Late Stalinist Cinema and the Cold War: An Equation without UnknownsAuthor(s): Evgeny DobrenkoSource: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 98, No. 4 (Oct., 2003), pp. 929-944Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3737934Accessed: 11/12/2010 08:46

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LATE STALINIST CINEMA AND THE COLD

WAR: AN EQUATION WITHOUT UNKNOWNS

An equation is a mathematical record of the task of searching for the values of arguments, in which the values of two given functions are equal. The arguments on which these func? tions depend are called unknown factors, and the values of these unknown factors, which make the functions equal, are called solutions. (Iakov Perel'man, Entertaining Algebra (1950))

Films about the cold war constitute a small category in late Stalinist cinema, when such genres as biopic, war film, historical-Revolutionary film, and literary

adaptation dominated. However, the rebirth of the popular detective genre en- hanced the popularity of these most aggressively propagandist and most Stalin? ist of films. The traditional coupling of 'propaganda and entertainment' stands in contrast to the Sovietological view that Stalinist propaganda was by definition

incredibly boring and imposed almost by force on the Soviet people. Neverthe?

less, in recent years a crack has appeared in these bastions of common sense: it has become clear that there was in Stalinist culture a certain 'positive' socialist

realism, e.g. the skilful musicals of Aleksandrov or the songs of Dunaevskii.

The fact that these films belong to the category of popular cinema by no means reflects on their quality and their significance in the wider context.1

However, we need to refer with caution to the concept of the popular when

dealing with Stalinist culture: the Stalinist blockbuster was made in the same Central Committee offices where annual thematic plans and film scripts were confirmed. The blockbuster itself was the product of a certain distribution pol- icy (quantity of copies, film classification, special screenings in workers' clubs,

ete). For quite understandable reasons the musical was at the top of the lists of box-office leaders in the 1930s. Yet the musical carried no less propaganda and ideological potential than the historical-Revolutionary film. In the period of late Stalinism the situation was somewhat different: fewer films were made after the war than in the 1930s (it was the period ofthe so-called 'malokartine', when annual film production dropped from around a hundred in the 1930s to under fifty from the mid-1940s until after Stalin's death). The hierarchy of

genres changed: the historical-Revolutionary film was pushed aside in favour of the biopic, which took the lead in post-war film production; moreover, films

celebrating victory in the Second World War ('trophy films') appeared and en-

joyed huge popularity. Also among the clear leaders were cold-war films. Yet it is not possible to explain this fact by claiming that they simply complied with the social order: these were the most blatant propaganda films. However, no

I would like to express my gratitude to the International Center for Advanced Studies at New York University, where I worked on this article in the context of a project on 'Cold War as Global Conflict'.

1 See Thomas Lahusen, How Life Writes the Book (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997); Evgeny Dobrenko, The Making of the State Reader (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997)-

93? Late Stalinist Cinema and the Cold War

less degree of propaganda and ideological thrust can be found in the biograph? ical films about the heroes of Russian science and culture, in war films, and in

historical-Revolutionary films, in which Stalin invariably appeared. Where did the 'secret of success' lie, to borrow a phrase from Soviet criticism?

'If the argument is weak, raise the voice.' Winston Churchill's well-known advice represents a classic example of equations of a type that is not stipulated in the entertaining books of Iakov Perel'man. These are non-linear equations, non-square, non-cubic, non-differential and non-integral, non-chemical equa? tions. We are dealing with meta-equations, or rather the main principle of

equations: tautologies. We shall call this the principle of total valency: both halves of any equation strive towards self-repetition. Here it is not the content of functions on either side that is important, but the tension between them. In

the image of 'weakness of argument' and 'force of voice' the two factors are not

just valent, but they also create meaning. We commonly assume that a tautology creates entropy and emptiness; yet it can also create meaning. The aspect of

a tautology creating meaning in propaganda discourse is the focal lens for the

following investigation. Tautology as a universal phenomenon has its equivalent not only in math?

ematics, but also in art: if in science it is created in equations, then its genre

equivalent in art is detective fiction. The detective genre and the equation have in common the riddle: the equation is the rationalization of a riddle, the detec? tive story its mythologization. In 'high' genres the riddle preserves its principle: two equal sides with unknown factors demonstrate their dissimilarity, whereas

the recipient knows from the start that they are identical. The riddle is a game. The process of solving the riddle is, as a matter of fact, reduced to proving the

obvious: the fact that the values of 'two given functions are equal', as Perel'man

suggests, is known from the outset. This transforms the whole process into

something intellectual. If science goes down the path of transforming a riddle

into complicated rational (and useful) structures, then the detective genre en-

deavours to transform the process of solving the riddle into a sensual (and

pleasant) structure. In this sense the detective story is a meta-genre, and as such has its mani?

festations in art?from Shakespeare, Dickens, and Dostoevskii to Edgar Allen

Poe, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Stephen King. However, I

shall not deal here with the classical detective story, but with a special condi?

tion of the memory of the genre in the period of the cold war. The starting point here is Churchill's Fulton speech, and the nerve centre is American superiority through possession of the nuclear bomb. This superiority was short-lived, but

the conditions were not simple: the 'victorious power' was politically troubled,

having gone straight from one war into another?this time, literally, with yester-

day's allies. Actually, nothing unusual happened: both the Soviet Union and the West returned to a pre-war rhetoric. Only the 'political realities' ('arguments') had changed.

