CULTURAL REVOLUTION, COLLECTIVIZATION, AND SOVIETOINEMA: EISENSTEIN'S OLD AND NEW AND DOVZHENKO'S EARTH

by Paul E. Burns Old and New (1929) and Earth (1930) were the last silent films made by two world-renowed Soviet directors, Sergei Eisenstein and Alexander Dovzhenko respectively. The films deal with the Soviet village during the collectivization of agriculture under the First Five-Year Plan. Most Western discussions of these works concentrate on their directors' unique contributions to filmmaking methodology, and in Eisenstein's case, to film theoryJ Old and New and Earth are indeed distinguished examples of film art, but they are also graphic statements of the contemporary concerns and pressures of a society in unprecedented and mind-boggling flux. This essay focuses on the historical context of collectivization and cultural revolution as a key to understanding their ideological content and as a means of illustrating the interaction of Soviet cinema and society. The cultural revolution which accompanied and assisted "the great turning point" of the First Five-Year Plan in Soviet Russia has recently received systematic analysis by a group of Western scholars.^ Instead of viewing the period of the First Five-Year Plan as a transition from the tolerant and culturally diverse years of the New Economic Policy (19211928) to the repressive and culturally stagnant era of Stalin's "socialist realism," they see the cultural revolution of 1928-1931 as a discrete phenomenon with its own special characteristics. Cultural revolution was the counterpart to rapid industrialization and forced collectivization of agriculture; it reflected the economic and social transformation, but was also intended to foster that transformation. While it was to raise Paul Ei Bums is a member of the history department at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.. 84

the general cultural level of the masses (as Lenin had intended), it was also to advance the working class and Communist youth and introduce a militantly proletarian culture (not envisioned by Lenin), In the crucible of Stalin's revolution, no art form was free from the political pressure to produce works of relevance and ideological correctness. Major Soviet films of the 1920s had already broken with the canons of the bourgeois cinema. Absence of a star system, elevation of the masses or their representatives as hero, eschewal of romantic plots, and positive treatment of revolutionary subjects characterized the avantgarde. But while such revolutionary epics as Potemkin, Mother, The End of St. Petersburg, October, and Arsenal had astounded international film circles, imported entertainment films were the most popular fare of Soviet audiences. As the regime geared up for the First Five-Year Plan, it sought to marshal cinema's mass communication potential. At a Party conference on cinema held in March 1928, A. I. Krinitsky, head of the agitprop department of the Central Committee, characterized the cinema as "one of the most powerful instruments of the struggle for cultural improvement, an enormous factor in the cultural revolution and the socialist transformation of the country."-^ He praised the depiction of the Revolution in Soviet films for giving "a class assessment of historical events," but lamented the lack of worthwhile films on the problems of contemporary Soviet life, such as "the union [smychka] of the workersand the peasants" and "the fight for collective forms of agriculture."^ While he called for films "comprehensible to the millions," he also urged the Soviet cinema not to "follow in the wake of the audience...it must lead the audience, support the beginnings in it of the new man..."^ In no other area of Soviet life was it so difficult for the cinema to lead and be "a means of agitation for the current slogans of the Party"^ than it was in agriculture. The collectivization of Soviet agriculture followed a tortured path, both in its conception and in its execution. Individual peasant farming was the centerpiece of Lenin's New Economic Policy, and it had led to recovery of Russia's shattered economy.. But when the decision to rapidly industrialize was made after long debates in 1927-28, the leadership assumed that the necessary resources for industrial investment would be extracted from the peasantry. Low prices created a crisis in grain procurement during the winter of 1927-28, and Stalin responded with a campaign of forced requisitions and outcries against "kulak speculators." While coercion was officially termed "extraordinary," or temporary, and the NEP was reaffirmed, grain shortages recurred in 1928-29. The First Five-Year Plan, which was formally adopted in the spring of 1929, projected increased agricultural production by the 85

