The Soviet Union was far from alone in putting art to the service of propaganda in the 20th century. Hollywood, home to the most powerful film industry in the world, has a long track record of using the Silver Screen to create stereotypes and propaganda (see Russian Life, November/December 2008).
As recently as 2001, Langley collaborated closely with noted director Wolfgang Peterson on the CBS series The Agency, in which the CIA all but got veto power over scripts. The Democratic Party provided extensive financing of anti-war films during the Vietnam era. And clandestine “organs” have used film as a front in their interagency budget battles. For example, by a strange convergence of events, the film Enemy of the State, which focused on the National Security Agency’s (NSA) methods, appeared just as the scandal over the NSA’s Echelon global eavesdropping system was unfolding. Hollywood’s criticism of American policy aside, on film, U.S. security agencies are generally portrayed positively: as exceptionally capable professionals and, often, intellectuals.
That the Soviet Union had a “cultural policy,” therefore, is nothing unusual. But its scale dwarfed anything seen before or since. And the effect of what Lenin called “the most important” of all the arts has been enduring. Even today, many Russians perceive the 1930-50s based on what they see in old movies, regardless if it meshes with reality. Thus, the movie Swineherd and Shepherd (Свинарка и пастух, also known in the West as They Met in Moscow) shows an abundance of food at the Exhibition of the Achievements of the People’s Economy (VDNKh), but, in fact, during that time, hunger reigned in the country.
During the 1990s, the powerful Russian propaganda system in the arts collapsed. Now, however, after a two-decade hiatus, national cinema has begun to revive (domestic film releases now constitute a quarter of all box office receipts), and authorities are trying to re-establish elements of the state’s propaganda mechanism.
FSB Knows Best
Beginning in 2000, several series were produced with the support of the FSB (Federal Security Service) and other security agencies, portraying an image of the upright and strong intelligence agent or counterterrorism operative: Special Department (Спецотдел), Spetsnaz (Спецназ), Men’s Work (Мужская работа), and Secret Watch (Тайная стража). All did relatively well on Russian television. A few years later, in 2004, the movie Countdown (Личный номер) was released, portraying the FSB’s version of the September 1999 terrorist acts in Moscow. It was a major undertaking and investment. The Deputy Directors of the FSB and CIA served as consultants; filming was done in Moscow, Italy and the North Caucasus; soldiers from spetsnaz detachment Vympel took part as extras; and Russian military helicopters and an aircraft carrier were involved.
Since 2006, the FSB has moved beyond the role of adviser and investor to critic, appraising artistic works and presenting awards to films, books, television shows, songs and even paintings and sculptures. In point of fact, this is merely a return to a practice from the 1980s. From 1978-88, the Soviet KGB bestowed awards on artists who created a positive image of KGB personnel. In 2008, an analogous prize was awarded to the producers of the 2007 blockbuster Apocalypse Code (Код апокалипсиса), starring Vincent Perez and Anastasia Zavorotnyuk, and also to singer/songwriter Alexander Rosenbaum for a number of his patriotic songs.
Conversely, the organs are quick to denounce films in which KGB agents appear in an unflattering light. In 2007, a scandal broke out around the movie Svolochi (Сволочи), which portrayed Russian orphans recruited during WWII as saboteurs against fascist Germany. The movie was well regarded, and it earned three prestigious Russian MTV Movie Awards (best film, best action scene, and “breakthrough” actor of the year) – yet during the awards ceremony, Russian director Vladimir Menshov refused to present a prize to Svolochi, announcing, “I will not hand out a prize to a movie that defames my country.”
While the producers of the film and an eponymous book repeatedly stated that the film was fictional, the FSB put out an official release, declaring that “there are no materials in the archives of either the Russian FSB or the Republic of Kazakhstan’s Committee for National Security confirming the existence of such a ‘school for child saboteurs’ in the structure of the NKVD-NKGB, as depicted in the story Svolochi. However, the Russian FSB does have documents concerning the Fascist German special services’ use of children for sabotage purposes.”
Meanwhile, director Alexander Atanesyan said that the scandal only attracted greater attention to the film: as a result, Svolochi raked in four times more at the box office than it cost to produce.
