Russian Film Symposium 2003
Program Two

Thaw (1956-1968)

Mon May 5	Tue May 6
10am Grigorii Aleksandrov: Russian Souvenir, 1960. Intro by Aleksandr Shpagin.	10am Vladimir Berenshtein: Neutral Waters. Intro by Elena Stishova, 1968.
2pm Mikola Vingranovs'kii: A Shore of Hope, 1967. Intro by Aleksandr Prokhorov.	2pm Iaropolk Lapshin: Game Without Rules, 1965. Intro by Natalia Sirivlia.

Screenings take place at 106 David Lawrence Hall.

The cultural politics of the Thaw were unstable at best, frequentlycontradictory. This period of Soviet cultural history is traditionallysubdivided into a series on Thaws and Freezes, the origins of most ofwhich can be traced back either to Nikita Khrushchev's improvisedcomments on culture in the speech of the moment or to his directinterventions into the cultural administrative apparatus in order toadvance his own agenda. This constant, often ad hoc, reinterpretingand rescripting of state policy and responsibility in culturalproduction empowered cultural producers first and most of all: itopened the possibility for individual producers (writers, scenarists,filmmakers, artists, composers, etc.) to negotiate with the state– indirectly, but through an existing cultural administrationcharged with responding immediately to Party directives andpressures. The oft-celebrated "artistic freedom" of the Thawis merely the end result of these negotiations, unprecedented duringthe entire Stalin period of Soviet history.

Three features of Thaw culture have attracted especial attention inthe past decade. First, the cultural artifacts of the Thaw demonstrate arejection of Stalinist monumental art and representation, and a shift toa more intimate, more interiorized spatial paradigm. Second, Thawnarratives consistently demonstrate a rejection of Stalinist art'spenchant for epic narratives, both in content (lives of generals andgreat men, transformations and conquest of nature, the metaphor of thenation-as-family) and in form (multi-part novels and films, heroicpoetry, large-scale musical forms). Instead, Thaw narratives shift tomore intimate, more domestic subjects (the return of the everyday and ofeveryman) and genres (the literary sketch, the ode, the film short).Finally, Thaw culture is marked by its rejection of any unmediatedconnection between the empowered discourse of the state and thedisempowered discourse of the individual and of vox populi. Indeed,Thaw cultural artifacts unconditionally and consistently privileged thelatter at the expense of the former. This emphasis, clearly signaled bythe Thaw's insistence on the "sincerity" – of anutterance, of a vision – as the only legitimate (political?cultural?) means for measuring and evaluating the integrity of a work ofart, set the terms of the ensuing negotiations.

Central to these negotiations were two issues: the state'srelationship to the arts and the limits of its tolerance of individualvoices and views in the arts – that is, the state's implicitwillingness to extend its foreign policy of "peacefulco-existence" to its domestic practices in the arts. These twoissues were constantly open to re-negotiation between cultural producersand cultural administrators well into the first four years of LeonidBrezhnev's term of office. The fine-tuning (de-emphasizingde-Stalinization without a "posthumous rehabilitation," forexample) of the early Brezhnev years (1964-1968) should not be mistakenfor the radical shift of the cultural dial in the early years of theperiod known as Stagnation.

The dominant slogan of Soviet foreign policy during the Thaw was"peaceful co-existence," proclaiming communism's willingnessto tolerate the continued presence of capitalism. On the one hand, thepolicy marked a significant move away from the late-Stalinist Cold-Warpolicy of aggressive confrontation around the globe with the SovietUnion's former allies against Nazi Germany. Aggressive confrontation asa policy can be traced equally across Stalin's political culture (thepartition of Europe, the Berlin blockade, the plans to attack the UnitedStates) and cultural politics (the Party Resolutions on the Arts, theanti-cosmopolitan campaign, even "conflictlessness"). Thepost-war Stalinist culture industry was efficient in supplying audiences– general and specialized – with powerful and persuasiverepresentations of the evil, threatening, and alien "other."These images, verbal and visual, were so effective precisely becausethey were so cartoon-like and vitriolic, allowing the culture industryto displace and replace the ethnic or national identity of the"other" with ease: Japanese samurai, European fascists, andWhite Guard retrogrades in the "vigilance" and"defense" cultures of the mid-1930s; Nazi Germany from thelate 1930s through mid 1940s; American imperial ambitions from the mid1940s.

Indeed, the speed with which anti-American images in Soviet cultureof the Cold War could simply "stand in" for images of enemiesdefeated earlier (both real and imaginary) provides ample proof of theindustry's flexibility in graphically vilifying the "other."Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of these cultural artifactswere targeted specifically at the domestic audience, with almost noattempt made to translate or subtitle any of the classic anti-Americannovels or films of the period into English. With the exception, forexample, of Grigorii Aleksadrov's Meeting on the Elba (1949),none of the major anti-American films of the Cold War period was eversubtitled or screened abroad – neither Mikhail Romm's TheRussian Question (1948) nor The Secret Mission (1950; rest.1969), nor Abram Room's Silvery Dust (1953).

On the other hand, the shift from a policy of aggressiveconfrontation to "peaceful co-existence" inevitably madenecessary a radical redefinition of how the "other" wasrepresented in Thaw culture. This redefinition consisted of two parts: asoftening of contours and a hardening of distinctions.

Thaw culture re-humanizes the "other," whether the"other" is defined as "ours" (for example, WhiteGuard officer Govorukha-Otrop in Grigorii Chukrai's Forty First[1956]) or "theirs" (the American capitalist in Aleksandrov'sRussian Souvenir [1960]). The "other" of Thaw culturequickly sheds the vermin-like physical markings and bestial moralitythat were inseparable from all such representations of the"other" during Stalinist culture. While still marked as alienand antagonistic to the Soviet state, and, therefore, as dangerous toSoviet society, the "other" quickly acquires identifiablyhuman features, characteristics, and shortcomings. The"other," in other words, becomes a"not-one-of-us-but-who-is-still-like-us," that is, someonewith whom it is possible (if neither safe nor pleasant) to co-exist.

At the same time, the Thaw's new anti-American images begin todistinguish sharply between "Americans" and"America," between (re/present/ed) citizens and the (absent)state. Within this new configuration, "Americans" aresimultaneously the "other" of the Soviet people (both asnon-Soviet and as representatives of capitalism) and the"other" of the "American" state (both as falselyindoctrinated anti-communists and capitalists). In a peculiar twist,"Americans" were less the overt enemy of the Soviet Union thanthey were the first victims of the "American" state's ownvirulently anti-Soviet foreign policies. Unlike, the state, however,American citizens were capable of direct contact with Soviet citizensand could experience Soviet reality firsthand, a contact and experiencethat inevitably transformed the consciousness of the"American" and introduced him to the expanded horizons of"peaceful co-existence." In this way, the "American"in Thaw culture becomes recast in the mold (though not the image) of thesocialist realist positive hero, whose identity is marked by thetransformation from unreflective (spontaneous and impulsive) actions toactions informed by newly acquired political consciousness.