gradual but dramatic growth of collective farms to include 20 percent of the peasantry by 1932. Impressive growth of collective farms, or kolkhozes, during the summer and early fall of 1929 was based primarily on the poor peasant. Believing that inclusion of the middle peasant was essential and heartened by the earlier successes, the regime embarked during the winter of 1929-30 on a frenzied assault to "liquidate the kulaks [rich peasants] as a class." By March 1, this effort yielded a staggering 55 percent of the peasantry in collectives. The resulting chaos and destruction caused Stalin on March 2 to issue his famous "Dizziness from Success" article in Pravda, in which he proclaimed victory, but also decried the overzealousness of some officials. Collectivization statistics plummeted from over fourteen million to under six million on May 1, but the goal remained unaltered and by the end of 1932 60 percent of peasant families were reported collectivized.' Political control, famine, and economic disaster were the results. As the collectivization campaign raged in the countryside and the attendant cultural revolution took shape, the film industry struggled to assume its place in the arsenal of Soviet arts. Film journals detailed cinema's proper relationship to these two phenomena. "Cinema in the Service of Collectivization" described educational productions with such titles as Towards the Spring Sowing, Weeds and Measures for Combatting Them, Diseased Bread, and Introducing High Quality Seeds.^ "Sound Cinema in the Service of the Cultural Revolution" and "For a Marxist Film Criticism" dealt with the problems and prospects of creating a proletarian culture.9 The "cinema front" could be anywhere, including the regime's renewed attack on religion. The Moscow Provincial Soviet organized a traveling anti-religious cinema, and some former churches were used as movie houses.^^ In this politically charged and ideologically sensitive atmosphere, Eisenstein and Dovzhenko offered their contributions to collectivization and the cultural revolution. Prior to resuming work in 1928 on his agricultural film, Eisenstein wrote an essay included in a volume on Soviet arts published in the United States in 1930. In it he said: In the Soviet Union art is responsive to social aims and demands. One day, for example, all attention is centered on the village; it is imperative to raise the village from the slough of ancient custom and bring it into line with the Soviet system as a whole... The slogan is: "Face the Village!" The smichka, the union of proletarian and poor peasant is established. Opponents of Soviet aims are ousted. The strongest propaganda guns are put in action; there begins a bombardment on behalf of socialist economy. Here 86

the cinema plays a big In this same spirit he described the "enthusiastic workdays" devoted to capturing the transformation of the Russian countryside, which was epitomized by "kolkhozes, where, as in a drop of water, is reflected the boundless horizon of a new social era."'^ His enthusiasm was not dampened even when Stalin's intervention obliged him to spend two more months shooting footage for a new ending in the North Caucasus and the Ukraine, major centers of collectivizing efforts. In a letter to his French friend, Leon Moussinac, he enthused: "And I saw with my own eyes what is meant by the 'building of socialism.' Nothing could be more moving and more heroic! "^^ Eisenstein'.s passion undoubtedly derived not only from his commitment to the cause, but also from his methodological experimentation and his related theoretical writing. Just as Eisenstein's support for collectivization was apparently unqualified, the content of Old and New exhibits orthodox traits of the cultural revolution. Not only does the film deal with a contemporary problem of Soviet life, but it also displays attributes typical of Soviet literature during the First Five-Year Plan. Eisenstein's central character, Marfa Lapkina, a poor peasant woman, is one of Gorky's "little men," who is being raised to his full "human dignity."'^ Her creative potential will be fulfilled through banding together with other little people and contributing to the great achievements of the age. Typically, these efforts would lead to rapid and radical change, a second characteristic of the cultural revolution. Examples of such change in Old and New include: the miracle of the cream separator, which immediately increases membership in the co-op from four to fifty; the instant maturing of the communal bull and the rapid multiplying of his progeny, and the multifarious accomplishments of the tractor, plowing deep and fast, knocking down the fences dividing individual peasant holdings, and reproducing at a rate to equal the bull. But more than just the environment was to be transformed; by crossing "the muzhik with science, a new kind of person is born. Collectivist-man. Collectivizing-man."^^ At the film's end, a series of retrospective close-ups recapitulates Marfa's transformation from oppressed peasant to joyous tractor driver, attired in a stylized headgear with visor. Closely linked to Eisenstein's positive relationship to the cultural revolution was Old and New's socio-political orientation. His concentration on the poorest peasants as the object of collectivization corresponded to the regime's own efforts during the grain procurement crisis in 1928 and the electoral campaign early in 1929. " His portrayal of a religious procession's failure to bring rain to a drought-stricken land 87

