
the monument and the characters. The monument is shown from a distance and is not
accompanied by any explanation referring to the historical pair. Already in 1940, Salavat
Iulaev’s opening titles emphasize the hero’s achievement that has inspired veneration:
For almost two centuries the Bashkir people honor the memory of their
Bard and hero Salavat Yulaev, who under the banners of Pugachev led the
bashkirs into the wide path of the common struggle for liberation, in
brotherhood with the great Russian people and the other peoples of tsarist
Russia.
In the 1950 Zhukovskii the titular name is carved out of stone, across a marble
background, and then there is a cut to a cast bust of the man, and then to a shot of a
commemorative plaque that says “To Nikolai Egorovich Zhukovskii 1847-1921 the
father of Russian aviation.” These words are part of an actual plaque which completes a
cycle of three monumental emblems (following title and bust) and perform an act of
commemoration, not merely demonstrate an example of one. This sequence situates the

143
film in the commemorative genre and infuses it with the epic pathos of origins, in this
case, the Russian origins of great things. It also immediately sets up the tone of
veneration and national pride.
Opening Scenes on the Road
A common opening shot or a shot very close to the beginning of the film features
the protagonist walking down a road amid some wider expanse. The road here provides a
long establishing shot that contrasts a zoom-in on the character. In some instances it will
dramatically introduce the audience to the type of adversity the hero will battle for the
duration of the film/life. In the most distilled form of this topos the encounter is direct:
Kotovskii comes upon the body of a Bessarabian peasant unfairly beaten to death,
Pirogov – upon a cholera-stricken corpse. The corpse in both cases is attended by a
weaker figure – in Kotovskii by a woman crying over her husband's body, in Pirogov - by
a monkey jumping sadly about the dead man. These scenes do not reflect the sacrificial
ethos of the 1930s for the victims are anonymous. As the heroes both show concern for
the common man and his suffering, their particular humanity is revealed. Humanism,
largely understood in Soviet public discourse as an ability to sympathize with fellow
human beings, was seen as the central motivational force for revolutionaries of all times.
In some “road openings” it is not the protagonist but the narod that will be
featured on the move. In Belinskii, a peddler is walking down a road in a long shot,
singing a song. Sudden music change punctuates a dramatic shift, cutting to a peasant
rebellion. In Minin i Pozharskii the initial close-up of a wounded man’s head is followed
by a road with herds of agitated cattle. In general, the road lends itself easily to describing
situation’s in a state of flux.

144
Introduction of the Protagonist in a Conversation
The protagonist is often first mentioned in a conversation of peers in which most
opinions about the character are critical. One person in the group will provide an
argument in favor of the character. This discussion positions the character in terms of
profession, current achievements, and creative plans (Pirogov, Akademik Pavlov)
Another type of conversation about the character, between inferiors or
commoners, produces a gap between the audience and the main character. Kutuzov opens
with the Russian Army’s retreat in 1812 under the command of General Barclay de Tolly.
Unhappy with the retreat, two common Muscovites discuss the situation, from which
Kutuzov emerges as half-rumor, half-bylina bogatyr’, whose very name is elusive, but
whose lineage is solid: “The people are saying, there is this general who can knock
Napoleon out at once. The one who fought alongside Suvorov. Got this strange
name…”
109

Kutuzov himself only appears at minute eighteen and then only momentarily. His
arrival is announced by an opportune rhyme “Here comes Kutuzov to beat up the French”
(Пришел Кутузов бить французов). Kutuzov then disappears for another five minutes
of screen time after saying to the soldiers “To retreat, with such great boys!” (С такими
молодцами, и отступать!)
Up until this point the audience has been watching and identifying with the
soldiers. The soldiers are shown in situations that present their discontent, fears, and
yearnings. Now Kutuzov gives his approval to the soldiers and retreats back into the

109
«В народе сказывают, есть такой генерал, который Наполеона враз побьёт. Тот, что с Суворовым
воевал. Фамилие ещё такое...»

145
shadows. This initial distance remains throughout the film in a series of crucial scenes,
like Borodino and the farewell to the dying Bagration. A similar but even more severe
distancing can be seen in Admiral Nakhimov, where the title character is played by
Aleksey Dikiy, the same actor who portrayed Kutuzov just three years earlier. The film
opens with very dramatic, somber music. The first scene shows a ship struggling
desperately in a storm. After it calms down one sailor on the ship tells the other: “What
are you staring at me for? Over there, he is the one to look at.” (Ты чё на меня глаза
пялишь? Ты вон на кого смотри.)
This cue sounds as if this were a military parade, where the direction of one’s
gaze is predetermined and fixed at the commander. In itself, this cue does not preclude
the audience from identifying with the main character. This sequence dramatizes
anticipation and in principle identification could be established if this scene was followed
with a shot-counter shot sequence. Instead, however, Nakhimov’s face is shown in a
profile and the command that directed our attention to him is followed by a question that
intensifies the mystery: “You think that’s a storm for him? That, my brother, is the sea
trembling in front of him.”
110
While the sailors share with us that Nakhimov is as
powerful as Poseidon, Nakhimov stands proudly, shot from below, looking elsewhere.
The distance between the audience and the character continues to grow in the scene
where the decision to sink the entire fleet is taken. In this scene the commander of the
Black Sea fleet Vice-Admiral Kornilov announces the decision to sink the entire sail fleet
in Sevastopol bay. Every captain in the room is seated, and Kornilov addresses them
standing up. Across the room from Kornilov is Nakhimov, also standing. The prevalence

110
“Ты думаешь, это ему буря? Это, брат, море перед ним дрожит.”

146
of low-angle shots as well as lack of emotional identification with Nakhimov places the
character outside and above the rest. The fact that Kornilov was Nakhimov’s superior is
never mentioned in the film.
The exact same device can be observed in the opening of Suvorov: before we see
Suvorov, a voice-over informs us that although his horse had been killed, the commander
has not suffered any wounds.
111
Unusually, he is carried into view – possibly because the
Suvorov of popular legend is a highly unorthodox character. The film character later
cracks jokes, eagerly makes a clown of himself and at one point is shown as a lonely
aging alcoholic. But in this introductory scene the audience does not get to see his eyes,
so the connection between the subject of the gaze and its object is established without
engaging the audience. The exceptionality of Suvorov’s body is also established
immediately as a soldier comments admiringly, “And no bullet can take him as no saber
can cut him.”
112

Source of Inspiration
Soviet biopics show the moment and causality of the protagonist’s inspiration –
whether it is a work of art or a scientific/technological invention. Films about artists, in
particular, tend to grapple with the question – how did this idea occur to the Great Man?
Great narrative effort is expended in relating inspiration to objective forces and make it
part of a logical (zakonomernyi) process, whereby inspiration can be tied to the Nation or
to a group of peers/mentors. Overall, inspiration may serve as the main compositional

111
“Лошадь под ним убили, а ему ничего.”
112
“И никакая пуля его не берет и никакая сабля не рубит.”

147
principle as the motive because the narrative in most of the biopics about artists is built
around a series of their works. (Kompozitor Glinka, Vasilii Surikov, Lermontov)
Rimskii-Korsakov (1952) opens with the composer’s voice-over announcing: “It
was still in my young years that I conceived of Sadko.” As Tikhomirov’s review of the
Eisenstein/Pavlenko script for Aleksandr Nevskii shows, Sadko, the character based on a
popular cycle of medieval folk tales (byliny), was not necessarily very well known to
Soviet audiences. Hence this opening to a film about the composer would not meet a
“realistic” narrative goal except to foreground folk epic sources in the composer’s work
as evidence of patriotic sympathies. This scene is both token access to the protagonist’s
subjectivity and an instance of the “source of inspiration” motif. It is followed by
Rimskii-Korsakov sitting at the table, thinking up, musical vehicles for various seas, as
he explains in the continuing voice-over. Having earlier given musical life to foreign
seas, he is now determined to find the appropriate voice for the Sea of Novgorod (More
Novgorodskoe).
Lermontov is sleepless, haunted. Relief comes to him – just as it does to
Musorgskiy as he is searching for a conceptual framework for Boris Godunov – when he
finds the first line of the future piece.
113
The idea of Mtsyri comes from observing a blind
Georgian singer (an epic folkloric mouthpiece), the idea for The Masquerade at
a…masquerade.
It is not clear why it is more comforting for Soviet culture to have all ideas
originate either from Lenin or Pushkin rather than have them dispersed more evenly
among the greats. It appears that such concepts as inspiration and truly original ideas

113
“Погиб поэт, невольник чести.”

148
could be dealt with better if they came from familiar sources of genius and masters of
foretelling the future. In Kompozitor Glinka, the line “Vsiak sushchii v nei iazyk” from
Pushkin’s “Monument” becomes the source of inspiration for his opera Ruslan i
Liudmila, whose multinational characters serve as a pretext to demonstrate the richness of
Russian empire’s ethnic musical sources. Thus the Russian musical tradition, which is
fathered by Glinka, relies on the elements of national musical traditions. In the movie,
after a conversation with Pushkin, Glinka is mesmerized with a tableau that, in the
Aleksandrovian manner, shows a festival of dancing Russians, Ukrainians, Circassians,
Moldovans, Georgians, etc.
People as the Source of Inspiration
In Vasilii Surikov (1956) inspiration is shown through a series of encounters with
the common people, again tying the work of the Great Man to the narod. As shown
above, in Kompozitor Glinka the composer takes his cues from a long list of other greats
(Griboedov, Pushkin, Zhukovskii), for most of his work. The source of inspiration is a
central dramatic problem for the Soviet biopic, which fact only became noticeable after
the regime became more liberal. Thus in the artistic council meeting for the film Surikov
screenwriter A.Kapler reminded his colleagues that most Soviet biopics made an
extensive effort to show the exact reasons for the artist’s inspiration and that in doing so
the film-makers often resorted to cliches like the artist being struck by his observations of
the common people at a fair.
114

Restlessness/Loneliness/Sacrifice of family

114
Mosfilm 2453, op.3, 262, L.2.

149
It has been argued that the protagonist of Ivan Groznyi (1944) is the culmination
of the type of Soviet film hero whose personal happiness becomes antithetical to his
socially useful activities. One analysis has pointed out that the heroes’ personal sacrifice
in the late 1930s’ narratives is resolved differently than it was in the 1920s, whereby the
loneliness of the character becomes the logical conclusion of the narrative arc.
115

A.Deriabin has recently pointed out that Mikhail Kalatozov may have actually been the
first to have come up with this concept for a biopic in his script about the life of a
Dagestani leader in Shamil’ (1937-1939).
116
By the time Michurin was made in 1948,
insistence on the sacrifice of human ties and a confrontation with the community became
problematic. Michurin displays foul temper with his immediate environment, including
his ailing wife. With his credo “I serve the distant ones” Michurin is unapologetic even to
his dying wife.
117
A flashback explains that the attention he could formerly give her is
needed elsewhere – it is his concern for the people that makes him into a difficult person.
It was no accident that Dovzhenko's Michurin endured a lot of criticism and changes
forced by the Minister of Cinema Kuzakov on account of Michurin’s lack of ability to
sympathize with his fellow man.
118
The combination of the protagonist as a loner who

115
“В конце 30-х годов герой-романтик пытается повторить подвиг своего предшественника—
романтика 20-х годов, то есть посчитаться со своей индивидуалистической сутью. Но пытается
сделать это не за счет беспредельного расширения сферы индивидуального, личного, но путем ее
тотального отрицания, безжалостного выкорчевывания. Результат, впрочем, оказался прямо
противоположным. На месте “отдельного человека”, виновного в скитской отъединенности и
казнящего себя за это, мы обнаруживаем не коллективного героя (как это случилось в самом начале
20-х годов), а сверхиндивидуалиста, обреченного на такую абсолютную скитскую отъединенность,
какая и не снилась староверам из вековых таежных лесов, героям фильмов Довженко” (Iu.
Bogomolov 91-92).
116
See A.Deryabin, “Piat’ let i tri goda. Predystoriia i istoriia kalatozovskogo Shamilia.”
117
Жена: “Ты угнетаешь близких.” Мичурин: “Я служу дальним.”
118
Kuzakov wrote: Образ Мичурина…дан излишне резким, нетерпимым даже к близким людям.
(Michurin’s character is presented as too snappish, intolerable even towards those very close to him.)
Kuzakov suggested excluding scenes of Michurin fighting with his wife, of her confession to the priest as

150
serves the farthest, and not his neighbor, evokes Zarathustra’s advice in F.Niezsche’s
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “Higher than love of your neighbor is love of the farthest and
future ones.”
119

This motif, in its milder version, includes irritable outbursts at the hero’s family,
friends and the immediate professional community. In Akademik Ivan Pavlov the scientist
is happily married but as he becomes frustrated in his work on stomach secretion and
spends all his resources on the constantly dying dogs he becomes irritable with her. The
wife then comes up with some money she had stashed away so that Pavlov can buy
another bunch of dogs. This “last hope” motif then is resolved happily – one of the dogs
survives. Even as a crowned, Nobel-prize winner, Pavlov gets violently impatient at the
rigidity of his professional environment and calls those who do not share the ideals of
progress – “ballast”: “Nu skol'ko eshchio zlykh, slepykh i tupykh liudei v nauke!!! Da, eto
tak. Ballast, ballast!”
Przhevalskii, Pirogov and Ushakov all are said or shown to fly into a rage easily
but a mitigating quality such as spontaneous affection from the young or the common
men is present, too.
Death in Peace
In Kutuzov, when Bagration is dying and pleads for the truth from Kutuzov,
Kutuzov lies to him (unless we are to ascribe prophetic vision to Kutuzov when he says
that Moscow is saved). Bagration says, “Now I can die in peace.” In Iunost’ poeta

contradicting the image of a scientist who lives in harmony with the people (narod) (Mosfilm, 2453, op. 2,
89, L. 6). The 1953 film Velikii voin Albanii Skanderbeg (dir. S.Iutkevich) also featured a voluntary
sacrifice of personal happiness.
119
F.Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 45.

