Soviet Society and Its Cinema
Dwight: Macdonald
"The brightest hopes of mankind are being fulfilled in the
Soviet Union, where all life is based on the doctrine of socialism.
Art is still lagging behind the practice of triumphant socialism ...
It
sees the future very
dimly."-Moscow News,
June 9, 1934. (From
an article on the cinema by Sergei Dinamov, then editor of
Int~rna
tional Literature,
recently reported under arrest.)
"It seems to me that our intelligentsia are living in a particularly
happy time . . . We will Jove our intelligentsia just as we love the
Red Army.
(Stormy applause.)
And the Red Army we love very
much!
(Applause.)
The Soviet system alone gives the intelligentsia
an opportunity to unfold its creative powers. . . . We shall
release such forces that the mere thought of it makes us breathless.
(Applause.)
Comrades! On December 19 we shall all vote for the
Communist Party, for him who expresses the aspirations of the people,
Comrade Stalin!
(Stormy applause, turning into an ovation, shouts
of 'Hurrah!')
For the Soviet intelligentsia! For the creative work of
the Soviet intelligentsia!
(Another outburst of applause and repeated
shouts of 'Hurrah!') "-From
a speech delivered on November 26,
1937, by Premier Kalenin before the representatives of the Soviet
Toiling Intelligentsia of Leningrad.
IN EARLIER ISSUES
OF
PARTISAN REVIEW,
I have traced the decline
of the Soviet cinema from what was in my opinion, the major art
form of this century, to something that more and more closely ap–
pro'\ches the output of Hollywood. In this concluding article, my
purpose is to analyze the social and
~olitical
factors in
this
deteri–
oration.
The old-fashioned, unreconstructed liberals--as against the neo–
Stalinist variety-explain the decline of Soviet cinema in terms of
state control of the individual. The artist, they say, cannot create
great works when art is made a state activity and is required to tum
out 'propaganda.' This explanation is especially persuasive nowadays,
when totalitarianism is getting such a bad press. And it is indeed true,
as I have already shown in detail, that the policies of the
Kremlin
have been chiefly responsible for what has happened
~o
the cinema
since 1930. But from this historical fact it is not possib(e to deduce an
abstract principle of esthetics. It is not the mere
fact
of political con–
trol, but the
direction
of this control that has been damaging. In the
twenties, the Soviet cinema drew its very breath of life from a close
connection with the Soviet state. In the thirties, this integration has
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