not only reflected his repulsion for such superstition, but also could have been seen as enhancing the regime's intensified campaign against the church in the countryside.'^ As the class that symbolized capitalist exploitation in the countryside, kulaks were destined for liquidation during collectivization. Eisenstein depicts an obese, indolent, and unsharing kulak, whose family, fearing success of the collective, treacherously poison Fomka, the communal bull. Although such a kulak might well warrant liquidation, one Soviet film journal faulted Eisenstein for resorting to the stereotype of the kulak "as a fat hog."^^ Eisenstein presents the crucial smychka, the link between the poor peasant and the proletariat, in two related sequences. A tractor factory foreman intervenes with the bureaucracy on behalf of Marfa and the collective to shake loose the much-needed tractor which has been delayed by red tape. To further illustrate the smychka, factory representatives come to Marfa's village and ceremoniously present the tractor. Eisenstein caricatures bureaucrats who, like the kulak, have plenty of leisure; they dress like the bourgeoisie and obstruct the construction of socialism by insisting in "Catch-22" fashion that there can be no tractor given on credit until after the crop is "realized." Realization of collectivization depended in large part on the mechanization of agriculture, or as Stalin expressed it, putting "the muzhik on a tractor."^^ Perhaps that is why Eisenstein at one point asserted that the tractor "is the real hero of my new film."^^ A Soviet critic, writing at the time of the cultural revolution, accused Eisenstein of "technical fetishism," of emphasizing the technical revolution at the expense of the class struggle, and thus transforming "the tractor...into the cause, the base of social construction, instead of changing class content."^ While there is a degree of justification to the charge, Eisenstein's concentration on the cream Separator and the tractor also reflected Stalin's obsession with the superiority of large-scale, mechanized farming.^^ While Old and New focuses on the transformation of the poor peasant, symbolized by Marfa, and the leading part that scientific breeding and mechanization will play in collectivizing the countryside, the film also provides a distinct, albeit subtle, organizational and leadership role for the Party and its representatives. At infrequent but crucial moments, there appear a young, blond member of the Komosomol (Young Communist League) and a seasoned, district agronomist who bears a striking resemblance to Lenin.^^ Attired in a black leather jacket and a worker's cap with a star, reminiscent of political commisars in the Civil War, the agronomist agitates for and organizes the co-op; he is present at the unveiling and successful demonstration of the cream separator; and he 88

saves Marfa and the co-op's treasury, which is to purchase a bull,-from a group of threatening peasants. He is never specifically identified as a representative of the Party, but the peasants resistant to the co-op accuse him and the komsomol of Bolshevik tricks. The komsomol's physical exuberance permeates the film; he entreats the peasants to join the co-op, cranks the cream separator, challenges the village strongman to a goodnatured mowing contest, and assists the tractor driver in the triumphal parade of wagons. It would seem that Eisenstein was adhering to the Party line by acknowledging the Party's role as catalyst, protector, and guide. Pravda, however, saw it somewhat differently. The Party organ perceived the film as a summons, "in powerful language, to the reconstruction of ancient village life on a new basis, to the organization of collective economy, to the implementation of the party's general line."24 Pravda's reviewer lauded the picture's presentation of the "fresh, exciting poetry of machines, the tractor, pure-blooded pedigreed cattle, an improved, well-organized agriculture." Although the reviewer conceded Old and New's "true communist aspirations," he also cited important "deficiencies." The film showed too little of the organizing and directing role played by Party organizations and the village soviet. It barely touched upon the class struggle in the village and did not show how the kulak deceived and enslaved the poor peasants. Foreshadowing Eisenstein's problems in the 1930s, Pravda warned of a "formalistic aestheticism" and "abstractness" in the picture. Other contemporary reaction emphasized Eisenstein's "maximalism," or what Anisimov called the "boundlessness and excess of his images."^^ Perpetuating a difficulty experienced by his preceding film, October, was a report of a Red Army Club's preview reaction that Old and New could not be understood by peasants.^^ In what must be viewed as a delayed ironic response by the man who felt that with Old and New he had mastered the intellectual film, Eisenstein stated in a 1934 lecture at the Institute of Cinematography that "The people who were against the film were those who think rather than feel."^' In light of the subsequent furor raised by Dovzhenko's Earth for what were called its "biological moments," it is important to note that the sexual symbolism found in Old and New by a later generation of Western critics seems to have eluded Eisenstein's contemporaries.^^ Throughout production Old and New was known as The General Line. The title was changed upon its release because the authorities found it ideologically inadequate. An equally persuasive explanation might be that the Party's line on agriculture was in such flux that no film, regardless of content, was capable of bearing such a definitive title In any event 89