151
Derzhavin on hearing the young Pushkin’s verse: “Have you heard that, gentlemen? A
Poet! Now I can die.”
120

Roads and Walking
Roads, people walking along them, moving toward and away from the audience,
arrivals and departures happen frequently throughout the narrative and are associated
with changes of states. In Aleksandr Nevskii, human chains turn into an army. People
who walk across fields and roads in Musorgskii, Belinskii, Stepan Razin, Pugachev, Iakov
Sverdlov, Bogdan Khmelnitskii are shown as either displaced or homeless. These people
are always depersonalized extras, part of the landscape of the past. The processions of
people invariably appear every time a burning estate/house/field is shown. The displaced
wanderers often feature the blind (sometimes blind singers) that are always complete with
walking sticks.
While the road may serve as a backdrop for the introduction of the Great Man as
well, he always arrives at a platform from which to give important cues. In contrast, the
common people are often and repeatedly seen wandering roads and fields without a clear
destination. The uprootedness of the common man, who appears always in motion,
contrasts the static nature of the Great Man of the later Stalinist biopic, where the
discursive figuration of the narod is particularly pronounced. Narod as common
classes/nation/historical entity is often aesthetically synthesized into the figure(s) of a
displaced (blind) man, moving about in an unknown direction.
In the 1953 Belinskii the first shot features a peddler and various wanderers
appear several times in flashbacks, eventually to be represented as peasants in chains.

120
“Слышали, господа? Поэт! Теперь и умереть можно.”

152
Here the wandering men provide punctuation for the narrative and, rather directly, offer a
metonymic representation of a people in flux. Since Belinskii is a committed enemy of
the autocracy, the repeated interjections of the common men moving about (in what
eventually begin to look like peasant uprisings) create a visual thesis for awakened
popular political feeling.
In general movement is reserved for the lower position in the Soviet cultural
hierarchy. The Great Man remains in place and moves about very little, especially in the
1940s, with agitated body language reserved for moments of ideological collision, where
it suggests the Great Man’s intolerance of rigidity and backwardness. In the opening
scene of Admiral Nakhimov, the first sequence associated with the leadership style of the
admiral (who remains supremely calm during a dangerous storm that instills mortal fear
in the sailors) is slow and somber in music, physical movements, and editing; after
Nakhimov gives his orders and it is now up to the sailors to carry out the admiral’s
orders, he disappears from the screen and the film reverts to silent film mode, with sped-
up projection, wide fast movements and lack of speech.
The Blind
Once the common men sit down to sing, it immediately turns out that they are
blind. While blindness and displacement in this visual logic go hand in hand, wandering
types tend to fill the landscape without coming in direct contact with the Great Man but
merely appearing as a walking metaphor for the “suffering people.”
The blind may be part of a group of wanderers or be led by a young boy
(Musorgskii, Kutuzov [script], Pushkin, Velikii voin Albanii Skanderbeg). Frequent
combinations of burning lands, estates and the movements of the displaced/disabled

153
(blind) men (sometimes singing as they walk) creates a mis-en-scene of people’s
suffering (Musorgskii, Belinskii, Stepan Razin, Iakov Sverdlov) and usually motivates the
main character’s commitment to the cause of the narrative. However, it is not a
spontaneous, emotional commitment that either happens on the road in the opening or as
results from perceiving the people’s grief: instead, the commitment is the manifestation
of consciousness presiding over spontaneity, demonstrated in the main character.
In Bogdan Khmelnitskii the blind singers are emphatically endowed with the
power of national epic chronicling. As a group of kobzari sit down to sing the people’s
misery, a montage detailing Polish oppression unfolds in front of our eyes. In Lermontov
a blind Georgian singer’s song serves as a source of inspiration for Mtsyri. The singer’s
blindness appears to be a nod to the visual tradition of showing the past, whereby the
national epic is channeled through the figure of a wandering blind singer.
A blind old man led by a boy is also featured in the director’s script for Kutuzov,
although the scene does not appear in the film.
121

4.3 The Great Man and His People
Meeting with the common man
As has been observed, the Soviet heroes of the late 1930s “were, in the final
analysis, a group of nobles, tsarist generals, emperors, and princes, whose status as
exemplary figures within the Soviet pantheon of heroes could never be fully reconciled
with the reigning revolutionary ethic of Marxism-Leninism” (Brandenberger & Platt 11).
The relationship of the Great Man with his nation is so naturalized in the context of
Soviet aesthetics that the mechanics of this relationship often pass unnoticed. In his

121
Mosfilm, 2453, op.2, 82, L. 75.

154
analysis of the Soviet biographical film Ognev notes that the Great Men had to be shown
as close to the people. Ognev also points out that the people were treated metonymically
through a representative who never rose above the stature of the servant of the Great Man
(9). The author sees this relegation of the common man to an inferior social position as
the direct impact of the cult of personality, whereby the common man was urged to
demonstrate subservience and readiness for sacrifice.
Apart from the obvious sympathetic alignment with the people under the umbrella
of “humanism,” the relationship between Great and common men describes specific post-
war ideological concerns, like the growing Russian nationalism in the wake of the cold
war and a shift of focus from class to nation for domestic purposes of empire
expansion/Russification. Nation is substituted for class and the unity of the Russian
people is expressed through a scene where the Great Man encounters the common people
through a representative of the lower classes. This encounter with the people may take
different forms (recognition, misrecognition, acknowledgment, and protection or rescue)
but they happen early on in the film. As the result of this encounter a bond of sympathy,
likeness, admiration is established between the main character and the common man.
Thefunction of these scenes is to separate the Great Man from the rest of the
oppressive landowners and reposition him as primarily a representative of the Russian
people. Here the two meanings of narod – as ethnicity and, in the populist sense, as
common people – are combined in order to collapse class and ethnicity under the
umbrella of the term “Russkiy narod”. Once their likeness has been established, the Great
Man may proceed to strengthen the identification with the man as a Russian.

155
These encounters may be represented in a number of ways, for instance, as an
instance of recognition (Akademik Ivan Pavlov, Aleksandr Pushkin). These are brief
scenes that are designed to show that there is a rapport between the common people and
their barin or an intuitive spontaneous connection between them. In these cases greetings
are exchanged between the Great Man and a blind common man, who intuitively senses
that the hero stands out from his class.
The meeting can also develop along the lines of acknowledgment, whereby the
Great Man recognizes the formidable qualities of the common man and proceeds to
summarize his observation as a class and national quality. (Admiral Ushakov, Admiral
Nakhimov) Both films involve the admiral coming to admire the skill of his canoneers.
122

In the first scene of Kompozitor Glinka during a St.Petersburg flood Pushkin and Glinka
witness a male serf saving children from the water. Glinka participates in the final stage
of one such rescue effort, at which point he is spotted by Pushkin. Pushkin steps into the
picture to admiringly sum up the accomplishment and identify himself both with the
common man and the semi-heroic young Glinka.
123
In another version, Pushkin says,
“Beautiful is our people, especially when in trouble.”
124
In the very next scene, Pushkin
and Glinka, on the way to Vielgosrky’s, bump into a group of servants and haiduks
singing a song by Glinka and Pushkin comments that these common people have “more

122
Extolling soldiers, not technology, is consonant with the change in emphasis of Stalin-era sloganeering
from “Technology is the answer to everything” to “Cadres are the answer to everything” («Техника
решает всё» to «Кадры решают всё») that took place in 1935 (Brandenberger, National Bolshevism 27).
1930s films like Pugachev, Minin i Pozharskii and, especially, Piotr Pervyi stress the importance of
technology, in particular of ‘canons’ (пушки). Motivation in major plot lines of the above films is tied to
the procurement of iron ore for the canons or to the facilities for their production. The late biopics, like
Admiral Nakhimov and Admiral Ushakov each have a scene that stresses the skill of canoneers.
123
“Вот они, Глинушка, какие мужики пошли! Какую силищу в себе почуяли”(Mosfilm, 2453, op.3,
doc. 578, L.10).
124
“Прекрасен народ наш, особливо в беде.”

156
taste and national dignity than those in Vielgorskii’s salon.”
125
In Iunost’ poeta the young
Pushkin decidedly prefers the serf girl Natasha to the young women of his own class. The
Pushkin of Aleksandr Pushkin writes his tales specifically for his old nanny, Arina
Rodionovna, and emphatically calls her “mama” at the beginning of the story, in the
winter of 1824 (“Mama” is changed to “nyanya” in later versions).
126

The encounter also often follows the dynamic of protection/rescue, whereby the
Great Man protects or saves a common man from the persecution of a serf owner or cruel
officer (Admiral Nakhimov, Taras Shevchenko, Miklukho-Maklai, Pirogov); or
instinctive/inexplicable sympathy when a common man feels a connection with the
Great Man, despite his barin class, and helps the (future) Great Man (Aleksandr Popov,
Miklukho-Maklai, Lermontov, Michurin).
Once the friendly association is established, it levels off class differences. The
quality that brings the two together, whether it is shared or not, is then extolled as the
essentially significant one, even if it is not named directly but remains undifferentiated
from the context. The essentially significant is then contextually or directly tied to the
notion “Russian” and articulated by the Great Man in pronouncements on the nature of
the Russian people.
Despite the glaring substitution of the two clearly different meanings of the word
narod, this widespread rhetorical slippage in late Stalinist culture remains completely
unexamined. As the Great Man gains legitimacy in talking about the russkiy narod due
to his positive encounter, he proceeds to deliver the summary as if he were both outside,

125
Mosfilm, 2453, op.3, doc. 578, L. 25.
126
Mosfilm, 2453, op.3, doc. 1693, L. 15.

157
where the common man – hero, precise sniper, man of enormous strength – is the object
of impartial observation/inspiration for the Great Man’s work and about himself, because
the Great Man, unlike other representatives of his class shares the essential quality with
the people – common man and ethnicity. The qualities of Russianness then become
ahistorical and essentially Russian, natural to “our people” (nash narod).
In some versions the common man feels a sudden surge of sympathy towards the
Great Man, usually without knowing who he is. In the 1949 Aleksandr Popov, Popov is
lost in thought, sitting on the shore in Kronshtadt, when he drops a glass flask. A boy
dives headlong into the water to find it. In this instance a common man instantaneously
perceives goodness in the Great Man and rushes to help. After the boy recovers the flask,
his older relative gets to chat with Popov. Throughout the scene Popov is positioned in
the shot considerably above the older common man as the two men get into a
conversation about radio waves. The common man shows a great ability to understand
complex notions, as explained by Popov, and the scientist admiringly concludes: “You
get it perfectly.” This understanding is contrasted in the narrative with the science peer
group where the reception is neither whole-hearted nor spontaneous.
This scene can be reduced to an encounter without particular conclusions, but one
encounter that establishes a close alignment nonetheless. In Akademik Pavlov (1949), the
Pavlov brothers walk down a country road when they come upon a common man and
greet him warmly. Next to the common man there is a blind wanderer, who asks “Whose
[sons] are those [young men]?” The man replies that they are the Pavlovs, the sons of
“our father Peter.” The response is pronounced with a respectful body movement, as the
common man half bows down to the absent barin. In Taras Shevchenko, the title

