Late Stalinist Cinema and the Cold War: An Equation without Unknowns

Author(s): Evgeny Dobrenko

Source: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 98, No. 4 (Oct., 2003), pp. 929-944
Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3737934
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 LATE STALINIST CINEMA AND THE COLD

WAR: AN EQUATION WITHOUT UNKNOWNS

An equation is a mathematical record of the

task of searching for the values of arguments,
in which the values of two given functions are
equal. The arguments on which these func?
tions depend are called unknown factors, and
the values of these unknown factors, which
make the functions equal, are called solutions.
(Iakov Perel'man, Entertaining Algebra (1950))

Films about the cold war constitute a small category in late Stalinist cinema,
when such genres as biopic, war film, historical-Revolutionary film, and literary
adaptation dominated. However, the rebirth of the popular detective genre en-
hanced the popularity of these most aggressively propagandist and most Stalin?
ist of films. The traditional coupling of 'propaganda and entertainment' stands
in contrast to the Sovietological view that Stalinist propaganda was by definition
incredibly boring and imposed almost by force on the Soviet people. Neverthe?
less, in recent years a crack has appeared in these bastions of common sense: it
has become clear that there was in Stalinist culture a certain 'positive' socialist
realism, e.g. the skilful musicals of Aleksandrov or the songs of Dunaevskii.
The fact that these films belong to the category of popular cinema by no
means reflects on their quality and their significance in the wider context.1
However, we need to refer with caution to the concept of the popular when
dealing with Stalinist culture: the Stalinist blockbuster was made in the same
Central Committee offices where annual thematic plans and film scripts were
confirmed. The blockbuster itself was the product of a certain distribution pol-
icy (quantity of copies, film classification, special screenings in workers' clubs,
ete). For quite understandable reasons the musical was at the top of the lists
of box-office leaders in the 1930s. Yet the musical carried no less propaganda
and ideological potential than the historical-Revolutionary film. In the period
of late Stalinism the situation was somewhat different: fewer films were made
after the war than in the 1930s (it was the period ofthe so-called 'malokartine',
when annual film production dropped from around a hundred in the 1930s to
under fifty from the mid-1940s until after Stalin's death). The hierarchy of
genres changed: the historical-Revolutionary film was pushed aside in favour
of the biopic, which took the lead in post-war film production; moreover, films
celebrating victory in the Second World War ('trophy films') appeared and en-
joyed huge popularity. Also among the clear leaders were cold-war films. Yet it
is not possible to explain this fact by claiming that they simply complied with
the social order: these were the most blatant propaganda films. However, no

I would like to express my gratitude to the International Center for Advanced Studies at New
York University, where I worked on this article in the context of a project on 'Cold War as Global
Conflict'.
1 See Thomas
Lahusen, How Life Writes the Book (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997);
Evgeny Dobrenko, The Making of the State Reader (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
1997)-
93? Late Stalinist Cinema and the Cold War

less degree of propaganda and ideological thrust can be found in the biograph?
ical films about the heroes of Russian science and culture, in war films, and in
historical-Revolutionary films, in which Stalin invariably appeared. Where did
the 'secret of success' lie, to borrow a phrase from Soviet criticism?
'If the argument is weak, raise the voice.' Winston Churchill's well-known
advice represents a classic example of equations of a type that is not stipulated
in the entertaining books of Iakov Perel'man. These are non-linear equations,
non-square, non-cubic, non-differential and non-integral, non-chemical equa?
tions. We are dealing with meta-equations, or rather the main principle of
equations: tautologies. We shall call this the principle of total valency: both
halves of any equation strive towards self-repetition. Here it is not the content
of functions on either side that is important, but the tension between them. In
the image of 'weakness of argument' and 'force of voice' the two factors are not
just valent, but they also create meaning. We commonly assume that a tautology
creates entropy and emptiness; yet it can also create meaning. The aspect of
a tautology creating meaning in propaganda discourse is the focal lens for the
following investigation.
Tautology as a universal phenomenon has its equivalent not only in math?
ematics, but also in art: if in science it is created in equations, then its genre
equivalent in art is detective fiction. The detective genre and the equation have
in common the riddle: the equation is the rationalization of a riddle, the detec?
tive story its mythologization. In 'high' genres the riddle preserves its principle:
two equal sides with unknown factors demonstrate their dissimilarity, whereas
the recipient knows from the start that they are identical. The riddle is a game.
The process of solving the riddle is, as a matter of fact, reduced to proving the
obvious: the fact that the values of 'two given functions are equal', as Perel'man
suggests, is known from the outset. This transforms the whole process into
something intellectual. If science goes down the path of transforming a riddle
into complicated rational (and useful) structures, then the detective genre en-
deavours to transform the process of solving the riddle into a sensual (and
pleasant) structure.
In this sense the detective story is a meta-genre, and as such has its mani?
festations in art?from Shakespeare, Dickens, and Dostoevskii to Edgar Allen
Poe, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Stephen King. However, I
shall not deal here with the classical detective story, but with a special condi?
tion of the memory of the genre in the period of the cold war. The starting point
here is Churchill's Fulton speech, and the nerve centre is American superiority
through possession of the nuclear bomb. This superiority was short-lived, but
the conditions were not simple: the 'victorious power' was politically troubled,
having gone straight from one war into another?this time, literally, with yester-
day's allies. Actually, nothing unusual happened: both the Soviet Union and the
West returned to a pre-war rhetoric. Only the 'political realities' ('arguments')
had changed.
The genre memory of detective fiction had been subjected to major up?
heavals in Soviet history: the classical detective story had been expelled from
the sphere of reading, while a 'Soviet' detective genre could not be generated.
The struggle with 'Pinkerton-ism' and 'Messmend-ism' led to the death of
 EVGENY DOBRENKO 931

