Sergei Eisenstein: A Biography by Oksana Bulgakowa (review)

Abstract

MLR, 98.4, 2003 1067 Annette Aronowicz examines the Jewish Communist Chaim Sloves's attempts to reconcile his allegiances to the Jewish community and to Communism in the period from 1948 to the mid-1960s, when the Soviet Union's brutal suppression of Yiddish culture had rendered this dual allegiance untenable. Aronowicz argues that Jewish Communists' unwillingness to abandon Soviet Communism was grounded in their refusal to believe that the regime that had granted Jews rights as a nation, allowed the flowering of Yiddish-language institutions, and defeated Hitler, could betray Jews. She demonstrates how Sloves, in his attempts to reconcile Yiddishism and Soviet Communism, becomes ensnared in contradictory arguments. For example, he extols the intrinsic value of Yiddish in the brotherhood of diverse cultures united around Communist principles, while also arguing forits value as an instrument forthe cultural assimilation of Soviet Jews. In conclusion, with its well-chosen assortment of essays addressing the contribu? tions ofindividual figures,as well as a variety ofprogressive movements and their insti? tutions, the volume provides a comprehensive and well-rounded picture ofthe diver? sityofthe Yiddish Left. The uniformly high quality ofthe collection and its breadth of topics and approaches make it an important contribution to interdisciplinary Yiddish studies and to related fields of enquiry (foreign-language and immigrantjournalism, bilingual education, minority and exile literatures, African colonial literature, Soviet studies). The volume's only inconsistency is its organization. The division ofthe vol? ume into two parts, 'Politics' and 'Culture', seems artificial and unnecessary, as the contributions in both sections demonstrate so clearly that the two were inseparable in the Yiddish Left. It is unclear, for example, why Daniel Soyer's reading of Abraham Cahan's travel narratives (especially given the current interest in travel literature in lit? erary and cultural studies) is relegated to 'Politics', while EffraimZadoff's comparison ofthe status ofYiddish in Jewish schools in Mexico and Argentina (in which he focuses on the role of the political ideologies of various school organizations in determining the status of Yiddish with respect to Hebrew and Spanish) is labelled 'Culture'. University of Illinois at Chicago Elizabeth Loentz Sergei Eisenstein: A Biography. By Oksana Bulgakowa. Berlin & San Francisco: Potemkin Press. 2001. xii + 292pp. ?25 (pbk ?20). ISBN 3-9804989-9-9(pbk 3-9804989-8-0). Oksana Bulgakowa's biography of the Soviet film-maker and theorist Sergei Eisen? stein was firstpublished in German in 1998, and this translation is a most welcome addition to the growing literature on Eisenstein in English. Bulgakowa's is the firstscholarly biography of Eisenstein since that by the Romanian scholar Yon Barna, published in English translation in 1973. It is also the first biography to make use of improved access to the Russian archives since the disinte? gration of the Soviet Union. In particular, the author has been able successfully to weave Eisenstein's own private thoughts, consigned to his hitherto inaccessible diaries and correspondence, into the more public accounts of his activities used by earlier biographers. Furthermore, Bulgakowa has not shrunk from confronting some of the more awkward or embarrassing questions surrounding Eisenstein's life and work, questions that less adventurous guardians of Eisenstein's reputation would probably prefer had remained unasked, let alone unanswered. Bulgakowa handles these questions with confidence and sensitivity. As the rear jacket blurb remarks: 'Was Eisenstein homosexual? A Stalinist? A conformist? A dissident? He left no clear answers for his biographers.' It therefore needs a biographer with broad knowledge and experience of Soviet, Russian, European, and indeed 1068 Reviews Transatlantic cultural life in the firsthalf of the twentieth century to do justice to a biographical subject of Eisenstein's complexity. The author draws upon original source materials in a large variety of languages, including Russian, German, French, and English. Bulgakowa's previous work on Russian and Soviet culture in general, and on Eisenstein in particular, is well known in Germany, but only now becoming properly appreciated in the English-speaking world. Her biography takes Eisenstein's life in chronological order but manages to deduce a thematic thread from each chapter and section of his life. The biography also contains a useful chronology of Eisenstein's life,a bibliography ofworks about Eisen? stein, a list of...