158
character is immediately recognized as a great barin despite or possibly due to the fact
that Shevchenko had been a serf himself. Aleksandr Pushkin (script) opens with a poor
blind man who is led by a young girl walking across a wintry landscape. Pushkin walks
toward them; they meet, exchange lines off-screen and walk on in their own directions. In
one version of the screenplay, Pushkin simply gives change to the man, but after a
suggestion by the artistic council, the blind beggar was changed to a blind wanderer and
charity is exchanged for sympathetic attention.
127

While mostly taking place at the start of the story, such instances of identification
with the virtues and the plight of the common/Russian people continue throughout most
of the films – almost invariably capitalizing on the equivocations inherent in the word
narod. Pushkin continues to extol the Russian people, e.g., as the source of his unique
literary language. When telling Pushchin how he comes up with this language, Pushkin
tells of going into the thick of the people, quite like the later narodniki, and he joins the
blind men’s begging song (“пою со слепцами Лазаря”). The use of the expression
“singing Lazarus” raises the issue of Pushkin’s playful engagement in popular carnival,
as it refers both to the songs the blind traditionally sang while begging and to the
expression that stands for “making false claims of one’s misery.” However, despite the
fake garb Pushkin successfully blends in, absorbs authentic Russianness and comes out as
a mouthpiece for the common people.
128
In the 1947 Pirogov the surgeon headliner finds

127
Original episode in 2453, op.3, 1693, L. 3. “Стенограмма заседания художественного совета по
обсуждению литературного сценария «Александр Пушкин»,” 2468, op.2, 52.
128
“Я надеваю по праздникам русскую рубаху, шляпу соломенную и толкусь среди простого люда,
богомольцев, крестьян, монахов, слушаю русскую речь, записываю песни, сам пою со слепцами
Лазаря, обогащаю свои знания, исполняюсь любовью к народной мудрости. Живительный источник
силы непробужденной – наш народ.” He later clearly identifies the language of narod as the source for
his own vocabulary because “the language of the people is clearer and a hundred times more beautiful than

159
himself in a restaurant where a wealthy merchant is throwing a luxurious party asking for
ever more elaborate delicacies. In contrast, Pirogov orders some pies with gravy (пирогов
с подливой), thus aligning himself with simple food and playing up the simplicity of
even his name. Later on Pirogov refuses to ride in his friend’s carriage, scornfully
berating the stuffiness of the carriage and preferring an open (peasant) cart instead. Once
in the telega, Pirogov immediately starts consulting his servant Lukich on a variety of
important questions, leaving his luxury-loving friend slighted.
Another typical way for the recognition of the greatness of the narod is a
reference to the Napoleonic invasion of 1812 in the majority of films set in the 19
th

century. In Kompozitor Glinka (script, scene missing from the film), a genius inventor
peasant named Petrov only has the time to tell us that he had served during the campaign;
the common man and flood rescue hero from the opening scene, Erofeev, tells Pushkin
how he intended to capture Napoleon. In Belinskii the peasant leader of the rebellion
reiterates the Decembrist idea that the people had earned their emancipation from the
Tsar in 1812 with their own blood. In a Pushkin script the poet creates an explicitly class-
crossing tableau of a nation under threat: “And do you remember 1812? You’ve recalled
the lyceum and Derzhavin, and I will remind you of our regiments marching, officers and
soldiers, noblemen and muzhiki – Russians against Napoleon!”
129

among our high society. Enough! There is place for the Russian truth and speech in our poetry.” (“…
который у народа чище и стократ красивей, чем у нашего высшего общества. Довольно! Место
правде и речи русской в нашей поэзии.”)

129
“А помнишь 1812 год? Ты вспомнил лицей, Державина, а я тебе напомню, как шли наши полки,
офицеры и солдаты, дворяне и мужики – русские против Наполеона!” (Mosfilm, 2453 оp 3, 1693, L.
7).

160
However, in not one of these examples do we see Pushkin actually converse or act
with the people. The encounters are either shown from a distance or through dialogue,
which fact was not lost on the studio artistic council. Studio notes show criticism of an
episode in which Pushkin comes to a Cossack settlement to research the Pugachev
rebellion. In the episode, Cossacks first meet Pushkin with hostility and it takes a while
for him to earn their trust and sympathy. The absence of immediate friendly rapport is
pointed out as a serious shortcoming.
130
In the absence of other positive marks of
identification with the people an episode showing hostility would position Pushkin on the
wrong side of the barricades.
The next version of the script excised the episode with the Cossacks altogether
and instead introduced a different version of direct identification with people, namely,
“meeting a namesake.” Positioned directly in place of the “Cossack” episode is one of
Pushkin going to his estate Mikhailovskoe, ostensibly to allow him some breathing space,
an escape into the countryside from a suffocating St.Petersburg.
131
On arrival, Pushkin
engages in friendly reminiscing with the estate peasants and eventually stumbles upon a
bunch of peasant boys. Pushkin randomly strikes a conversation with one whose name
turns out to be “San’ka.” Pushkin is happy to have found a namesake. A minute later
Pushkin tears up; when asked by the boys why he is sad, Pushkin says “I feel sorry for
Pushkin.” In this moment of intimacy, figuring as the only moment of true access to the
state of the poet’s mind, the peasant boys (via the name connection) become the real
audience for the one who corresponds to the cultural signifier “Pushkin.” While this

130
Mosfilm 2468, op.2, 294.
131
After the 1836 scandal around the poem “Na vyzdorovlenie Lukulla”, Zhukovskii insists that Pushkin
write an apologetic letter, to which Pushkin throws “Can I at least break away to Mikhailovskoe to get
some breathing space” (“Могу я за это вырваться в Михайловское, отдышаться от вас?”).

161
episode is a more subtle variation of the identification with people trope, it also contains a
reference to “Pushkin-the-name,” the Pushkin of the future times, when his fame makes
him into “THE Pushkin,” in a sense that is similar to the discursive significance of “THE
Chapaev.” The difference between “THE Chapaev” and “the Pushkin” that the diegetic
Pushkin cries for is that the narrative shows that Chapaev’s fame in legend outpaces his
real-life achievement: Chapaev, the man, in his physical presentation comes short of the
popular idea of “THE Chapaev.” For Pushkin, the man, on the other hand, “THE
Pushkin” who is doomed at this point to the coming death, is the valiant blond bogatyr’
of the Prigov satirical fairy tale – a construct of the 20
th
century, “the father and
protector” whose loss is de facto traumatic for every Russian.
132
In Akademik Ivan Pavlov
(1949) the scientist identifies his enthusiasts (podvizhniki) as “the Russian soldiers who
are dying in the fields of Manchuria.”
Khodoki
A subset of identification with the common man is the trope of the common
man/men seeking out the Great Man. Common people travel across the country to see the
Great Man and ask him for guidance or advice (Michurin, Belinskii). This cliché bears
close resemblance to the historical peasants visiting Lenin, or the so-called khodoki. Thus
in Michurin common men bring him seeds from the Far East and ask for his help with
gardening in the harsh climate. In Belinskii, suffering peasants come to see Nekrasov to
seek protection from their owners. Pushkin talks to a common man in one of the script

132
In his spoof of the late Stalinist historiography, the satirical tale "Zvezda plenitelnaia russkoi poezii”,
Prigov describes a Russia-Rus’ that is besieged by the French – both literally (Napoleon’s troops) and
figuratively (Russian high society’s obsequious attitudes to all things French). Pushkin, a tall, blond poet
and known protector of women’s honor, with strong fists and a melodic voice, attempts to warn the elites of
the dire threat to the fatherland. Whenever he exits ‘suffocating’ ballrooms, Pushkin is approached by the
Russian people (narod) who address him as ‘our father’ (batiushka) and beg for prompt rescue from the
French. See D.A. Prigov, Napisannoe s 1975 po 1989.

162
versions at the opening. Thus, already from the beginning of the narrative the Great Man
is established as a credible source of the Truth.
4.4 Russian National Epic
Epic Chronicling
While the overall theme of the Soviet biopic could be characterized as “defense of
the land” or “defense of the land’s honor,” with the opening of many biopics describing a
national crisis or threat, most introductory titles have additional convention-forming
functions. Thus, the 1938 Aleksandr Nevskii sets up not only the period (“Eto byl XIII
vek”) but also the fact that “Rus’ was attractive to invaders with its “great” lands and
riches;” we are told that “the German plunderers expected an easy victory over our
people” (nad nashim narodom). Apart from the crisis, the titles tie Rus’ (mentioned
twice), “the entire country” (“the traces of cruel battles were still visible all over the
entire country”) and “our people.” Most importantly, the titles’ style and stylization
position the text as a pseudo-primary source.
After over thirty seconds of various shots of the monument to the title characters
on Red Square, the 1939 Minin i Pozharskii opens with titles presented as a scroll that
unfolds into the text of a folk song. The song is sung by a chorus (a frequent feature of
opening titles) at the same time as we read them. The text describes a Moscow invasion:
“Moscow-beauty, tell us of the deeds and grief forgotten, of the fields strewn with
bodies.”
133
The presence of both the scroll and Russian folk song signals a national epic,
and the film is introduced as a national historical narrative. As the song continues, scrolls
keep unfolding into individual sheets, which now display film credits. The text of the

133
“Расскажи Москва-красавица/ Про дела, про беды позабытые/ Про поля победами покрытые.”

163
song (the fields strewn with bodies) also works as a pre-figuration and preparation for the
first shot of the film, which is exactly that – a field strewn with bodies, with the camera
zooming in on the head of a person lying on that field. Considering the subject of the film
is the early 17
th
century, a reference to scrolls of course may be seen as an appropriate
stylization. And yet the topos of national chronicling, embracing both the oral (song) and
the written (scrolls) historical tradition, makes the narrative intentions explicit: these are
pages of an epic chronicle. This indication of the genre of epic chronicling provides an
excuse for the film’s somewhat disjointed structure, since in a national epic the feel of
authenticity can be achieved through means other than dramatic unities or cohesive
narrative. In the same vein, the very title of Iakov Sverdlov features the sub caption
“pages from the biography” (stranitsy iz biografii), as if drawing attention to the careful
selection behind the arrangement of the passages.
The title shot in the 1951 Belinskii presents a page with an excerpt from
Nekrasov’s poem Komu na Rusi zhit’ khorosho?, which reflects on whether a time might
come when common people will start reading the works of [the critic] Belinskii, and not
popular trash: “Прийдет ли времечко/ прийди-прийди желанное/ когда мужик не
Блюхера/ И не милорда глупого/ Белинского и Гоголя/ С базара понесет?” The
quote of one exceptional man’s work about another, a cross-fertilization between the
greats and populating the past with clusters of progressive men is one of the major
concerns of historical representation of the time. Here the text of the poem is displayed
from a book page, not separate from the screen but still recognizably a book page.
Kompozitor Glinka, 1952: The opening shot is that of a lavish, gold and red
ornamental leather cover of an old folio that opens like an album, not right to left, but

164
bottom up. “Composer Glinka” is the first page of that album, with red illumination on
the left side of the first letter, as in a manuscript. The same left-corner illumination is
featured on every page of the credits. The final page is that of a musical score (the page
looks different from the previous ones) across which a handwritten note states “1828, St
Petersburg.” Even though this may point to the fact that the book is a music album, the
credits unfold in the type of illumination reserved for older chronicles. The specific topos
of the book that we see in these three instances does not turn the film into a book, but it
enters the film into a verbal, narratable series. Furthermore, it is a series that foregrounds
national over narrative continuity and the presence of such topoi underwrites the primacy
of historical connections over psychological coherence.
As one observes the rise of literary content in film, it is not uncommon to subtitle
biopics “pages of the biography.” The Soviet obsession with the word (and twritten
culture) also finds a way into the 1949 Aleksandr Popov, the story of the Russian inventor
of radio, as it opens with the line: “The great Lenin called radio ‘newspaper without the
paper’.”
134
After the mention of the radio’s political propaganda potential, the titles
assume a very scientific language and in a lengthy lecture-like exposition describe the
multiple uses of radio. The titles appear to mark the film as a scientific documentary as
they are written over an image of radio waves rippling from towers, flickering on screen
in an animated sequence. The exposition concludes with a perfectly alliterated line: Radio
Rodilos’ v Rossii (Radio was born in Russia). This line is underscored because it is the
only line in the titles that moves in and out of the center to the front of the screen before it
disappears. It is succeeded by the explanation that radio was created by “our great

134
“Великий Ленин назвал радио “газетой без бумаги.”

