Aleksei Yu. Suslov Kazan national research technological University, Department of public administration, history and sociology, Russia
68 Karl Marx str., Kazan, 420015.
professor
PHD in History
e-mail: plusha131333@yandex.ru
The Images of Socialists in the Soviet Cinema of 1920s–1960sAbstract: The author considers the process of transformation of the image of representatives of the opposition socialist parties (Mensheviks and social revolutionaries) in the historical consciousness of the Soviet society from the 1920s to the 1960s. The success of development of a new historical consciousness also depended on the extent to which the Bolsheviks would be able to involve the population in the process of its creation – ultimately, in the process of a kind of “construction of the past”. In order for a particular historical phenomenon to be fixed in the collective memory, it must be filled with meaning for its bearers. Such structural elements are called “memory figures” or “places of memory” in historical science. They are the main reference points for community members and provide insights into the past and present. With the help of cinematographic propaganda, the authorities eventually managed to create by the 1930s an image of the history of the socialist parties that was experienced at the level of personal and group memory and provided people with the language in which they expressed their memories.
Significant in this respect were the documentary films of S. Eisenstein and G. Aleksandrov “October” (1927), a documentary film by D. Vertov “The Process of socialist-revolutionaries”, the trilogy about Maxim G. Kozintsev and L. Trauberg, the film “Lenin in October" and “Lenin in 1918” M. Romm, the picture “The Sixth of July” (1968, directed by Y. Karasik, writer M. G. Shatrov). As a result, cinema, along with other cultural practices, had a significant impact on the formation of the historical consciousness of Soviet society. The image of representatives of the socialist parties, Mensheviks and social revolutionaries, has undergone a certain evolution from schematic, unambiguously negative stereotypes of the Stalinist era, through more reliable works of the 1960s and 70s to extremely contradictory modern subjects.
Key words: historical memory, historical cinema, propaganda, socialists-revolutionaries, Mensheviks, Soviet Russia, historical consciousness, Dziga Vertov, Mikhail Shatrov, Yulij Karasik.
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For Citation: Suslov, A. (2020). The Images of Socialists in the Soviet Cinema of 1920s–1960s. International Journal of Cultural Research, 4 (41), 111–122. DOI:10.52173/2079-1100_2020_4_111
DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2020_4_111
