soviet cinema, 1929-41 the development of industry and infrastructure

University of Glasgow

Soviet Cinema, 1929-41: The Development of Industry and InfrastructureAuthor(s): Jamie MillerReviewed work(s):Source: Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Jan., 2006), pp. 103-124Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20451166 .

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EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES Routledge Vol. 58, No. 1, January 2006, 103-124 Taylor&FrancisGroup

Soviet Cinema, 1929-41: The Development of Industry and Infrastructure

JAMIE MILLER*

Abstract

This article explores the development of the Soviet film industry in the 1920s and 1930s and argues that the rise of Soviet cinema as an industry was hampered by a lack of technical equipment and the know how to produce this, and that the USSR struggled to achieve independence in the production of equipment for film production and demonstration throughout the 1930s. The article examines the technical and economic aspects of film production in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. It explores the extent of 'cinefication', especially in terms of the lack of technology for sound film. It scrutinises the distribution and demonstration systems for films, making comparisons to the US industry. It argues that fewer films were produced in the USSR, thus offering a limited choice to Soviet audiences; at the same time new films were distributed with an insufficient number of copies, so that the rise of Soviet film as an industry was hampered. The article demonstrates the absence of an infrastructure and an industry to produce the technical equipment for film production and demonstration (film stock, cameras, sound equipment were all important) making the industry dependent on the West.

CINEMA PRESENTED THE BOLSHEVIKS with a potentially powerful weapon, as it was not

only an exciting new technology, it was also accessible and appealing to the masses as an art form that they could engage in. From the communist perspective, cinema could serve many crucial functions. First of all, it could play its role in the struggle to eliminate illiteracy. Yet, this was not merely a practical application. The liquidation of

illiteracy would be done within the terms of reference and ideas of communist

ideology. Therefore, cinema would politically educate the masses so that they would develop a conscious understanding of the revolution, the new socialist reality and their part in that reality. At its most ambitious, such an education would contribute to the

creation of a 'New Soviet Man', a highly moral, socialist paragon of virtue, dedicated to the final goal of communism. However, the most fundamental task of cinema was never publicly spelled out. Through the political education of the masses, cinema had to help legitimise communist ideology, power and, most importantly, the reality that

they had given rise to. The legitimating task was central, as the communists had to reconcile their rhetoric of human emancipation with the grim Soviet reality of

*1 would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council for the financial support that allowed me to carry out this research.

ISSN 0966-8136 print; ISSN 1465-3427 online/06/010103-22 ? 2006 University of Glasgow DOI: 10. 1080/09668130500401715



104 JAMIE MILLER

breakneck industrialisation and the hardship and poor living standards that came with

such a transformation. Party leaders also knew that achieving mass cooperation was

essential for the realisation of their goals to politically, socially, economically and

culturally transform the country; they had to convince the masses of the necessity of

their effective participation in socialist construction by claiming that they were

working towards a communist paradise. The focus of this article on the nature of

cinema industry development is essential because for cinema to fulfil these tasks, there

had to be an infrastructure to produce, distribute and exhibit Soviet films.

Over the past two decades, scholars of Soviet cinema have gradually paid more

attention to the Stalinist period. The basic shape of the traditional Western approach

to Soviet cinema, which emerged in the 1930s, and now still exists in a traditional

totalitarian form of analysis, suggests that under Stalinism the Soviet film industry was

brought under the firm grip of an all-embracing, centralised state and administrative

system, which crushed the creative spirit of the 1920s, and obliged filmmakers to

become complicit in the creation of pro-regime film propaganda.' A revisionist

approach emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. Revisionists have argued that the changes

brought to cinema were not only imposed from above, but had a great deal of support

within the film industry itself. It was also argued that instead of simply seeing the

1930s as crushing creative freedom, it was in fact a genuine attempt at transforming

