Censorship/Soviet Stupidity

[Nevsky]

I have always wondered why leftist authoritarian governments (and even occasional nowadays leftists) didn't understand the strategy of "divide and conquer". Seriously, had the USSR paid a bit more attention to said priciple, it wouldn't have been frail as it was in the end. Let us take a look at the soviet film industry for example: Since the days of early visionaries like Eisenstein and Vertov the USSR had a very high reputation in the field of cinematic art. However, the soviet government lost all respect among the progressive intellectual circles all over the world by censoring/arresting/exiling the likes Sergei Parajanov and Andrei Tarkovsky. Socialist society was able to produce such genius only to be sabotaged by its own conservative government officials?
That behavior was purely suicidal by the brezhnevites if you ask me...

[G4b3n]

Yes, I agree. I believe if the USSR had allowed for personal liberty and only pursued actual counter-revolutionaries, then they might still be alive and well today. This of course goes with a list of other things they could have done more efficiently, it is certainly worth studying though.

[Kalinin's Facial Hair]

It's not 'stupidity'. It is degeneration, which commenced long before.

[Brutus]

Don't forget the fact that you couldn't tell Stalin jokes!

Here's a good one:
Stalin meets with a council of Ukrainian workers. He returns to his desk at the kremlin and goes for a smoke, but he can't find his pipe. So he searches his draws- no pipe; he searches his pockets- no pipe; he looks everywhere he can think of- no pipe! He rings up Beria, and says: "I can't find my pipe, one of them Ukranians must have stolen it! Find me my pipe!"

After half an hour, he rings Beria back, "I found my pipe, I was sat on it."

Beria replies, "Too late, comrade Stalin, half of the workers have signed a confession saying that they stole the pipe, and the other half committed suicide during interrogation!"

I wonder which joke Radek told to get himself a cosy spot in Siberia...

[khad]

I have always wondered why leftist authoritarian governments (and even occasional nowadays leftists) didn't understand the strategy of "divide and conquer". Seriously, had the USSR paid a bit more attention to said priciple, it wouldn't have been frail as it was in the end. Let us take a look at the soviet film industry for example: Since the days of early visionaries like Eisenstein and Vertov the USSR had a very high reputation in the field of cinematic art. However, the soviet government lost all respect among the progressive intellectual circles all over the world by censoring/arresting/exiling the likes Sergei Parajanov and Andrei Tarkovsky. Socialist society was able to produce such genius only to be sabotaged by its own conservative government officials?
That behavior was purely suicidal by the brezhnevites if you ask me...
Who gives a shit about Tarkovsky besides hipster film snobs, who, btw, consider him to be the anti-Eisenstein for his turgid storytelling and his complete disdain for the cutting room?

And was a reactionary. Funny how you complain about "conservative government officials" for a guy who was obsessed with pushing a religious agenda in just about everything he made. If you ask me, the censors did a fine job considering the kind of garbage Tarkovsky produced when he was given a free hand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offret

[goalkeeper]

And was a reactionary. Funny how you complain about "conservative government officials" for a guy who was obsessed with pushing a religious agenda in just about everything he made. If you ask me, the censors did a fine job considering the kind of garbage Tarkovsky produced when he was given a free hand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offret

So you have watched Tarkovsky movies? Why is it that it is fine for you to watch them but not the average man or woman in the Soviet Union?

[khad]

So you have watched Tarkovsky movies? Why is it that it is fine for you to watch them but not the average man or woman in the Soviet Union?
One and a half. Solyaris because he had less room to inject his religious obsessions and because I kind of like Lem. Andrei Rubliyev, now that's some unwatchable, turgid tripe. For me, the best Soviet cinema in the later period were the TV serials, without question.

Only people who masturbate furiously to Tarkovsky are hipster film nerds in the West. You know, the people who think that 15-minute still shots of light reflecting off a pond constitute great art that will emancipate the working class.

[Nevsky]

Only people who masturbate furiously to Tarkovsky are hipster film nerds in the West. You know, the people who think that 15-minute still shots of light reflecting off a pond constitute great art that will emancipate the working class.