The genre memory of detective fiction had been subjected to major up? heavals in Soviet history: the classical detective story had been expelled from the sphere of reading, while a 'Soviet' detective genre could not be generated. The struggle with 'Pinkerton-ism' and 'Messmend-ism' led to the death of

EVGENY DOBRENKO 931

the detective genre.2 Because the problems of private life (the juicy parts of a

detective story) were excluded from artistic presentation, the only way out was

through the sphere of pure politics: in the 1930s adventure genres for children

appeared under the pressure of the ideological opposition of two systems, and

detective plots of artistic production for adults relied on figures of saboteurs,

spies, wreckers, ete. However, this did not contradict the nature of the detective

novel, which is an overtly social genre. One of its constant functions (on one

side of the equation) is the law, while the other function is variable. Whichever

way the variable is changed, it is easy to model the second part of the equation on the first; after all, the detective story is a social and moralizing genre; its

condition is the victory ofthe social order (embodied in the law). In the absence

of private subject matter, the detective story mirrors the drama of the state. In

this sense the history of the Soviet detective story is the embodiment of the

social trauma of the Soviet epoch. The defeat in the race for a monopoly on

the H-bomb proved to be exceedingly traumatic, and the resulting inferiority

complex could not be eased by the recent victory in the war, making it instead

especially painful that this victorious state did not have the Bomb. The generic form of the state's 'illness' became the political detective plot of the post-war

years. Two circumstances need to be borne in mind.

The first is that the pool of film-script authors was made up of playwrights,

prose writers, and poets, which dispenses with the need to consider vari?

ous genre manifestations of the political detective story in post-war art, so

that we may speak exclusively about a cinema which, because of its synthetic

character, combined the 'poetry of struggle for peace' (Konstantin Simonov, Nikolai Tikhonov, Il'ia Ehrenburg), the 'patriotic play' (Brothers Tur, Nikolai

Virta, August Jakobson, Aleksandr Shtein, Boris Romashov), and the 'detec?

tive novel' (Lev Sheinin, Nikolai Shpanov). The films discussed here were all

scripted by established writers: The Meeting on the Elbe (Vstrecha na EVbe, dir. Grigorii Aleksandrov, 1949) was scripted by the Brothers Tur and Lev

Sheinin; Mikhail Romm's The Russian Question (Russkii vopros, 1948) was

adapted from Simonov's play, and Secret Mission (Sekretnaia missiia, 1950) was written by Konstantin Isaev and Mikhail Makliarskii; The Conspiracy of the Doomed (Zagovor obrechennykh, dir. Mikhail Kalatozov, 1950) was based

on Virta's script; Abram Room's Silvery Dust (Serebristaia pyV, 1953) was

adapted from a script by Jakobson; and Aleksandr Dovzhenko's unfinished

Farewell America (Proshchai, Amerika, 1951) was assumed, at an early stage, to have been scripted by the Brothers Tur. We might also mention the screen

adaptations of the plays of Romashov, Great Force (Velikaia sila, dir. Fridrikh

Ermler, 1949), and Shtein, Court of Honour (Sud chesti, dir. Room, 1948), but

the homogeneity of genre of the six films selected here, by the most important Soviet directors, renders their discussion superfluous for present purposes. A

comparison of the film scripts with the filmed material shows a surprising level

of discipline on the part of the directors. The ideological status of the script re?

quired very precise adherence to the text (in fact, The Russian Question and The

2 These terms were used to refer to 'petit-bourgeois boulevard literature', detective stories about the legendary investigator Pinkerton and the 1920s novel by Marietta Shaganian Mess-Mend; or, Yankees in Petrograd.

932 Late Stalinist Cinema and the Cold War

Conspiracy of the Doomed were adaptations of very popular plays, which were

at this time being performed in theatres all over the country). At the same time, under the regime of the malokartine directors had no great choice of scripts.

The second circumstance is the release of the detective plot from the pressure of ideology. 'Great literature' and 'a great Western', which 'must be printed in

a thick journal', is how Vsevolod Vishnevskii described Dovzhenko's script.3 Maia Turovskaia writes about the 'entertainment potential of these "crime" films': 'the genre structure of these films is very weak: the espionage intrigue does not move the plot forward, but arranges it'.4 The proof of this weakness

of subject lies in the fact that the theme of each film can be described in one

sentence and without touching on the plot or on specific events:

Farewell, America is about how an honest American girl cannot live in the

espionage den of the American embassy in Moscow and deserts America,

becoming a Soviet citizen. The Meeting on the Elbe is about how the Americans co-operated with former

Nazis in occupied Germany, plundering the country. The Russian Question is about how an honest American journalist refuses to

carry out the order of his boss to write a book about the Russians' desire for

war and, having written the truth about the peaceful disposition ofthe Soviet

regime, loses his job.

Silvery Dust is about how in secret US laboratories American scientists, to?

gether with former Nazis, develop radioactive weapons; about the prepara- tion for a war, human experiments on black Americans, and the struggle for

peace in America. The Conspiracy of the Doomed is about how in some East European country the

Americans organize a plot against the Communist members of a coalition

government and how the Soviet Union comes to their rescue. Secret Mission is about how the American allies conducted separate negotia-

tions with Germany during the war, trying to prevent the advance of the

Soviet army into Europe.

But this weak subject is almost the most interesting feature of these films:

it allows an understanding of the factors that have influenced the memory of

a genre and explains why the Soviet detective novel developed as it did. For

obvious reasons the anti-American film production of the late Stalinist period did not constitute a topic for serious analysis: a traditional context analysis can?

not be applied to these films, which follow one thematic line. It is impossible to read their content without proceeding from the texts to a description of the

relationship between artist and regime. The description of this anti-American film production by Turovskaia as 'the

worst, the most untrue, the most false that [Zhdanov's culture] had, when

3 Cited in Dovzhenko's diaries: Aleksandr Dovzhenko, 'Operatsiia bez narkoza: Dnevnikovye zapisi', Iskusstvo kino, 9 (1996), 73-75 (p. 75).

4 Maia Turovskaia, 'Fil'my "kholodnoi voiny"', Iskusstvo kino, 9 (1996), 99-106 (p. 101). See also Maya Turovskaya, 'Soviet Film and the Cold War', in Stalinism and Soviet Cinema, ed. by Richard Taylor and Derek Spring (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 131-41.