Films about the horrors of the Stalin era, both imagined and real, have enjoyed consistent success from the beginning of perestroika to the present day. In 2004, there was the television miniseries Moscow Saga (Московская сага), based on the novel by Vasily Aksyonov, and Children of the Arbat (Дети Арбата), based on the novel by Anatoly Rybakov; in 2005, there was The First Circle (В круге первом), based on the book by Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; and in 2007, Lenin’s Will (Завещание Ленина) appeared, based on the work of Varlam Shalamov, one of Russia’s most famous writers on life in Stalin’s prison camps. All were quite popular, demonstrating that Russians still have a horrified fascination with the twists and turns of their past.
However, there is also the widespread belief that the younger generation needs clear values and not the “ideological porridge” of the perestroika period, as Daniel Dondurey, editor of the magazine Art and Film (Искусство и кино), recently stated in Rossiyskaya Gazeta. “More than 20 years after Gorbachev came to power, people just don’t know what happened in the 20th century,” Dondurey wrote. “Did the ‘Reds’ bring goodness and justice, or did they only commit fratricide and crap in the vases at the Hermitage? What about the ‘Whites’? Were they intellectual graduates of the best military academies or psychologically impaired torturers? It is clear that what people need are positive ideals that are simple to understand, despite the fact that there are films, albeit propagandistic, that the public truly loves, such as those starring Lyubov Orlova.”
“In this situation of the apparent crisis of ideas,” Dondurey continued, “it would be foolish for the authorities not to attempt to reestablish a system of propagandistic culture, a system of cultural ideology loyal to the state.”
Kiss and Tell
Last May, Alexander Avdeyev, former Russian ambassador to France, became the new Russian Minister of Culture. Almost immediately after his appointment he gave a wide-ranging press conference, at which he emphasized that he would work to increase funding for the film industry. “I am much in favor of the development of modern literature and film,” Avdeyev said, “but I am displeased by the limited funding for culture, especially films.”
Apparently, a certain part of the film industry is tuned into the state’s cinematic fixation. They may even be counting on state grants determined by trustworthiness, rather than talent. But in at least one case, that calculation may not have paid off.
Last year, a former high-level official, Anatoly Voropayev, released A Kiss – Not for the Press (Поцелуй не для прессы), directed by little known actress Olga Zhulina. The film is a love story about a stewardess and a St. Petersburg lawyer who ascend to the heights of power. The picture evoked tremendous public interest, because it was clearly based on real events from the life of then-President Vladimir Putin and his wife Lyudmila. Officially, the producers neither confirmed nor denied the connection. “There is a reflection of events from the life of the ‘first couple’ in the movie, but, generally speaking, the married couple is a composite image,” they asserted, rather disingenuously.
The movie was ready for release in 2003, but, strangely, it was held up until Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2008. The only big screen showing was at Moscow’s Khudozhestvenny Theater. According to rumor, Vladimir Putin saw the film before the premiere and did not like it. After the premiere, the press quickly derided the film as mediocre and trite. Within a couple of weeks, everyone had forgotten about it.
Film critic Viktor Matizen wrote that “the guileless fabulists and spin doctors [Voropaev and Zhulina] fell into a trap of their own design… the naiveté of their picture was worse than stealing state funds and swindling salty old craftsmen. Understanding whose table they had eaten from, they are trying in some way to cover up their cinematic mediocrity: ‘We made off with a bundle, so let’s give them at least something for the money.’ These folks did not make one dime, and caused a lot of damage: financial damage to their sponsors, and moral damage to those they wanted to please.”
Matizen wrote that after the premiere, western journalists asked him if “the Kremlin had a hand in it.” He said he replied cryptically: “In my opinion, the young guys in the presidential administration have more brains than the protagonist of this film, and, most likely, they have more than is necessary to shine a light on this shameful display.”
Afghan Connection
Meanwhile, more distant history is getting a fresh look with state support. On the twentieth anniversary of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan (see Russian Calendar, page 19), a comprehensive 12-part documentary, The Afghan War (Афганская война), is coming to TV with a five million dollar budget, including a healthy dose of state support.