the detective genre.2 Because the problems of private life (the juicy parts of a
detective story) were excluded from artistic presentation, the only way out was
through the sphere of pure politics: in the 1930s adventure genres for children
appeared under the pressure of the ideological opposition of two systems, and
detective plots of artistic production for adults relied on figures of saboteurs,
spies, wreckers, ete. However, this did not contradict the nature of the detective
novel, which is an overtly social genre. One of its constant functions (on one
side of the equation) is the law, while the other function is variable. Whichever
way the variable is changed, it is easy to model the second part of the equation
on the first; after all, the detective story is a social and moralizing genre; its
condition is the victory ofthe social order (embodied in the law). In the absence
of private subject matter, the detective story mirrors the drama of the state. In
this sense the history of the Soviet detective story is the embodiment of the
social trauma of the Soviet epoch. The defeat in the race for a monopoly on
the H-bomb proved to be exceedingly traumatic, and the resulting inferiority
complex could not be eased by the recent victory in the war, making it instead
especially painful that this victorious state did not have the Bomb. The generic
form of the state's 'illness' became the political detective plot of the post-war
years. Two circumstances need to be borne in mind.
The first is that the pool of film-script authors was made up of playwrights,
prose writers, and poets, which dispenses with the need to consider vari?
ous genre manifestations of the political detective story in post-war art, so
that we may speak exclusively about a cinema which, because of its synthetic
character, combined the 'poetry of struggle for peace' (Konstantin Simonov,
Nikolai Tikhonov, Il'ia Ehrenburg), the 'patriotic play' (Brothers Tur, Nikolai
Virta, August Jakobson, Aleksandr Shtein, Boris Romashov), and the 'detec?
tive novel' (Lev Sheinin, Nikolai Shpanov). The films discussed here were all
scripted by established writers: The Meeting on the Elbe (Vstrecha na EVbe,
dir. Grigorii Aleksandrov, 1949) was scripted by the Brothers Tur and Lev
Sheinin; Mikhail Romm's The Russian Question (Russkii vopros, 1948) was
adapted from Simonov's play, and Secret Mission (Sekretnaia missiia, 1950)
was written by Konstantin Isaev and Mikhail Makliarskii; The Conspiracy of
the Doomed (Zagovor obrechennykh, dir. Mikhail Kalatozov, 1950) was based
on Virta's script; Abram Room's Silvery Dust (Serebristaia pyV, 1953) was
adapted from a script by Jakobson; and Aleksandr Dovzhenko's unfinished
Farewell America (Proshchai, Amerika, 1951) was assumed, at an early stage,
to have been scripted by the Brothers Tur. We might also mention the screen
adaptations of the plays of Romashov, Great Force (Velikaia sila, dir. Fridrikh
Ermler, 1949), and Shtein, Court of Honour (Sud chesti, dir. Room, 1948), but
the homogeneity of genre of the six films selected here, by the most important
Soviet directors, renders their discussion superfluous for present purposes. A
comparison of the film scripts with the filmed material shows a surprising level
of discipline on the part of the directors. The ideological status of the script re?
quired very precise adherence to the text (in fact, The Russian Question and The
2 These terms were used to refer to
'petit-bourgeois boulevard literature', detective stories about
the legendary investigator Pinkerton and the 1920s novel by Marietta Shaganian Mess-Mend; or,
Yankees in Petrograd.
932 Late Stalinist Cinema and the Cold War

Conspiracy of the Doomed were adaptations of very popular plays, which were
at this time being performed in theatres all over the country). At the same time,
under the regime of the malokartine directors had no great choice of scripts.
The second circumstance is the release of the detective plot from the pressure
of ideology. 'Great literature' and 'a great Western', which 'must be printed in
a thick journal', is how Vsevolod Vishnevskii described Dovzhenko's script.3
Maia Turovskaia writes about the 'entertainment potential of these "crime"
films': 'the genre structure of these films is very weak: the espionage intrigue
does not move the plot forward, but arranges it'.4 The proof of this weakness
of subject lies in the fact that the theme of each film can be described in one
sentence and without touching on the plot or on specific events:

Farewell, America is about how an honest American girl cannot live in the
espionage den of the American embassy in Moscow and deserts America,
becoming a Soviet citizen.
The Meeting on the Elbe is about how the Americans co-operated with former
Nazis in occupied Germany, plundering the country.
The Russian Question is about how an honest American journalist refuses to
carry out the order of his boss to write a book about the Russians' desire for
war and, having written the truth about the peaceful disposition ofthe Soviet
regime, loses his job.
Silvery Dust is about how in secret US laboratories American scientists, to?
gether with former Nazis, develop radioactive weapons; about the prepara-
tion for a war, human experiments on black Americans, and the struggle for
peace in America.
The Conspiracy of the Doomed is about how in some East European country the
Americans organize a plot against the Communist members of a coalition
government and how the Soviet Union comes to their rescue.
Secret Mission is about how the American allies conducted separate negotia-
tions with Germany during the war, trying to prevent the advance of the
Soviet army into Europe.

But this weak subject is almost the most interesting feature of these films:
it allows an understanding of the factors that have influenced the memory of
a genre and explains why the Soviet detective novel developed as it did. For
obvious reasons the anti-American film production of the late Stalinist period
did not constitute a topic for serious analysis: a traditional context analysis can?
not be applied to these films, which follow one thematic line. It is impossible
to read their content without proceeding from the texts to a description of the
relationship between artist and regime.
The description of this anti-American film production by Turovskaia as 'the
worst, the most untrue, the most false that [Zhdanov's culture] had, when

