SOVIET SOCIETY AND ITS CINEMA
83
'romantic heroics' becomes a matter of political (and sometimes lit–
eral!) life and death, the discussion is not likely to prove very fruitful.
It is not, of course, merely or even primarily a matter of Stalin's
being a barbarian. It is true, most unhappily for Soviet art, that Stah\t
was almost the only important leader among the makers of the 1917
revolution who had not spent any time in exile, and hence that he
was comparatively narrow, uncultivated, and provincial. But if the
Russia of Lenin and Trotsky permitted the development of avant–
garde art, it was despite the leaders' personal lack of interest in
it
and because its political movement was forward, towards socialism,
and so could not but open out a free field for advanced art.
Likewise, by its very nature, the Stalin regime must pursue a
reactionary policy in art. Unable to conceive of such matters except
on the lowest, most vulgar plane, it 'integrates' art with the state by the
bluntest sort of police measures. Its first recorded exploit in the cin–
ema was a typical piece of petty vandalism perpetrated on Eisenstein's
great film of the October revolution. According to Alfred H. Barr, Jr.,
"October
was to have greeted the delegates to the tenth anniversary
celebration. of the October Revolution, but an absolute censorship of
all the parts played by the recently exiled members of the opposition
required laborious re-cutting.
As
a result, it was not completed until
five months later."
108
One scene, however, in which the actor playing
Trotsky had his back to the camera, was overlooked. When the film
was first shown, Trotsky's figure was recognized-and applauded. At
once, the lights were turned up in the theatre, and GPU men walked
up and down the aisles looking for those who had clapped.
109
This
excellent beginning has been steadily improved on, until today an
agent of the Secret Police heads the entire cinema industry, and, ac–
cording to recent visitors, every movie set is guarded by a soldier with
rifle and fixed bayonet.
110
Propaganda
. .
and Propaganda
A great deal has been written about propaganda in the Soviet
cinema, most of it rather beside the point. There is propaganda–
and propaganda. Those bourgeois critics who have dismissed Soviet
films
as 'propaganda' really mean that it presents certain social values
which they find strange-and hostile.
If
'propaganda' be used to de–
scribe such general expressions of
weltanschauung
as
Arsenal
or
Po–
temkin,
then the term must include also most other past and present
artistic productions. Up to 1930, those in control of the Soviet state
asked of ·the cinema only the most general sort of propaganda, cele–
brating the triumph of socialism, exposing the decadence of capital–
ism,
giving the masses a sense of the heroism of
their
revolution.
The present regime, however, has been more specific in its demands.