This is not the first film on the Afghan war. Most famously, there was Fyodor Bondarchuk’s box office hit Ninth Company (Девятая рота), about the destruction of a company of new conscripts surrounded by mujahedeen.
The Afghan War is based on a book by General Alexander Lyakhovsky, whose adventure-filled career started in 1968, when he participated in the suppression of the Czechoslovakian uprising. In 1987, he was part of the USSR Ministry of Defense Operational Group in Afghanistan and was a close assistant to the chief of the group up through the completion of the Soviet troop withdrawal in 1989. Lyakhovsky also worked on the script of this historical documentary. Lazurniye Polya studio will both broadcast the film on Russian television and show it at several international festivals.
The film’s focus, Lyakhovsky said, is the period of the war against the mujahedeen. A film crew made three trips to Afghanistan and planned some 300 interviews, which ranged from Zbigniew Brzezinski, to the chiefs of the CIA operational groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan, to mujahedeen commanders. Yet, the final episodes also cover the terrorist attacks on the U.S., NATO’s “Enduring Freedom” military intervention, and the current situation in the region.
“In the film,” Lyakhovsky said, “we follow the history of the emergence of al-Qaeda as early as the middle of the 1980s, when training camps were created with CIA assistance, where terrorists were trained and out of which grew al-Qaeda, as well as Osama bin Laden. Both Arab and Pashtu leaders innately sense that they are free people, they have little patience for subordination, and they often cannot be controlled. As a result, the whole world has to deal with this now.”
At the state level, agencies ranging from the Ministry of Culture to the FSB and the Defense Ministry have provided support for this project, including financing. The producers even stated that the original five million dollar budget was insufficient. The Russian Union of Afghanistan Veterans (RVSA) is overseeing the project. “We have a vast amount of factual material and it must be used properly,” said RSVA leader and State Duma Deputy Franz Klintsevich, “I am sure that we will have a very powerful movie.”
Interestingly, Klintsevich cautiously revealed the agenda which may lie behind the film: the RSVA, he said, intends to seek a review of the 1989 Supreme Soviet resolution which declared the Afghan war a mistake. With the assistance of this movie, which Klintsevich said is intended to really “get things spinning,” certain Russian authorities want to “ram through” the idea that the USSR did everything correctly in Afghanistan, annulling “perestroika views” that the deployment of Soviet troops to that region was ill-advised.
Just Business
The 1968 novel The Inhabited Island (Обитаемый остров) is considered the most trenchantly political book by the noted science fiction writers and brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. It is the story of the cosmonaut Maxim, who has crashed on the planet Sarakhsh in the year 2057. There he finds himself at the center of events in a world where the inhabitants are irradiated in order that they will love the ruling military junta. Maxim participates in an uprising and does not suspect that agents from Earth have already been at work on Sarakhsh for some time, preparing a gradual reform.
The book was not only about the Soviet Union, but about totalitarian regimes in general. That was how people understood it in the Soviet period, even though what made it into print in 1968 was far from what the author wrote. Soviet censors, said Boris Strugatsky, made 896 changes to the novel. “We were not allowed to mention: socialists, tanks, or prisoners. Even cats, horses and dogs,” Strugatsky said.” They also crossed out guards, orders, footcloths, counter-intelligence, and Eau de Cologne; generally anything that bore a resemblance to Earth or, God forbid, the USSR. It was absolutely idiotic, almost paranoid thinking… yet we did not have the intent of needling the regime. The goal was completely different: to concoct increasingly daring adventures for 22nd century Komsomol members in a country of archetypal tyrants. However, we could not, and did not want to, dream up an operetta world; we liked describing what was around us and what was credible. And somehow, all on its own, a political tone emerged out of a thing that had been conceived as absolutely apolitical.”
The film’s director, Fyodor Bondarchuk (creator of Ninth Company), is talented, and it would be difficult to call him an active supporter of the current Russian regime (like, for example, Nikita Mikhalkov). Most likely, he just wants to practice his craft and not run afoul of the authorities, especially given that the state regularly invests in his films. Alexander Rodnyansky, one of the film’s producers, confirmed that the Ministry of Culture allotted one million dollars to The Inhabited Island. And producer Yelena Yatsura acknowledged that Ninth Company also received a state grant. Bondarchuk’s Moscow area studio is itself financed by the state-owned VTB bank.