Tarlovsky is respected all over the world as one of the best filmmakers of all time. Bergman, Fellini etc. all worshipped him. USSR should have publicly shown proudness of its cultural achievements instead of persecuting them for ignorant reasons. Mainstream western marxists wouldn't have turned to social democrats as quickly if the Soviet Union acted a in a slightly more sophisticated manner.

[khad]

Lol, Fellini. Someone I respect even less than that religious nut Tarkovsky. ZZZZzzzzzzzzz....

Wake me up when you say something relevant to the working class.

[Nevsky]

Lol, Fellini. Someone I respect even less than that religious nut Tarkovsky. ZZZZzzzzzzzzz....

Wake me up when you say something relevant to the working class.

And which films are the working people supposed to see, then? Independence Day? Avatar?

[Igor]

please tell me more about what movies i should like as a member of the working class user khad

[khad]

Well, something that is more immediately recognizable to the average Russian today than the pretentious religiosity of Tarkovsky would be the miniseries The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed, which for something produced in "Super-Stalinist Ultramax Russia" might please you mewling idiots with its overall tone regarding human rights. In what other cop show do you have a protagonist hope that in the future there'll be no need for cops?

Or if you're into war film, there's Seventeen Moments of Spring, probably the most beloved show of all time in the Russian language. Or if you want something really proletarian about an intellectual being forced to teach and interact with adult students at a night school, there's the Big Break.

Your tendency to discount any example of Soviet film just because the masses happened to like it betrays the general level of contempt you have towards Soviet culture and non-Western people, because in your eyes, if it doesn't meet approval by the jury of socially-irrelevant, pretentious European film snobs and bourgeois western media, it simply doesn't exist.

[Igor]

you seriously deducted contempt towards all non-western people from liking tarkovsky movies?

all right then fella

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Also the osterns. Can't go wrong with osterns.

Concerning Tarkovsky, however, it should be noted that most of his films can be interpreted in several ways. Consider Stalker, for example. The main religious character is, at best, a yurodiviy, and at worst, a lout who leeches off the misery of other people in order to justify his own miserable existence. The Sacrifice is pretty awful, though.

Also, what he did to the works of Lem and the brothers Strugatsky is nothing short of criminal.

But censorship also exists in the liberal, democratic "West", although it is hidden under the rubric of financing decisions and "profitability" (and it's not as if Tarkovsky was dragged off to a labour camp). So, at the very least, the Soviet Union was no worse than "the West", and, if anything, the regime there was more honest.

[Igor]

you're not exactly setting your standards high if you keep comparing shit to western countries all the time you know

[khad]

you seriously deducted contempt towards all non-western people from liking tarkovsky movies?
What can I deduce when you pendejos insult all of later Soviet cinema apart from Parajanov and that religious nut Tarkovsky? Clearly the likes of you can't actually be bothered to evaluate Soviet society and its culture on its own merits, turning instead to the authority of bourgeois "culture-makers" in the West.

you're not exactly setting your standards high if you keep comparing shit to western countries all the time you know
Says the guy whose only examples are western bourgeois-sanctioned and approved.

[khad]

Also, what he did to the works of Lem and the brothers Strugatsky is nothing short of criminal.
Well, the Strugatskys. You can't expect anyone on this forum to have heard of em. After all, they wrote about a communist future without imperialism or nations. Instead we here on revleft prefer our cyberpunk dystopias and their victorious march of neoliberalism. Leave it to the Kasamites to parse out the revolutionary potentiality of the Matrix trilogy.

Soviet literature? Naaaah doesn't exist!

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Well, the Strugatskys. You can't expect anyone on this forum to have heard of em. After all, they wrote about a communist future without imperialism or nations. Instead we here on revleft prefer our cyberpunk dystopias and their victorious march of neoliberalism. Leave it to the Kasamites to parse out the revolutionary potentiality of the Matrix trilogy.

Soviet literature? Naaaah doesn't exist!

Noon is great stuff.