Soviet cinema into a mass form of politicised entertainment in contradistinction to the

elitist cinema of the 1920s.2 Meanwhile, academics in the Soviet Union, at least

formally, saw the Party as the careful guiding hand for the film industry, ensuring that

it moved in the correct political direction. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, study

of the 1930s has ironically adopted the traditional totalitarian arguments of the West,

concentrating on the supposedly overwhelming interference of Stalin, comparing

Soviet films of the 1930s with those of Nazi Germany, and focusing on victims of the

purges in the cinema industry.3 However, while in general the debates and polemics surrounding Soviet cinema have

become increasingly more sophisticated, academics, from both East and West have

neglected the economic and technical aspects of cinema industry development in the

lA series of important studies of cinema under Stalin can be found in Richard Taylor & Derek Spring

(eds) (1993) Stalinism and Soviet Cinema (London, Routledge). For the traditional view, see Dwight McDonald (1969), 'Soviet Cinema, 1930-1940, A History', in On Movies (Englewood Cliffs, NJ,

Prentice Hall). This work, originally carried out in the late 1930s, foresaw the development of later, more systematic totalitarian accounts. The most influential of these is Peter Kenez (2001) Cinema and

Soviet Society from the Revolution to the Death of Stalin, 2nd edition (London, I. B. Tauris).

2See Denise Youngblood (1985) Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, 1918-1935, (Ann Arbor, MI, UMI

Research Press). In this book, Youngblood argued that Stalinism constituted a revolution from below

in cinema, but later amended this theory, arguing that there was no mass support for the changes. Instead a revolution 'from the middle' was said to have taken place within the film industry itself. See,

for instance, Denise Youngblood (1993) Movies for the Masses (Cambridge, Cambridge University

Press). The argument that the 1930s saw an attempt to create a genuine mass form of politicised entertainment can be found in Richard Taylor (1991) 'Ideology as Mass Entertainment: Boris

Shumyatsky and Soviet Cinema in the 1930s', in Taylor, Richard & Christie, Ian (eds) Inside the Film

Factory (London, Routledge), pp. 193-216.

3See Alentina Rubailo (1976) Partiinoe rukovodstvo razvitiem kinoiskusstva 1928-1937 (Moscow, Moskovskii Universitet). For examples of more recent Russian studies of the 1930s, see Lidiya Mamatova (ed.) (1995) Kino: politika i lyudi 30-e gody (Moscow, Materik).



SOVIET CINEMA, 1929-41 105

1930s. For example, when addressing issues such as the production of Soviet films, the

expansion of cinema exhibition outlets, the development of sound and a production

base for film stock, cameras and projectors, it is usually claimed that in the 1930s the

USSR was fairly successful in reaching the masses and achieving economic self

sufficiency in every sphere. Where economic and technical matters have been

addressed, the conclusion has emphasised Soviet successes in the 1930s in achieving

economic and technical independence without foreign assistance.4 Studying this aspect

of the film industry is not only crucial in our general historical consideration of

whether or not the Soviet cinema infrastructure was sufficient for the medium to form

part of an effective political propaganda system of persuasion and mobilisation, but it

also helps us to understand how realistic the broader aim of surpassing the capitalist

West really was in relation to cinema.

This article adopts a perspective, that acknowledges the value of certain elements in

the totalitarian account, especially those that emphasise central state and administrative

control over policy direction, as well as endorsing revisionist accounts that suggest the

Soviet bureaucracy was often extremely inefficient at implementing these policies. I shall

thus examine the aims that emanated 'from above' and the reality of implementation on

the ground. I begin by examining the goals of the cinema administration, before arguing

that the attempt to reach the masses through new exhibition outlets had very limited

success, largely due to the failure to create an adequate infrastructure for the production

of sound equipment. I also contend that existing viewing facilities were often of a poor

standard and the films being shown for much of the decade were often dated foreign or