EVGENY DOBRENKO 933

artists could hardly plead for misunderstanding or appeal to the "faith"',5 is

disputable. First, these films were not 'worse' and not 'more false' than Kuban Cossacks (Kubanskie kazaki, dir. I. Pyr'ev, 1950) or The Cavalier of the Gold Star {Kaval'er zolotoi zvezdy, dir. Raizman, 1951); second, they were no more

cynical than, for example, Fall of Berlin {Padenie Berlina, dir. M. Chiaureli, I95?) ?r Romm's films about Lenin, Lenin in October {Lenin v oktiabre, 1937) and Lenin in igi8 {Lenin v igi8g., 1939). The artistic production of socialist realism cannot be described in such categories; Turovskaia herself confirms

this, showing in these films the transformation of the 'image of the enemy' into an 'invented America'.

Dovzhenko's Farewell, America6 raises the question of the artist and the

regime. Antropov argues that as soon as we understand Dovzhenko's rules of the game, we begin to see an unrecognizable and strange Dovzhenko.7 Trim- bach writes:

Did only commercial/tactical reasons motivate the director? Was that the reason why he made this agitka about perfidious American diplomats with their fierce hatred for the country of the Soviets? He made a flat satire about the representatives of the land that so many nowadays consider the 'promised' land; but this is nowadays. During Comrade Stalin's time Soviet man, even an outstanding director, piously believed that America was the country of social and other horrors, where Negroes were lynched, women raped, where fat-bottomed and fat-lipped billionaires with cigars between their teeth chased poor people without mercy. 'The corrupted ground. America', Dovzhenko wrote in his own hand.8

In terms ofthe evolution of Dovzhenko's work, his anti-American film, released after a lapse of half a century, looks absolutely organic.

It is not only the stylistics of the script but also the globality of the ideas that unites Dovzhenko's post-war projects. 'In the script global problems are solved. [. . .] Everything will work out for us, if we free ourselves from everyday trifles and rise above them', reads the diary entry concerning Farewell, Amer? ica:9 'It will be a wide panorama of public life on our planet, taking the year 1950 as a paradigm [...]. Everything has to be significant, and by-the-way, and like a testament at once.'10 But with the same logic all of this can be attributed to any of Dovzhenko's ideas:

I want to call it [the film Farewell, America] a film-poem. I have taken a journalistic theme and rendered it in the language of art. [. . .] The whole of nature must be raised and everything must be rendered in the poetry of the epoch. [. . .] Some devices of generalization are needed for a proper portrayal. In lieu of accuracy comes synthetic generalization.11

5 'Fil'my "kholodnoi voiny"', p. 99. 6 The film's production was halted after a third of the material was shot, and later annotated with commentaries and released in 1996.

7 V. Antropov, 'Chuzhoi Dovzhenko?', Iskusstvo kino, 9 (1996), 87-89 (p. 89). 8 S. Trimbach, 'Vvzhzhennaia zemlia Aleksandra Dovzhenko', Iskusstvo kino, 9 (1996), 80-86 (p. 82).

9 Dovzhenko, 'Operatsiia bez narkoza', p. 74. 10 Aleksandr Dovzhenko, 'Nado igrat' ne klinicheskii sluchai, a dramu: rabochie zapisi k fil'mu "Proshchai, Amerika"', Iskusstvo kino, 9 (1996), 76-79 (p. 77). 11

Dovzhenko, 'Operatsiia bez narkoza', pp. 74-75.

934 Late Stalinist Cinema and the Cold War

Literally the same expressions are used in the film script Poem about the Sea

for the old Ukrainian village with Scythian tombs. The threat that the earth

will be turned into dust comes not from America, but from dry winds. The

enemy is not America, but nature. All the same, Dovzhenko found an object

through which to display his apocalyptic vision: in Poem about the Sea it is the

desert encroaching on Ukraine that justifies the flooding of hundreds of Old

Petrovites. Entire sequences are moved from the project of Farewell, America to

the Poem about the Sea, such as the child and the monument to the heroic father

(the father here will be a general, and the monument passes into the scene with

the grieving mother). There is the paranoia which colours all his later work, an expression of a fatal weariness, if not illness. Scenes in Farewell, America

such as mass meetings of the Association of Progressive Figures of American

Culture, or the May Day parade in Moscow, are typical of Dovzhenko's hys- terics. In the anti-American films the pacifists speak from platforms. But only in Dovzhenko are things so 'beautiful' (in the words of his heroes): America

is transformed into a moral torture chamber!'; 'we are carried towards cata?

strophe with a speed that America has never known!'; 'we are participants in

the greatest madness ever faced by mankind'; 'The shadow of a nuclear bomb

has cut off the light! All is under lock and key in Wall Street! Science has been

stolen!'; 'we have plunged into deep mental depression!'12 The result of this

deep mental depression was the film Farewell, America.

'Improvise, add some phrases to the role. Act out today's newspaper.' Men-

tally Dovzhenko addresses the actor of the role of the American diplomat-spy

Marrow, and again he writes: 'movement [...] is a great thing in film. Movement

should not be self-sufficing, it is limited by words.'13 Movement accompanies the words of a newspaper. The writer Dovzhenko had enough words; there were

too many words, but he did not have not enough movement and plot. Such a

plot was created for The Meeting on the Elbe by those masters of intrigue, the

Brothers Tur and Lev Sheinin, assistant to prosecutor Vyshinskii, whose desk

was located in the USSR State Prosecutor's quarters. The Meeting on the Elbe is the only film (except for Dovzhenko's unfinished

film) where Russians and Americans meet in direct opposition, although the

identification of Americans with Nazis is not the 'only secret of the packet of cold-war films'.14 There are many secrets of a special nature: we are in a

world of games where, trying to solve a riddle, we are immediately given the

solution. In the first frames we see the flight of Nazis who had not yet been

caught from the German city of Altenstadt, occupied by the Soviet army, to

the American zone, aboard the ship Adolf Hitler. The film could have stopped

here, but then we would not know why they are fleeing. The spectator certainly

knows, just as in a bad detective story we know not only who has been killed

but also who the murderer is, and it is only the detective who gropes in the

dark. But as if that were not enough, here the detective too knows everything. The main intrigue lies somewhere on the periphery of the action: the mission

12 Aleksandr Dovzhenko, 'Proshchai Amerika: fragmenty stsenariia', in Dovzhenko, Sobrania sochinenia v 4-x tomakh (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1968), iv, 729-53 (pp. 733-34).

