Oleg Vitalievich Gorbachev,
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin, Yekaterinburg, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Semantics of the Objective World of Soviet Village Cinema in the “Thaw” Period
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2022-5-14
Along with the “village prose”, the village cinema of the second half of the 1950–1970s quite fully reflected the everyday realities of the Soviet village. The feature films of this period make it possible to reconstruct the elements of rural material culture associated with housing, everyday life, labor and leisure practices. Their film presentation is reliable insofar as it is aimed at creating a “recognition effect” on the part of the viewer and is based on repetition. On the other hand, the cinematographer continued to carry out the ideological mission of shaping the image of the desired future, albeit in a less rigid form compared to the “Stalinist” cinema. Such film images are verified by referring to party documents and concepts of ideological campaigns (“thirty-thousanders”, rapprochement between town and countryside, electrification, an increase in the level of education, etc.). The semantic content of the objective world of rural cinema was formed both by the logic of the film image (positive or negative hero) and by socially sanctioned models of consumer behavior. As applied to the rural cinema of the “thaw” period, the symbols of status and transition are most often used. Due to the specifics of film language, cinema is more inclined to present a demonstrative rather than an everyday model of consumption. The features of a positive character are usually books, a portrait of Pushkin on the wall, etc., reflecting his craving for education, openness to technical progress (radio receiver). A few expensive things in the frame did not necessarily serve as a marker of social status (e.g. TV). The change of a city coat for a quilted jacket for a visitor from the city demonstrated his familiarization with the rural community. On the contrary, the deliberate adherence to urban fashion alienated the hero from “his own”. Unification of consumption patterns in the 1960s–1970s smoothes the confrontation between the city and the countryside. Compared to the “Stalinist” cinema, where collective consumption dominates as a reward for a labor feat (richly laid tables, fairs), an individualized consumer model is established in the cinematography of the “Thaw” period. The change in the semantics of the objective world presented on the movie screen during the “Thaw” period in comparison with the Stalinist era is due to the weakening of ideological control, the shift in the “collective-personality” balance towards the individual, the influence of technological progress, the processes of modernization and urbanization.
Publishing: 28/10/2022
The article has been received by the editor on 06/08/2022
How to cite: Gorbachev O.V. Semantics of the Objective World of Soviet Village Cinema in the “Thaw” Period // Historical Courier, 2022, No. 5 (25), pp. 166–180. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2022/ISTKURIER-2022-5-14.pdf]
Links: Issue 5 2022
Keywords: Soviet cinematography; village cinematography; film image; “Thaw” period; historical source; material culture