3 Cited in Dovzhenko's diaries: Aleksandr Dovzhenko, 'Operatsiia bez narkoza: Dnevnikovye

zapisi', Iskusstvo kino, 9 (1996), 73-75 (p. 75).
4 Maia Turovskaia, 'Fil'my "kholodnoi voiny"', Iskusstvo kino, 9 (1996), 99-106 (p. 101). See
also Maya Turovskaya, 'Soviet Film and the Cold War', in Stalinism and Soviet Cinema, ed. by
Richard Taylor and Derek Spring (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 131-41.
 EVGENY DOBRENKO 933

artists could hardly plead for misunderstanding or appeal to the "faith"',5 is

disputable. First, these films were not 'worse' and not 'more false' than Kuban
Cossacks (Kubanskie kazaki, dir. I. Pyr'ev, 1950) or The Cavalier of the Gold
Star {Kaval'er zolotoi zvezdy, dir. Raizman, 1951); second, they were no more
cynical than, for example, Fall of Berlin {Padenie Berlina, dir. M. Chiaureli,
I95?) ?r Romm's films about Lenin, Lenin in October {Lenin v oktiabre, 1937)
and Lenin in igi8 {Lenin v igi8g., 1939). The artistic production of socialist
realism cannot be described in such categories; Turovskaia herself confirms
this, showing in these films the transformation of the 'image of the enemy' into
an 'invented America'.
Dovzhenko's Farewell, America6 raises the question of the artist and the
regime. Antropov argues that as soon as we understand Dovzhenko's rules of
the game, we begin to see an unrecognizable and strange Dovzhenko.7 Trim-
bach writes:

Did only commercial/tactical reasons motivate the director? Was that the reason why he
made this agitka about perfidious American diplomats with their fierce hatred for the
country of the Soviets? He made a flat satire about the representatives of the land that
so many nowadays consider the 'promised' land; but this is nowadays. During Comrade
Stalin's time Soviet man, even an outstanding director, piously believed that America
was the country of social and other horrors, where Negroes were lynched, women raped,
where fat-bottomed and fat-lipped billionaires with cigars between their teeth chased
poor people without mercy. 'The corrupted ground. America', Dovzhenko wrote in his
own hand.8

In terms ofthe evolution of Dovzhenko's work, his anti-American film, released

after a lapse of half a century, looks absolutely organic.
It is not only the stylistics of the script but also the globality of the ideas
that unites Dovzhenko's post-war projects. 'In the script global problems are
solved. [. . .] Everything will work out for us, if we free ourselves from everyday
trifles and rise above them', reads the diary entry concerning Farewell, Amer?
ica:9 'It will be a wide panorama of public life on our planet, taking the year
1950 as a paradigm [...]. Everything has to be significant, and by-the-way, and
like a testament at once.'10 But with the same logic all of this can be attributed
to any of Dovzhenko's ideas:

I want to call it [the film Farewell, America] a film-poem. I have taken a journalistic
theme and rendered it in the language of art. [. . .] The whole of nature must be raised
and everything must be rendered in the poetry of the epoch. [. . .] Some devices of
generalization are needed for a proper portrayal. In lieu of accuracy comes synthetic
generalization.11

5
'Fil'my "kholodnoi voiny"', p. 99.
6 The film's
production was halted after a third of the material was shot, and later annotated
with commentaries and released in 1996.
7 V.
Antropov, 'Chuzhoi Dovzhenko?', Iskusstvo kino, 9 (1996), 87-89 (p. 89).
8 S.
Trimbach, 'Vvzhzhennaia zemlia Aleksandra Dovzhenko', Iskusstvo kino, 9 (1996), 80-86
(p. 82).
9 Dovzhenko,
'Operatsiia bez narkoza', p. 74.
10 Aleksandr
Dovzhenko, 'Nado igrat' ne klinicheskii sluchai, a dramu: rabochie zapisi k fil'mu
"Proshchai, Amerika"', Iskusstvo kino, 9 (1996), 76-79 (p. 77).
11
Dovzhenko, 'Operatsiia bez narkoza', pp. 74-75.
934 Late Stalinist Cinema and the Cold War

Literally the same expressions are used in the film script Poem about the Sea
for the old Ukrainian village with Scythian tombs. The threat that the earth
will be turned into dust comes not from America, but from dry winds. The
enemy is not America, but nature. All the same, Dovzhenko found an object
through which to display his apocalyptic vision: in Poem about the Sea it is the
desert encroaching on Ukraine that justifies the flooding of hundreds of Old
Petrovites. Entire sequences are moved from the project of Farewell, America to
the Poem about the Sea, such as the child and the monument to the heroic father
(the father here will be a general, and the monument passes into the scene with
the grieving mother). There is the paranoia which colours all his later work,
an expression of a fatal weariness, if not illness. Scenes in Farewell, America
such as mass meetings of the Association of Progressive Figures of American
Culture, or the May Day parade in Moscow, are typical of Dovzhenko's hys-
terics. In the anti-American films the pacifists speak from platforms. But only
in Dovzhenko are things so 'beautiful' (in the words of his heroes): America
is transformed into a moral torture chamber!'; 'we are carried towards cata?
strophe with a speed that America has never known!'; 'we are participants in
the greatest madness ever faced by mankind'; 'The shadow of a nuclear bomb
has cut off the light! All is under lock and key in Wall Street! Science has been
stolen!'; 'we have plunged into deep mental depression!'12 The result of this
deep mental depression was the film Farewell, America.
'Improvise, add some phrases to the role. Act out today's newspaper.' Men-
tally Dovzhenko addresses the actor of the role of the American diplomat-spy
Marrow, and again he writes: 'movement [...] is a great thing in film. Movement
should not be self-sufficing, it is limited by words.'13 Movement accompanies
the words of a newspaper. The writer Dovzhenko had enough words; there were
too many words, but he did not have not enough movement and plot. Such a
plot was created for The Meeting on the Elbe by those masters of intrigue, the
Brothers Tur and Lev Sheinin, assistant to prosecutor Vyshinskii, whose desk
was located in the USSR State Prosecutor's quarters.
The Meeting on the Elbe is the only film (except for Dovzhenko's unfinished
film) where Russians and Americans meet in direct opposition, although the
identification of Americans with Nazis is not the 'only secret of the packet
of cold-war films'.14 There are many secrets of a special nature: we are in a
world of games where, trying to solve a riddle, we are immediately given the
solution. In the first frames we see the flight of Nazis who had not yet been
caught from the German city of Altenstadt, occupied by the Soviet army, to
the American zone, aboard the ship Adolf Hitler. The film could have stopped
here, but then we would not know why they are fleeing. The spectator certainly
knows, just as in a bad detective story we know not only who has been killed
but also who the murderer is, and it is only the detective who gropes in the
dark. But as if that were not enough, here the detective too knows everything.
The main intrigue lies somewhere on the periphery of the action: the mission
12 Aleksandr
Dovzhenko, 'Proshchai Amerika: fragmenty stsenariia', in Dovzhenko, Sobrania
sochinenia v 4-x tomakh (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1968), iv, 729-53 (pp. 733-34).
13 Dovzhenko, 'Nado igrat' ne klinicheskii sluchai, a dramu', pp. 78-79.
14 Turovskaia, 'Fil'my "kholodnoi voiny"', p. 100.
 EVGENY DOBRENKO 935