Inhabited Island will be released on January 1, 2009. But early reports indicated that most of the “political aspects” from the novel were stripped in favor of making it a more typical extraterrestrial adventure film. “I did not have any part at all in this film,” Strugatsky said, “but Bondarchuk seems to me a good director. Of course, there is the danger that the film will turn into a costume action film. One can only hope that the creators of the movie understand that science fiction should be realistic; only then does it have a chance to enthrall any sort of serious viewer.”
Another recent big budget film, Strangers (Чужие), is anything but apolitical. The film’s director, Yuri Grymov, is a former advertising magnate who became famous as director of the TV movie based on Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s novel Kukotsky’s Case (Казус Кукоцкого). Strangers is about an American medical mission in Africa that encounters Russian peacekeepers. The Russian media was quick to label the film anti-American, yet Grymov said he does not agree, while at the same time revealing his own biases.
“Every individual views things according to their own distortions,” Grymov said. “If someone in the audience is highly politicized, he might naturally see something like that. But understand then that means we have thoroughly anti-Russian films in Russia; in our films the Russian is always a drunk, a criminal or a thief. I really do not understand this. After all, Americans do not stoop to making movies about themselves with unflattering portrayals of Americans. The soap bubble known as America is overblown, both ideologically and economically.”
Interestingly, a few weeks before the film’s Russian release, the media was filled with rumors that the office of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “did not recommend” its release in America. There was no confirmation of the rumors, but, in an era of strained U.S.-Russian ties, they garnered the movie some valuable publicity.
“Who cares?! Publicity is publicity,” Gromov said in reply to an observation that taking advantage of the rumor might harm the film. “You have to draw attention to the movie, so people won’t just watch things that they were herded into the theaters for. I would like as many people as possible to watch this movie.”
In point of fact, Strangers is a fine film. Grymov has amazing control of the camera and knows how to construct a scene. “I am an independent director and producer. I do what is on my mind, what I want to express,” Grymov said.
That said, Grymov declined to reveal his film’s budget or backers. Notably, however, its distributor is Karoprokat, a subdivision of one of Russia’s largest film companies, KARO Holdings. KARO is, in turn, one of several companies that, in accordance with the new state policy for the development of the national film industry, will likely receive a portion of the Ministry of Culture’s annual R4 billion allotment. Releasing a “controversial” film that is perceived as anti-American and offered by a leading director, cannot but help their chances.
Not Just Movies
Ideological trends appear more starkly in cinema, yet other art forms have not been free of the state’s new ideological overtures.
In 2002, the pro-Kremlin movement Nashi (Наши) sought to incite a cultural war and chose a likely literary “victim” for their first salvo: Vladimir Sorokin. Noted literary critic Vyacheslav Kuritsyn has called Sorokin “the last Great Russian writer, whose narrative is literariness itself, the meat of writing, quite indifferent to inherent semantics…” Yet Nashi was scandalized by pornographic elements in his works. They organized burnings of his books, delegated their spokesmen to appear on television shows, and picketed the Bolshoi Theater, where an opera based on his script was being performed. Nashi demanded that publishers stop printing Sorokin and that he be tried for pornography.
Interestingly, the only result of the campaign was that an elite author, previously read almost exclusively by the intelligentsia, became known to the entire country, and pressruns of his books skyrocketed. Consequently, Nashi retreated from this front in the culture wars and the Kremlin settled on a much more pragmatic policy.
In 2007, then President Vladimir Putin suddenly expressed a desire to meet with young Russian writers. Fifteen writers came to his residence in Novo-Ogarevo, and Putin reportedly told them that literature can be “completely elitist,” “commercial,” or “within the framework of government contracts.” In the case of the latter, he said, it could focus on such obvious themes as, “promotion of a healthy lifestyle, family, the army, security, the drug war – anything. The state should determine the priorities that are most important to the state and upon which it is prepared to expend funds, just as it enunciates its own interest.”