[Nevsky]

@Khad You are basically talking to yourself by now, or whatever strawmen you are pulling out of your arse. I never showed any disregard for soviet culture beyond Tarkovsky. Your anti-intellectual "working class" self-righteousness equals "hipster-bourgeois-snobs" in stupidity and pretentiousness. By the way, Parajanov was arrested because he supposedly promoted homosexuality. Is the latter a symptom of bourgeois-hipster decadence, too?

[khad]

@Khad You are basically talking to yourself by now, or whatever strawmen you are pulling out of your arse. I never showed any disregard for soviet culture beyond Tarkovsky. Your anti-intellectual "working class" self-righteousness equals "hipster-bourgeois-snobs" in stupidity and pretentiousness. By the way, Parajanov was arrested because he supposedly promoted homosexuality. Is the latter a symptom of bourgeois-hipster decadence, too?
Yet you're only capable of pulling Tarkovsky and Parajanov out of your ass. Why is that?

[Nevsky]

Yet you're only capable of pulling Tarkovsky and Parajanov out of your ass. Why is that?

Because they are ... uhm ... like ... famous and stuff? You know, examples to emphasize my initial point nobody seems to care about? Seriously, where does all the fucking hate here come from? Ma va' fa mocca a mammt.

[khad]

Because they are ... uhm ... like ... famous and stuff? You know, examples to emphasize my initial point nobody seems to care about? Seriously, where does all the fucking hate here come from? Ma va' fa mocca a mammt.
Famous abroad, not more famous in Russia/Former SU, which is a little fact lost on your film nerd intellect.

Here's another fact for you: Seventeen Moments of Spring is the most quoted film or television production in the entire Russian language. But you've never heard if it, have you?

[Nevsky]

Famous abroad, not more famous in Russia/Former SU, which is a little fact lost on your film nerd intellect.

Here's another fact for you: Seventeen Moments of Spring is the most quoted film or television production in the entire Russian language. But you've never heard if it, have you?

Oh and I must have forgotten that Tatyana Lioznova was imprisoned by the soviet government? Wait a minute... she wasn't! So what the fuck does she or her art have to do with my fucking argument, you genius?

[khad]

Oh and I must have forgotten that Tatyana Lioznova was imprisoned by the soviet government? Wait a minute... she wasn't! So what the fuck does she or her art have to do with my fucking argument, you genius?
You state that the only famous examples of Soviet film are ones by dissident directors like Parajanov and Tarkovsky, in other words the ones that the bourgeois western film press has deemed worthy of their consideration. The way you dismiss almost the entirety of Soviet cinema--tough talk for someone who clearly knows almost nothing about the topic.

For every film they produced, there were dozens of others just as worthy of artistic consideration, and Soviet cinema suffered very little as a whole from the exile of Tarkovsky, whose film Offret shows the kind of religious garbage he reveled in once given artistic free reign. If you actually want to have a conversation that extends beyond me calling you out for the ignoramus that you are--well, we all know that's an impossibility.

db7pqpylMUA

[Nevsky]

You state that the only famous examples of Soviet film are ones by dissident directors like Parajanov and Tarkovsky, in other words the ones that the bourgeois western film press has deemed worthy of their consideration. The way you dismiss almost the entirety of Soviet cinema--tough talk for someone who clearly knows almost nothing about the topic.

It appears that you are completely oblivious to what my initial intention of this thread was. Fuck off.

[Hermes]

It does seem kind of odd that a thread about Soviet censorship has basically devolved into "Tarkovsky was terrible", which kind of leads to the conclusion, due to the lack of any other statement, that every other censorship was justified on those terms.

Unless you just have some gigantic complex against Tarkovsky and are incapable of discussing anything else when his name is mentioned.

(though I don't agree in the least that the SU would have somehow lasted longer had it censored less)

[Arlekino]

I am big fan of Soviet Films. To be fair I did not like it Solaris at all.
Seventeen Moments of Spring I would say is master film serial. Should advice strongly to watch.

[goalkeeper]

One and a half. Solyaris because he had less room to inject his religious obsessions and because I kind of like Lem. Andrei Rubliyev, now that's some unwatchable, turgid tripe. For me, the best Soviet cinema in the later period were the TV serials, without question.

