Russian Film Symposium 2003
Program Three

Stagnation (1968-1986)

Thu May 8	Fri May 9
10am Budimir Metal'nikov: Doctor Ivens's Silence, 1973. Intro by Elena Stishova.	10am Mikhail Tumanishvili: Solo Journey, 1985. Intro by Natalia Sirivlia.
2pm Tamara Lisitsian: On Rich Red Islands, 1981. Intro by Elena Prokhorova.	2pm Iurii Marukhin: The Man Who Took an Interview, 1986. Intro by Aleksandr Shpagin.

Screenings take place at 106 David Lawrence Hall.

Historians of political culture tend to locate the end of the Thaw inOctober 1964 with the palace coup that forcibly retired NikitaKhrushchev and installed Leonid Brezhnev as the First Secretary of theCPSU. Such a view, however, overly maximizes the immediacy of the impactof political events on cultural politics and practices, on the one hand,and overly privileges a belief in unmediated control of the culturalapparatus by the state, on the other. By contrast, historians ofcultural politics tend to locate the end of the Thaw with a differentpolitical event: the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 by Sovietand Warsaw Pact tanks. The symbolic crushing of an eastern Europeanattempt to establish "socialism with a human face" veryquickly became a material crushing of "peaceful co-existence"as a domestic policy both in political culture (the dire consequences tothe demonstrators on Pushkin Square protesting the termination of the"Prague Spring"; the rise of the dissident movement; the rightto emigrate extended to undesirable ethnic minorities – Jews,Armenians, Volga-Germans; etc.) and in cultural politics (the explosionin the number of films shelved; the mass removal of books byémigré writers from libraries, or banning of plays byémigré playwrights or of films by émigré directors;the expulsions of writers, composers, filmmakers from the creativeunions; etc.).

As a political event, August 1968 marked a radical redefinition ofwhat was tolerable in cultural practice under "developedsocialism": the prospects for negotiating a private voice or viewwith the cultural administrative apparatus ended that summer. Althoughthe right to a private voice or view was not publicly contested, anyattempt to exercise the right – to reproduce it (to type or paintit, to print or film it, etc.) or to circulate it (socially orculturally) – was prosecuted with the full force of Soviet law, ifit deviated too much from the narrowed limits now set by the state. Thisnarrowing of tolerance for private voices and views quickly filtereddown the cultural administration to the level of the artistic councils(khudsovety), through several of which every verbal or visual text hadto pass prior to receiving permission to enter the domain of publicconsumption. Surviving documents for many of the discussions at theartistic councils surrounding "problematic texts" that wereshelved (scrupulously collected and republished by film historianValerii Fomin) provide ample evidence of these councils' caution andinflexibility in dealing with views they considered"inaccurate," "slanderous,""un-Soviet."

Cultural producers faced a greatly reduced likelihood ofnegotiating successfully for the artistic integrity of their individual voicesand views. Instead, they were once again forced onto the defensive, requiredto demonstrate the extent to which that individual voice or view fulfilled orcomplied with what was permitted or with what was already established astolerable. It did not take long for the inflexible policies imposed andpursued by the khudsovety to alienate cultural producers from culturaladministrators. With negotiations replaced by defense summations, the linebetween the two sides was firmly drawn.

"Peaceful co-existence" gave way to"détente"―that is, the tolerance of the"other" yielded to a stand off between two antagonists equalonly in their ability to annihilate each other if the fragile truceshould break down. "Détente" was the major slogan ofthe foreign policy pursued successfully by both sides in the Cold Warduring the Stagnation period. At its core, "détente"was simply a diplomatic way of acknowledging the prospect of"mutual annihilation," a peculiar form of stabilitypredicated on maintaining the political and military status quo. Anyshift from the agreed-upon status quo was always and only seen as atransparent act of hostility, guaranteeing an immediate (andpotentially escalating) response from the other side.

In many ways "détente" was as active (ifunmentioned) a policy within the Soviet Union during Stagnation inmaintaining the social and cultural status quo. Any attempt bycultural producers to deviate from publicly endorsed images of"us" or the "other" were instantly seen as andresponded to by cultural administrators as acts of hostility by a"cultural double agent," an "other" who merely hasmerely passed as one of "us." This is precisely the strategythat Stagnation culture embraces in imaging the American-as-other: the"other" is not the American, but rather thatAmerican who merely passes as one of "them" (that is,Americans). One of Stagnation culture's most productive discoverieswas the rupture between Americans and their (secret) governmentagencies, the true servants of capitalism: the FBI, the CIA, the NSA,the unnamed-and-ultra-secret. In effect, Stagnation culture was markedby its rejection of Thaw culture's idealistic distinction between"Americans" and "America," the roots of which werealready to be found in late-Stalinism's predilection for thenaïve and unwitting American agent. Instead, Stagnation culturefocuses on the distinction between "Americans" and"agents of America," who invariably are "doubleagents" within American society (hence the recurrence of renegadeCIA units and operatives, and of top secret "black ops"agents as the arch-villains qua cold warriors in Soviet films andpolitical-adventures thrillers of the period).

At the same time, Stagnation culture partially re-Stalinized thevisual codes for representing "us": a return to the image (andspirit) of Soviet (especially Russian) superiority to anything andeveryone abroad, especially the American "other.""Developed socialism" presupposed not simply the domesticstabilization of the material conditions of daily life, but moreimportant, the attainment of a permanent moral high-ground over thecapitalist world more broadly. Soviet citizens, these representationalcodes suggested, were far more advanced in their transition to fullconsciousness than their misguided (politically flawed and morally weak)antagonists. In much the same way that the cultural tolerance of theThaw allowed the "other" to be recast in the mold of the"positive hero," the cultural inflexibility of Stagnation ledto the recasting of the "us" as the "mentor": fullydeveloped and possessing a political consciousness anchored in moralsuperiority.