13 Dovzhenko, 'Nado igrat' ne klinicheskii sluchai, a dramu', pp. 78-79. 14 Turovskaia, 'Fil'my "kholodnoi voiny"', p. 100.

EVGENY DOBRENKO 935

of an American journalist and spy and of the Nazi criminal Schrank, who is

supposed to steal licences for military optical devices from the Soviet zone,

appears from the beginning to be under the control of the intelligent Soviet commander Kuzmin. The dramatic necessity of the plot with the journalist, the Nazi's claim to be a resistance fighter, the concealment of the licences in some ruins, or the affair of the commander with a woman journalist is not clear, both because the secret flight of the town's mayor and his return to the Soviet zone together with a whole group of progressive engineers demands no special efforts, and because access to the American zone is open to everyone.

These flaws, which deflate the tension of the intrigue, this negligence suggest that the 'espionage intrigue' does not so much 'arrange the plot' but rather un- covers the basic descriptive layer ofthe 'internal subject'. The detective story becomes descriptive. It is so much of an anti-detective situation that from be- neath the fragments of the reduced plot construction the actual?ideological? plot of the film transpires. The detective plot cannot be detached: before us is the classical equation. The Elbe, into which the American general shreds the Allied obligations, is a sort of 'equals sign' between functions.

One of these functions is Soviet, the other American. The Russian attack is a monumental picture of struggle, while the American soldiers are pictured with bottles of alcohol. The meeting ofthe two currents is 'the heaviest consequence of war', according to the American general. This general is only busy buying shares in German industry and creating a social democratic government to un- dermine the influence of the Communists, carrying out espionage and working with a Nazi agency, while the Soviet commander's first concern is to release all

political prisoners. The Americans plunder Germany, whereas the Soviet gen? eral proclaims: 'Now we need the key to the soul ofthe German people.' The ed? ucated Soviet commander reads Heine's verse and restores a monument to him, while in the American zone the monument to Kaiser Wilhelm remains broken.

The film shows a world already separated. In the Soviet zone people are en?

gaged in the education of children: 'this is Germany's future'. In the American zone people plunder the country. The stunned mayor15 sees the American zone as an apocalyptic vision, with night clubs, public houses, prostitutes, queues for

bread, where the unfortunate Germans 'exchange German culture for stewed

pork, beans, and cigarettes'. The theme of cultural opposition is central. Of

course, the American general and, later, the senator speak about the beginning of a new war against Communism; of course, the problem of production of a new weapon is actively discussed; of course, the spectator is told that the Mar- shall Plan is a preparation for aggression against Russia. But the main thing is the cultural incompatibility of the two countries.

The plot of The Meeting on the Elbe is thus the non-meeting of two worlds. This equation with a 'not-equals' sign {*) is a mathematical record of the conditions of the post-war world. When, in the finale, the American senator welcomes those gathered for a ball with the words: 'The spectacular light of

15 The 'honest German', who has travelled a path from non-Party allegiance to comprehension of the correctness of the Russians: 'Two worlds have met on the Elbe, on two coasts. Germany must choose. I remain on this coast, where a new, democratic, unified Germany is born', he declares at the end of the film to the Soviet commander, handing over the folder with the ill-starred licences.

936 Late Stalinist Cinema and the Cold War

the American order shines brightly on the gloom of post-war Europe', and the

electricity in the hall fails (the workers in the American zone have declared a

strike), this is not simply a sign of class solidarity, but of a blackout of projection: the film ends with a close-up of the bridges rising over the Elbe. The order to raise the bridges is given by a drunken aide-de-camp of the American general, played by Erast Garin in the style of Hitler as he appeared in the Wochenschau film (with his striking short moustache, distorted face, and the hand extended

forward). Above the rising bridges the last phrase of the Soviet commander sounds: 'Farewell. We met as allies, lived as neighbours, and we part as friends. Do everything to ensure that in the future we will not meet as enemies. . . .

Remember, the friendship of the peoples of America and Russia is the most

important question that now stands before mankind.'

Here, however, we are in the grip of mathematics, which accepts no other

logic. The main figure to express this logic is the journalist. He is like a frontier

guard, standing on the border between the two parts of the equation. His con-

vertibility (in The Meeting on the Elbe and in The Conspiracy of the Doomed his

function was performed by the American spies, and in The Russian Question, on the contrary, he was the main positive hero) makes him almost a symbolic figure. The journalist is also a self-image: Soviet directors and writers certainly did

not know America. Many of them, especially the writers, had been war corre-

spondents and therefore depicted the world they knew. But the journalist's job is to possess a huge amount of real information and to distil it, with a touch of

cynicism, for propaganda purposes. This cynicism brings the journalist closer to the politician, casting him in the role of a politician and, if necessary, a scout or spy. Hence the appearance of so many journalists in these films, and thus it is

that Soviet anti-American film production begins with The Russian Question, a play by Simonov and a film by Romm?about journalists.