of an American journalist and spy and of the Nazi criminal Schrank, who is
supposed to steal licences for military optical devices from the Soviet zone,
appears from the beginning to be under the control of the intelligent Soviet
commander Kuzmin. The dramatic necessity of the plot with the journalist,
the Nazi's claim to be a resistance fighter, the concealment of the licences in
some ruins, or the affair of the commander with a woman journalist is not clear,
both because the secret flight of the town's mayor and his return to the Soviet
zone together with a whole group of progressive engineers demands no special
efforts, and because access to the American zone is open to everyone.
These flaws, which deflate the tension of the intrigue, this negligence suggest
that the 'espionage intrigue' does not so much 'arrange the plot' but rather un-
covers the basic descriptive layer ofthe 'internal subject'. The detective story
becomes descriptive. It is so much of an anti-detective situation that from be-
neath the fragments of the reduced plot construction the actual?ideological?
plot of the film transpires. The detective plot cannot be detached: before us is
the classical equation. The Elbe, into which the American general shreds the
Allied obligations, is a sort of 'equals sign' between functions.
One of these functions is Soviet, the other American. The Russian attack is a
monumental picture of struggle, while the American soldiers are pictured with
bottles of alcohol. The meeting ofthe two currents is 'the heaviest consequence
of war', according to the American general. This general is only busy buying
shares in German industry and creating a social democratic government to un-
dermine the influence of the Communists, carrying out espionage and working
with a Nazi agency, while the Soviet commander's first concern is to release all
political prisoners. The Americans plunder Germany, whereas the Soviet gen?
eral proclaims: 'Now we need the key to the soul ofthe German people.' The ed?
ucated Soviet commander reads Heine's verse and restores a monument to him,
while in the American zone the monument to Kaiser Wilhelm remains broken.
The film shows a world already separated. In the Soviet zone people are en?
gaged in the education of children: 'this is Germany's future'. In the American
zone people plunder the country. The stunned mayor15 sees the American zone
as an apocalyptic vision, with night clubs, public houses, prostitutes, queues for
bread, where the unfortunate Germans 'exchange German culture for stewed
pork, beans, and cigarettes'. The theme of cultural opposition is central. Of
course, the American general and, later, the senator speak about the beginning
of a new war against Communism; of course, the problem of production of a
new weapon is actively discussed; of course, the spectator is told that the Mar-
shall Plan is a preparation for aggression against Russia. But the main thing is
the cultural incompatibility of the two countries.
The plot of The Meeting on the Elbe is thus the non-meeting of two worlds.
This equation with a 'not-equals' sign {*) is a mathematical record of the
conditions of the post-war world. When, in the finale, the American senator
welcomes those gathered for a ball with the words: 'The spectacular light of
15 The 'honest German', who has travelled a path from non-Party
allegiance to comprehension
of the correctness of the Russians: 'Two worlds have met on the Elbe, on two coasts. Germany must
choose. I remain on this coast, where a new, democratic, unified Germany is born', he declares at
the end of the film to the Soviet commander, handing over the folder with the ill-starred licences.
936 Late Stalinist Cinema and the Cold War

the American order shines brightly on the gloom of post-war Europe', and the
electricity in the hall fails (the workers in the American zone have declared a
strike), this is not simply a sign of class solidarity, but of a blackout of projection:
the film ends with a close-up of the bridges rising over the Elbe. The order to
raise the bridges is given by a drunken aide-de-camp of the American general,
played by Erast Garin in the style of Hitler as he appeared in the Wochenschau
film (with his striking short moustache, distorted face, and the hand extended
forward). Above the rising bridges the last phrase of the Soviet commander
sounds: 'Farewell. We met as allies, lived as neighbours, and we part as friends.
Do everything to ensure that in the future we will not meet as enemies. . . .
Remember, the friendship of the peoples of America and Russia is the most
important question that now stands before mankind.'
Here, however, we are in the grip of mathematics, which accepts no other
logic. The main figure to express this logic is the journalist. He is like a frontier
guard, standing on the border between the two parts of the equation. His con-
vertibility (in The Meeting on the Elbe and in The Conspiracy of the Doomed his
function was performed by the American spies, and in The Russian Question, on
the contrary, he was the main positive hero) makes him almost a symbolic figure.
The journalist is also a self-image: Soviet directors and writers certainly did
not know America. Many of them, especially the writers, had been war corre-
spondents and therefore depicted the world they knew. But the journalist's job
is to possess a huge amount of real information and to distil it, with a touch of
cynicism, for propaganda purposes. This cynicism brings the journalist closer
to the politician, casting him in the role of a politician and, if necessary, a scout
or spy. Hence the appearance of so many journalists in these films, and thus it is
that Soviet anti-American film production begins with The Russian Question,
a play by Simonov and a film by Romm?about journalists.
We return to the structure ofthe equation: whatever sign stands between the
two given functions (equals or, as in this case, not-equals), the functions appear
as equivalent. Therefore the idea that in cold-war films the image ofthe enemy
was shifted to America because Soviet reality could not contain plots, political
murders, provocations, terror, demagogy, deceit, is as correct as the opposite;
everything shown in these films is both false and true. Certainly, when an
American newspaper prints the message that Russian aircraft have appeared
over Eritrea, this causes, to put it mildly, mistrust. Journalists know that it is a
cheat. But it is not a bigger lie than the statement that the Soviet commanders
in the occupied zone were teaching German children and reciting Heine.
The world of Soviet anti-American films shows the American reality of
the McCarthy epoch in strongly exaggerated, but in many respects authentic,
terms. The same is true for American anti-Soviet films, such as Iron Curtain
(dir. William Wellman, 1948), Red Danube (dir. George Sidney, 1949), Berlin
Express (dir. Jacques Tourneur, 1948), My Son John (dir. Leo McCarey, 1952),
/ was a Communist for the FBI (dir. Gordon M. Douglas, 1951), and others.
The cold war was really one of the most gloomy periods in American history,
and this can be read in any American textbook; the corresponding period of
Soviet history does not constitute a Golden Age either. There was no change in
American reality just because Soviet authors displaced their own moral atmo-
 EVGENY DOBRENKO 937

