ABSTRACT
During its eight decades of existence, the Soviet state created an almost perfect machine to control cinema and to coerce movie people to act as propagandists of Soviet ideology and the present party policy. Soviet movies, with their abrasive misrepresentation of reality, spurred the Soviet people to imitate the conduct of the heroes in Soviet films. From the end of 1929, the work of most Soviet filmmakers was controlled by sheer force. In the first decade following the revolution, however, many filmmakers accepted the revolution, and the perspectives it opened for them, with enthusiasm. During the first period – until the death of Stalin –, movie directors were almost totally unconcerned with truth. After Stalin’s death directors easily, and seemingly without scruples, changed their old movies, adapting them to a new version of official history. Soviet bureaucrats often used brutal and corrupt methods to impose official ideology on moviemakers.