Here it is worth making a slight digression to describe the particular characteristics of the Soviet literary world. While it cannot be said that all writers in the Soviet era lived well (especially dissidents, who sat in prisons or left the country), and far from all earned a living from their writing, at least at that time society’s attitude toward art was respectful.
In the post-Soviet era, such respect evaporated when literature was swamped by new, private publishers’ relentless pursuit of profits. Two literary worlds – the elite and the commercial – began to exist side-by-side. “Serious” authors turn up their noses at “popular literature,” with its huge pressruns, filthy lucre, and absence of “real talent.”
Now, apparently, the authorities have seized on this split to coopt members of “serious literature” (no need to pursue the “commercial” authors; they will be controlled by lowest-common-denominator mass interest, which tends to pulp fiction). Putin’s words were clear. Writers have a choice: they can remain in the realm of serious literature and struggle, or they can earn decent money by conforming to the interests of the state.
It is difficult to say whether young writers who grew up in the era of Russian capitalism will be enticed by such offers. Yet noted Soviet-era dissident Vladimir Bukovsky believes there is a real danger that argumentative, interesting literature may disappear. Literature in Russia, he said, is dying. “Vladimir Sorokin has some works that very accurately reflect certain current tendencies,” Bukovsky said. “But I don’t know how long he can endure. Certain authors who once could be relied upon have stopped developing. I try to find time to follow the literary situation, and for now, I don’t see literature capable of portraying life. Yet, on the other hand, for the moment they will still print any book in Russia; censorship has not yet spread to book publishing.”
russian rock, since its emergence during the Era of Stagnation (1964-1982), was protest music. Rock musicians were the antithesis of officious variety stage performers and they reflected youth’s interest in the West. The first Soviet rock groups, such as Time Machine (Машина времени) and Aquarium (Аквариум), rarely performed publicly, but tapes (magnitizdat) of their performances spread rapidly across the country. Today edgy protest rock is all but gone. Young groups are rarely interested in social issues. Still, some of the old rockers remain true to their principles.
Yuri Shevchuk is leader of the ultra-popular rock group DDT. Every May, the Russian television channel Culture (Култура) marks the birthday of singer and poet Bulat Okudzhava (see page 52), and Shevchuk has long headlined these concerts. But in 2008 the concert went on without him. News agencies reported that Shevchuk’s songs will no longer be shown on Culture and that a ban on RTR might soon follow. Observers attributed the ban to the fact that Shevchuk unexpectedly participated in a demonstration led by Garry Kasparov and Eduard Limonov’s opposition group Other Russia, following the 2008 Duma elections.
“I was at the dissenters’ march, because these elections did not leave me any choice,” Shevchuk said. “Everything in Russia is becoming like the Brezhnev era of stagnation, and either we will slide into totalitarianism, or we will give Russia a jolt toward development.”
“I am not a member of any party,” Shevchuk continued. “I am a citizen, and I am not comfortable with the fact that many of my colleagues, having gotten their cut from the government, now have to work it off.”
What Shevchuk was referring to were the many musicians who participated in the concert on the Vasilevsky Spusk, just off Red Square, celebrating the Unified Russia victory in the 2008 Duma elections.
like rock music, modern art did not have a chance to exist or develop in the Soviet period. Moreover, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was renowned for his dislike of the avant garde. Then, in the Brezhnev era, there was the bulldozing of an exhibition of important artists. In the perestroika and Yeltsin eras, modern art was left in peace. Today, art has become another front in the simmering war over culture.
The signal scandal erupted in January 2008, on the eve of the opening of the “SotsArt” (Socialist Art) exhibit in Paris organized by Andrei Yerofeyev. One of the most respected curators of modern art, until recently Yerofeyev worked in the state-owned Tretyakov Gallery, organizing shows and exhibitions, and gathering a tremendous collection of contemporary art. But on the eve of the exhibition’s opening, then Minister of Culture Alexander Sokolov said that the exhibition would be “a disgrace to Russia, which will have to be answered for in full.” He added that he had “done all [he] could, in order that it would not come here.”