sphere to an invented America.16 True, a secret weapon was developed in the

USSR and human experiments were carried out, but the same took place in the
USA; true, there was no political freedom in the USSR, but the same (albeit
adjusted to democratic procedures and traditions) can be said ofthe USA; true,
espionage agencies operated in both countries, achieving the realization of their
political ends in occupied countries: the USSR arranged plots, but so did the
USA; true, the USSR talked about peace and prepared for war, but the same is
true for the USA; true, the rhetoric became ever more strident: in Soviet films
the Americans were shown as Nazis, and American films showed Stalin as a
second Hitler; true, newspapers lied, but on both sides of the ocean. . . .
Even if we read anti-American as inverted Soviet,17 the suppressed complexes
of the Soviet Union nevertheless shine through in these films; in fact, nothing
changes: the American press lied as well, American intelligence agencies or?
ganized plots as well, and the Americans too developed a radioactive weapon.
Thus the values of both functions are equal, and the only required correction
when reading these films is one of focus. All the time we see one half of the
equation, but since the other is easy to construct (according to the principle
of mirror reflection), we construct it all the time: reading a propaganda text
without such a correction dooms the process to tautology. Taking account of
the 'mirror surface' reveals the objective, structure, and functions of propa?
ganda discourse, and turns the process of reading into a process of detection of
meaning where emptiness seemed to gape.
Let us look from this viewpoint at The Russian Question, in which, as the
newspaper magnate Macpherson says, 'there can be no middle'. The journalist
Smith naively attempts to steer a middling course, to get away with half-truths,
to avoid a direct answer to the question of whether the Russians want war. This
is, in fact, the attempt to eliminate the mirror, because the truth is much more
complex than an unequivocal 'yes' or 'no'. However, this is not clear to anybody
in the film but, most importantly, it should not be clear to the spectator either,
who has been pushed into the impasse of truth/falsehood about Soviet Russia
by the law of binary opposition. Moreover, the issue of how truthful the picture
of America is should be avoided. This is irrelevant in the framework of the
equation.
At the centre of film is the editorial office of one of the largest New York
newspapers. This picture is drawn richly: before us we have an editorial anthill
in which 'the dirty linen from all points of the compass is shaken up' and the
information for the American philistine is presented as required by Wall Street.
Everything, from the police chronicle ('the corpse of a girl on a roadway, guts
wound around a column, brains on the window of a drugstore') to international
information (Russian journalists have brought money for striking coal miners;
Russians share everything, from bikes to wives), is shot through with sensation
and falsehood; but mainly with cynicism.
The film is about truth and falsehood; the journalists themselves speak about
this. Nobody believes in what they do, everyone knows that they lie ('All the
same, half of the Americans hold views completely different from those we
Turovskaia, 'Fil'my "kholodnoi voiny"', p. 106.
Turovskaia, 'Fil'my "kholodnoi voiny"', p. 106.
938 Late Stalinist Cinema and the Cold War

express'); everybody is ashamed ('What, these Russian are still good guys? . . .
That's beastly of them! If they were worse, it wouldn't be so shamefuP); every -
one speaks about their bad conscience and tries to detect it in others: 'Why do
we seek out the conscience of other people all the time?' is the question that
the only fair journalist, Smith, puts to his friend working not for Macpherson
(centre right), but for Hurst (extreme right). Some drink out of misery, others
are under coercion, and still others work because they need the money. Over all
this hopelessness stand Smith's words: 'It is impossible to be honest and happy
at the same time.'
The dispute about truth and falsehood had its source in Gorkii's play Lower
Depths (Na dne). If we subtract from the play the character Luka and the ap?
peal to Christianity, we have The Russian Question. Among the inhabitants of
the asylum on Fifth Avenue we find the same figures of the hopelessly drunk
(almost a third of the film passes in the Press Bar, where the heroes conduct
their 'Russian conversations', quaffing whisky), the same cynics, the same ex-
ploiters, the same self-deceivers. The same angry monologue in defence of man
is pronounced here. The lesson of the classics is taken into account, however:
here these texts are pronounced not by the drunken Satin, but by Smith, who
rises in esteem before our eyes. From the apolitical but honest journalist, who
had spent the war together with 'Russian guys in trenches near Gzhatsk' and
written a book about the battle at Stalingrad, he develops into a fighter. By
the end of the film he repeats: 'I have written the truth', 'I shall not become
a rascal', 'I am ashamed for all of us. I have remembered that I am a human
being'. And however much he is told that the loop cannot be broken ('War is
necessary, and a bad Russia is necessary for war'), our hero is not appeased. We
might think that before us we have a romantic hero, but it appears that truth
is the only way out, the only means of self-preservation (the fate of Smith's
journalist friend Murphy, who commits professional suicide by declaring on a
live broadcast 'I leave your gang!', is one alternative).
By the end of the film the rhetoric accrues on both sides. On behalf of 'all
honest people of America' the journalist Smith speaks at a meeting of peace
supporters:
I have written an honest book about Russia. For the forty-seventh time I tell its content
because in our country, the country of press freedom, there is no publishing house
that would dare to print it. For having written this book I was deprived of work and
thrown out on the street. For travelling around the country and telling its content, in
our country, the country of free speech, I am summoned by the Commission for the
Investigation of Anti-American Activity. But this too will not silence me! For a long
time I thought naively that there was one America. But there are two. And if I do
not have a place in the America of Macpherson and Hurst, I shall find myself a place
in the America of Lincoln and Roosevelt. America is not Wall Street, not a hundred
billionaires, two hundred newspaper kings, and a thousand venal journalists. America
is the people, it's us! They tell us that the enemies of America are beyond the ocean, in
the Soviet Union. It's a lie! The enemies of America are here. Four blocks from here,
on Wall Street. They are here, four hundred kilometres from here, in Washington, in
the war ministry. Enemies of America are those who say that Russia threatens us with
war. Nobody threatens us with war. It's a lie! They are the enemies of America, they
push us to war. They say that we Americans are a strong nation. Yes, we Americans are
a strong nation. Strong enough to wring the neck of our own warmongers.
 EVGENY DOBRENKO 939