Only people who masturbate furiously to Tarkovsky are hipster film nerds in the West. You know, the people who think that 15-minute still shots of light reflecting off a pond constitute great art that will emancipate the working class.

This perhaps is all well and true and i'll take your word for it until i watch it. But why do you think the average Soviet person should not have been able to watch it and judge it for themselves how you have?

It may well be turgid tripe, but surely Soviet people should have been able to decide that for themselves?

[Invader Zim]

I thought that Solyaris was bum-numbing boring and turned it off after a while. The only reason I saw it was because they have a copy at my local rental store and people tend to bang on about it.

However, I have to say that this thread has taken a bizarre turn. From an initial complain that the Soviet authorities were counter-productive because they censored/mistreated some of their most exported filmmakers, this seems to have turned into Khad calling people "hipster film nerds". Apparently because they like famous exported art house Soviet films (the only ones that actually see release in the west), but haven't seen films with greater popular appeal in Soviet Russia at the time (presumably because they never saw release in the west) - so people are pretentious because they've seen films popular enough to see release, where as they wouldn't be pretentious if like Khad they watched films too obscure in the west to have seen release? Did I follow that correctly?

What has any of this got to do with Soviet film censorship? Which, I know nothing about. Though censorship in general is an interesting topic. I was watching a documentary the other day about film censorship in Britain and the 'video nasties' moral panic in the 80s (which saw the banning of what on the whole were pretty generic exploitation movies).

[Arlekino]

This perhaps is all well and true and i'll take your word for it until i watch it. But why do you think the average Soviet person should not have been able to watch it and judge it for themselves how you have?

It may well be turgid tripe, but surely Soviet people should have been able to decide that for themselves?

Oh yes we did decided to have neoliberal revolution and we got it, hura welcome to post soviet union, no jobs, no medical care no community and Hollywood films smashing faces and heads are blow in up.

[goalkeeper]

Oh yes we did decided to have neoliberal revolution and we got it, hura welcome to post soviet union, no jobs, no medical care no community and Hollywood films smashing faces and heads are blow in up.

I'm not sure how that is relevant?

I'm asking why some people here think that because some directors made "turgid tripe" movies Soviet people should have been banned from seeing them rather than seeing them and deciding it for themselves?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I don't think anyone supports this sort of censorship, not without reservations at least. Of course hostile propaganda should be censored, but Tarkovsky's religious moments are so obtuse they could have only turned the practical worker against his fanatic yurodstvo and "sacrificial" egoism.

That said, censorship of Tarkovsky, Parajanov, and others needs to be placed in context. Obviously no one would defend jailing a man for his bisexuality or something like that. But most Soviet censorship consisted of the withholding of funds. And surely, no artist has a right to state funds?

And khad's point, if I have understood it correctly, is that many people view the very vibrant Soviet culture through the lens of one or two filmmakers that have found favour in the West, certain (awful in all senses of that word) dissident writers and so on, ignoring most of the Soviet cultural corpus.

[Nevsky]

And khad's point, if I have understood it correctly, is that many people view the very vibrant Soviet culture through the lens of one or two filmmakers that have found favour in the West, certain (awful in all senses of that word) dissident writers and so on, ignoring most of the Soviet cultural corpus.

I know all about this and I hate that sort of western ignorance. I hate people who think Solzhenitsyn is like the epitome of russian literature or something but what reason did khad have to even arrive at this point? What did I do to suggest that Tarkovsky is the only soviet filmmaker I care about? He was being a fucking asshole for no reason at all. Pathetic fucker who desperately needs to hate on something, be it "hipsters", "westerners", "filmsnobs" and whatnot. Fuck him.

