University of Glasgow

Istoriya Sovetskogo Kino 1917-1967 v Chetyrekh Tomakh. Tom I: 1917-1931Review by: Richard TaylorSoviet Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Jul., 1971), pp. 166-167Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/149735 .

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Istoriya sovetskogo kino I917-I 967 v chetyrekh tomakh. Tom I: I917-- 931. Moscow, 'Iskusstvo', I969. 750 pp.

IN the I920S the cinema was at the forefront of intellectual controversies, and numerous books were published covering all fields of film history, theory and technique. Not surprisingly, these controversies ceased in the 1930s, and publications were largely confined to memoirs. In 1947 the first attempt at a history of the Soviet cinema was produced: N. A. Lebedev, Ocherk istorii kino SSSR, tom I: I9I7-I934. However, this volume dealt only with the silent film. In I956 the first of the three volumes of the Ocherki istorii sovetskogo kino, under the editorship of Yu. Kalashnikov, N. A. Lebedev, L. P. Pogozheva and R. N. Yurenev, and with a collective author- ship, was published. It marks a turning-point, for since then there has been a systematic and increasingly thorough investigation of all aspects of Soviet film history and theory. The Institute for the History of Arts of the Academy of Sciences has published, every year since I957, collections of documents and articles under the series headings Voprosy kinoiskusstva (devoted to problems of aesthetics and technique) and Iz istorii kino (devoted to the history of the cinema). TsGALI and the 'Iskusstvo' publishing house have collaborated to produce a similar series which, confusingly, is also called Iz istorii kino. In I965 Lebedev's history of the silent cinema was republished in an enlarged and improved edition, and in I969 the first serious attempt to summarize the entire history of the Soviet cinema in one volume, Kratkaya istoriya sovetskogo kino I9I7-67, appeared in Moscow. The collected works of Dovzhenko and Eisenstein and selected works by Pudovkin, Protazanov and Kuleshov have been published, and a start has been made on two important series, Aktery sovetskogo kino and Shedevry sovetskogo kino. The latter devotes a single volume of essays, reviews, stills and the original script to an individual film. As a culmination of this process the principal institutions for the study of the cinema, the arts and culture in general have combined to produce what the Soviet press has already described as the 'standard work', Istoriya sovetskogo kino. The first volume, covering the years 1917-3I, has already appeared.

It is perhaps surprising that the editorial collective should have decided to divide their efforts equally throughout the 50 years of the Soviet cinema, for the 1920S is the period of the greatest development and influence of the Soviet film. The time-span chosen for the first volume invites immediate comparison with the Lebedev history and with the first volume of the Kalashnikov et al. trilogy. Although Lebedev's work has weathered well, it remains a personal and more subjective view, and in addition the increased availability of information and advances in research methods over the past 20 years have left their mark. The Kalashnikov, on the other hand, has the vices of collective authorship without its virtues, and is in places almost unreadable. It does not rely to any great extent on original materials and tends to abstract dogmatism. Istoriya sovetskogo kino therefore steps into something of a vacuum. Its credo is established clearly on the first page: 'The "History of the Soviet Cinema" has set itself the task of summarizing the experience of the establishment of the multi-national Soviet cinema and of examining the paths of its creative development within the development of our Socialist culture as a whole.' Nevertheless, the authors concentrate on the films themselves to a much greater extent than might be expected.

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They have drawn on a wide range of sources from books and newspaper articles to unpublished manuscripts, documents and other archive materials, including films which had previously been considered lost. As a result, this history is considerably more objective and more comprehensive than previous efforts. For the first time in a work of this sort Lev Kuleshov, a founding father and guiding spirit of the State Film School and a leading experimenter and theoretician in the I920S, is given appropriate recognition, and the judgement of Pudovkin and his other pupils is quoted with approval: 'We were carried on his shoulders out into the open sea. . .. We make pictures-Kuleshov made the cinema.'

The films of Yakov Protazanov, who returned to the USSR after an initial period of exile, are also reappraised in a more positive light, and he is lauded for having been among the first to attack the besetting sins of bureaucracy. The Petrograd Eccentrics, the FEKS group, with which Grigory Kozintsev and Sergei Yutkevich were associated, are reassessed, and their significance in relation to the mainstream of Soviet cinema ex- amined, while the Ukrainian film satirist, Les' Kurbas, is virtually redis- covered. Of course, in many of these cases the authors have had to rely on secondary sources for in the Soviet Union, as elsewhere, many old films have been lost or destroyed. In accordance with the current emphasis on the multi-national unity in diversity of the Soviet cinema, there are separate chapters on the development of the film in the Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Belorussia and the Central Asian republics. These cover a great deal of ground in a short space, and deal adequately with the films themselves, but again there is no discussion of the socio-political, economic or organiza- tional background, and in particular of the difficulties which we know from other sources were encountered in establishing film industries, on both the production and distribution side, in areas where the population was back- ward, illiterate and often nomadic.

The history's principal weakness is this failure to place the films within a socio-political framework and even within the framework of what the authors call in their introduction 'the development of our Socialist culture as a whole'. What of ARK, the cinema's equivalent of RAPP, and ODSK with its network of film clubs? What of the workers' clubs, the military film organizations and the problems of supplying them with appropriate material at appropriate prices? What of the influence of film on the peasantry and on the children, subjects of considerable investigation in the I92os? Quite simply-nothing. The Soviet cinema of the 1920S is essentially the reflection of an era. The Civil War, NEP and the changes culminating in the first five-year plan were all reflected not merely in the structure of the film industry but also in the thematic preoccupations of the Soviet film. Un- certainties in policy led to uncertainties in theme, as in Eisenstein's The Old and the New, and to such problems as the 'screenplay crises' and a reversion to historical subjects. In addition, the Soviet cinema was faced, from its inception, with formidable problems of re-equipment and expansion on a shoestring budget. That it survived and prospered, at least in the period covered by this book, is in itself a major achievement. But of all this there is little mention in the Istoriya sovetskogo kino.

University College of Swansea

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RICHARD TAYLOR

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