165
compatriot, a Russian scientist and patriot.” The name does not appear until the next shot
when it is written over a bas relief of Aleksandr Popov. The numerous verbal topoi of this
introduction – Lenin (legitimacy)/ popular-scientific film (authenticity)/ Russian origins
of great things (national pride) – are accompanied by a visual unit (radio waves), which,
like a book, represents dissemination of knowledge. The final line (and the bas relief)
situates the film in a series of commemorative icons.
Folk songs and folk music
Folk songs abound in the Soviet biopics and sometimes stretch over several
minutes of screen time. In Aleksandr Nevskii, the action spans a considerable period of
time witnessing the transformation of quantity into quality as the army is being amassed
and the civilians who trickle in are transformed into an army – all during a chorus that
starts out sounding as if it could be coming from the people in the shot and then rising
above the heads of the walking army as does the camera. This transformation of the song
into a historical meta-narrative – an eye-witness chronicle, the voice of people recording
history as it happens – is not exposed in other biopics but the simulation of the crowd
singing also occurs in Pugachev, Stepan Razin and Bogdan Khmelnitskii. In the latter, a
blind kobzar’ is asked to play and as he does, the condition of the oppressed people is
illustrated in a visual sequence accompanying the kobzar’s song about it.
135
Folk songs
also often open narratives as in Minin i Pozharskii, Taras Shevchenko and Salavat Iulaev.

135
A possible source for the proliferation of the topos of the blind kobzar’, who symbolizes epic
chronicling and national resistance at the same time, may be the description of a blind player of bandura
and singer who sings about Khmelnitskii from N.Gogol’s “Strashnaya mest’:” “В городе Глухове
собрался народ около старца бандуриста и уже с час слушал, как слепец играл на бандуре. Еще
таких чудных песен и так хорошо не пел ни один бандурист. Сперва повел он про прежнюю
гетьманщину, за Сагайдачного и Хмельницкого. Тогда иное было время: козачество было в
славе; топтало конями неприятелей, и никто не смел посмеяться над ним” (N.V.Gogol’, “Strashnaya
mest’” 16).

166
Overwhelmingly, folk songs are sung by choruses usually in combination with a group of
people engaging in an activity, like walking.
Folkloric Elements
In the film Rimskii-Korsako, the composer’s opera Sadko is presented as the
central moment of the composer’s career despite the composer’s own admission that he
considered Tsarskaia nevesta his crowning achievement.
136
In the 19
th
century, Sadko
was the subject of two eponymous pieces by the composer (a musical picture in 1867 and
the opera in 1896) and a painting by I.Repin in 1876. In the post-war period, A.
Nechaev’s epic tale (bylinnyi skaz) of “Sadko” was reprinted every several years and the
children’s movie Sadko was released in 1953 to become a Soviet classic.
Rimskii-Korsakov’s opera is a national epic opera, in which the action is slowed
down in favor of a fluidity that “revives the spirit of the ancient bylina skaz (folkloric
epic tales)”. Musical portraits are developed over lengthy, rich numbers, whereas the life
of the people is shown through monumental choral scenes, with the characterization of
the Russian people dominated by the Russian folk songs.
137

Idioms and Sayings/ Крылатые выражения
The Great Men are often shown authoring popular idiomatic expressions, even if
such maneuvers require a plunge into anachronism. In a draft for Kompozitor Glinka,
Adam Mickiewicz is given one of Lenin’s (!) most famous lines about the spark giving
rise to the revolutionary flame: “Мицкевич: может быть из этой искры разгорится
пламя русской революции.”

136
Korsakov wrote in a letter to his son in 1901: “Думаю, что это наиболее виртуозная и
уравновешенная из моих опер, а по эклектизму своих форм и средств она представляет наиболее
желательный тип современной оперы”
M.Druskin, ed. 100 oper. Istoriia sozdaniia. Siuzhet. Muzyka, (Leningrad: Muzyka, 1987)

167
The efforts to show the Great Man author an expression also point in the direction
of an epic narrative, which affirms the world of the first and unequivocally marks points
of origin. Lest one remain convinced that the expression “sister of mercy” is a translation
from English (what with Florence Nightingale’s service in the Crimean war) we are
shown the exact situation that leads to Pirogov coining the term – in the fields of the
same Crimean War. Pirogov: “Women innately possess mercy” and then, to the woman
who wants to make herself useful for the war effort, “you will be like a sister to the
wounded – a sister of mercy.”
Autometapoesis
The exiled Suvorov is dictating his instruction “The Science of Winning”, which
features this line: “Take up as a model an ancient hero – watch him, follow him, catch
up with him, pass him by, glory to you, you are Russian!” The original line by Suvorov
reads as follows: “ Take up as a model an ancient hero – watch him, follow him, catch
up with him, pass him by, glory to you! [“you are Russian” is absent]”
Chaikovskii script: “If you really cannot find any reason for joy, take a look at
others. Join the people. Look, they know how to be joyful.”
138

Periphrasis
Periphrases are numerous in characterizations of Great Men. In Aleksandr
Pushkin, after a salon reading of Boris Godunov Mickewicz addresses Pushkin as ‘my
older brother in pen!’ The same Mickewicz calls Glinka “a second Pushkin in music.”
139

During Glinka’s “Aragonese jota” Hertzen whispers to Prosper Merimee sitting right next
to him: “What did we know about Spain before Glinka? Nothing.Glinka discovered Spain

138
2453, оp.3, 2630, L.14.
139
2453, op.3,.580, L. 2.

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for us, like Columbus discovered America.” In this periphrasis, Glinka becomes a second
Columbus.
140
Relating one great to another was seen by film-makers as a legitimacy
booster, as this line from the letter of the head of Mosfilm to the Minister of Cinema
attests: “The script Admiral Fiodor Ushakov tells of the life of an oustanding Russian
naval commander and innovator of naval warfare, referred to by his contemporaries as
‘the naval Suvorov’ (morskim Suvorovym).”
141

In the multiple periphrases used in biopics the newcomer on the historical stage is
allotted a place through a link, sometimes directly genealogical with another, already
canonical name. Defining Great Men through each other goes as far back in Russian
cultural history as Illarion’s “Sermon on Law and Grace”, where Illarion calls Vladimir,
who christened Rus’, “second Constantine”. If this relationship serves to rhetorically
bring Vladimir into the line of kinship that goes back to King David, a similar
relationship may be hypothesized for Pushkin and Columbus as points of reference. Both
these figures stand unequivocally at the origins of tradition/language or of a paradigm
shift. In one of the script drafts for Kompozitor Glinka Pushkin makes the explicit
equation (they are the founders of their respective traditions, in line with Stalin’s address
in December of 1941) and says to Glinka, “Great for you! You have now tasted what it
feels like to be a founder.” (Молодец! Почувствовал себя начинателем.)
That origins are at stake is later underscored by Glinka’s dialogue with Ivanov,
who is trying to convince the composer to stay in Europe because there is no good music

140
“Что мы знали до Глинки об Испании? Ничего. Глинка открыл нам Испанию, как Колумб
Америку” (2453, op.3, 580, L. 5).
141
“Pis’mo ministru kinematografii SSSR tov.Bolshakovu I.G.,” signed “Direktor studdii “Mosfil’m”
S.Kuznetsova, nachal’nik stsenarnogo otdela K.Kuzakov,” Mosfilm, 2453, op.3, 92, L. 5.

169
in Russia. Ivanov says, “They don’t even have decent music over there.” Glinka replies,
“They will.”
142

When Balakirev sums up Glinka’s role in the history of Russian culture, he says
“Your cause is great, everyone knows that. You are our second Pushkin.”
143
Pushkin (in
Aleksandr Pushkin), on seeing a sculpture by Pimenov, to which he in fact wrote a
dedication, calls Pimenov “brother-in-trade” (sobrat). This might seem peculiar, had
Pushkin not just underscored the point that Pimenov had fathered a new tradition by
calling him “brother:” “Thank God, finally we also have people’s sculpture in Russia!”
(Слава богу, наконец и скульптура в России появилась народная!) Although this line
is practically verbatim what Pushkin is actually reported to have said on seeing
Pimenov’s sculpture, his addressing the sculptor as “brother-in-trade” is apocryphal.
144

With this addition a periphrasis is created, whereby Pimenov is a second Pushkin in
sculpture and both are originators of a people’s art.
A similar relationship between terms can be found in Admiral Nakhimov when an
adversarial character (Pelisie) worries that the sinking of ships in Sevastopol Bay will
turn out badly for the countries supporting Turkey: “Russians are setting up a second
Moscow for us.” In this case reference is made to the burning of Moscow in 1812. The
parallel is established even earlier, when the decision to sink the entire fleet is being

142
Mosfilm, 2453, op.3, 580, L.3.
143
“Дело ваше великое, это все знают. Вы наш второй Пушкин” (Mosfilm, 2453, op.3, 580, L. 6).
144
«А. С. Пушкин в энергическом порыве и с навернувшимися на глазах слезами, взяв в обе руки
руку ваятеля, сказал громко: слава богу, наконец и скульптура на Руси явилась народною.»
A.S.Pushkin, PSS, 2
nd
ed., SPb, 1870, vol.1, 520.

170
discussed: “Moscow burned but Rus’ did not perish from that.” Whenever the
honor/glory/integrity of the country is at stake, the country is designated as “Rus’.”
When Aleksandr Popov opens with a title explaining the meaning of inventing
radio through the great Lenin’s phrase that refers to radio as newspaper without the paper
and without the distance, available to the millions, the paraphrasing initiative is ascribed
to Lenin. The titles further detail the uses of radio waves for different spheres of modern
life. Radio is implied to be a vehicle of progress. And the emphatic point is that it was a
Russian man who had invented it. The opening titles already hint at the dispute over the
ownership of the invention. Although this point in itself is nothing new and all of the
biopics of the period feature strong statements about the nature of Russian character, it
sets up the next periphrasis. In the first scene of the film a group of scientists read and
discuss a newspaper article about electricity. The article refers to electricity as “the
Russian light.”
Periphrasis serves to reinforce previously introduced ideas (or variegate the
theme) in a manner that brings in new information, often that of hierarchy.
145

The pseudo-Kantian emphasis on progress is extremely important to the ethos of
social Darwinism present in Stalinist teleology.
146
In a society bound for a destination,
the notion of progress becomes the measure of the course towards the destination. In the
absence of actual class struggle, scientific progress stands in for social progress, which

145
Compare, for instance, Lenin’s use of periphrasis: “Вопрос: как быть, если в России власть перейдет
в руки Советов Р. и С. Д., а в Германии не произойдет такой революции, которая бы низвергла не
только Вильгельма II, но и немецких Гучковых и Милюковых (ибо если немецкого Николая II
заменять немецкие Гучковы и Милюковы, то по отношению к войне ровно ничего не изменится)”
(18/IV-17 г. Наши взгляды, Правда N 35) Quoted in Tynianov 107).
146
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). S. Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology 147,
On Violence 55.