[Ismail]

It's not 'stupidity'. It is degeneration, which commenced long before.Degeneracy had existed in the 30's, but it was the Khrushchevite revisionists who accepted it. As Hoxha wrote in 1968:

Of what fight against bourgeois ideology can the Soviet revisionists speak while revisionism is nothing else by a manifestation of the bourgeois ideology in theory and practice, while egoism and individualism, the running after money and other material benefits are thriving in the Soviet Union, while careerseeking and bureaucratism, technocratism, economism and intellectualism are developing, while villas, motor-cars and beautiful women have become the supreme ideal of men, while literature and art attack socialism, everything revolutionary, and advocate pacifism and bourgeois humanism, the empty and dissolute living of people thinking only of themselves, while hundreds of thousands of western tourists that visit the Soviet Union every year, spread the bourgeois ideology and way of life there, while western films cover the screens of the Soviet cinema halls, while the American orchestras and jazz bands and those of the other capitalist countries have become the favorite orchestras of the youth, and while parades of western fashions are in vogue in the Soviet Union? If until yesterday the various manifestations of bourgeois ideology could be called remnants of the past, today bourgeois ideology has become a component part of the capitalist superstructure which rests on the state capitalist foundation which has now been established in the Soviet Union.And from a 1981 Albanian conference one writer noted that:

At the end of 1960, at the time when the Meeting of 81 communist and workers’ parties was being held in the Kremlin, important changes had already taken place in Soviet literature. The change of course by the Khrushchevites had made itself felt in all aspects of the life of the country, but the repercussions of this deviation were especially evident in Soviet literature. And this is fully understandable. As an active part of the ideological superstructure, literature and the arts were bound to be among the spheres most susceptible to Khrushchevism. Once again life was proving Lenin’s thesis that there can be no literature and art outside politics.

Soviet literature at the beginning of the 60’s had nothing in common with that great revolutionary literature which was born in the flames of the October Revolution, the Civil War and later, in the years of socialism in the Soviet Union. For decades this literature and art had been a spiritual nourishment and source of inspiration for the workers and progressive people throughout the world. Breaking through the walls of prejudice and silence, raised by the international bourgeoisie the names of Gorky, Mayakovsky, Ostrovsky and Fadeyev, Soviet music and films, had spread the truth about the revolution, communism and the new proletarian world which was emerging, all over the world.

At the beginning of the 60’s, at the time of the consolidation of revisionism, not even the shadow of the great revolutionary Soviet literature was left in the Soviet Union. The Khrushchevites had succeeded in distorting it, reducing it to an amorphous literature, rotten in content and form, a miserable means of illustrating their anti-Marxist theses. It was a typical conformist literature adapted to their anti-communist course, colourless, spiritually barren, with no authority among the international audience...

There is an opinion that one of the main reasons for the degradation of Soviet literature is the existence in the Soviet Union since the 20’s and 30’s of regressive or decadent writers such as Akhmatova, Bulgakov, Zhoshchenko, Pasternak, etc some of them surviving from the time of the Tzar, and others emerging in opposition to the Soviet power later. It is true that some of them continued to write, mostly translations, but their literary activity was extremely restricted, and they themselves were isolated from Soviet cultural life. They were rightly called “internal emigrees”, and it is unimaginable that they could play an important role in the development of Soviet literature, much less set the tone for it. Other writers set this tone and another literature dominated in Soviet life, the true literature of socialist realism.

In his speeches, instructions and correspondence with outstanding Soviet writers, Stalin had made clear the stand of the party towards the development of the internal life of Soviet literature. The emergence of writers like Bulgakov or Pasternak was an aspect of the class struggle in the Soviet literature and art, and by no means a phenomenon allegedly caused by mistakes in Stalin’s stand, as the Trotskyites and Maoists try to present it.

The change in the political course of the Soviet Union the state of stability of Soviet literary life, which existed in Stalin’s time, was replaced by the most unpredictable oscillations; the principled class struggle, as a normal manifestation of literary life, was replaced by unprincipled stands, ranging from flattery of a few writers to sensational scenes, reminiscent of western movies, like the expulsion from Soviet territory of Solzhenitsyn, whom the Khrushchevite revisionists themselves had brought to the limelight as a tool to attack and denigrate Stalin and the dictatorship of the proletariat, but who later became too much of an embarrassment to them. This whole Khrushchevite business of the Khrushchevites struck a mortal blow to the development of Soviet literature. Its appearance changed completely. Such writers as Ehrenburg, Tvardovsky, Sholokhov with their works “The Thaw”, “Vasil Tyorkin in the Other World”, “The Fate of a Man”, followed by Simonov and Katayev, and new writers of the type of Yevtushenko, a direct offspring of the Khrushchevite 20th Congress, began their infamous crusade against socialism, disguised behind the struggle against the alleged cult of the individual....

