ABSTRACTThe Soviet film industry's conversion to sound-film production was initiated during the first Five-Year Plan, when the Soviet Union engaged in an ambitious economic agenda of rapid growth across all its industries. The rhetoric promoting such policies was oriented pointedly towards the West, and western capitalist countries were seen as the standard bearers of greater economic output that Soviet industries were charged to catch up with and surpass. Although overall improvement and expansion was ideally to occur independently of western assistance, that was rarely the case and foreign consultants were routinely imported. The Soviet film industry followed a similar trajectory in its development and implementation of sound-film production. Film-makers and industry officials sought to distance themselves from the West while still acknowledging and relying upon its superior technological capabilities. Two different sound systems were developed internally—Shorinofon. and Tagefon—both. utilizing optical sound tracks, and both equivalent to systems found in Hollywood. Indeed, there was a significant exchange of ideas with engineers in the United States throughout the transition era, and an American firm was even hired to help oversee the conversion of Soviet theatres to sound-film projection. Despite the grand rhetoric and certain achievement, the transition to complete sound film-making extended well beyond the first Five-Year Plan, with Soviet film-makers hindered by their industry's own technological shortcomings.