The text emphasizes the concepts of non-freedom, deceit, enemies. Before

us we already have a Soviet character: he even measures the distance from
New York to Washington in kilometres instead of miles. The internal schism
of America is the basic message that encircles Romm's film. It begins with
the montage of documentary footage of the Statue of Liberty, Manhattan from
above, frontal views of Harlem, the distribution of soup to the unemployed, a
magnificent banquet, grain discharged into the water, milk trickling into a river,
the dispersal of a demonstration, the work of printing presses, the packing of
newspapers, the countrywide dispatch of trains carrying newspapers, people
reading newspapers, black women washing linen, the preparation of food on a
Harlem roadway, the Empire State Building from bottom to top, a cancan in a
cabaret, a manicure salon for dogs, the text 'America, 1946'.
This is an example of a false equation: Romm's image of 'New York, city of
contrasts' creates a situation where an equation is within one of the functions
(still with the not-equals sign *), whereas the Soviet side is presented not only
through Smith's manifestos, but very briefly in his memoirs about what he
saw in the USSR. When our hero dares to write the truth about whether the
Russians want a war, he consistently sees images of Red Square, the Moscow un?
derground, the turbines of Dniepr Hydroelectric Station, a machine-building
factory, collective-farm fields, children behind school desks in the USSR. This
documentary footage of peaceful work is opposed to the montage of American
reality. To solve this rebus, we place in brackets the two different Americas and
obtain one function; the Soviet pictures are another function. Between them
lies full convertibility: it is enough to peruse the pictures of post-war life in the
USSR (the poverty in communal apartments, famine in villages, bread queues
with ration cards, ete.) for a smooth surface to appear. In this case the second
picture (function) is equal to itself, just like the first. From the fact that the
Soviet Union is half a function it does not follow that the picture of Amer?
ica is false: New York really is a 'city of contrasts', while the Soviet picture
is obviously incomplete. The truth about the Russia of the journalist Smith
(Simonov-Romm) differs but little from the 'lie' of Macpherson and Hurst. It
is neither truth nor lie, but full valency.
A solution to our equations is offered by the film Silvery Dust. Professor
Samuel Steel has invented a radioactive poison that decomposes several days
after dispersion and destroys all life, allowing the quiet occupation of territory:
no destruction, no protests, no disinfection, no decontamination, a minimum
of expense, and a real detective plot.
The Pentagon wants to buy Steel's discovery. The representative ofthe army,
General MacKennedy, associated with a certain Eastern trust, is interested in
transferring the order to his bosses on Wall Street, while the project was fi-
nanced by the Southern trust, headed by Anthony Bruce. The process of ten?
der begins; trying to delay business, the general insists on conducting control
experiments on people. But no 'human material' is at hand and the delivery of
'a group of Korean or Chinese prisoners of war' takes time. Bruce decides to
use black people sentenced to death for his experiments, but none is available.
Then, together with the sheriff, the judge, and the state governor, he concocts a
plot against six black people arrested during a peace demonstration and charged
94? Late Stalinist Cinema and the Cold War

with the attempted rape of a white woman. A former Nazi colonel working for
Steel gets involved in the plot when General MacKennedy orders him to steal
the formula for the production ofthe silver-grey dust. He incites Steel's son to
steal his father's keys, but the attempted robbery ends pitiably: Steel's son is
exposed to radiation and perishes. Steel himself, it transpires, had poisoned his
teacher and married the latter's daughter, thus inheriting the laboratory. Steel
dies when the general, together with his gang, forces him to reveal his secrets.
In the end the pacifists stop the Ku Klux Clan, which wanted to lynch the
unfortunate prisoners, and release the prisoners from Steel's laboratory. The
terrible story is matched by appropriate settings: catacombs, bunkers, protec-
tive gowns, blinking lamps. It is first of all a detective story: the ideological
debate developing during the course of the action only serves as a setting for
the intrigue. This arrangement is crucial: the endless monologues, providing
the detective story with meaning, are delivered by the pacifists.
The plot is moved forward by a family conflict and by the unfailingly enlight-
ened attitude of an honest but apolitical scientist; many motivations, however,
are stitched with a false thread. For example, the general has only to say to the
former Nazi: 'Help us and we shall help you take revenge for the bitterness of
defeat' to ensure that the Nazi will steal the documents. It is enough for the
Nazi to tell Steel's son that 'thoroughbred Aryans are born with the psychology
of a winner' and 'stand above the current morals' for the son (having previously
read Mein Kampf, of course) to steal the keys from his father and climb into
the terrible safe.
All these films adopt a more strident tone towards the end: the theme of op?
position is infinite. The rhetoric is the result of a 'counterbalance ofthe bomb':
neither side can act, and this only kindles their reputation as 'warmongers' or
'pacifists', both in Soviet and in American political films ofthe post-war years.
'The tension of the atmosphere' in Soviet films is connected not only with texts
and gesticulation, but also with musical composition. The greatest Soviet com-
posers wrote the music for these films: Dmitrii Shostakovich {The Meeting on
the Elbe), Aram Khachaturian (The Russian Question, Secret Mission), Mikhail
Chulaki (Silvery Dust), Vissarion Shebalin (The Conspiracy of the Doomed).
Scenes like the finale in Silvery Dust are certainly no longer cinema, but
theatre; the sensation of the game never abates, words are pressing. The choice
of stage actors for roles in these films can be explained in this way.18 Of course,
Silvery Dust may have been the expression of the 'possibility of speaking
in plain terms about experiments on humans, of provoking disorder and ar-
rests, of blackmailing each other', in other words the depiction of a totalitarian
regime.19 But, first, it was hardly a sign of freedom, and second?without com-
ical displacement?this was approximately what happened in reality: Negroes
were lynched, weapons were developed, patents were stolen, and big business
vied for military orders.
It is a different matter that a detective story without a secret does not amount
to much. The secret in a political detective story is a conspiracy, even if it is
18 Maia Turovskaia writes about the
very special 'acting ensembles in these films', noting the
'distinctive theatrical quality ofthe films' ('Fil'my "kholodnoi voiny"', p. 102).
19 Turovskaia,'Fil'my "kholodnoi
voiny"', p. 106.
 EVGENY DOBRENKO 941

