War disabled on screen: remembering and forgetting the Great War in the Russian and Soviet cinema, 1914–1940

Abstract

This article focusses on a region which up till now has not received much attention from scholars of disability, Tsarist and Soviet Russia. The article focuses on the complex ways Russian disabled veterans from the First World War were represented in different visual source materials like newsreels, documentaries and feature films. It evaluates the differences between different kinds of disability and the way that they were represented in film from a number of well-known directors. The article employs sources from archives to analyse the myriad of ways in which disabled veterans were constructed and used by the state during and after the Revolution.