Queer readings of Soviet children's films, 1931–1954

Abstract

The chapter addresses the possibilities for producing a queer subjectivity in Soviet children’s cinema, from the early 1930s until the early 1950s. This analysis of the practices of subjectivation in Soviet cinema is based on the close queer readings of several films that are well known to Soviet viewers, but practically unknown to the post-Soviet audience: ‘Putevka v zhizn’ (Road to Life, 1931), ‘Krasnyj galstuk’ (Red Tie, 1948) and ‘Attestat zrelosti’ (Certificate of Maturity, 1954). Particular attention is paid to the explication of the historical and political contexts that enables identification of the influence that discussions on a New (Wo)Man and the ‘sexual issue’ had on the formation of Soviet ‘children’s policy’ (educational and cultural). The chapter provides an alternative perspective on the discourses of normativity and exclusion in Soviet children’s films and investigates the subversive potential of the films in question to threaten the dominant system of meaning.