We return to the structure ofthe equation: whatever sign stands between the

two given functions (equals or, as in this case, not-equals), the functions appear as equivalent. Therefore the idea that in cold-war films the image ofthe enemy was shifted to America because Soviet reality could not contain plots, political murders, provocations, terror, demagogy, deceit, is as correct as the opposite;

everything shown in these films is both false and true. Certainly, when an

American newspaper prints the message that Russian aircraft have appeared over Eritrea, this causes, to put it mildly, mistrust. Journalists know that it is a

cheat. But it is not a bigger lie than the statement that the Soviet commanders

in the occupied zone were teaching German children and reciting Heine. The world of Soviet anti-American films shows the American reality of

the McCarthy epoch in strongly exaggerated, but in many respects authentic, terms. The same is true for American anti-Soviet films, such as Iron Curtain

(dir. William Wellman, 1948), Red Danube (dir. George Sidney, 1949), Berlin

Express (dir. Jacques Tourneur, 1948), My Son John (dir. Leo McCarey, 1952), / was a Communist for the FBI (dir. Gordon M. Douglas, 1951), and others. The cold war was really one of the most gloomy periods in American history, and this can be read in any American textbook; the corresponding period of Soviet history does not constitute a Golden Age either. There was no change in American reality just because Soviet authors displaced their own moral atmo-

EVGENY DOBRENKO 937

sphere to an invented America.16 True, a secret weapon was developed in the USSR and human experiments were carried out, but the same took place in the

USA; true, there was no political freedom in the USSR, but the same (albeit adjusted to democratic procedures and traditions) can be said ofthe USA; true, espionage agencies operated in both countries, achieving the realization of their

political ends in occupied countries: the USSR arranged plots, but so did the

USA; true, the USSR talked about peace and prepared for war, but the same is true for the USA; true, the rhetoric became ever more strident: in Soviet films the Americans were shown as Nazis, and American films showed Stalin as a second Hitler; true, newspapers lied, but on both sides of the ocean. . . .

Even if we read anti-American as inverted Soviet,17 the suppressed complexes of the Soviet Union nevertheless shine through in these films; in fact, nothing changes: the American press lied as well, American intelligence agencies or?

ganized plots as well, and the Americans too developed a radioactive weapon. Thus the values of both functions are equal, and the only required correction when reading these films is one of focus. All the time we see one half of the

equation, but since the other is easy to construct (according to the principle of mirror reflection), we construct it all the time: reading a propaganda text without such a correction dooms the process to tautology. Taking account of the 'mirror surface' reveals the objective, structure, and functions of propa? ganda discourse, and turns the process of reading into a process of detection of

meaning where emptiness seemed to gape. Let us look from this viewpoint at The Russian Question, in which, as the

newspaper magnate Macpherson says, 'there can be no middle'. The journalist Smith naively attempts to steer a middling course, to get away with half-truths, to avoid a direct answer to the question of whether the Russians want war. This

is, in fact, the attempt to eliminate the mirror, because the truth is much more

complex than an unequivocal 'yes' or 'no'. However, this is not clear to anybody in the film but, most importantly, it should not be clear to the spectator either, who has been pushed into the impasse of truth/falsehood about Soviet Russia

by the law of binary opposition. Moreover, the issue of how truthful the picture of America is should be avoided. This is irrelevant in the framework of the

equation. At the centre of film is the editorial office of one of the largest New York

newspapers. This picture is drawn richly: before us we have an editorial anthill in which 'the dirty linen from all points of the compass is shaken up' and the information for the American philistine is presented as required by Wall Street.

Everything, from the police chronicle ('the corpse of a girl on a roadway, guts wound around a column, brains on the window of a drugstore') to international information (Russian journalists have brought money for striking coal miners; Russians share everything, from bikes to wives), is shot through with sensation and falsehood; but mainly with cynicism.

The film is about truth and falsehood; the journalists themselves speak about this. Nobody believes in what they do, everyone knows that they lie ('All the

same, half of the Americans hold views completely different from those we

Turovskaia, 'Fil'my "kholodnoi voiny"', p. 106. Turovskaia, 'Fil'my "kholodnoi voiny"', p. 106.

938 Late Stalinist Cinema and the Cold War

express'); everybody is ashamed ('What, these Russian are still good guys? . . . That's beastly of them! If they were worse, it wouldn't be so shamefuP); every -

one speaks about their bad conscience and tries to detect it in others: 'Why do

we seek out the conscience of other people all the time?' is the question that the only fair journalist, Smith, puts to his friend working not for Macpherson (centre right), but for Hurst (extreme right). Some drink out of misery, others are under coercion, and still others work because they need the money. Over all this hopelessness stand Smith's words: 'It is impossible to be honest and happy at the same time.'

The dispute about truth and falsehood had its source in Gorkii's play Lower

Depths (Na dne). If we subtract from the play the character Luka and the ap? peal to Christianity, we have The Russian Question. Among the inhabitants of the asylum on Fifth Avenue we find the same figures of the hopelessly drunk

(almost a third of the film passes in the Press Bar, where the heroes conduct their 'Russian conversations', quaffing whisky), the same cynics, the same ex-

ploiters, the same self-deceivers. The same angry monologue in defence of man is pronounced here. The lesson of the classics is taken into account, however: here these texts are pronounced not by the drunken Satin, but by Smith, who rises in esteem before our eyes. From the apolitical but honest journalist, who had spent the war together with 'Russian guys in trenches near Gzhatsk' and written a book about the battle at Stalingrad, he develops into a fighter. By the end of the film he repeats: 'I have written the truth', 'I shall not become a rascal', 'I am ashamed for all of us. I have remembered that I am a human

being'. And however much he is told that the loop cannot be broken ('War is

necessary, and a bad Russia is necessary for war'), our hero is not appeased. We

might think that before us we have a romantic hero, but it appears that truth is the only way out, the only means of self-preservation (the fate of Smith's

journalist friend Murphy, who commits professional suicide by declaring on a

live broadcast 'I leave your gang!', is one alternative).