Why such disfavor? It turned out that several pieces at the exhibition (borrowed from the Tretyakov) were the work of radical modern artists; one of the pictures, for example, showed Russian policemen kissing. As a result, the controversial works were removed from the exhibition. Meanwhile, Mikhail Shvydkoi, head of the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinema, commented that no one has the power to abolish an entire school of art. Nonetheless, he advised the Tretyakov to be more attentive with regard to its selection of works of modern art.
This was far from the end of things.
Soon thereafter, the civic organization Center for Protection of the Nation (Центр народной защиты) took up Sokolov’s banner and filed a complaint with the General Prosecutor Office’s, calling for criminal proceedings against the organizers of the Russian exhibition in Paris. After all, in Moscow an investigation was already underway into yet another avant garde exhibition – “Forbidden Art,” held at the Sakharov Center – which had been organized by Yuri Samodurov and the very same Andrei Yerofeyev.
In short order, Yerofeyev was fired from the Tretyakov. The Tretyakov’s deputy director, Irina Lebedeva, said the firing was not political, but due to the fact that Yerofeyev had not been able to handle his responsibilities for cataloging gallery acquisitions, leading to chaos in the collections. Samodurov also recently left his position as head of the Sakharov Center, allegedly under pressure “from above.”
At the end of last summer, the civic movement National Assembly (Народный Собор), which initiated the action against Forbidden Art, was expecting responses from the prosecutor’s office about several other shows.
“When a public hearing on ‘Forbidden Art’ was held at the gallery of Aidan Salakhova,” said Alexander Lapin, cochairman of National Assembly’s Moscow office, “we came and saw that photographs of public figures and representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church were hung on the walls, and below them were obscene comments. National Assembly filed a complaint with the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office and requested the prosecutor initiate legal proceedings against the artists.”
The statutes cited by National Assembly include pornography, insulting believers, and dishonoring national symbols. Interestingly, among the “accused” exhibits are a display of 19th century erotic French photographs and works of Jules Pascin, a friend of Modigliani. Thus, legal action is being taken based on the work of dead artists.
“I do not understand how it is possible to prosecute artists or gallery owners for pictures,” said Anna Stavitskaya, Samodurov’s lawyer. “The goal of this investigation was not to establish the truth, but to denounce Samodurov and Yerofeyev, regardless of whether they are guilty or not.”
Ideas and Ideology
Of course it would be easy to accuse the authorities of wanting to gain control of a dutiful and “calibrated” culture. Yet artists also need ideology.
“To presume to live without ideology is utopian,” said Mosfilm director Karen Shakhnazarov. Cinematographers have a problem, he said, and it is the absence of ideas. “A director’s skill and drive for truth are important only if the author has ideas,” he said in a recent interview. “Today, Russian society is in search of its ideology and of those ideas that will give it direction… We grew accustomed to understanding ideology in Party terms, but in a broad sense it means worldview. Where it exists, it is transmitted in art and in film. The ideology of the U.S. is not written down, like it was for us in the printed program of the Communist Party, but it does exist. Therein lies its strength. You can agree or disagree, but ideology does exist in film.”
But what about the person who has ideas, but whose ideas do not correspond with the newly emerging state ideology? And why, for example, in regard to a significant painting, does the state choose such a harsh policy of prohibition?
In fact, it may be because contemporary painting and sculpture is unaffected by the language barrier, that such works are dynamically integrating Russia into a universal contemporary culture. The absence of a verbal component means that painting is the most liberated sphere of contemporary art, more easily assimilating outside trends and transmitting its own to others. Yet such an integrative spirit may be at cross purposes to a state ideology of uniqueness and distinctiveness – of a special Russian path.
To which gallery owner Aidan Salakhova offered a cautionary note: “It is possible that I will not like these pieces, but my attitude is that an artist is free to express his ideas, and his works can be debated or denounced in discussions, but he cannot be criminally prosecuted for his works. And, most importantly, a zone of creative freedom exists in various countries of the world, and a wise state permits this freedom in galleries, so that it will not spill into the streets. So it would be much more logical for the state to be more indulgent towards such art.” RL
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