Denis A. Anan'evInstitute of History, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia
8, Ul.Ak.Nikolaeva, 630090, Novosibirsk, Russia
Senior Researcher
PHD in History
e-mail: denis.ananyev@gmail.com
The Great Patriotic War as Depicted by the Soviet and Russian Cinema: Key Trends and QuestionsAbstract: Modern historiography pays much attention to the questions of representation of the historical past in cinema. One of the key events depicted by the Soviet and post-Soviet cinema is the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945). This topic is of great interest to historians as war films clearly demonstrate the ideological and educational functions of cinema, its role as instrument of agitation and propaganda and its importance for development and preservation of collective memory. The paper objective is to identify key trends and specific features of depicting the War in the Soviet and Russian cinema; find out what questions were of particular interest to the filmmakers. Film historians emphasize two main trends in representation of the Great Patriotic War by the Soviet and Russian filmmakers. The first trend manifested itself in the films aimed at creating the ‘heroic image’ (or constructing the ‘heroic myth’) of those who won the Second World War; the idea of the Great Victory was the basic sense-making event of the late Soviet and post-Soviet national history. The second trend is represented in the films focused on the question of the ‘price of the Victory’, resulting in "demythologization" (and sometimes even "deglorification") of the War; showing its inhumanity, devastating and irreparable consequences. It is notable that both trends appeared already in the films made during the War although the first trend prevailed until the mid-1950s. The second one dominated in cinema in the late 1980s-early 2000s; during other periods of history both tendencies co-existed almost on equal proportion.
Key words: Great Patriotic War, historical memory, Soviet cinema, Russian cinema, war movies, agitprop, “Fighting Film Collections”, postwar period, the “Thaw” period of the Soviet cinema, “perestroika” period of the Soviet cinema, film epic.
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For Citation: Anan’ev, D. (2020). The Great Patriotic War as Depicted by the Soviet and Russian Cinema: Key Trends and Questions. International Journal of Cultural Research, 4 (41), 26–39. DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2020_4_26
DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2020_4_26