171
explains why it is so important for Soviet official historiography to appropriate the torch
of scientific progress. “Russian light” becomes the symbol of Russian progressiveness in
the disputed issue of radio invention.
As has been pointed out above, periphrastic activity – a marker of a classicizing
aesthetic – is most noticeable in the switch from the 1920s euphemistic but literate to the
1930s euphemistic and obfuscating terms for execution (“slap up against the wall” to “the
highest measure of social protection” to “ten years without the right to correspondence”).
One of the least noticed but most striking instances of periphrasis is Stalin’s 1935 slogan
“Cadres is the answer for everything!” (Кадры решают все!). The shift from the
original slogan “Technology is the answer for everything!” marks the shift in attention to
the people, but only in relation to their function vis-à-vis the State.
Qui gladio ferit, gladio perit
A subset of prophetic statements is the variation of the proverbial “Whoever
comes to us with a sword, will perish from it. On that has always rested the Russian land
and it still does!” (Кто к нам с мечом придет, от меча и погибнет. На том стояла и
стоит русская земля!). The line is popularly believed to have been authored by the
historical Aleksandr Nevskii but was in reality first uttered by actor Cherkasov and
belongs to the Soviet writer Pyotr Pavlenko.
147
The popular attribution is but another
testament to the status of the film Aleksandr Nevskii in modern Russian political culture.

147
P.A Pavelnko, Aleksandr Nevskii: kinopovest’ (1938). The 2003 encyclopedia of idiomatic expressions
and sayings points to a statement from the Gospels as the likely source for the line: “Тогда говорит ему
Иисус: возврати меч твой в его место, ибо все, взявшие меч, мечом погибнут” (Matthew, Chapter 26,
art. 52). A variation of the expression was also widespread in Ancient Rome, at a time preceding the
gospels: “Qui gladio ferit, gladio perit” (V.Serov, ed. Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ krylatykh slov i vyrazhenii
(2003)).

172
In Kutuzov, as Napoleon’s generals try to figure out the main mistake of their
Russian campaign Bonaparte himself enters and says “our main mistake was committed
earlier when we started the campaign against Russia.”
Code of Russian Honor
When director Mikhalkov suggested that the scripts of the late Stalinist biopics be
remade, provided one leaves out “inappropriate ideology” but retains the patriotic thrust
one wonders into which category the incessant articulations of the code of Russian honor
would fall? Great Russians of the biopics as in the instance of the cross-class alignment,
operate on the assumption of this essentially sublime Russian virtue.
Lermontov : “We Russians won’t allow anyone to insult us and go unpunished.”
That this refers to the fact that Dantes remained unpunished is insignificant
because this instance of code articulation serves no other reason than to align Pushkin and
Lermontov through the special Russian code of honor. Lermontov soon also identifies
himself as a Russian soldier: “I am a lieutenant and I won’t comrpomise the honor of the
Tengin regiment. I will fight, as the duty of the Russian soldier bids me.”
148
Since the
film was released in 1944, any connection with military honor is connected to the war
effort and yet the language of the statement and its place in the narrative positions it as an
element of the epic aesthetic, referring to a clear national code rather than a melodramatic
negotiation of choice.
Belinskii: “We, Russians, have to be the first to put this lie [autocracy] to rest.”

148
“Я поручик и не посрамлю честь тенгинского полка. Я буду сражаться так, как мне велит долг
русского воина.”

173
In Admiral Ushakov, Potemkin says to foreign ambassadors: “That’s how Russia
is – it rises early itself and wakes others, too.”
Value of the Great Man’s Life for the Nation
In Minin i Pozharskii, the inevitability of punishment for an assassination attempt
is explained by the value of the Great Man’s life for the community: since the people
have elected Pozharskii the knife was raised at the state, not at the man.
In Admiral Nakhimov, a sailor who covers Nakhimov with his body and takes a
bullet that kills him is relieved to find out that Nakhimov is safe: “Now I can die in
peace.” This episode implies that one life is more valuable than the other, that
Nakhimov’s value to the country is greater than that of a sailor.
Lermontov. The young poet is first spared from battlefield service by a military
superior due to the captain’s spontaneous appreciation of Lermontov’s poetry. Belinskii
also insists that Lermontov be more careful with his life: “You must live, as did Byron,
Goethe, Pushkin…Take care of yourself. Few are the poets in Russia and bitter is their
fate” (“Вы должны жить, как жили Байрон, Гете, Пушкин…Берегите себя, в России
мало поэтов и очень горька их судьба”).
In Aleksandr Pushkin when questioned on the subject of secret societies, Pushchin
explains why he is secretive with Pushkin: “We are protecting you. Your voice must
never go silent for the fatherland” (“Мы бережем тебя. Твой голос не должен
умолкнуть для отчизны никогда”).
Genealogy
Not unlike the celebrated rulers of Rome who claimed their descent from gods,
the Socialist Realist character will claim a genealogical link to the fathers of Marxism-

174
Leninism. In biographical film, genealogical relationships are also always present,
although most biopic narratives take place in times and settings that make it impossible to
provide a connection between Marx, Lenin or Stalin and the given character. However,
for Great Men ties to even greater or at least equally Great Men serve a different purpose
than the oft-repeated endorsements of a working class protagonist by a historical great.
Great Men of the biopics do not require validation per se. They have all earned their spot
in the pantheon by advancing Russian science, art, physical frontiers, etc. Yet the tropes
of their recognizing each other, whether synchronically or diachronically, is given
considerable, repeated attention. In the 1946 Admiral Nakhimov, the protagonist states
emphatically that he is following the spirit, if not the exact testament, of his great
predecessors Ushakov and Lazarev. Michurin of the eponymous film talks of Darwin and
Timiryazev, although since Darwin is not Russian, he had to be cut out of the film.
149
In
Admiral Ushakov (1953), Ushakov insists on creating “the science of naval warfare” and
makes explicit and implicit references to Suvorov’s “science of winning:” even as
Ushakov is reminded that Suvorov fought on the ground, the admiral retorts, “different
tactic, same method.”
The 1949 Akademik Ivan Pavlov features the scientist describing himself as
hugely indebted to Sechenov. Popov's work on radio has to be endorsed by Mendeleev.
The protagonist of Kotovskii (1943) studies Marxism under the tutelage of his friend and
future commissar, but before he joins the Bolsheviks, he emphatically compares himself
to Gaiduki. Gaiduki were the controversial Balkan and Karpatian warriors who had been
represented in Soviet lore as fighters against the Ottoman rule in general and against the

149
Mosfilm, 2453, op. 2, 89, L.7.

175
local rich in particular. The civil war hero, of the 1942 Aleksandr Parkhomenko, gets to
meet Lenin himself, who puts Parkhomenko at the head of the Tsaritsyno battle. With
such an overflow of fraternal and paternal ties, is it any wonder that the parents are absent
from these narratives? The insistence on tracing the connection with forefathers creates a
view of history as uncoiling in similar circles that are driven by comparable historical
logic.
In the script for Borodin:
Balakirev: “Yes, Glinka is like Pushkin in literature. There have been
many talents but it all really began with them.”
Stasov (entering the room): “Miliy, add to that Venetsianov in painting.”
In Lermontov the moment the young poet arrives at the Caucasus, he goes to visit
Griboedov’s tomb.
Progressive community/Kollektivnoe tvorchestvo
(Гигант Пушкин, волшебник Глинка)
In Suvorov (1941), Kutuzov rather modestly says that only the (legendary)
Suvorov could beat Bonaparte. In his turn, Suvorov greets Kutuzov with a warm, friendly
“Mishenka, my one-eyed dear!” and takes him aside in a conspiratorial manner, thereby
creating a hero-to-hero historical community.
150
In Pirogov, the surgeon meets
Nakhimov in Sevastopol: admiral Nakhimov comes to the bed of the sick Pirogov and
urges him to rise because “We only have one Russia” (Россия у нас одна). Thus, the two
historical characters are linked together as THE two people who share not only caring
sentiment but the country’s burden. This is also confirmed by the fact that the studios
insisted on not showing the characters in isolation, and a “progressive community” was

150
“Мишенька, одноглазенький мой!”

176
always preferred to showing a brilliant loner. In the first versions of Kompozitor Glinka
representation of the progressive community was taken to ridiculous lengths. A
progressive circle was the source of all decisions, creative and otherwise.
151
Here, as
elsewhere, a community of greats is presented as the “source of inspiration” – possibly
the central character problem of the Soviet biopic. Although this particular instance of
mutual inspiration between Great Men is based on fact – it was Griboedov who informed
Glinka of the popular Georgian folk tune and Pushkin who wrote the poem after hearing
the music played by Glinka – the density of great names per square meter is suggestive of
the narrative pressures on the Soviet biopic. Between pages 56 and 70 of the script the
following famous people are referred to or appear in person to discuss Glinka’s work at
his concert: the composer Berlioz, the poet Nekrasov, the critic Belinskii (in two
episodes), admirals Nakhimov and Kornilov, writers Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, writer
Balzac whispering to writer Stendhal, and even the philosophers Marx and Engels.
152

The origin of the idea for Glinka’s opera Ivan Susanin is also tied to progressive
circles. Glinka and Pushkin talk about the impact of the 1812 war on the Russian narod.
1812 would be a good subject but censorship does tends to exercise caution with 1812, so
Pushkin suggests going back to earlier times in history to find a subject that would deal
with the heroism of the Russian people. Glinka mentions that Zhukovskii had previously
suggested Susanin. Pushkin approves of what is implicitly another instance of the

151
First drafts envision the process of creation in this manner: “И вот уж мы видим – художник
Айвазовский напевает ему какой-то грузинский мотив, Грибоедов его уточняет. ... У вас, Мишель,
врожденный вкус к восточной музыкe... а тенор Иванов на вечере у Жуковского поёт “Не пой,
красавица при мне.” Later the origin of this song is turned into a less crude but still collaborative version
of creation: Nina Chavchavadze starts singing a Georgian song, and as Glinka rushes to the piano to
improvise, Pushkin jots down the entire poem, the mutual effort thus amounting to the famous романс.
152
Mosfilm, 2453, op.3, 574, LL.56-70.

177
awakening of people’s political consciousness. This episode exposes the very
historiographical procedure that reigns over the late Stalinist culture and in particular the
biopic – a search for precursors in earlier times and a striking facility for creating
equivalence between different periods.
In the script for Borodin the composer plays while Dargomyzhskii and Balakirev
discuss what is missing – a cue for Musorgskii to step in and find the solution for the epic
theme in Prince Igor.
153
This is followed by discussions of the plays of Ostrovskii, the
music of Musorgskii and Vasnetsov’s painting of the bogatyri. Repin is shown painting
the portrait of the influential music critic Stasov.
Pushkin of the Aleksandr Pushkin script repeatedly quotes Griboedov’s Woe from
Wit.
154
The poet Adam Mickiewicz on hearing the reading of “Boris Godunov:” “I hear
the wind of history today. Let me kiss you, my brother, my elder brother in pen!” “To the
brotherhood of poets! Symbolizing the brotherhood of our nations!”
155
Kiss to general
applause.
In the script for Sofia Kovalevskaia (in a scene absent from the film) the
mathematician gives Dostoevsky the idea for his novel The Adolescent.
156
Sonya meets
her future husband V.Kovalevskii in the courtroom, where they immediately identify
each other as “our kind” (наши). In Belinskii Vissarion Grigoryevich speaks as a proto-
revolutionary when he comes upon a group of like-minded men who are actively opposed

153
“А конец первой части такой – скрестили богатыри оружие с врагами.”
154
2453 op. 3, 169.
155
“Ветер истории слышу сегодня. Разрешите поцеловать вас, брат мой, старший брат мой по перу!
Пушкин: Целуйте, Мицкевич! За братство поэтов! Олицетворяющее братство наших народов!”
156
The script fails to mention that Dostoevsky courted and was even considered engaged to Sofia’s sister
Anna for several months.

178
to autocracy: “I’d like to know how many of ‘ours’ there are around.”
157
Here the
progressive part of the public appears to be a proxy for the “party” avant la lettre.
Belinskii in general is portrayed in consonance with Trotskii’s declaration that were
Belinskii alive in the era of the October Revolution he would be member of the Politburo.
In Akademik Ivan Pavlov, Sergey Kirov pays the scientist a friendly visit. As part
of the ideological embrace, Kirov informs Pavlov that the Communist Party considers the
scientist “one of us” and assures him that the Party and scientific progress are propelling
history in the same direction: “Michurin’s gardens are advancing into the polar circle. A
sea is planned to appear in Central Asia.”
158

The Giant Pushkin
Pushkin acknowledges his own greatness as he addresses his little son Sasha in
the crib, when he tells the boy not to write poetry, since he, Sasha, is not going to be able
to outdo his father and writing mediocre poetry is pointless. Pushkin here serves not only
as the creator of Russian literature but also as its only legitimate mouthpiece. A famous
line from Pushkin’s monument (“всяк сущий в ней язык”) metonymically represents
self-actualization for the other nations under the Russian rule but, while the artiсulation
may happen in the language of the Tungus or the Finn, it is only to give tribute to
Pushkin. Late Stalinist ideology especially emphasized Pushkin’s fathering of the
Russian language. Out of all the different types of genius that Pushkin represents – poet,

157
“Знать бы, сколько таких “своих.”
158
“Мичуринские сады наступают на заполярье. Запланировано море в Средней Азии.”