By the end of the film the rhetoric accrues on both sides. On behalf of 'all honest people of America' the journalist Smith speaks at a meeting of peace supporters:

I have written an honest book about Russia. For the forty-seventh time I tell its content because in our country, the country of press freedom, there is no publishing house that would dare to print it. For having written this book I was deprived of work and thrown out on the street. For travelling around the country and telling its content, in our country, the country of free speech, I am summoned by the Commission for the Investigation of Anti-American Activity. But this too will not silence me! For a long time I thought naively that there was one America. But there are two. And if I do not have a place in the America of Macpherson and Hurst, I shall find myself a place in the America of Lincoln and Roosevelt. America is not Wall Street, not a hundred billionaires, two hundred newspaper kings, and a thousand venal journalists. America is the people, it's us! They tell us that the enemies of America are beyond the ocean, in the Soviet Union. It's a lie! The enemies of America are here. Four blocks from here, on Wall Street. They are here, four hundred kilometres from here, in Washington, in the war ministry. Enemies of America are those who say that Russia threatens us with war. Nobody threatens us with war. It's a lie! They are the enemies of America, they push us to war. They say that we Americans are a strong nation. Yes, we Americans are a strong nation. Strong enough to wring the neck of our own warmongers.

EVGENY DOBRENKO 939

The text emphasizes the concepts of non-freedom, deceit, enemies. Before us we already have a Soviet character: he even measures the distance from

New York to Washington in kilometres instead of miles. The internal schism of America is the basic message that encircles Romm's film. It begins with the montage of documentary footage of the Statue of Liberty, Manhattan from

above, frontal views of Harlem, the distribution of soup to the unemployed, a

magnificent banquet, grain discharged into the water, milk trickling into a river, the dispersal of a demonstration, the work of printing presses, the packing of

newspapers, the countrywide dispatch of trains carrying newspapers, people reading newspapers, black women washing linen, the preparation of food on a Harlem roadway, the Empire State Building from bottom to top, a cancan in a

cabaret, a manicure salon for dogs, the text 'America, 1946'. This is an example of a false equation: Romm's image of 'New York, city of

contrasts' creates a situation where an equation is within one of the functions

(still with the not-equals sign *), whereas the Soviet side is presented not only through Smith's manifestos, but very briefly in his memoirs about what he saw in the USSR. When our hero dares to write the truth about whether the Russians want a war, he consistently sees images of Red Square, the Moscow un?

derground, the turbines of Dniepr Hydroelectric Station, a machine-building factory, collective-farm fields, children behind school desks in the USSR. This

documentary footage of peaceful work is opposed to the montage of American

reality. To solve this rebus, we place in brackets the two different Americas and obtain one function; the Soviet pictures are another function. Between them lies full convertibility: it is enough to peruse the pictures of post-war life in the USSR (the poverty in communal apartments, famine in villages, bread queues with ration cards, ete.) for a smooth surface to appear. In this case the second

picture (function) is equal to itself, just like the first. From the fact that the Soviet Union is half a function it does not follow that the picture of Amer? ica is false: New York really is a 'city of contrasts', while the Soviet picture is obviously incomplete. The truth about the Russia of the journalist Smith

(Simonov-Romm) differs but little from the 'lie' of Macpherson and Hurst. It is neither truth nor lie, but full valency.

A solution to our equations is offered by the film Silvery Dust. Professor Samuel Steel has invented a radioactive poison that decomposes several days after dispersion and destroys all life, allowing the quiet occupation of territory: no destruction, no protests, no disinfection, no decontamination, a minimum of expense, and a real detective plot.

The Pentagon wants to buy Steel's discovery. The representative ofthe army, General MacKennedy, associated with a certain Eastern trust, is interested in

transferring the order to his bosses on Wall Street, while the project was fi- nanced by the Southern trust, headed by Anthony Bruce. The process of ten? der begins; trying to delay business, the general insists on conducting control

experiments on people. But no 'human material' is at hand and the delivery of 'a group of Korean or Chinese prisoners of war' takes time. Bruce decides to use black people sentenced to death for his experiments, but none is available.

Then, together with the sheriff, the judge, and the state governor, he concocts a

plot against six black people arrested during a peace demonstration and charged

94? Late Stalinist Cinema and the Cold War

with the attempted rape of a white woman. A former Nazi colonel working for Steel gets involved in the plot when General MacKennedy orders him to steal

the formula for the production ofthe silver-grey dust. He incites Steel's son to

steal his father's keys, but the attempted robbery ends pitiably: Steel's son is

exposed to radiation and perishes. Steel himself, it transpires, had poisoned his

teacher and married the latter's daughter, thus inheriting the laboratory. Steel dies when the general, together with his gang, forces him to reveal his secrets. In the end the pacifists stop the Ku Klux Clan, which wanted to lynch the

unfortunate prisoners, and release the prisoners from Steel's laboratory. The

terrible story is matched by appropriate settings: catacombs, bunkers, protec- tive gowns, blinking lamps. It is first of all a detective story: the ideological debate developing during the course of the action only serves as a setting for

the intrigue. This arrangement is crucial: the endless monologues, providing the detective story with meaning, are delivered by the pacifists.

The plot is moved forward by a family conflict and by the unfailingly enlight- ened attitude of an honest but apolitical scientist; many motivations, however, are stitched with a false thread. For example, the general has only to say to the former Nazi: 'Help us and we shall help you take revenge for the bitterness of

defeat' to ensure that the Nazi will steal the documents. It is enough for the

Nazi to tell Steel's son that 'thoroughbred Aryans are born with the psychology of a winner' and 'stand above the current morals' for the son (having previously read Mein Kampf, of course) to steal the keys from his father and climb into

the terrible safe. All these films adopt a more strident tone towards the end: the theme of op?

position is infinite. The rhetoric is the result of a 'counterbalance ofthe bomb':

neither side can act, and this only kindles their reputation as 'warmongers' or

'pacifists', both in Soviet and in American political films ofthe post-war years. 'The tension of the atmosphere' in Soviet films is connected not only with texts

and gesticulation, but also with musical composition. The greatest Soviet com-

posers wrote the music for these films: Dmitrii Shostakovich {The Meeting on

the Elbe), Aram Khachaturian (The Russian Question, Secret Mission), Mikhail Chulaki (Silvery Dust), Vissarion Shebalin (The Conspiracy of the Doomed).