to assert, as does a recent article, that Old and New "sets the spirit of the Bolshevik Revolution against the prevailing political circumstances in the Soviet Union a decade later" and that it is an example of a work in "dispute with Soviet Ideology,"^^ is unwarranted. Instead, Eisenstein's affinity with tenets of the cultural revolution and his attempted adherence to the Party's line on agriculture support the notion that rather than being a closet-Leninist in 1929, he was "dizzy from Stalinist policies."30 At the same time that Eisenstein was completing Old and New and embarking on a foreign odyssey to study sound film techniques, Alexander Dovzhenko was writing and filming his contribution to collectivization. In the same month (December 1929) that the cult of personality was launched and Stalin announced the new policy of "liquidating the kulaks as a class," Dovzhenko was cutting and editing Earth. As he later recalled: I conceived Earth as a film that would herald the beginning of a new life in the villages. But collectivization and liquidation of the small landowners class -- events of tremendous political significance that occurred when the film had been completed and was ready to be released -- made my statement weak and ineffectual.^ The day before Stalin's "Dizziness from Success" article and a month before Earth's premiere, one of the more militant new journals spawned by the cultural revolution praised Dovzhenko as "a poet of social catastrophe.... the first poet coming from the Soviet cinema," and predicted that "a remarkable future" awaited him.^^ Less than a week before the film's opening, Demyan Bedny, the Kremlin folk poet, attacked Earth in Izvestiia as a "kulak film." What was there in this simple story that provoked such a reaction and that stirred up the larger debate in film circles? The story would seem to meet contemporary needs; a Ukrainian village is collectivized through the efforts of a young middle peasant and the secretary of the local Komsomol. The regime was currently trying to appeal to middle peasants as well as the poor, and Komsomol members were one of the groups being promoted by the cultural revolution. Vasily, the young hero, secures a tractor for the village and performs marvels, knocking over kulak fences and plowing all fields into one. A rapid montage sequence suggests the extent of the transformation wrought by the machine. A reaper harvests the fields and the complete process of mechanized breadmaking is shown in a rapid succession of images. A kulak family angrily and irrationally resists collectivization, with the father attempting to ax his livestock and the son murdering Vasily. Vasily's father, who has been vacillating about joining the collective, is won over and he turns 90

his back on the village priest, who is implicitly allied with the kulak. The funeral, at which "songs of the new life" (the film's subtitle) are sung at the father's request, is the occasion for the village's rededication to the cause for which Vasily gave his life. The village ignores the demented confession of the murderer-kulak; he and the priest are linked in isolation and represent the doomed past. Despite Earth's seeming ideological orthodoxy, a barrage of criticism greeted its release. The criticism's tone and substance reveal some of the preoccupations and tensions prevalent in cultural circles during the crisis of collectivization. The editors of Kino i zhizn' devoted more than a third of their April 21 issue to Earth calling it a "turning-point picture" in the sense that Dovzhenko approached social themes "urgent for our socialist construction."-^^ They portrayed Dovzhenko as representative of the better portion of "fellow travelers" who "come to us, but are not yet fully ours." Because Dovzhenko could not completely escape his "pettybourgeois aestheticism," his work went far from the fundamental social task of making "a film saturated with enthusiasm for socialism's struggle with capitalism in the village." While recognizing Earth's great artistic significance, the editors stressed the contradiction between the "lofty artistic form and the squalor" of Dovzhenko's social interpretation. Dovzhenko's kulak, they asserted, is presented as a "frenzied, neurasthenic, finally disarmed character, with whom it is unnecessary to struggle." To the contrary, they argued, the class struggle was in full swing and the kulak "still shows his fangs, it is too early to bury him alive." They feared that showing such a kulak might disarm the social activism of the village poor. Also alarming was Dovzhenko's distorted priest, who "only 'searches for truth,' as if the church had already put up its weapons in the struggle with atheism."^^ While the inimical elements were not drawn in sufficiently negative strokes, for the editors of Kino i zhizn' the progressive forces--the Party, the Komsomol, and the poor peasants--suffered from a lack of "genuine Bolshevism," particularly in their response to "kulak intrigues." After Vasily's murder, they "all sort of throw up their hands, helplessly dream and lapse into some sort of lyricism." Dovzhenko's presentation of the tractor, which he later called "a revolutionary on the wide fields of the Ukraine,"36 also failed to satisfy the demanding expectations of the editors. They described it as "a feeble, sickly-looking creature...incapable of a serious revolution" (it first appears as a speck on the horizon). In contrast, the editors noted "a genuine idealization of the old," a tendency to show the old with enthusiasm to the detriment of the new. As an example, they offered Dovzhenko's poeticized oxen. 91