179
historiographer, patriot – the role of the creator of the language was especially
underscored in Stalin’s figuration as an expert in linguistics.
159

The original treatment for Kompozitor Glinka boldly suggests that Pushkin be
shown as the mentor responsible for the education of Glinka’s soul. It is Pushkin who
insists that Glinka go to Italy in order to learn the art of integrating folk music into their
works from Italians. When Ivan Susanin premieres Pushkin makes a pun comparing
Glinka not with clay (glina) but with the product of its transformation, porcelain.
160

Pushkin also approves of Glinka’s work on Ruslan and Liudmila and even promises to
introduce changes into the poem so as to make a suitable libretto.
161

Pushkin adopts both Lenin’s language and his role as the Leader.
162
While it is not
surprising that Pushkin is presented as an authority for Glinka to look up to, the striking
language of a boss talking to his inferior solidifies the hierarchy.
163
For Shevchenko the
very source of creativity goes back to Pushkin. Pushkin's greatness is so overwhelming
that even in death it provides impetus for other greats' creative output, as Shevchenko
says, “It was all so quiet. And, in the silence, for the first time poetry appeared in my

159
In his review of one of the drafts for Aleksandr Pushkin, D.Blagoi points out that the recent ‘speeches of
genius’ by comrade Stalin make it indispensable to show Pushkin’s role as the founder of the Russian
language and make this a priority over Pushkin’s other achievements. Mosfilm 2468, op.2, 294. Delo
kinokartiny “Aleksandr Pushkin”.
160
«Нынче наш Миша не Глинка, а фарфор!»
161
Pushkin is a towering presence in Kompozitor Glinka. On seeing him in a theater the young Glinka says,
“Я читал его “Руслана.” И все во мне пело. Это какое-то колдовство. Если бы я мог своей музыкой
подняться до вершин его поэзии и светлых мыслей. Не оторвать глаз от него. Навождение.”
Viel’gorskii says: “Не выпадете в партер, Глинка” (Mosfilm, 2453, op. 3, 575. Literaturnyi stsenarii
“Slavsya!”, 2-oi variant. 1950).
162
Pushkin to Glinka: «Не переносить к себе готовое, но разгадать тайну итальянского волшебства –
наша задача (учиться, учиться, учиться военному делу – вот наша задача). Судьба наградила тебя
инстиктом истины, верно идешь” (vernoi dorogoi idete, tovarishchi).
163
Pushkin to Glinka about Ruslan and Lyudmila “Набросай мне твои соображения. Я, может быть, для
тебя переделаю поэму ” (2453 op.3. 580, L.4).

180
soul…”
164
Even after his death, Pushkin continues to oversee the process of creation in
the Russian culture. Belinskii acts as an intermediary as he says to the young Lermontov:
“Yes, you are right. Beautiful poetry in Russia was written by Pushkin. You have now
taken over his place.”
165

The very value of the young Lermontov’s life is underwritten by the lesson of
Pushkin’s life and death. As Lermontov opens in a ballroom in January 1837 the young
poet is entirely consumed with anticipation of a promised introduction to the great
Pushkin. As Lermontov appears at the ball, chats with acquaintances and dances with his
current love interest, he mentions the older poet’s name a total of five times in the first
ten minutes of screen time. The trauma of the tragic news – Pushkin’s duel took place
that very day – is shown as the factor that propels Lermontov to national fame. After
writing an inflammatory poem Lermontov is exiled to the Caucusus and after he comes
back, he is treated as Pushkin’s successor.
166

In an even more mystical way Glinka oversees the creation of Russian music in
the unproduced script for Borodin, where composer Dargomyzhskii engages in a fierce
confrontation with Glinka’s portrait over the issue of disciples and tradition and, as the
portrait comes alive in Dargomyzhskii’s mind, he dies.
Essentially the device of “passing on the baton,” the community of greats, usually
conceived of in the terms of filiation or of brotherhood, amounts to a projection of the
notion of the vanguard or consciousness into the past. This “party” motif competes with

164
“Было тихо-тихо. И вот тогда, в тишине, в первый раз зазвучали в моей душе стихи...”
165
“Да, вы правы. Прекрасные стихи в России писал Пушкин. Вы теперь на его место заступили.”
166
An intertitle reads: “Вернувшись с Кавказа, Лермонтов был с интересом встречен в Петербурге,
как преемник славы Пушкина, которому он принес себя в жертву.”

181
that of the “lone genius.” The opposition is laid bare in the studio notes – most clearly, in
the instances of Michurin and Surikov.
167

4.7 Adversarial Forces
Community of peers
The central conflict in Hollywood biopics is the antagonistic relationship between
the hero and his community (Custen 71). The same can be said of the Soviet biopics.
Apart from the natural opposition like that between military enemies, biopic characters
face a hostile environment, either in their scientific, artistic or other professional milieu.
Hostility is related to two major sources of opposition to progress, which are autocracy
and foreigners.
Foreigners as the enemy in the discourse of the 1940s far outweigh the horrors of
Russia’s political and economic backwardness. Film after film places adversarial force in
all things foreign. As relations with the WWII allies deteriorated, the domestic attack on
against “cosmopolitanism” increased and the search for evil precursors in the past now
caused film writers to seek similar emplotments in the 19th century. In the script for
Kompozitor Glinka, prince Vielgorskii is described as “a snob and a cosmopolitan, in the
worst sense of the word” (сноб и в худшем смысле слова космополит) because he
consistently praises Italian musicians, causing Pushkin to say, “He won’t be happy

167
When discussing Surikov Stolper makes the point that from the recent series of biopics one could get the
impression that nobody other than the protagonist did anything, despite the fact that the protagonist was
surrounded by great artists. Specifically, the objection was raised against showing Repin as a clown.
Instead, Stolper insisted, one needed to show that, clown or not, Repin also created great art and that these
artists enriched each other’s work.

182
without smuggling something in from abroad” (Ему бы только что-нибудь вывести
из-за границы).
Giaccomo Meyerbeer – Glinka’s ideological adversary – pompously announces
that music is by definition international and cannot have a national character. Glinka is
furious.
Pavlov, the academician, is equally furious at offers of working abroad: “Science
has a fatherland and a scientist must have one, too.You see, I am not a rat, and the ship is
not about to sink. No, I don’t believe it will.”
168

The opposition foreign-Russian is the dramatic pivot of Kompozitor Glinka.
Glinka goes to study to Italy and is quite successful there, touring with the tenor Ivanov.
But he soon exclaims (in reality after two years): “No, sincerely, I do not feel that I am
Italian.” Glinka to Balakirev about Wagner: “Exactly, a meteor – he will race by and
disappear…What is it with you and the Germans? Will he ever be sung by the people?”
A curious feature of Great Men’s patriotic rebuttals to non-patriotic Russians is
their creative use of the Russian language in the process of doing so. In Pirogov, during a
medical argument a foreign expert named Mandt (sporting the same rectangular eye
glasses as a foreign ambassador in Ivan the Terrible) says to Pirogov that “civilized
Europe” recognizes his (Mandt’s) method of atomistic treatment. Pirogov criticizes
“civilized Europe” that has acknowledged many charlatans and says that Russians are not
going to go on “monkeying” after others (“na obezyanii maner”). After Catherine II tells
Admiral Ushakov in French that she promotes him in rank, he retorts, “I do not use

168
“Наука имеет отечество, и ученый обязан его иметь. Я, знаете ли, не крыса, и корабль не потонет.
Нет, не верю.”

183
French.”
169
On meeting a scientist who works abroad and asks about news in Russia,
Pavlov wittily rhymes back: “Что ж, живем, хлеб жуем, а с предателями родины не
разговариваем.” Michurin: “Я русский человек, и нет таких денег и пароходов,
которые могли бы увезти меня из России.” Belinskii: “Can he [the foreign doctor] ever
understand how we loved Gogol’ [and how we therefore worry about Gogol’s embrace of
the Russian autocracy] and how we still love him?”
170

On the surface level of the narrative, the two major forces – autocracy and
foreigners – are represented by a number of institutions that demonstrate rigidity and
resistance to progress. A common motif is the competition between Russian and foreign
achievements in professions, whereby a tsarist bureaucrat will always support foreigners,
usually out of obsequious veneration of all things Western. In a typical manner, in
Przhevalskii a scientist successful with the Royal Science Academy says of the
protagonist: “He is going to have to yield the road to the people of modern formation, of
the European mold.” Opposition is expressed in the spontaneous and overwhelming
support for the protagonist by young people.
This antithesis (tsarist/pro-foreign/bureaucratic versus
young/revolutionary/raznochinets) is especially obvious in Pirogov. Pirogov’s enemies
hit two birds with one stone when the authorities arrest his revolutionary assistant Fyodor
who is carrying a prescription of ether for Pirogov to use in a public demonstration.

169
In Belinskii, one hears an even stronger tirade: “Наши безмозглые либералы восхищаются тем, что в
Европе все равны перед законом. Здесь равны перед законом и те, кто возит на себе уголь, и те, кто
в карете. Здесь те же Чичиковы…Они покупают живые [души] на парламентских выборах. …Горе
государству, которое в руках капиталистов. Это люди без патриотизма. Для них мир или война – это
только возвышение или упадок фонда.”

170
“Разве он может понять, как мы любили Гоголя и как мы любим его.”

184
When the arrested Fyodor’s fiancé volunteers to help, a foreign pharmacist intentionally
gives her the wrong prescription.
Formidable Powers/Adversarial Endorsement
Whatever the actual shape of resistance in the narrative, almost inevitably, close
to the beginning, a scene takes place which features a conversation between colleagues or
peers of the Great Man. These discussions feature the main ideological points of the
conflict but, curiously, even as the conversations are overwhelmingly critical of the
protagonist and his cause, there is always one voice either defending the protagonist or
extolling his formidable qualities. Although in some instances the voice speaking in favor
of the protagonist is his collaborator or friend, in many films the endorsement actually
comes from an adversary, who simply cannot help but acknowledge the merits of the
protagonist (Michurin, Kompozitor Glinka, Akademik Ivan Pavlov, Pirogov, Przhevalskii
etc. ).
A variation of this device – extrapolation of endorsement on the nation – can also
be seen in a number of films. In these instances, it is a powerful representative of the
enemy – British, Turkish, French, etc. – who is forced to acknowledge the greatness of
Russia and its people. In Admiral Ushakov the British Prime Minister Sir Pitt maintains
that Russian ships in the Black Sea are the greatest blow to England since the founding of
St. Petersburg. A variation of the same statement had already been made in Admiral
Nakhimov, where a British commander says that ‘these Russians are a great nation”, even
if they are not quite to the British taste.
171
In Kutuzov, a French general points out that it

171
Адмирал Ушаков: “Русские корабли на Черном море – это самый страшный удар для Англии со
времён основания Петербурга.” Адмирал Нахимов “Эти русские – это великая нация. Правда, они
совсем не в нашем вкусе.”