The Conspiracy of the Doomed. The answer to the riddle lies in the very title of
Kalatozov's film: any conspiracy is doomed. The pure tautology of the events
emerges from the magic of words, marking in different ways the same poli?
tical realities: the cause to which the conspirators have devoted themselves is
doomed. This film, which, according to Turovskaia, is 'a huge Freudian film-
slip-of-the-tongue', really uncovers the internal mechanics of state coups and
revolutions from coalition governments to a one-party system, a number of
which took place in the countries of Eastern Europe at the end of the 1940s.20
The script of revolutions remained the same for the countries of the Soviet
bloc and later (Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, ete). Certainly, the
popular masses did not reconcile themselves to the Communists for the sake
of a better life. Conspiracy, the dissolution of parliaments, the deliberate cre?
ation of famine, instigation, intimidation, the establishment of dictatorship,
active manceuvres by the Soviet intelligence agencies, and betrayal of national
interests were necessary. However, it does not follow from this that the coun?
tries of Western Europe accepted the Marshall Plan for the sake of a good life
and/or without bearing the consequences; nor that the American embassies in
European countries were engaged exclusively in cultural links between people.
Slips of the tongue occur where the main thing remains unsaid, where there is
a function x. The film explains everything in detail, except for one thing: where
is the main character of this performance, namely the occupying army? From
the events that develop right after the war in a certain Romano-Hungarian-
Czech land (various identifications are possible), it is completely impossible to
decide in which 'zone' the given country lies. Given that the Americans op-
erate under guises, through diplomat-spies, it is not their zone. But Moscow
too appears to be at some remove (the Communists send a delegation to Stalin
only at the end of the film). It follows that there were no occupation armies
in post-war Europe, and that European countries developed under conditions
of full independence. In a film about a state coup (!) there is not one soldier
(except the peripheral local general-conspirator).
Let us assume that people decide their destiny. The people are shown as
crowds walking between the governmental cars with slogans such as 'Long live
Stalin!', 'The Marshall Plan is our death!', 'We do not want to wear an American
collar!', and they display an amicable solidarity with the Communists. Here is
another unknown function: why, with such explicit support from the electorate,
are the Communists in a minority in parliament, and why is the representative
power in the hands of some 'espionage rabble'? (All political leaders of the
country, except the Communists, of course, appear to be hired and rehired by
the Nazis, the Americans, the Vatican, so that it is quite impossible to decide
who is whose agent.) The impression is created that this surprising country
exists virtually in two 'zones' simultaneously.
On the one hand there are the conspirators, whose centre is the American em-
bassy. The ambassador himself, 'the boss of this gang of murderers and provoca-
teurs',21 declares: 'Europe needs our president. Put me through to the president
of this nasty country' He promises power and reconstruction ofthe country to
Turovskaia, 'Fil'my "kholodnoi voiny"', p. 106.
B. Galanov, 'Ekran izoblichaetpodzhigatelei voiny', Iskusstvo kino, 3 (1950), 23-25 (p. 25).
942 Late Stalinist Cinema and the Cold War

each of the parties in eager rivalry. To all the representatives of this 'gang of
traitors' (for some reason comprising two-thirds ofthe parliament) an American
intervention is most desirable. American weapons, instead of bread, are stored in
the church for conspirators who arrive in 'peace trains' (the trains are festooned
with advertisements for American cigarettes and stars-and-stripes banners,
while a jazz band travels on the roof). No protection of national interests can be
expected from this regime. Here go 'our freedom and blood for a bowl of lentil
soup', to quote the words ofthe main heroine, the Communist Hanna Lichta.
On the other hand, Communists everywhere are surrounded by portraits of
Stalin, and they advocate calling on the Soviet Union for help (the Americans
organized the export?to Yugoslavia?of all bread on the eve of the parliamen-
tary vote on the Marshall Plan), arguing from the fact that 'Stalin is the friend
of the peasant. He is the friend of the people. More than once he has helped
us, and he will help us again.' They quote Lenin and Stalin from a podium
in parliament. The Communists (together with the people) swear loyalty to
the Soviet Union (the film begins with an oath before a monument to Soviet
soldiers?'The flame of friendship between our peoples will never go out!'?
and ends in a national oath: 'We swear to Stalin and to the Soviet people to
protect the freedom and independence of our country! We swear to struggle
for peace and to protect our friendship with the great Soviet Union and the
countries of national democracy! . . . May the warmongers shudder! People led
by the great Soviet Union will overcome everything that impedes the triumph
of peace and the happiness of mankind!'.
The question arises whether anybody in this country cares about its own
national interests. A debate is devoted to this, with endless conflicts inside the
coalition government. For the Communists it is clear that everything boils down
to a conspiracy. The problem is simplified in order to stop the debate, when the
leader of the Social Democrats argues that not every disaster can be explained
by a plot. When valent sizes are simplified, the equation is given a denominator:
an oath to Stalin. It seems that the intrigue has no meaning: the conspiracy was
inspired, the conspirators are disclosed, the masks are removed, the people have
been taught a lesson. The situation is not a common one for a detective story: it
is as if the detective himself first commits a crime and then investigates it. After
all these genre perversions, Secret Mission is almost a virgin detective story and
espionage film, with real spies, secrets, pursuits, murders around the corner,
recruitment, treason, interception, stolen secret-service lists, hidden micro-
phones, and microfilms. In a word, all these cherished properties ofthe detective
genre cover up the cumbersome propagandistic design of the film, and Secret
Mission and The Conspiracy ofthe Doomed were extremely popular at the time.22
'From the point of view of the unwritten laws ofthe detective genre, the ab?
sence of an outstanding and single specific feat of the heroine-spy speaks of the
weakness of the plot.'23 But this is a superficial view of the matter: 'The main
storyline of the film is not a concoction. The story of unprecedented treachery
committed by the diplomats of Anglo-American imperialism, who conspired

24.2 and 19.2 million spectators respectively for 1950.

L. Pogozheva, 'Missiia, perestavshaia byt' sekretnoi', Iskusstvo kino, 5 (1950), 12-15 (p. 15).
 EVGENY DOBRENKO 943

with Hitler's regime behind the back of their ally, is actual history, well known
today.'24
Romm underscores the historicity of the events by introducing documentary
footage into the film, showing the 'victorious Soviet advance'. To the three tasks
ofthe 'secret missionaries' (the American senator and the representative ofthe
American intelligence)?(i) to persuade the Germans to make a 'completely
confidential capitulation to the West'; (2) to buy up patents owned by German
industry; and (3) to acquire the Nazi intelligence on the Balkans?Romm op-
poses his own tasks: to convince the spectator that (1) Anglo-Americans played
virtually no part in the war; (2) Americans are capitalists who were concerned
only with profit and plunder of the enemy; and (3) the Americans are direct
successors to the Nazis.
Since the thematic design of a detective story can be reduced to the task of
unmasking, the figure of the spy appears not only as completely integral, but
also as functionally irreplaceable.
All the films discussed here have a lot to say about the participation of the
Americans in the war. In The Meeting on the Elbe the American soldiers meet
the Soviet army with slogans?'The Americans will not forget the feat of the
Russians'?as though they were not meeting an ally, but the liberator of the
United States. Romm develops a metaphor: the Germans capitulated in the
West, which explains the progress of the Anglo-American armies. Pictures of
Germans surrendering cities to Anglo-American forces show the latter being
welcomed with bread and sait. Straight away, as a footnote, there follows a
depiction of the Eastern front, with panoramic views of the real battle. The
common theme of all these films of the cold war, which Romm also develops,
is that America equals imperialism. The first thing that the American sena?
tor says to the German partners in the negotiations is 'I am a merchant, a
businessman'. He immediately discloses to them the completely confidential
date of the Soviet attack, communicated by Stalin to Churchill in a personal
message. The authors show the aged senator making his way through the front
line to London upon receipt of a call from the bosses in Wall Street, meeting
with German industrial magnates in the house of Krupp, and, finally, agreeing
that the Americans will bomb the eastern part of Germany (which will become
the Soviet zone) whenever possible and preserve the industrial installations in
the western zone (never mind that these areas have already sufTered monstrous
bombardments by the Allied forces).
No doubts should remain about the Americans inheriting everything from
the Nazis, down to the intelligence agencies which, as Borman tells his American
visitor, 'will soon be needed for the struggle against democracy and the Bol-
sheviks'. Everything that was discussed at the top-secret meeting at Krupp's
house was known in Moscow immediately afterwards: lists of Nazi agents in
the Balkans were copied and transferred the same evening, thanks to Martha/
Masha.25
The favourite device of a detective story is the phrase 'And at the same
24 Pogozheva, 'Missiia, perestavshaia byt' sekretnoi',
p. 12.
25 In the film she is the driver Martha and at the same time the Soviet
spy Masha, played by the
famous actress Elena Kuzmina, Romm's wife.
944 Late Stalinist Cinema and the Cold War

time . . .' On that April day in 1945 when the Soviet spy died, having executed
the 'secret mission' to a city called Altenstadt, the Soviet and American forces
closed in from both sides. They met on the River Elbe, and here we come full
circle.
Having made a correction to the mechanism of the mirror reflection of the
functions in the equation, we understand that films of the cold war paradoxi-
cally restore the equality of the divided parts of the world. However, all these
'Meetings', 'Farewells', 'Missions', 'Plots', 'Questions' have never ceased to
cause pain. They have simply lost their verbality: the action contained in them
has turned into a 'verbal adjective', into 'silvery dust'. The dust will not settle
after a few days, as in the laboratory of Professor Steel. The geo-political pat?
tern of the world contained in these films has not only not become a thing of the
past, but half a century later still dominates the minds of millions of people on
both sides of the ocean. The problem, however, is that a verbless detective story
cannot be confident of success with the audience. The spectator has the right
to feel deceived: there was no need to 'search for the meaning of arguments';
the parts of the function were equal, QED, and the 'unknown values' known.
Certainly, on one side there were warmongers, but there were no doves of peace
on the other side.
Thinking about the reasons for the success of cold-war films, we begin to
understand that they were destined to become blockbusters (with all the above-
mentioned corrections to this concept in Stalinist culture): they were completely
new from the point of view of genre (as against the historical-Revolutionary, bi?
ographical, or war-justifying film); they not only depicted actual political plots
(as against biographical, historical-Revolutionary films or literary adaptations),
but also represented them in the forms of detective story and melodrama, which
were accessible to the viewing public; finally, these were not simply propaganda
films, but films whose basic content was genuine balm to the post-war spec?
tator: as against historical-Revolutionary films (which did not carry anything
new after Stalin's Short Course in the History of the CPSU), the films of the
cold war brought a 'feeling of deep satisfaction'; they removed the trauma of
the new global order. Let us remember that in the first post-war years the new
picture ofthe world was shaped, which determined the world-view for decades;
in these years a new Soviet identity, the image of the superpower, was formed,
which even now, half a century later when that world and that opposition have
passed out of existence, still hurts with a phantom pain.

University of Nottingham Evgeny Dobrenko

(Translated from the Russian by Birgit Beumers)