Therefore, Earth suffered from the "organic flaw" of incorrectly portraying the "social perspective of the class struggle in the village." In addition to this serious shortcoming, the editors observed a second flaw: "...the center of gravity of the entire picture appears to be biology, and not sociology." The biological moments which they claimed diverted audiences from the class struggle include: urinating in the tractor's radiator after it boils over, a night of love after the day's joyous labors captured by the village's young men standing motionless with a hand on the breasts of their young women, Vasily's bereft and nude fiance writhing in agony in her room while the funeral is taking place, and the concluding image of Vasily's fiance happy with another man. These scenes were expurgated before general distribution, but a still from the urination sequence was included in the April 21 issue of Kino i zhizn'. Because the picture shows biological processes in a non-class, non-social interpretation, that is as "eternal," these moments "emasculate the production's social interior," are "useless and even harmful." In conclusion, the editors reiterated Earth's highly artistic quality, but condemned it as politically feeble and without serious political-educational significance for the village audience. The additional discussion of Earth, which the editors of Kino i zhizn' offered, echoed and amplified the editorial views already expressed. Several writers lamented that Earth would not be understood by the peasants, a serious shortcoming in a cultural revolution which was to produce films "comprehensible to the millions." One critic referred to it as "a peasant picture about peasants, but not for peasants"; another said it would not "charge up the village spectator in need of our guidance." Nearly everyone claimed that Dovzhenko overemphasized biological motivation at the expense of social meaning. R. A. Kedrova, general secretary of O.D.S.K. (Society of of Friends of the Soviet Cinema), cited the film's "unhealthy eroticism" and labeled the urination scene "simple pornography." P. A. Bliakhin, representing the film section of Glavrepertkom (Main Repertory Committee, a censorship organ), argued that the intercutting of the nude woman's grief was not understood, brought forth laughter, and thus neutralized the revolutionary meaning of the funeral scene. To illustrate the problem, the editors included reactions from the Krasnom Bogatyre factory audience, who shouted such remarks as, "She should be at the funeral!"^^ Reflecting the proletarian militancy of the cultural revolution, the editors commented: "The argument about Earth...will be decided not in the cinematographic heights, but in workers' meetings." According to a post-Stalin Soviet study of Dovzhenko, broad sections of the audience at such meetings--Red Army men, students, workers, peasants--differed sharply with

professional critics and O.D.S.K. representatives, "deeply and truly" understanding the picture.^^ Kino i zhizn' included one strongly positive assessment of Earth, made by B. S. Ol'khovy of Moiodaia Gvardiia (Young Guards) and Literaturnaia gazeta (Literary News).^^Showing unusual sensitivity to Doy zhenko's artistic purpose, Ol'khovy strongly disagreed with the criticism that the picture was constructed on biological, rather than social processes. He asserted that "all biological moments...are fully subordinate to social content." Earth might be accused of lacking philosophical clarity, he said, but is was "by no means without class consciousness." Ol'khovy found neither mysticism nor eroticism in the film, remarking that it would be necessary "to look especially for eroticism, in order to see it." In Ol'khovy's opinion, the picture signified the development of Soviet cinematography, and, employing a literary metaphor, he associated Earth with the cinema audience's eventual demand for "cinema books" instead of "ABC books," books which they will want to "re-read several times." He saw the need and utility of "cruel arguments," but, in a direct reference to Bedny, he cautioned that it was one thing to say the picture "was a miss" and quite another to call it "a kulak picture." Although Dovzhenko wrote in 1939 that Bedny's attack weighed heavily on his mind, and he called his statement in Earth "weak and ineffectual,""^^ in 1930 he answered his critics more boldly. Proclaiming the primacy of "political understanding" for his work, Dovzhenkp said that above all he. did not want to present a "vulgar poster" of a paunchy kulak, who drinks vodka and laughs disgustingly. He warned that it was necessary to take the kulak seriously, because he is "smart, strong, well-armed," and "reads Pravda and Izvestiia." He explained that he treated the priest in like manner, not as "drunken, gluttonous," and tippling vodka "behind the icons," but as "surviving by his wits." From personal experience, Dovzhenko knew that the village churches were virtually empty; thus he had Vasily's father say to the priest: "God doesn't exist and you don't exist."^2 On another occasion he countered criticism of Earth's biological moments with the cryptic remark: "...the healthy like the picture, and.the sick don't like it." And in a more pointed reference, he said: "Good lads sit and hold the girls by the breast, and old men go balmy."^^ j^ a talk entitled "World Outlook and Creative Work," he told his comrades that they knew the village only from magazines, which contained accurate but limited information. "But," he admonished "the spirit, the smells, the tastes, the subtleties of those processes which are now occurring in the village, you do not know...'"*^ Such spirited responses bear little resemblance to the public confessions of error that would be required later under Stalin 93