The “dissidents” are the spawn of Khrushchevism. It was Khrushchev personally who ordered the publication of Solzhenitsyn’s books in the Soviet Union and it was the Khrushchevites who called on the Soviet literary scum to rise against socialism. It was only when the masters came into conflict with their apprentices, only when these so-called dissident writers, with their insistence on pushing ahead, did not respect the laws of demagogy, that is, no longer obeyed their masters on the question of the speed with which the betrayal should proceed and ware becoming a danger to the revisionist chiefs who feared exposure, that the latter, after trying in vain to discipline them, attempted to get rid of them.

However, it is immediately evident that the struggle against the “dissidents” was half-hearted, only for the sake of appearances. Was not Boris Pasternak the chief dissident of the Soviet Union some years ago? Nevertheless, it did not take long for Pasternak’s blemishes to be forgotten, and now his books are published and he is honoured in the Soviet Union the same as the others. Without doubt this is what will occur eventually with Solzhenitsyn and all the others who will be reunited with the body from which they broke away...

In regard to the relations between the present-day revisionist literature and bourgeois literature, they are nothing but a reflection of political relations. Despite the fact that, from the strategic standpoint, they are component parts of a united reactionary world front, bourgeois literature and revisionist literature have contradictions and disagreements which result from the contradictions between the group of bourgeois states headed by the USA and the group of revisionist states headed by the USSR.

When our Party challenged Khrushchevite revisionism right in its centre, Moscow, in 1960, along with the struggle for the defence of the principles of Marxism-Leninism, for the defence of the freedom and independence of the peoples, and following its example, the struggle commenced for the denunciation of revisionist art and the defence of socialist realism, the banner of which the Khrushchevite revisionists have abandoned.

[Nevsky]

Thank you, Ismail. No matter how childish the thread, you always manage to contribute something useful.

[khad]

Thank you, Ismail. No matter how childish the thread, you always manage to contribute something useful.
Ismail is saying that Stalin failed to do the "right thing," which was to purge dissident artists harder. The ghosts of Tarkovsky and Parajanov must be weeping tears of blood over your shoulder.


There is an opinion that one of the main reasons for the degradation of Soviet literature is the existence in the Soviet Union since the 20’s and 30’s of regressive or decadent writers such as Akhmatova, Bulgakov, Zhoshchenko, Pasternak, etc some of them surviving from the time of the Tzar, and others emerging in opposition to the Soviet power later. It is true that some of them continued to write, mostly translations, but their literary activity was extremely restricted, and they themselves were isolated from Soviet cultural life. They were rightly called “internal emigrees”, and it is unimaginable that they could play an important role in the development of Soviet literature, much less set the tone for it. Other writers set this tone and another literature dominated in Soviet life, the true literature of socialist realism.

[Nevsky]

Ismail is saying that Stalin failed to do the "right thing," which was to purge dissident artists harder. The ghosts of Tarkovsky and Parajanov must be weeping tears of blood over your shoulder.

So? If I remember correctly, this thread was about soviet censorship, not about bashing or praising Tarkovsky.

[Brutus]

Thank you, Ismail. No matter how childish the thread, you always manage to contribute something useful.

Ismail just quotes Hoxha.

[Beeth]

Soviet Union was a barbaric totalitarian regime, so it isn't surprising that censorship was in full sway. As the OP rightly mentions, many creative and revolutionary people were persecuted with religious zeal.

[piet11111]

Considering Lysenko-ism the soviet bureaucrats really did manage to fuck up good things.

[Arlekino]

Soviet Union was a barbaric totalitarian regime, so it isn't surprising that censorship was in full sway. As the OP rightly mentions, many creative and revolutionary people were persecuted with religious zeal.
Not sure your comments are good. Totalitarian, barbarian? Ah

[Ismail]

Considering Lysenko-ism the soviet bureaucrats really did manage to fuck up good things.One thing people tend to forget is that he was associated with Khrushchev, who only removed him from a position of prominence because he criticized some of Khrushchev's "Virgin Lands" policies as unscientific. Stalin also made fun of Lysenko's insistence that all science is class-based, writing in the margins of Lysenko's speech "HA-HA-HA!!! And what about Mathematics? And what about Darwinism?" (Stalin: A New History, p. 285.)

