Abstract
During the 1920s in the USSR, the theme of the Civil War became an essential part of the mass culture of the period, and more specifically of Soviet film production. Produced in a context of shortages – experienced filmmakers and celluloid were lacking –, these films, which portrayed a simplified vision of events, had an essential propaganda purpose for the new Bolshevik regime. This article analyses the reception of these films on the basis of public discussions and opinion polls in cinemas among moviegoers. This work deals with the generational gap concerning the reception of this production: films that aroused the enthusiasm of a young public were often more criticized by the older generations, survivors of the Civil War. Indeed, the latter considered that the productions did not do justice to their sacrifices during those years of conflict. The violence of some shots, the blood on the screen, as well as the fate of the main characters are at the focus of heated discussions. This study focuses on the memory and commemoration of the Civil War in the first post-war decade.
Highlights
When asked in 1928 whether she liked contemporary Soviet films, one woman answered:I want to forget so dreadful past, but our directors vie with each other for showing the Civil War.1As this comment suggests, the theme of the Civil War was prominent in the Soviet cinema of the 1920s
The theme of the Civil War was prominent in the Soviet cinema of the 1920s
If we turn to the list of films acceptable to the workers’ clubs in 1925, we find that approximately 1/3 of the list of are films devoted to the history of the Civil War
Summary
When asked in 1928 whether she liked contemporary Soviet films, one woman answered:. I want to forget so dreadful past, but our directors vie with each other for showing the Civil War.. It fits into the general historiography of the memory of war veterans —and more generally, participants and witnesses of any dramatic and large-scale events (Rauch 2020)— and the representation of war in cinema This applies both to the Russian context (World War I, the Great Patriotic War, the Winter War, etc.) and to the global, primarily Hollywood, context (Broderick 2015). In the 1920s, for the first time in history, cinema provided an opportunity to present ideas about the war and experience trauma using new expressive means The specificity of this art form, only gaining the status of not just a technical attraction, but a new kind of art, in naturalism, the need to focus on alienating themselves from the image on the screen and to understand its fiction. This was not always easy for the viewers of early cinema
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