Not only did Dovzhenko escape such humiliation in 1930, but he was also allowed to travel to Central and Western Europe from August through October, demonstrating Earth and addressing press conferences. By 1932 Dovzhenko was again under fire and his father was expelled from a collective farm. Comparisons of Old and New with Earth usually stress their obvious stylistic differences, much to the latter's benefit.'^^ Eisenstein's complexity is contrasted with Dovzhenko's simplicity, and simplicity is judged more appropriate to peasant village material. And indeed, Dovzhenko seenis generally more enamored with the peasantry, perhaps because of his middle-peasant background, than does Eisenstein, who dwells more on what Marx called "the idiocy of rural life." In Eisenstein's film poverty and ignorance characterize the Russian village prior to the coming of mechanization. Work is back-breaking and humans are equated with beasts of burden. More than mere kulak treachery must be overcome, if life is to be transformed. Eisenstein shows nature's caprices, drought and untimely rain, as major causes of peasant misery. When Eisenstein envisions change, it is dramatic and sometimes Utopian, as in Marfa's dream of visiting a Bauhaus-like state farm, or sovkhoz, where everything is orderly, sanitary, and abundant. When mechanization comes to the countryside, it disturbs not only the kulak, but also disrupts nature's harmony by startling horses and geese. In contrast, Dovzhenko's Earth contains no such poverty, ignorance, drudgery, and disharmony. The sole sources of disruption are the class enemies, the kulak and the priest. Dovzhenko's peasants are happy and healthy, taking joy in their labors in what is shown as an abundant land even before mechanization. Nature is beneficent in Earth; the rain is warm, gentle, and life-giving. Arrival of the tractor does not destroy nature's harmonies, as horses and cattle remain calm in its wake. As these examples suggest, the films display significant differences in style and outlook. The two films also shared some similarities. In addition to addressing common subject matter, both Eisenstein and Dovzhenko encountered criticism for their treatment of mechanization, the one for "technical fetishism" or overemphasizing machinery at the expense of social content, the other for understating the tractor's revolutionary role. Mechanical breakdown, a common problem in collectivization's early days,^^ threatens success in both films. Peasant ingenuity saves the day in each instance, the tractor's radiator being ingeniously replenished in Earth and pieces of Marfa's dress being used to cure an unspecified tractor engine ailment in Old and New.^^ Other similarities could undoubtedly be found, but the overriding quality of their larger shared experience must not be 94

obscured. We in the West are accustomed to thinking of artists like Eisenstein and Dovzhenko as having worked under a severe handicap, as having been compromised in their creative freedom by political constraints. While that is undoubtedly true to some degree, we are too likely to forget that these artists were very often dedicated to building a new and better world, to constructing socialism, to "reconstructing the peasant village." Particularly at the time of the First Five-Year Plan, dedication and fervor were at a high point amongst the ideologically committed. They were undertaking a great experiment and were willing to struggle and sacrifice, to pay almost any price to achieve their heroic goals. Many artists were just as committed to this great undertaking. They were convinced of the superiority of collectivized agriculture, of kulak venality and treachery, of the church's complicity in kulak sabotage, and of the church's obstruction of progress with superstition. Striving to rid themselves of bourgeois remnants in their work, Dovzhenko and Eisenstein were naturally sensitive to charges of "petty-bourgeois aestheticism" or "petty-bourgeois limitation." If Eisenstein and Dovzhenko were not political revolutionaries, and at times were even politically naive, they were certainly cultural revolutionaries. Thus could Dovzhenko be labeled "the most engage of all the talents in all Soviet art.' And thus could Eisenstein write: "We must be prepared daily for quarrels, mistakes, corrections and fresh mistakes."4^ On the eve of his departure for the West, Eisenstein's revolutionary ardor had not cooled, as he enthused: "...there is a need -with scissors clenched in fist -- to move film culture forward, together with the need to make it immediately accessible to all."^*^

^An exception to this generalization is Vance Kepley, J r . , "The Evolution of Eisenstein's Old and New," Cinema Journal 14 (Fall 1974), 34-50. Kepley, however, deals only with p o l i t i c a l and economic factors and does not place the f i l m in the context of cultural revolution. ^Sheila Fitzpatrick, ed.. Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931 (Bloomington i London: Indiana University Press, 1978). ^Quoted in Richard Taylor, The Politics of the Soviet Cinema, 1917-1929 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 108. Sibid., pp. 108-109. ^ I b i d . , p. 108. Information in this paragraph is drawn from: M. Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power: A Study of Collectivizat i o n , trans. Irene Nove 8 John Biggart (New York: W. W. Norton i Co., 1975) and Lazar Volin, A Century of Russian Agriculture: From Alexander I I to Khrushchev (Cambridge, Mass.: Haryard University Press, 1970). %ino i zhizn' [Cinema and L i f e ] , No. 2, 30 November 1929, pp. 11-12.

