Denis Anatolyevich Anan’ev,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Nostalgia for the “Thaw” Period in the Soviet Cinema of the Second Half of the 1970s – Mid-1980s
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2022-5-16
Before the mid-1980s it was rarely the case that Soviet cinematographers made films about the so-called “Thaw” period, which lasted from Stalin’s death until the mid-1960s. This was due not only to the censorship restrictions or little relevance of the topic but also to the lack of temporal distance which was necessary for a more objective assessment of the recent past. However, as the “Thaw” period became more distant the Soviet cinema industry produced some films with a nostalgic and idealized image of the 1950s – 1960s. The paper objective is to identify and analyze ways of the “Thaw” Period’s “nostalgic” representation in the Soviet films of 1970s – mid-1980s. It is concluded that the Soviet filmmakers started to analyze the Thaw period through the generational discourse, even before the Thaw ended. At first they demonstrated a critical view of the “Sixtiers” (e.g., in the films of M. Khutsiev and R. Viktorov based on the scripts of A. Grebnev) which in the 1970s gave way to the nostalgic representation of the recent past. It can be seen, first of all, in the films creating an idealized image of the past times (e.g., “The Blue Portrait”, 1976, dir. G. Shumsky; “Photographs on the Wall”, 1978, dir. A. Vasilyev; “Dawns are Kissing”, 1978, dir. S. Nikonenko). Another way of nostalgic representation was to construct a positive image of a protagonist who adhrered to the values and had best qualities of “the Sixtiers” generation. In some films both methods were used (for example, in M. Kazakov’s film “The Pokrovsky Gate” (1983)).
Publishing: 28/10/2022
The article has been received by the editor on 11/04/2022
How to cite: Anan’ev D.A. Nostalgia for the “Thaw” Period in the Soviet Cinema of the Second Half of the 1970s – Mid-1980s // Historical Courier, 2022, No. 5 (25), pp. 193–203. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2022/ISTKURIER-2022-5-16.pdf]
Links: Issue 5 2022
Keywords: Soviet cinema of the 1970s–1980s; the “Thaw” period; the Sixtiers; nostalgic cinema; generational discourse