ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the "Moscow text" developed over the course of the 20th century was as much a visual one as textual: between 1918 and 1991, as the journal Art of Cinema documented, Soviet filmmakers made 314 movies about Moscow. It explains how Soviet filmmakers built on the preexisting notions of Moscow and adapted them to fit the needs of the new state to show off Moscow as a quintessential socialist home. Moscow films of the 1920s frequently featured young women who came to the city, encountered some initial resistance in the form of the "old", but overcame it, settled in the capital, and began the business of transforming it into a socialist home. Soviet filmmakers endowed Moscow with meaning as a space by constantly referencing the Moscow cityscape in films. In providing Soviet senses of space and place centered in Moscow and within Moscow apartments, Soviet filmmakers also created visions of a "Soviet home.".
