Soviet movies as a tool of Russian colonialism

"My capital, My Moscow"

In the Soviet media, films and songs, Moscow was presented as a kind of centre of the universe — the most important, beautiful, and friendly city in the world, or at least in the USSR. As usual, this flattering image was somewhat at odds with the actual experiences of people visiting Moscow. Although everyone agreed that Moscow was richer than the rest of the empire (it offered goods and services unavailable or rare elsewhere, such as bananas or the fizzy drink Fanta), many visitors perceived the city’s inhabitants as "snobbish", "aggressive" or "selfish"; many of them found the city "soulless" or "unwelcoming".

However, the state-controlled popular culture constantly suppressed or downplayed any criticism of the "capital of our Motherland, Moscow," while promoting it at every possible opportunity. Sometimes this was done explicitly: a song in which the narrator repeats how proud he is of "his capital, his Moscow", or where university graduates tell the listener that "the beloved capital" would remain "in each of their hearts" forever; or a film in which the entire plot is based on the supposed greatness of the empire’s largest city.

Quite often, however, the advertisement was subtle. In the detective TV series "The meeting place cannot be changed" (1970s), the main characters, while walking through Moscow in 1946, "accidentally" meet a young war veteran who tells them how struck he is by the beauty of the city; together they spend some time listening to the Kremlin chimes and contemplating the beauty of the Moskva River. Interestingly, this scene has no connection with the rest of the plot.

In the supposedly "non-political" comedy "Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future") (a.k.a. "Ivan Vasilievich Changes His Profession", 1973), a young Soviet engineer invents a time machine and transports the 16th century Tsar Ivan the Terrible to the modern-day USSR. Ivan, considered by historians as a proven mass murderer and perhaps Moscow’s most brutal monarch ever, is presented as a rather likable character, with occasional outbursts of anger, but without dire consequences to those around him. At one point, the engineer takes the Tsar onto the balcony of his apartment tower and solemnly exclaims: "And now I will show you modern Moscow!" Impressed by the splendor of the capital’s new look, with all its cars and high-rises, the Tsar only has to say: "Gorgeous!" Again, this scene has very little to do with the rest of the plot. Its main purpose is to subtly reinforce the idea that Moscow is “the best city in the world".

The movie doesn’t stop there, however. Although all the Soviet peoples were theoretically "equal", it explicitly presents the 16th-century Muscovite ruler as "one of ours", while the Tatars who opposed him (and whose descendants were among the recognized nations of the USSR) are perceived as "our enemies." Thus, the officially multinational USSR of 1970s — where Russians were supposed to be one of about 100 equal peoples and ethnic groups — was implicitly shown as the direct political descendant of the despotic feudal state that, under Ivan the Terrible, had forcibly annexed two large neighbouring countries (Kazan and Astrakhan Khanates), neither of which had anything in common with Muscovy’s culture, language or religion. Ivan’s army was depicted as "our good Russian lads." Meanwhile, a modern Soviet Russian, accidentally transported back in time, cunningly confronts a "wily" Swedish diplomat who wants to seize a disputed "Russian" border region (in fact, it was inhabited by Finno-Ugric peoples back then and decades later).

Of course, there is nothing wrong with promoting a big city or admiring the history of one’s own nation — as long as it is not imposed on colonized nations at the expense of their own culture and identity.

"Soft" Russification

Most Soviet films are a priori Russocentric. Russian language, culture and worldview always dominate, even when the plot is set in Ukraine or even the Caucasus (a mountainous region inhabited by many indigenous peoples, all of whom are very different from Russians both culturally and linguistically).

Ukrainian-speaking characters, if they appear at all, are at best secondary to a good Russian. They can be nice, cunning, respectful, usually simple-minded or a bit backward — but always a kind of "my man Friday" supporting the "civilized" Russian "Robinson". That is, when they are not traitors or petty criminals.