Scenes like the finale in Silvery Dust are certainly no longer cinema, but

theatre; the sensation of the game never abates, words are pressing. The choice of stage actors for roles in these films can be explained in this way.18 Of course,

Silvery Dust may have been the expression of the 'possibility of speaking in plain terms about experiments on humans, of provoking disorder and ar-

rests, of blackmailing each other', in other words the depiction of a totalitarian

regime.19 But, first, it was hardly a sign of freedom, and second?without com-

ical displacement?this was approximately what happened in reality: Negroes were lynched, weapons were developed, patents were stolen, and big business vied for military orders.

It is a different matter that a detective story without a secret does not amount to much. The secret in a political detective story is a conspiracy, even if it is

18 Maia Turovskaia writes about the very special 'acting ensembles in these films', noting the 'distinctive theatrical quality ofthe films' ('Fil'my "kholodnoi voiny"', p. 102).

19 Turovskaia,'Fil'my "kholodnoi voiny"', p. 106.

EVGENY DOBRENKO 941

The Conspiracy of the Doomed. The answer to the riddle lies in the very title of

Kalatozov's film: any conspiracy is doomed. The pure tautology of the events

emerges from the magic of words, marking in different ways the same poli? tical realities: the cause to which the conspirators have devoted themselves is doomed. This film, which, according to Turovskaia, is 'a huge Freudian film-

slip-of-the-tongue', really uncovers the internal mechanics of state coups and

revolutions from coalition governments to a one-party system, a number of

which took place in the countries of Eastern Europe at the end of the 1940s.20 The script of revolutions remained the same for the countries of the Soviet

bloc and later (Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, ete). Certainly, the

popular masses did not reconcile themselves to the Communists for the sake

of a better life. Conspiracy, the dissolution of parliaments, the deliberate cre?

ation of famine, instigation, intimidation, the establishment of dictatorship, active manceuvres by the Soviet intelligence agencies, and betrayal of national

interests were necessary. However, it does not follow from this that the coun?

tries of Western Europe accepted the Marshall Plan for the sake of a good life

and/or without bearing the consequences; nor that the American embassies in

European countries were engaged exclusively in cultural links between people.

Slips of the tongue occur where the main thing remains unsaid, where there is

a function x. The film explains everything in detail, except for one thing: where

is the main character of this performance, namely the occupying army? From

the events that develop right after the war in a certain Romano-Hungarian- Czech land (various identifications are possible), it is completely impossible to

decide in which 'zone' the given country lies. Given that the Americans op- erate under guises, through diplomat-spies, it is not their zone. But Moscow

too appears to be at some remove (the Communists send a delegation to Stalin

only at the end of the film). It follows that there were no occupation armies

in post-war Europe, and that European countries developed under conditions

of full independence. In a film about a state coup (!) there is not one soldier

(except the peripheral local general-conspirator). Let us assume that people decide their destiny. The people are shown as

crowds walking between the governmental cars with slogans such as 'Long live

Stalin!', 'The Marshall Plan is our death!', 'We do not want to wear an American

collar!', and they display an amicable solidarity with the Communists. Here is

another unknown function: why, with such explicit support from the electorate, are the Communists in a minority in parliament, and why is the representative

power in the hands of some 'espionage rabble'? (All political leaders of the

country, except the Communists, of course, appear to be hired and rehired by the Nazis, the Americans, the Vatican, so that it is quite impossible to decide

who is whose agent.) The impression is created that this surprising country exists virtually in two 'zones' simultaneously.

On the one hand there are the conspirators, whose centre is the American em-

bassy. The ambassador himself, 'the boss of this gang of murderers and provoca- teurs',21 declares: 'Europe needs our president. Put me through to the president of this nasty country' He promises power and reconstruction ofthe country to

Turovskaia, 'Fil'my "kholodnoi voiny"', p. 106. B. Galanov, 'Ekran izoblichaetpodzhigatelei voiny', Iskusstvo kino, 3 (1950), 23-25 (p. 25).

942 Late Stalinist Cinema and the Cold War

each of the parties in eager rivalry. To all the representatives of this 'gang of traitors' (for some reason comprising two-thirds ofthe parliament) an American intervention is most desirable. American weapons, instead of bread, are stored in the church for conspirators who arrive in 'peace trains' (the trains are festooned with advertisements for American cigarettes and stars-and-stripes banners, while a jazz band travels on the roof). No protection of national interests can be

expected from this regime. Here go 'our freedom and blood for a bowl of lentil

soup', to quote the words ofthe main heroine, the Communist Hanna Lichta. On the other hand, Communists everywhere are surrounded by portraits of

Stalin, and they advocate calling on the Soviet Union for help (the Americans

organized the export?to Yugoslavia?of all bread on the eve of the parliamen- tary vote on the Marshall Plan), arguing from the fact that 'Stalin is the friend of the peasant. He is the friend of the people. More than once he has helped us, and he will help us again.' They quote Lenin and Stalin from a podium in parliament. The Communists (together with the people) swear loyalty to the Soviet Union (the film begins with an oath before a monument to Soviet soldiers?'The flame of friendship between our peoples will never go out!'? and ends in a national oath: 'We swear to Stalin and to the Soviet people to

protect the freedom and independence of our country! We swear to struggle for peace and to protect our friendship with the great Soviet Union and the countries of national democracy! . . . May the warmongers shudder! People led

by the great Soviet Union will overcome everything that impedes the triumph of peace and the happiness of mankind!'.

