Soviet Family as Depicted on Screens in 1920s – Authentic or Not?

Abstract

In 2017 it was 90 years since a “cult” movie “The Third Meshanskaya”, by A. Room came out. This movie was known as a “Battleship Potemkin” in everyday life movie genre. In 2018, in turn, it was a 20-year anniversary of the movie “Retro for three”, a remake of “The Third Meshanskaya” by P. Todorovsky.Because of this, students of faculty of foreign languages and area studies were given an assignment as a part of a course “Russian Cinema” to write reviews on both aforementioned movies. The main goal of the task was not to find out students’ opinion about a “provocative” movie shot in 1920s, but rather to assess their knowledge of peculiarities and problems of interpersonal and family relations that people had in the first years of Soviet regime.The results of the experiment were predictable. Students generally liked both movies, especially “The Third Meshanskaya”. Students were surprised both with topicality of the movie’s theme and with the audacity of the film director. It turned out that the realities of soviet life in 1920s are unfamiliar and practically unknown to modern students.This article makes an attempt to address gender issues related to NEP (new economic policy) period of Soviet history in order to define exactly how authentically the daily life of average soviet people was shown in soviet movies. To make an objective assessment of a content of such movies additional sources and materials are required.