When a character with a Ukrainian surname suddenly becomes the protagonist, he is visibly Russian-speaking and has nothing to do with Ukrainian culture or even identity. Such is the case in the 1959 film "E.A. — Extraordinary Accident", which centers on Anton Kovalenko, the smart and charismatic first mate of a big cargo ship. Not only is he Russian-speaking, but he identifies strongly with Russia, showing no interest in or connection with anything Ukrainian. The cook of the same ship, the Ukrainian-speaking Kharytonenko, is presented as elderly, simple-minded, obviously undereducated, yet nice, cunning and unconditionally devoted to his "great Soviet motherland" and the Communist rule.

IN THE MOVIE "SPRING ON ZARECHNAYA STREET", LOVE FOR TANYA IS INTERTWINED WITH LOVE FOR THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE

The 1956 film "Spring on Zarechnaya Street" is a romance between a young factory worker (Alexander "Sasha" Savchenko) who, although smart and hardworking, was never able to finish high school, and an equally young teacher of evening classes for adults (Tatiana "Tanya" Levchenko). Sasha becomes Tanya’s student at the local school for adults, and they fall in love. The action obviously takes place in Ukraine, and most of the characters, including the two protagonists, have obviously Ukrainian surnames (Savchenko, Levchenko, etc.). This detail seems "unimportant", but it is not. Tanya Levchenko, who embodies everything pure and progressive and genuinely believes in her educational mission, is a teacher of Russian (!) language and literature. Ukrainian language, culture, or even identity do not figure anywhere. They are simply not there, in any form. The fact that Tanya teaches young workers Russian literature, rather than, say, math or physics (much more important for their careers), is far from trivial.

Since the movie was quite good and the actors played well, it remains popular today: people enjoy the love story and the overall personal growth of the main characters. However, the subtle unspoken message is crystal clear: in the "progressive" industrial Ukraine, there is no place for anything Ukrainian except surnames; already Russified ethnic Ukrainians succeed in perfecting their Russian and promoting Russian literature. And this status quo is perceived as "normal", "natural" and "indisputable", because this is "the way it should be".

Another Soviet comedy featuring an adult evening class, "The Big Recess" (Bolshaya Peremena, 1973), contains an overtly xenophobic scene. The protagonist, a teacher, shouts at a Ukrainian-speaking man: "What kind of language is this?! Speak your native language!" When the character explains that both Ukrainian and Russian are his native languages, as he is the child of a mixed Ukrainian-Russian marriage, the teacher ignores this remark. The whole scene is presented as "very funny" because the only Ukrainian speaker in the film looks weird, always nervous, not very intelligent, although nice; he is looked at with sympathetic condescension. Once again, the entire scene is presented as "normal" and "casual"— another "good and funny comedy".

There was nothing exceptional about this portrayal of Ukrainian characters. "Either you were an 'ordinary Russian person', or your ethnicity was presented as a laughing stock so that you want to become an 'ordinary Russian person,'" explains Ukrainian journalist Darka (Dariia) Hirna, whose YouTube channel collects cases of symbolic discrimination against everything Ukrainian in the Soviet movies (https://youtu.be/RzIeHPgp7AM ).

Russian surnames

Like many people born and raised in Odesa (Southern Ukraine), I grew up with a reverence for the musical comedy "White Acacia" (1955), which was made into a film in 1957. Both the play and the movie extol Odesa, its beauty, its cheerfulness, and its people, especially its sailors (and, by implication, their Greate Soviet Motherland). Although all the characters were ostensibly from Odesa, there was a peculiar and supposedly "trivial" detail: all of them, without exception, had Russian surnames.

Odesa sees itself as a multiethnic city. Throughout the 19th and the early 20th centuries, it was also multicultural. Even if those born after World War II were largely Russified and cut off from their historical ethnic cultures, many people continue to be proud of their roots, happily naming two, three, four or more ethnicities of their ancestors. If you had taken a representative sample of Odesa population in the 1950s, when the musical was written, and looked at their surnames, many of them would indeed have sounded Russian. But many others would have been Ukrainian, Jewish, Polish, Romanian, etc. However, in "White Acacia" everyone suddenly became "Russian" and all the "non-Russian" surnames simply disappeared. This was neither a coincidence nor a free choice of the authors (none of whom could “boast” of a Russian-sounding surname). They simply had to follow the expectation of the Soviet establishment of the time, which had largely (although unofficially) adopted Russian ethnic nationalism during and after the World War II. Multinational Odesa was thus artificially presented as implicitly Russian.