The question arises whether anybody in this country cares about its own national interests. A debate is devoted to this, with endless conflicts inside the coalition government. For the Communists it is clear that everything boils down to a conspiracy. The problem is simplified in order to stop the debate, when the leader of the Social Democrats argues that not every disaster can be explained by a plot. When valent sizes are simplified, the equation is given a denominator: an oath to Stalin. It seems that the intrigue has no meaning: the conspiracy was

inspired, the conspirators are disclosed, the masks are removed, the people have been taught a lesson. The situation is not a common one for a detective story: it is as if the detective himself first commits a crime and then investigates it. After all these genre perversions, Secret Mission is almost a virgin detective story and

espionage film, with real spies, secrets, pursuits, murders around the corner, recruitment, treason, interception, stolen secret-service lists, hidden micro-

phones, and microfilms. In a word, all these cherished properties ofthe detective

genre cover up the cumbersome propagandistic design of the film, and Secret Mission and The Conspiracy ofthe Doomed were extremely popular at the time.22

'From the point of view of the unwritten laws ofthe detective genre, the ab? sence of an outstanding and single specific feat of the heroine-spy speaks of the weakness of the plot.'23 But this is a superficial view of the matter: 'The main

storyline of the film is not a concoction. The story of unprecedented treachery committed by the diplomats of Anglo-American imperialism, who conspired

24.2 and 19.2 million spectators respectively for 1950. L. Pogozheva, 'Missiia, perestavshaia byt' sekretnoi', Iskusstvo kino, 5 (1950), 12-15 (p. 15).

EVGENY DOBRENKO 943

with Hitler's regime behind the back of their ally, is actual history, well known

today.'24 Romm underscores the historicity of the events by introducing documentary

footage into the film, showing the 'victorious Soviet advance'. To the three tasks ofthe 'secret missionaries' (the American senator and the representative ofthe American intelligence)?(i) to persuade the Germans to make a 'completely confidential capitulation to the West'; (2) to buy up patents owned by German

industry; and (3) to acquire the Nazi intelligence on the Balkans?Romm op- poses his own tasks: to convince the spectator that (1) Anglo-Americans played virtually no part in the war; (2) Americans are capitalists who were concerned

only with profit and plunder of the enemy; and (3) the Americans are direct successors to the Nazis.

Since the thematic design of a detective story can be reduced to the task of

unmasking, the figure of the spy appears not only as completely integral, but also as functionally irreplaceable.

All the films discussed here have a lot to say about the participation of the Americans in the war. In The Meeting on the Elbe the American soldiers meet the Soviet army with slogans?'The Americans will not forget the feat of the Russians'?as though they were not meeting an ally, but the liberator of the United States. Romm develops a metaphor: the Germans capitulated in the

West, which explains the progress of the Anglo-American armies. Pictures of Germans surrendering cities to Anglo-American forces show the latter being welcomed with bread and sait. Straight away, as a footnote, there follows a

depiction of the Eastern front, with panoramic views of the real battle. The common theme of all these films of the cold war, which Romm also develops, is that America equals imperialism. The first thing that the American sena? tor says to the German partners in the negotiations is 'I am a merchant, a businessman'. He immediately discloses to them the completely confidential date of the Soviet attack, communicated by Stalin to Churchill in a personal message. The authors show the aged senator making his way through the front line to London upon receipt of a call from the bosses in Wall Street, meeting with German industrial magnates in the house of Krupp, and, finally, agreeing that the Americans will bomb the eastern part of Germany (which will become the Soviet zone) whenever possible and preserve the industrial installations in the western zone (never mind that these areas have already sufTered monstrous bombardments by the Allied forces).

No doubts should remain about the Americans inheriting everything from the Nazis, down to the intelligence agencies which, as Borman tells his American

visitor, 'will soon be needed for the struggle against democracy and the Bol- sheviks'. Everything that was discussed at the top-secret meeting at Krupp's house was known in Moscow immediately afterwards: lists of Nazi agents in the Balkans were copied and transferred the same evening, thanks to Martha/ Masha.25

The favourite device of a detective story is the phrase 'And at the same

24 Pogozheva, 'Missiia, perestavshaia byt' sekretnoi', p. 12. 25 In the film she is the driver Martha and at the same time the Soviet spy Masha, played by the

famous actress Elena Kuzmina, Romm's wife.

944 Late Stalinist Cinema and the Cold War

time . . .' On that April day in 1945 when the Soviet spy died, having executed the 'secret mission' to a city called Altenstadt, the Soviet and American forces closed in from both sides. They met on the River Elbe, and here we come full

circle.

Having made a correction to the mechanism of the mirror reflection of the

functions in the equation, we understand that films of the cold war paradoxi-

cally restore the equality of the divided parts of the world. However, all these

'Meetings', 'Farewells', 'Missions', 'Plots', 'Questions' have never ceased to cause pain. They have simply lost their verbality: the action contained in them has turned into a 'verbal adjective', into 'silvery dust'. The dust will not settle after a few days, as in the laboratory of Professor Steel. The geo-political pat? tern of the world contained in these films has not only not become a thing of the

past, but half a century later still dominates the minds of millions of people on both sides of the ocean. The problem, however, is that a verbless detective story cannot be confident of success with the audience. The spectator has the right to feel deceived: there was no need to 'search for the meaning of arguments'; the parts of the function were equal, QED, and the 'unknown values' known.

Certainly, on one side there were warmongers, but there were no doves of peace on the other side.

Thinking about the reasons for the success of cold-war films, we begin to understand that they were destined to become blockbusters (with all the above- mentioned corrections to this concept in Stalinist culture): they were completely new from the point of view of genre (as against the historical-Revolutionary, bi?

ographical, or war-justifying film); they not only depicted actual political plots (as against biographical, historical-Revolutionary films or literary adaptations), but also represented them in the forms of detective story and melodrama, which were accessible to the viewing public; finally, these were not simply propaganda films, but films whose basic content was genuine balm to the post-war spec? tator: as against historical-Revolutionary films (which did not carry anything new after Stalin's Short Course in the History of the CPSU), the films of the cold war brought a 'feeling of deep satisfaction'; they removed the trauma of the new global order. Let us remember that in the first post-war years the new

picture ofthe world was shaped, which determined the world-view for decades; in these years a new Soviet identity, the image of the superpower, was formed, which even now, half a century later when that world and that opposition have

passed out of existence, still hurts with a phantom pain.

University of Nottingham Evgeny Dobrenko

(Translated from the Russian by Birgit Beumers)