ABSTRACT
The war changed the face of world politics. The worldwide cataclysm diverted the nations from the usual posturing about the superiority of one political system or another and encouraged them to embrace the priority of common human values and the idea of global unity. At the end of the war this idea seemed about to materialize, conciliating the conflicts among recent allies and damping the ardor of the diehard revanchists. Even the genesis of the Cold War, followed by the atomic psychosis, could not entirely scotch the idea of a Common European Home. Kubanskie kazaki was the most popular of all postwar films. It depicted the life of a village in the north Caucasus after the war as contented, abundant, and joyful. Reality was utterly different, of course, and the film was consequently subjected to severe and appropriate criticism.
