ABSTRACT
This chapter represents an experiment in thinking through and developing some of this potential. It aims to establish certain possible coordinates for a fresh approach to the field, and to present one or two avenues. The chapter must be stated at the outset that historically grounded research into Soviet audiences and especially those of the Stalin era is faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles, in particular when it comes to the questionable reliability of available historical evidence. 1936, according to a goskomizdat pamphlet written by Grigorii Zel'dovich and published in 1939, Liubov' Orlova was greeted by a group of workers from the piston ring section of a Cheliabinsk tractor factory. Orlova's success, like that of many other leading Soviet artists and performers of the time, also generated an array of texts of various kinds that are available for research and analysis. It argues for a broadening of the definition of 'ideology' that tends to characterize accounts of Stalinist cinema.