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Apropos of Culture, after liberalising a bit during the thaw, ol' Khrushchev realised modern art was indeed "dog shit" and policies were reversed.

Also, it is worth considering that, despite these claims of "censorship", there was is in many works towards the 1970's and onwards a growing cynicism often tolerated; in Afoniya (1975), the main character is a man without direction who gets into constant trouble and neglects his job, and during one scene, he has a hearing before the neighbourhood community board, and the lacklustre enthusiasm of the participants is not downplayed. They all "want to go home and watch television". In Literature, too, there was a remarkable tolerance for nationalistic leanings being presented, particularly in local languages. It's worth mentioning that during the 1970's one in four books in the world were published in the Soviet Union, so there was hardly any cultural nothingness, and despite the claims of "censorship", there was a tremendous richness and variety.

Tarkovosky sucks arse (what he did to Roadside Picnic is unforgivable), and the comparison to Bergman is very apt; because Bergman is one of those worthless tools whose cultural respect stems from critic circle-jerking and elitism rather than any true talent or appreciation, who is not well liked in general except when contemplated as a some enigmatic "cultural treasure".

[The Intransigent Faction]

Don't forget the fact that you couldn't tell Stalin jokes!

Really? Even after "DeStalinization"?

[Brutus]

Really? Even after "DeStalinization"?

I doubt you could tell krushchev jokes during his rule.
Shame, really.

[Nevsky]

Honestly, I expected to find less conservatism on a site called "revolutionary left".

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

One thing people tend to forget is that he was associated with Khrushchev, who only removed him from a position of prominence because he criticized some of Khrushchev's "Virgin Lands" policies as unscientific. Stalin also made fun of Lysenko's insistence that all science is class-based, writing in the margins of Lysenko's speech "HA-HA-HA!!! And what about Mathematics? And what about Darwinism?" (Stalin: A New History, p. 285.)

It should also be noted that Stalin opposed a similar trend in linguistics, associated with N. Y. Marr, even though that trend (the so-called "Iaphetic theory" in the broad sense) was quite popular in the period. Lysenko was also somewhat popular, since he was able to both present his theories as more "proletarian", and to connect them to the work of the popular botanist Michurin (who had also opposed Mendelian genetics, but who was modest enough to not preach about areas far outside his field of expertise). At the same time, several of Lysenko's scientific opponents did end up imprisoned, notably Vavilov, and that scientific disagreement could lead to police action is indicative of deep structural faults in the Soviet society of that period, I think. Nonetheless, the usual image of Stalin, the tyrant, dictating all aspects of state life, and particularly ordering every coercive action, is somewhere between "implausible" and "insane".


Honestly, I expected to find less conservatism on a site called "revolutionary left".

I don't recall anyone expressing conservative ideas on this thread, though. No one has said that women belong in the kitchen, that LGBT people should be killed, or that the state is being ruined by those crafty subversive Jews. Nor has anyone expressed anti-intellectual sentiment - "Roadside Picnic" is a deeply intellectual work for example, and this gives it more coherence than the sort of science fiction, all too prevalent, where the alleged aliens are simply humans with odd skin tones and bodies. But at the same time, it was a fairly popular work. The development of the national culture demands both a high quality of work, and a broad appeal. As much as I like some films by Parajanov and Tarkovsky, they definitely did not have broad appeal, so, given the economic realities of the period, should they have been financed by the state? I lean toward "no". But I don't see how this is a conservative position.

[piet11111]

I think. Nonetheless, the usual image of Stalin, the tyrant, dictating all aspects of state life, and particularly ordering every coercive action, is somewhere between "implausible" and "insane".

True Stalin could not possibly have handpicked all of the people persecuted under his regime.
Clearly the lists of names he signed off on where selected by a vast amount of bureaucrats that had a bone to pick with the unfortunates they put on the list.

