Soviet Spy Cinema of the early Cold War in Context of the Soviet Cultural Politics

Viktoria Sukovata

doi:10.5007/2175-7976.2016v23n36p391

Abstract

The article is devoted to analyses of the Soviet cultural consciousness during the Cold War, which was refected in the genre of spy cinema and literature. It was argued that the spy movie (along with the flm noir and nuclear fantasies) was one of the most representative genre of the Cold War, because it refected the basic cultural notions of that epoch, the public fears and the media clichés. There were investigated how the images of the Soviet spies and the secret agents were transforming in the Soviet cinema. It was concluded that the Soviet cinema during the Cold War focused not on the nuclear fears, but on the genre of the spy and military detectives because they were more representative for the notions of the Soviet society about the confrontation between the Soviet and the Western societies. Other principal conclusion is that Soviet spyware detectives were the metaphorical representation of the Soviet intellectuals’ opinion about the nature of the Soviet authorities.

Highlights

The article is devoted to analyses of the Soviet cultural consciousness during the Cold War, which was reflected in the genre of spy cinema and literature
It was argued that the spy movie was one of the most representative genre of the Cold War, because it reflected the basic cultural notions of that epoch, the public fears and the media clichés
It was concluded that the Soviet cinema during the Cold War focused not on the nuclear fears, but on the genre of the spy and military detectives because they were more representative for the notions of the Soviet society about the confrontation between the Soviet and the Western societies

Summary

Introduction

My statement is that the Cold War (1947-1991), which lasted for more than last forty years of the twentieth century can be seen as a holistic cultural epoch, with its own specificity, political, and cultural and aesthetic thinking. Culture and movie of the Cold War has received quite extensive studies in the West 3, but cinema art was investigated mostly in political and historical perspectives in the Soviet Union and Russia4.

Results

Conclusion