Again, this is not an isolated case: from time to time, Soviet authors had to ensure that the surnames of their main characters sounded ‘more’ Russian.

"Research" into non-Russian folklore… only in Russian

In the USSR, it was taken for granted that Russians did not need to learn the languages of other peoples of the USSR, who in turn were expected to speak Russian. This Russocentric view has entered cinema, even when it did not make any sense. In the 1967 comedy "Kidnapping, Caucasian Style", a Russian student named Shurik (Alexander) comes to the Caucasus to collect the oral ethnic folklore — myths, legends, and toasts — of the local non-Slavic peoples. He does not bother to learn any local languages and sets out to collect non-Russian oral folklore only in Russian.

His ignorance becomes obvious when a local corrupt official, who wants to use Shurik in his kidnapping scheme, manipulates the young "folklorist" into believing that three Russian petty criminals he has hired are locals who “do not speak Russian". These Russians, dressed in some supposedly "local" clothes, shout out some random made-up words (like "bambarbiya kergudu"), which the "folklorist" takes for genuine local language. And since Shurik understand only Russian and doesn’t have even a rudimentary knowledge of local languages, he relies on the schemer’s "translation".

The Caucasus is famous for dozens of mutually unintelligible languages often belonging to different language families. However, if Shurik knew the basis of one or two of them, he would at least try to look for familiar words or asked which language the supposed "locals" were speaking. But this never happened, and the statement that they "don’t speak Russian" prevented any attempt to establish any verbal communication with them.

One might ask what was the scientific value of Shurik’s "research" into local "myths, legends, and toasts" created in languages he completely ignored and in which he showed no interest at all. But this question never occurred to the filmmakers or to the vast majority of Russian-speaking audience. In their worldview, it was natural for non-Russians to switch to Russian when communicating with Russians, while the languages of colonized peoples were at best "optional" and at worst "useless".

For decades, "Kidnapping, Caucasian Style" remained one of the favourite comedies of the so called "Russian World," and no one noticed any inconsistency in studying a non-Russian oral tradition without the slightest idea of the language in question.

Let's summarize

Soviet culture, and especially Soviet cinema, were tools for promoting the Soviet government and system, and more broadly, "everything Russian", from language, literature and folklore to Russian identity and Russian-centric version of history.

Like Western advertising for soft drinks or car insurance, these advertisements were often "hidden": you enjoyed a comedy, detective story or romantic movie where the "correct" propaganda messages were carefully inserted into the plot, dialogues, and/or background.

Soviet and Russian culture, even in its ostensibly non-political aspects, was a tool to promote the USSR abroad: a classical ballet performed in Rome or New York would help to create a better image of the Soviet regime. The mass murders under Stalin’s government and the continued widespread human rights violations after his death were supposed to be forgotten under the spell of Russian literature, classical music, and “politically neutral” films.

Overall, Soviet films created an (entirely virtual) alternative utopian world that was presented as the "true" life in the USSR. This virtual reality either ignored or downplayed Soviet social problems — organized crime, drug addiction, police brutality, widespread corruption, ethnic conflicts, racial discrimination, poverty, homelessness, etc. In Soviet films, all of these "could only exist abroad". And because Western filmmakers did not hesitate to talk about crime, social problems, government inefficiency, and corruption in their own countries, their movies only "confirmed" to the Soviet citizens that the West was indeed "corrupt", "unjust" and "dangerous".

The fakeness of the world depicted by the Soviet movies became obvious in the late 1980s: as soon as censorship began to weaken during Gorbachev’s reforms, the same directors "suddenly" began to include in their new films the reality they knew well: widespread crime, hypocritical Communist officials, drug addiction, casual violence, inefficient police, and much more…

USSR eng film propaganda