185
is not going to be an easy battle (Borodino) given the fury with which “these Russians
have gone out to meet their death!”
172

Since the adversary often arrives at this conclusion based on the actions of our
protagonist, these instances of grudging acknowledgment foreground the metonymic
treatment of nations through Great Men, or, more precisely, Russians through great
Russians. The same rhetorical substitution is at work here as in the instance of class-
nation identification, when a Great Man comes upon a common man and having
established a connection proceeds to extol the virtues of the russkii narod that refer back
to himself. Here the radiation of virtues happens in the opposite direction, whereby the
Great Man’s virtues are discussed and in the same segment (phrase, scene), his
nationality is brought to attention. In the following example this amalgam is incorporated
into “the enemy acknowledgment” cliché:
Admiral Ushakov

Nelson: I would have been happy to have him (Ushakov) under my
command...but he is older, higher – both in rank and, I would say, in the
number of victories.
Hamilton: Over the Turks, Sir! That was in the days of yore...
Nelson: Drop it, Hamilton! You’re not a sailor. He is a wise, daring...and
independent admiral. And once he raises his sails, he is not likely to roll
them down. I am afraid he will move towards the Ionic islands. To liberate
the Greeks. They have the same faith!
173

172
“С какой яростью эти русские шли на смерть! Вот с каким народом нам придется завтра
сражаться.”
173
Адмирал Ушаков
Нельсон: “Я был бы рад иметь его (Ушакова) в подчинении…но он старше меня годами, званием и,
я бы сказал, количеством побед.” Гамильтон: “Над турками, сэр! И когда это было…” Нельсон:
“Оставьте, Гамильтон! Вы не моряк. Это мудрый, дерзкий…и независимый адмирал. И если он
поднял паруса, вряд ли станет их сворачивать. Боюсь, он двинется на ионические острова.
Освобождать греков. Единоверцы!”

186
In Admiral Nakhimov, the enemy military leader Osman Pasha says that he is surprised
by the noble behaviour Russians exhibit towards their captives and by their courage in
battle and a British commander comments: “These Russians really only get better at
battle every month, not worse. I cannot imagine what new misfortunes could break
them.”
174

In a script draft for Kompozitor Glinka during a performance of Glinka’s
“Aragonese jota” Meyerbeer asks Ferenz Liszt, who is shown quite unsympathetically:
“How are you going to respond to this jota?” Meyerbeer’s question is a challenge and it is
dramatically resolved when Liszt responds laconically, “With admiration.”
175
This
follows right after Karl Marx, also present at the concert, tells Prosper Merimee that the
Russians are going to eclipse Germanic civilization.
A subset of this device – appraisal of the audience of the Great Man’s formidable
powers is the ability to defy the elements or even death. In Sofia Kovalevskaia, the
mathematician’s mentor admiringly tells her: “People like you cannot but win.” In
Admiral Nakhimov sailors are convinced the admiral is beyond physical demise.
Suvorov: “Carrying, they are carrying him. The horse got killed underneath him,
and he is not even touched. Kotovskii: “And so Grigoriy Kotovskii became a criminal but
a prison that could hold him had not yet been built.”
176

174
“Эти русские действительно с каждым месяцем дерутся не хуже, а лучше. Я не представляю,
какие новые бедствия могли бы сломить их.”

175
- Чем вы ответите на эту хоту? - Преклонением.
176
“Такие как вы не могут не победить.”
“Ты думаекшь, это ему буря? ЭТО, брат, море перед ним дрожит.”
“Несут, несут. Лошадь под ним убили, а ему ничего.”

187
Secondary characters/Disciples
The Great Men beleaguered by a rigid tsarist/foreign opposition are usually
aided/acknowledged by a younger assistant/group of students. The secondary plot –
romantic or conspiratorial – develops around the younger characters (as in Admiral
Nakhimov (1
st
version), Pirogov, Velikii voin Albanii Skanderbeg, Rimskii-Korsakov).
Spontaneous ties of affection arise among the Great Men and groups of young people –
usually students (Akademik Ivan Pavlov, Przhevalksii, Aleksandr Pushkin, Michurin,
Zhukovskii) Young people / “students” appear to stand in for the revolutionary populist
movement, whether or not such equivalence is historically correct.
Anachronisms
Leninisms
Many Great Men adopt the language characteristic of Vladimir Lenin. This is
manifest in overuse of superlatives as well as in the use of Lenin’s exact or slightly
altered phraseology. Paradoxically, despite Pushkin’s status as the creator of the Russian
literary language, the character’s speech is also contaminated with Lenin-like, 20
th

century, sloganeering elements. In a script draft of Kompozitor Glinka Pushkin uses a
Leninist double superlative.
177

“Так Григорий Котовский стал преступником, но еще не была построена та тюрьма, в которой
могли бы его удержать.”

177
According to Selishchev, superlatives did not gain overwhelming currency they did in the 20
th
century,
until Lenin’s rise. (page) In the script for Aleksandr Pushkin Pushkin uses words like “интереснейший.” In
Kompozitor Glinka, Pushkin telss the young composer, “Вы же превосходнейший музыкант.” Судьба
наградила тебя инстинктом истины, верно идешь. (Lenin: верной дорогой идёте, товарищи) Pushkin
tells Glinka about Ruslan i Liudmila: “Jot down your thoughts for me, will you? I might change the poem
for you” (Набросай мне твои соображение. Я, может быть, для тебя переделаю поэму).

188
In Belinskii, the all but dying character makes an accusatory speech about the
deceptive nature of constitutional equality in the West, using both Lenin’s phrases and his
rhetorical maneuvers: “Our brainless liberals [Lenin’s expression] are delighted that in
Europe everyone is equal under the law… Here equal under the law are those who carry
charcoal on their backs and those who ride in carriages.”
At first sight, this is a strange phrase, because Western democracies regularly take
pride in the equality of different classes under the law. However, it is the nature of the
very value of equality that is being questioned. This questioning is assisted by visuals that
demonstrate the oppression of working classes in the West. The rhetorical thrust of
Belinskii’s speech is the same as that of many of Lenin’s speeches, in which, in
Tynianov’s words, the leader “puts the opponent’s words in quotation marks” in order to
lampoon the self-evident value of the word. One of Lenin’s most spectacular rhetorical
achievements was his manipulations with the meaning of the word ‘freedom’ as in the
following examples: “The word “freedom” is a good word. At every corner we encounter
“freedom”: freedom to trade, freedom to sell and to be sold, etc;” “Free trade of bread
means the freedom for the rich to make a profit, the freedom to die for the poor.”
178

When Belinskii argues with Slavophiles, he relies on the famous Lenin line “We
will choose another path” pronounced in reference to his brother Aleksandr’s terrorist
activities. Belinskii: “We will go, but not back to the domostroi, we will go forward. …

178
This example comes from Lenin’s speech at a rally in March 1919: “Слово “свобода” - хорошее слово.
На каждом шагу “свобода”: свобода торговать, продавать, продаваться и т. д.”; “Свободная торговля
хлебом - это значит свобода наживаться для богатых, свобода умирать для бедных” (Ответ на
запрос крестьянам, Правда, 1919 г. N 35. Quoted in Tynianov 96).

189
Moreover, the path of the Russian people will become the path of the whole of
mankind.”
179

Representation of some of the protagonists’ circumstances can be framed by the
tropes of iconic representations of Lenin from the Lenin films which made in the 1930s.
As Belinskii ails, this very rare portrayal of sickness echoes that of Lenin’s sickness. The
doctor who attends to Belinskii’s consumption in Europe forbids the critic to worry or do
any work but the Great Man gets upset at the insensitivity of the doctor who can issue
such orders at the time when the country is in peril (Cf.: Appassionata, Lenin v Oktiabre;
Rasskazy o Lenine).
Although no direct link to Lenin’s statements can be established in some instances
the contamination of the language is often tangible and comes across as a Leninism:
Pavlov, “My molchat’ ne sobiraemsya, budem ubezhdat’ faktami.” Characters will also
often adopt Lenin’s iconic gestures. In Belinskii, Lenin’s mannerisms are part of both
Herzen’s and Belinskii’s personae. Most significantly, Herzen adopts Lenin’s
mannerisms in order to recap the last part of a famous Lenin article on Herzen himself.
180

Taras Shevchenko utilizes Lenin’s phraseology as he recaps Lenin’s “three stages
of the Russian revolution,” arguing that the only way forward is work towards a popular
uprising: “Пробудить крестьян. Не заговор кучки образованных людей, а народное
восстание.” Herzen (striking a Lenin pose) issues a program for the progressive

179
“Мы пойдем не назд к домострою, а вперёд…Более того, путь русского народа станет путём
всего человечества.”
180
“In memory of Herzen” in “Социал-Демократ” № 26, 8 мая (25 апреля) 1912.

190
community of Russian intellectuals: “Our entire lives have to be dedicated to unsettling
the two-headed effigies of autocracy.”
181

Belinskii strikes a Lenin pose again as he adopts the language of building
communism: “We are not the ones building it, it will be up to our grandchildren, but we
must clear the path for them.”
182
The use of the word “construction” in relation to the
future, and specifically to Communism of the future, is a feature of the 20
th
century,
Leninist rhetoric.
183
The word “construction” was a main signifier for the process of
bringing about the Communist future until the very collapse of the Soviet system.
Although found in abundance in writings of Lenin, Trotskii, Bukharin, etc., the word
probably first entered Russian discourse through the line in the anthem of the
International: “We will build our own new world…” (“Мы наш, мы новый мир
построим...”)

181
The virtual merging between Herzen and Lenin is justifiable. Tynianov wrote that it was Lenin’s
polemical style that experienced a great influence of Herzen’s argumenattive flare: “из русских именно на
полемический стиль Ленина несомненно влиял стиль Герцена, в особенности намеренного
вульгаризированный стиль его маленьких статей в "Колоколе" - с резкими формулами и
каламбурными названиями статей” (Tynianov 110).
182
“Мы еще не строим, строить будут наши внуки, но мы обязаны расчистить путь для них.”
183
See V. Lenin “Voprosy stroitel’stva sotsializma I kommunizma v SSSR.” To appreciate the
insidiousness of this usage in the sense of “connector” with the future consider this typical sentence from
the 1962 “Communist Party Program,” which features three words with the root стро- (‘to construct’),
where “construction” refers to ‘moving forward, developing’, not to ‘building’ objects but that retains the
meaning of ‘physically creating:’ “Достигнутые результаты в построении развитого
социалистического общества, единство целей и действий партии и народа, задачи развёрнутого
коммунистического строительства обусловили и возрастание роли и значения КПСС, которая,
продолжая оставаться партией рабочего класса, стала в то же время партией всего советского
народа — строителя коммунизма” (The results so far achieved in the construction of a developed
socialist society, a unity between the party and the people in their goals and actions, the tasks of advanced
communist construction have determined the increased and heightened role of the CPSU, which, while
remaining the party of the working class, has at the same time become the party of the entire Soviet people,
the construction worker of communism) (Program issued by the 22
nd
Communist Party Congress, October
31, 1961. CPSU XXIInd Congress. Stenographic report, Moscow, 1962).

191
Prophetism
Even as an outside critic, A.Bazin could astutely discern the selection principle
for the Soviet pantheon – namely, the correct vision of history – something that justifies
Peter’s less than admirable outbursts and even rubs off on his retinue to minimize the
adverse perception of their power-mongering and debauchery, for they, too, have chosen
the correct side of history by aligning themselves with the man of vision.
The principle “History will be the one to judge” is an implicit refrain of many
historical films, but in the Soviet biopic “History has already passed its verdict” and the
Great Man does not hesitate to brandish his superiority in front of his contemporaries.
Beyond the problems of realism or anachronistic emplotment such instances of
“prophetism” underscore the protagonist’s exclusive relationship with History and,
through his uncanny access to the future, his belonging to the nation understood as a
historical continuum.
Aleksandr Nevskii, 1938. Aleksandr’s prophetic statement at the close of the first
scene “We can wait with the Mongols, there is an enemy more dangerous … more
cruel… And having defeated him, we could take the Tatars on.”
184
I. Danilevskii has
argued that even the possibility of such thought process in the 13th century is negligible,
because the devastating Tatar invasion (1236-1240) in the north-western Rus’ territories
as well as the earthquakes that followed it, had precipitated an all but definite sense of the
end of the world in the official written culture of the time, including in a collection of

184
“S Mongolom podozhdat’ mozhno. Opasnee Tatarina vrag est’– blizhe, zlee…A ego razbivshi, i za tatar
mozhno vzyatsya.”