^ I b i d . , No. 7, 1 March 1930, pp. 15-16 and No. 14, 11 May 1930, pp. 6-7. John S. Curtiss, The Russian Church and the Soviet State, 1917-1950 (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1965), pp. 239-240. ^Quoted in Joseph Freeman, Joshua Kunitz, & Louis Lozowick, Voices of October (New York: Vanguard Press, 1930), p. 231. '^S. M. Eisenstein, Izbrannye proizvedeniia [Selected Works], 6 yols. (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1964-71), I : 142. ^ \ e t t e r dated June 4, 1929 In Leon Moussinac, Sergei Eisenstein, trans. D. Sandy Petry (New York: Crown Publishers. 1970), p. 34. ^Vaterina Clark, " L i t t l e Heroes and Big Oeeds: Literature Responds to the First Five-Year Plan," in Fitzpatrick, Cultural Revolution, pp. 191-192 delineates the t r a i t s . ^^Eisenstein, "Eksperiment, poniatnyl milHonam" [An Experiment Understood by M i l l i o n s ] , Izbrannye proizvedeniia, I : 146. l^Lewin, Russian Peasants, pp. 226-227 and 284-285. I'Curtiss, Russian Church, pp. 228-240; Matthew Spinka,

The Church in Soviet Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 74-76; and Robert Conquest, Reiiqion in the U.S.S.R. (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1968), pp. 21-25. ^^"Rabochii i krest'ianin na sovetskom ekrane" [Workers and Peasants on the Soviet Screen], Kino i 2hizn', No. 16, f i r s t ten-days, June 1930, p. 10. ^^Quoted in Theodore H. Von Laue, Why Lenin? Why Stalin? A Reappraisal of the Russian Revolution. 1900-1930. 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: J . B. Lippincott Co.. 1971), p. 195. ^Quoted in Freeman, Voices of October, p. 240. ^^Ivan Anisimov. "The Films of Eisenstein," International Literature, No. 3. Moscow. 1931, a ten-page excerpt (Appendix Four) in Marie Seton. Sergei M. Eisenstein (New York: Grove Press. 1960). p. 502. See Pascal Bonitzer. "Le machines e(x)tatiques (Macroscopie et s i g n i f i c a t i o n ) , " Cahiers du Cinema 271 (November 1976): 22-25. for a discussion of machine symbolism in Old and New. 23james Goodwin, "Eisenstein: Ideology and Intellectual Cinema." quarterly Review of Film Studies 3 (Spring 1978): 175, mistakenly i d e n t i f i e d the bureaucratic director of the tractor factory as looking l i k e Lenin ( I think he looks more l i k e Plekhanov). Anisimov, "The Films of Eisenstein." in Seton, Eisenstein recognized the agronomist's prominence, but associated him with Eisenstein's "technicism," labeling the episode "a very characteristic perversion of real relations. . . , " p. 502. 2'^Pravda, October 13, 1929, p. 5. this paragraph is based on i b i d . The remainder of