I think the entire "Stalin the boogeyman" is used as a scapegoat by those very same bureaucrats to wash their hands off their crimes and to continue on in the soviet state apparatus under all who followed up on Stalin.

Unfortunately i rarely hear people saying this and instead heap the blame entirely on Stalin as some sort of comical super villain.

[Luís Henrique]

True Stalin could not possibly have handpicked all of the people persecuted under his regime.
Clearly the lists of names he signed off on where selected by a vast amount of bureaucrats that had a bone to pick with the unfortunates they put on the list.

True. Generally speaking, those bureaucrats had a working comprehension of what kind of people could and should be persecuted - and that was't their creation either.

The whole political system was flawed, and it could not be flawed without most bureaucrats being involved in the flaw. But that includes Stalin - in no way the system could have functioned in the way it did if Stalin did not, for the most part, and in the decisive parts, agree with the way it functioned.


I think the entire "Stalin the boogeyman" is used as a scapegoat by those very same bureaucrats to wash their hands off their crimes and to continue on in the soviet state apparatus under all who followed up on Stalin.


Sure, as the converse "it was all the fault of low level bureaucrats" is bogeyman used to justify the system as a whole, and indeed to somehow argue that it was too lax. If only comrade Stalin wasn't such a pacifist democrat, and had hanged all those obnoxious petty bureaucrats...


Unfortunately i rarely hear people saying this and instead heap the blame entirely on Stalin as some sort of comical super villain.

The system was built that way. All successes were magically attributed to Stalin, to his enlightened leadership, etc. Evidently, when things went bad, the natural tendency was to attribute all the problems to him, too. The comical superhero becomes a comical super villain; but only because it was a comical superhero first place.

Luís Henrique

[hashem]

That behavior was purely suicidal by the brezhnevites if you ask me...

why? it was a completely logical act by a bourgeoisie dictatorship in order to maintain its power. if revisionists hadnt resorted to censorship, that was suicidal.

censorship has a clear connection with class nature of governments. when a government is representing a huge mass of workers and toilers, it doesnt need censorship, but when its representing a small number of exploiters and has to violently repress the majority, it needs censorship.

[Luís Henrique]

why? it was a completely logical act by a bourgeoisie dictatorship in order to maintain its power. if revisionists hadnt resorted to censorship, that was suicidal.

censorship has a clear connection with class nature of governments. when a government is representing a huge mass of workers and toilers, it doesnt need censorship, but when its representing a small number of exploiters and has to violently repress the majority, it needs censorship.

So how do you explain that we can see Tarkovski's movies in Brazil, the United States, Germany, or, of all places, Putin's Russia? Are all those governments that "represent a huge mass of workers and toilers"?

Less reductionism, please.

Luís Henrique

[piet11111]

Luis i hope you dont mistake my post for some sympathy for Stalin he was a true class enemy but i also realize that he was a figure head of an entire faction of bureaucrats behind him.

Had Stalin died before he would have gotten to his position of power then the USSR would have ended up with someone else doing that rotten job.
After all its the specific circumstances that enabled Stalin to get to power and not the other way around.

[hashem]

So how do you explain that we can see Tarkovski's movies in Brazil, the United States, Germany, or, of all places, Putin's Russia? Are all those governments that "represent a huge mass of workers and toilers"?

Less reductionism, please.

Luís Henrique

im surprised to see such a poor argument. is it that hard to understand that Tarkovski's movies were against the official ideology of USSR but could be used as anti communist propaganda in Brazil, the United States, Germany or ...?

Iran is a dictatorship as well, much worse than USSR. but Tarkovski's movies are shown from states television and state media praises him. but on the other hand, movies which propagate Christianity against Islam are banned.

[Nevsky]

im surprised to see such a poor argument. is it that hard to understand that Tarkovski's movies were against the official ideology of USSR but could be used as anti communist propaganda in Brazil, the United States, Germany or ...?

Well, your argument is kind of weak, too, considering that in western countries we are free to watch any strongly anti capitalist/anti bourgeois film ever made.