192
sources on the life of Aleksandr Nevskii.
185
Living in the anticipation of the Antichrist,
whose coming had first announced itself with the arrival of the “impure peoples,”
Aleksandr’s contemporaries did not anticipate a “later time” in which to shake off the
Tatar yoke. The significance of resisting the Teutonic knights as opposed to trying to
fight off the Tatars, Danilevskii concludes, rested in preserving a religious autonomy, not
a territorial one. The aggressor, not defender in the instance of the Chud’ lake battle (a
modest military encounter whose victims most likely counted in the low dozens on both
sides), Aleksandr succeeded in completing fighting off a largely proselytizing mission of
the knights, who had come to Pskov in 1240 together with seven (!) bishops in their
mission of several dozen higher ranking church members. Danilevskii argues that the
special “vision” of history, in which one enemy was to be fought off for good so that the
country could focus on the next one (Tatars) originates with the Sergei Eisenstein/Petr
Pavlenko script, originally published in the journal Znamia in 1937.
Other instances:
Belinskii: The aforementioned statement by Belinskii on the Russian path, away
from domostroy and towards the building of radiant future.
Suvorov: “But in vain will Europe move against Russia – here it will find a fierce
hatred, a mighty courage and a coffin for itself.”
186

Lermontov: After the protagonist is killed in a duel, critic Belinskii reminds us
that Lermontov’s name will soon become known to everyone.

185
I.N. Danilevskii, “Aleksandr Nevskii: Paradoksy istoricheskoi pamiati,” in Tsep’ vremion: Problemy
istoricheskogo soznaniia, (Moscow: IVI RAN, 2005): 119-132.

186
“Но тщетно двинется Европа на Россию – она найдёт здесь ненависть лютую, доблесть великую
и свой гроб.”

193
Pirogov announces that despite his recent spectacular failure with ether, “narcosis
is destined to have a brilliant future” because “the forward motion of science is inevitable
and inexorable.”
In Przhevalskii, the scientist looks around Vladivostok and predicts a glorious
man-made transformation for the now barely inhabited region. In Kutuzov, after the
general prophetically assures the dying Bagration that Moscow is saved, the city burns to
a most lively soundtrack, although sources show that at this time this event was shrouded
in the atmosphere of deepest despondency.
187
Here, as in other biopics, the perspective is
anachronistic: since we today know that this maneuver will indeed end up saving
Moscow, the mood of the event itself is recast.
Some of the prophecies are very specific: in the 1949 Akademik Ivan Pavlov the
scientist is unsettled by the 1912 executions of workers in the Lena basin that had also
famously inspired Vladimir Ul’ianov to take up the name “Lenin.” Pavlov complains of
the same “suffocating” atmosphere that had also adversely affected Pushkin (dushno) and
foresees that the Provisional Government will fall. He is however wildly anxious that the
fall of Kerenskii will be succeeded by the Germans’ advance and a literal dismembering
of Russia.
188

Admiral Nakhimov’s prophetic powers would border on the uncanny and
therefore be unacceptable for the Soviet aesthetic were these not tied to the Historical
vision described by Bazin. Intertitles even admit that “Everything happened just the way

187
N. Antsiferov, Griboedovskaya Moskva 154-156.
188
“Сбросят Керенского – туда ему и дорога. Но ведь немцы наступают – того и гляди разорвут
Россию на клочки.” Sergei Kirov, who visits the old Pavlov, also prophesies: “Yes, I’ve fought a lot, and I
think, I’ll need to fight again, because they are not going to leave us in peace.” Pirogov: “This will help us
a lot during the war.” Fedor: “Are you waiting for one?” Pirogov: “Even on a fine day we need to be
prepared for one.”

194
Nakhimov foresaw it.” This prophetism helps mitigate the sudden on-screen death of the
protagonist, killed by a stray bullet during the siege of Sevastopol. Before that Nakhimov
is almost hit by another bullet, and when cautioned by his cowardly (tsarist official)
companion, Nakhimov shrugs and says, “They are sharp shooters today!” A second later,
in the middle of a sentence, Nakhimov is shot in the head.
In Admiral Ushakov Potemkin teases the admiral over his future glory, believing
that Ushakov’s maneuver will result in a bust or a statue to himself, rather than to
Ushakov. Ushakov sticks to his desire to fight the Turks, leaving it to posterity to
“hopefully, figure it out for themselves.”
Terror
Several films make references to punishment of the enemies of the people,
especially foreign ones. In Minin i Pozharskii, the attempted assassin is executed with the
words: “You have sold your soul to the Poles, so you die” (Ты ляхам душу продал, а
значит, тебе – смерть). Kutuzov dismisses Benigsen with a seeming innocent piece of
advice “Go to Kaluga, get some treatment.” When Benigsen inquires what the treatment
would be for, Kutuzov paraphrases the idiom usually associated with arrests: “They will
figure it out in Kaluga” (В Калуге разберутся. Cf.: Там разберутся). In Admiral
Ushakov, Potemkin also insistently advises count N to get some rest, but the appropriate
treatment sounds like a threat.
189

It becomes apparent that some of the recurrent elements, like those related to the
purges, are instances of the political agenda finding its way into cinema in an unmediated

189
“Плохо выглядишь, болен, отправляйся на отдых. Тебе пряника нельзя, тебе баночки, баночки,
банки тебе.”

195
manner whereas others, like the projection of the ideal Rus’ into the pas,t serve goals of
creating an imagined national continuity in Russian history.

196
Conclusion
As one looks at the course of the Soviet biopic between 1934 and 1953, one
wonders what would have happened to the genre had the country’s course not changed
shortly after Stalin’s death. While its narrative developments do not inspire optimism
about the potential future of epic story-telling, it appears that amidst theoretically
justified austerity a modicum of stylistic experimentation still found its way into films
like Kompozitor Glinka and Michurin. Even before large-scale de-Stalinization took
place, Nikita Khrushchev addressed Soviet film-makers in 1954 and urged them to turn
their attention to contemporaries instead of historical greats. In fact, as late as 1963, at a
time when the prize-winning young director Andrei Tarkovsku was developing the script
for Andrei Rublev, biopic’s lingering association with the personality cult was still an
issue for the Mosfilm studio.
190
The fate of Tarkovsky’s film is itself a testament to the
legacy of Stalinist aesthetic. Andrey Rublev was originally approved on the premise that
the film was primarily about the people (narod), not a biopic glorifying a historical
personality. The emphasis on the concept of narod as “the creator of History” that one
sees in the Mosfilm editors’ notes continues in the footsteps of Stalinist historiography
but, importantly, it projects the narod democratically, as the environment that produced
opposition both to foreign and internal oppression, and that was responsible for the
creation of national culture and art.
191
At the same time, the memo criticized the script for

190
Mosfilm studio artistic council was careful to distinguish the concept of the people in Andrey Rublev
from the Stalinist biopic, especially when it came to the idea of Russians’ supremacy in the arts and science
(“Protokol [zasedaniia]. Stsenarii A.Konchalovskogo i A.Tarkovskogo. “Nachala i puti”, April 20, 1964.”
Goskino, 2944, op.4, 794, L. 17).
191
“Zakliuchenie khudozhestvennogo soveta VI tvorcheskogo obyedineniia po stsenariiu
A.Konchalovskogo i A.Tarkovskogo ‘Nachala i puti’, December 23, 1963 (Goskino, 2944, op.4, 794,
L.10).

197
its loose, episodic narrative structure and pointed out that such epic breadth even in
portrayals of a nation stood “in clear contradiction with the very principles of the genre of
film script.”
192

Another important recurrence of the debate that we saw in the 1940s was the
question of naturalism. Once Andrey Rublev was made, the most consistent criticism was
its “naturalism” in portraying the Tatars’ pillaging of the Russian lands. Words like
“naturalism,” “excessive,” “overly violent,” “tasteless,” and “unpleasant” are featured in
evaluations and conclusions from different entities of the studio, both in reference to the
script, the footage and the film submitted in 1966. The film was accepted by the studio in
1966 on condition that a number of scenes be cut out, especially the ones with dying
animals, gushing blood and references to rape. In retrospect, the matter-of-fact tone of the
suggestions targeting ‘naturalism’ discloses how self-evident it was for the film-makers
and editors of the period that such portrayals were in some fundamental violation of the
principle of visual story-telling.
Would these opinions still stand if the film was considered in the context of
Eisenstein’s early films or even the 1939 Minin i Pozharskii? Why did “naturalism”
remain such a powerful notion, a definitive taboo for an implicitly understood appropriate
aesthetic? One suggestion comes from the studio notes themselves: one of the script
reviewers suggests that the naturalistic portrayals in Andrey Rublev promote the theme of
“the suffering people,” which, in turn, undermines the idea of the people co-creating as it
were a powerful artist like Rublev.
193

192
“Zakliuchenie po literaturnomu stsenariiu ‘Nachala i puti’” in Goskino, 2944, op.4, 794, L.13.
193
“Protokol [zasedaniia]. Stsenarii A.Konchalovskogo i A.Tarkovskogo “Nachala i puti,” April 20, 1964”
in Goskino, 2944, op.4, 794, L. 18.

198
It is clear from this example that some of the tropes of Stalinist biopic survived while
others were overturned. While it was during later Stalinism that one saw the suppression
of the theme of the victimization of the lower classes, it was not to suggest that the people
were the source of origin for a strong artist, because the leader in the Stalinist biopic was
not expected to organically emerge from the midst of the people.
As this example shows, the study of the Stalinist biopic demonstrates a maturation
of the Soviet film aesthetic that continued to exert influence for many decades to come.
The recent resurgence of the biopic with such notable 2008 examples as S. Bodrov’s
Mongol and I. Kalionov’s Aleksandr: Nevskaia bitva underscores the intense interest of
the current Russian state in forging a perceived national continuity. As in the case of The
Mongol, despite the director’s vociferous refutations of any ideological borrowings from
Eisenstein’s 1944 Ivan the Terrible, in the climate of rising cultural pride contemporary
film-making is bound to be affected by the works that are now seen as classic examples
of the genre. In the context of the 2000s’ state-building efforts, the story of the Stalinist
biopic needs a critical perspective that neither rejects the genre wholesale for its cultic
view of History nor embraces it uncritically thanks to its patriotic spirit. It appears that
extremes of ideologically tainted reception can be remedied when the artists’ agency is
historicized within the relevant frame of reference, which includes both the Communist
Party’s imperative to express the epoch and the material conditions of work within the
Soviet film industry.

199
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract This dissertation examines the evolution of the Soviet biographical film between the years 1934 and 1953, its stable recurrent elements and the major narrative changes that began to develop in the late 1930s. The study demonstrates two distinct types of narratives operative in the biographical films made before or around 1941 and those made in the 1940s. Chapter One introduces the categories that frame the analysis of Soviet film genre, an endeavor complicated by the fact that the Soviet critics openly challenged the notion of "genre." To avoid the confusion between the historical Soviet understanding of the genre and the contemporary definition of genre in film a larger distinction into epic and melodramatic modes of story-telling is introduced. Chapter Two analyses Stalinist culture’s gravitation toward the epic sense of reality, particularly evident in Soviet historiography and in theoretical statements on the development of narrative in Soviet film. The chapter shows how the disappearance of internal conflict in the protagonist, the loose episodic narrative structure and a static, austere, monumental style were welcomed and rationalized by the critics, who pronounced these developments welcome hallmarks of the epic film aesthetic. Chapter Three presents the case of one specific major concern of the Soviet film critics in their pursuit of the perfect cinematic realism, that of "naturalistic" tendencies that came to include a number of aesthetic phenomena. Acceptable in the 1920s Soviet art, portrayals of violence, death and disease still appeared in the 1930s' biographical films but had been positioned inside strong melodramatic collisions, and their affective power was leveraged for purposes of character motivation and for negotiation of peace-time ethics. Chapter Four discusses the narrative units that sustain the Soviet biopic, at various levels, like the elements that make up the plot, determine characterization and recur in mis-en-scenes.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Vasilyeva, Elena (author)

Core Title Two decades of Soviet biographical film: from revolutionary romanticism to epic monumentalism

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Slavic Languages

Publication Date 12/20/2009

Defense Date 09/09/2009

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag biopic,OAI-PMH Harvest,Socialist Realism,Soviet cinema

Place Name Russia (countries)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Zholkovsky, Alexander (committee chair), Kinder, Marsha (committee member), Levitt, Marcus (committee member), Pratt, Sarah (committee member)

Creator Email vassyuta@yahoo.com,vassyuta12@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m2794

Unique identifier UC1177150

Identifier etd-Vasilyeva-3285 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-302403 (legacy record id),usctheses-m2794 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Vasilyeva-3285-0.pdf

Dmrecord 302403

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Vasilyeva, Elena

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu