Stalin полностью

Many cultural figures collaborated with the Soviet party-state precisely for its wherewithal to deliver mass audiences.¹⁶⁵ To be sure, whereas listeners in Britain or Germany could tune in to several stations, including some that originated from abroad, the Soviets invested in cable (wire) radio, which was inexpensive and durable, enabling mass production, and imposed far stricter state control over content, since the wires delivered just the two official stations.¹⁶⁶ Only the privileged had hard-to-procure wireless receivers with tuners. Wire radios were installed in outdoor public spaces, factories, meeting halls, clubs, and dormitories.The Soviet Union had 2.5 million radio reception points already by 1934.¹⁶⁷ Radio Moscow and Radio Comintern were broadcasting approximately eighteen hours per day, creating an ambient Sovietness.¹⁶⁸

“Boring agitation is counter-agitation,” one Soviet film critic argued.¹⁶⁹ Surveys of radio listeners’ letters showed that they wanted fewer symphonies and more humor, information about the outside world, advice on childrearing, medical issues, and other daily life concerns, and entertainment, such as folk music, Gypsy romances, jazz, operettas (not operas), and songs from the latest films.¹⁷⁰ While Germany had Marlene Dietrich, and America Greta Garbo, the Soviets had Orlova, promoted in the press, books, and fan postcards.¹⁷¹ (She and Alexandrov would begin a love affair and later marry.) The songs proved to be easily and widely memorized. From streets to shop, almost the entire USSR was singing “Such a Lot of Nice Girls” (or the tango version, “Heart,” released by Pyotr Leshchenko) and the march (“A happy song lightens your heart”). Even in profoundly anti-Soviet Poland Jolly Fellows would find popularity. The comic master Chaplin would praise the film as better propaganda for the Soviet cause than executions.¹⁷²

Stalin authorized an all-Union Creative Conference of Workers in Soviet Cinema (January 8–13, 1935), albeit without formation of a formal union such as the writers had. Eisenstein was awarded the task of delivering the keynote. “When I heard Eisenstein’s report, I was afraid that he knows so much, and his head is so clear that, it is obvious, he’ll never make another film,” director Oleksandr Dovzhenko said in his follow-up speech. “If I knew as much as he does, I would literally die. (Laughter, applause.)”¹⁷³ Pravda (January 11) published a congratulatory note from Stalin to Shumyatsky. “Greetings and best wishes to the workers of Soviet cinema on the day of its glorious fifteenth anniversary,” the note stated. “Soviet power expects from you new successes—new films that, like Chapayev, proclaim the greatness of the historic cause of the struggle for power of the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union, mobilize for the attainment of new tasks, and remind us of both the achievements and difficulties of socialist construction.”¹⁷⁴

That same day, Stalin attended the ceremony at the Bolshoi where, for the first time, state awards were handed out to film workers. He had edited the proposed awards list: Orders of Lenin were given to the Leningrad Film Studio, Shumyatsky, Pavel Tager (who had helped introduce sound to Soviet films), and numerous directors. Eisenstein had been proposed for the lesser Order of the Red Banner, which Stalin crossed out, substituting something lesser still: “honored artist.”¹⁷⁵ After this humiliation, Eisenstein had to offer the closing remarks. “No one here has had to listen to so many compliments about highbrow wisdom as I,” he stated. “The crux—and this you know—is that I have not been engaged in film production for several years, and I consider the [awards] decision a signal from the party and government that I must enter production.”¹⁷⁶ The gathering concluded with a performance of the third act of Swan Lake.¹⁷⁷

Shumyatsky did not speak at the ceremony or at the conference, but Pravda (January 11) published an excerpt from his forthcoming book, Cinema for the Millions. “The victorious class wants to laugh with joy,” he wrote. “That is its right, and Soviet cinema must provide its audiences with this joyful Soviet laughter.” He admitted, however, that “we have no common view on such fundamental and decisive problems of our art as the interrelationship between form and content, as plot, as the pace and rhythm of a film, the role of the script, the techniques of cinema.”¹⁷⁸ In fact, all he and other film people had to go on was Stalin’s utterances or their own intuition about what might please him.

THE SECOND TRIAL