^^"Autobiography" in Marco Carynnyk. e d . , Alexander Oovzhenko: The Poet as Filmmaker, trans, and i n t r o . Marco Carynnyk (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1973), p. 16. 32B. Alpers,"A. Dovzhenko,": Kino i z h i z n ' . No. 7, 1 March 1930, p. 5. This journal had been featuring s t i l l s from Earth since i t s f i r s t issue on 20 November 1929. 33"Filosofy" (The Philosophers), I z v e s t i i a , 4 April 1930, p. 2. ^\ino i z h i z n ' . No. 12, 21 April 1930, p. 5. tJnless otherwise noted, subsequent quotations are from i b i d . 3 ^ I b i d . , p. 6. ^^Two Russian Film Classics: "Mother" (Pudovkin) and "Earth" (Dovzhenko) (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), p. 78. ^^Kino i zhizn'. No. 12, 21 April 1930, p. 8. 38ibid., p. 9. R. N. Yurenev, Aleksandr Dovzhenko (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1959), pp. 49-50. ^\ino i zhizn'. No. 12, 21 April 1930, p. 7. "Autobiography" in Carynnyk, Alexander Dovzhenko, p. 16. ''^"K bodrosti i zhizni" [To Cheerfulness and Life], Sobranie sochinenii [Complete Works], 4 vols. (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1966-69). I: 260-261. ^^"V podu s vremenem" [On the Hearth of Time], ibid., pp. 267 and 269. ^^"Mirovozzrenie i tvorchestvo," ibid., p. 275. Luda and Jean Schnitzer, Alexandre Dovjenko' (Paris: Editions Universitaires, 1966), pp. 64-65, and Gilberto Perez, "All in the Foregorund: A Study of Dovzhenko's Earth," Hudson Review 28 (No. 1, 1975): 71, 77, 78, and 80, are brief examples of such comparisons. ^^Lewin, Russian Peasants, p. 422, said that one government official reported in the summer of 1929 that as much as 48 percent of the operational time of the tractors was lost through breakdowns or being used on non-productive activities. Narboni, "Le hors-cadre decide de tout," p. 19, n. 9 interpreted Marfa's dishevelment as symbolizing the despoilment of the peasant to assure the development of industrialization. '^^Ivor Montagu, "Dovzhenko: Poet of Life Eternal," Sight and Sound 27 (Sutimer 1957): 4&. ^^Sergei Eisenstein, Film Essays and a Lecture, ed. Jay Leyda (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1970), p. 21. This was written in 1928 for Voices^ of Oct^ober, but was not included. 50"Perspectives," ibid, p. 35.

"maximalism" charge is taken from Sovetskii ekran. No. 40 [Soviet Screen] and is cited in the Pravda article. Anisimov is quoted in Seton, Eisenstein, p. 501. 26ibid., p. 115. 27quoted in i b i d , p. 487. 28see Kepley, "The Evolution of Eisenstein's Old and New," pp. 47-48; Dominique Fernandez, Eisenstein (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1975), pp. 178-181; and Eric Rhode, A History of the Cinema (New York: H i l l and Wang, 1976), p. 109, for discussion of such examples as: the phallic cream separator, the orgiastic religious procession, the b u l l ' s marriage, and the tractor d r i v e r ' s suggestive positions as he fixes the stalled machine. ^^Goodwin, "Eisenstein: Ideology and Intellectual Cinema," pp. 174 and 190. Jean Narboni, "Le hors-cadre decide de t o u t , " Cahiers du Cinema 271 (November 1976): 20. My translation is admittedly loose to t i e in with S t a l i n ' s "Dizziness from Success" a r t i c l e . "Delirious" or "light-headed" may be more exact.

THE EDEN MUSEE IN 1898: THE EXHIBITOR AS CREATOR

^ ^ a l i and Express, 15 February 1898, p. 7. The paper only mentions the Biograph once, perhaps unintentionally. ^^Clipper, 19 March 1898, p. 42. o f f i c e r of the Maine. Sigsbee was conmanding ^^New York Journal, 14 March 1898. ^^Maii and Express, 5 April 1898, p. 7. " c l i p p e r , 9 April 1898, p. 99. and Express, 19 April 1989, p. 7. and Express, 7 May 1898, p. 7. 32I b i d . , 21 May 1898. 33,1 11 June 1898. 3*Equity No. 6989, U.S. C i r c u i t Court, Southern D i s t r i c t of New York, Thomas A. Edison vs. J . Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith, individually and as co-partners trading under the name and style of Commercial Advertising Bureau and American Vitagraph Company. This gathering took place at the Vitagraph o f f i c e on 2 June 1898. 35Mai1 and Express, 25 June and 9 July 1898. 3 6 l b i d . , 16 July 1898, p. 18. 37lbid., 9 July 1898, p. 16. % r i b u n e , 7 August 1898, PT B, p. 12. Mail and Express, 27 August 1898. ^^Maii and Express, 17 September 1898, p. 14. ''"Tribune, 20 November 1898, p. 3 B. ' ' h b i d . , 4 December 1898. Mail and Express, 2D Dec 1898. ''^Tribune, 1 January 1899, p. 10 B. ^ ^ I b i d . , 8 January 1898, p. 12 B. Edison Vitagraph Company, broadside, 3 and 4 August 1898, misc. exhibit in Equity Nos. 6990, 6991, U.S. C i r c u i t Court, Southern D i s t r i c t of New York, Thomas A. Edison vs. Blackton, Smith, et a l . ^ ^ l i p p e r , 4 June 1898, p. 238; 18 June, p. 270. Proctor's Pleasure Palace, program, 11 June 1898. Harvard Theatre Collection.