Soviet products. The analysis suggests that there was a fundamental problem with film

copies and the nature of the distribution and exhibition network, which failed to move

towards ideological planning. Subsequently, the article shall examine the attempt to

establish a technical base for the production of film stock, cameras and projectors. I

indicate that shortcomings of both quantity and quality meant that foreign equipment

and knowledge still played a central role in Soviet filmmaking during this period. I also

point out that the general weakness of development in the industry was manifest in the

area of exports. The article concludes with an assessment of the administrative record, arguing that limited achievements were the result of extremely complex contextual

factors and a degree of administrative ambiguity. All of these factors form part of the

central argument, which suggests that the failure to adequately reach the masses and

achieve an independent, developed infrastructure represented a serious blow to the

Bolsheviks' intended political use of cinema in the 1930s.

Concerns about the development of the film industry were raised at the Party

Conference on Cinema in March 1928. The conference decided that the cinema

industry had to be significantly expanded to reach the masses and should achieve a

balance between commerce and ideology to ensure that Soviet cinema was still highly

4Economic and technical matters are addressed in Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, pp. 118-124.

An important recent examination of industry development during the first Five-Year Plan can be

found in Vance Kepley Jr (1996) 'The First Perestroika: Soviet Cinema under the First Five-Year

Plan', Cinema Journal, 35, 4, Summer. Kepley offers an extremely detailed analysis, which focuses on

the institutional changes of Soviet cinema in the late 1920s and early 1930s. For a Soviet perspective on

industry development in the 1930s, see N. Semenov & L. Chernyabskii (eds) (1940) Dvadtsat' let

Sovetskoi Kinematografii (Moscow, Goskinoizdat).



106 JAMIE MILLER

profitable. This required the development of a 'cinema intelligible to the millions'

where films would convey the political message in an entertaining manner. Support for

this new agenda was, to some extent, recognition of the fact that the montage classics

of Soviet cinema in the 1920s failed to attract a mass audience. Ordinary people

wanted the action, adventure and comedy that they had become accustomed to

through popular Soviet films and imported American and European films. One of the

other central points of the resolution was that the industry must achieve autarky by

freeing itself from dependence on the foreign market in areas, such as film stock and

almost all forms of cinema equipment and hardware.5 This equipment was still being

imported from countries such as the USA, Germany, France and Italy. This demand

reflected the Party rhetoric of recent years, which called for industrialisation without

foreign help. In 1928 Stalin also made his famous call to 'catch up with and overhaul'

the capitalist countries in an economic sense. Cinema had to make its contribution to

matching and surpassing the economic achievements of the capitalist West. Yet,

cinema also had to play another role; the Bolsheviks wanted to show the world that

their economy was also capable of engaging in more sophisticated areas of production

and they wanted to be associated with such futuristic advances.

The political leadership's concern with economic development was mirrored by the

aspirations of the cinema administration under Boris Shumyatskii. This is illustrated

in a draft plan written by Shumyatskii in 1931 under the heading 'The Big Programme

of Soyuzkino for 1932'. Shumyatskii began with the now familiar condemnation of

Soviet cinema to date. That is the lack of film productivity, caused by the same old

'illnesses' of Soviet cinema production, namely far too many ideologically unsound

films, as well as the lack of scripts and cadres. Shumyatskii also complained of the lack

of an industrial base for the production of film stock and filming equipment, as well as

the poor financial position of Soviet cinema in terms of its debts, tax obligations, and

lack of investment in capital construction. Furthermore, Shumyatskii pointed out that

completed films were not being exploited properly and cinefication was characterised

by the backwardness of the rural and school cinema network.6

In response to these problems, Shumyatskii proposed a comprehensive programme

of development and reconstruction for Soviet cinema. First of all, he aspired to the

creation of 500 full-length films, including more than 100 silent movies, compared to

the output of 200 films in 1931. He looked to a figure of 3 billion cinema visits in 1932

compared with 700 million in 1930 and 1 billion in 1931, as well as a 1 billion ruble

turnover compared to R400 million in 1931 and R300 million in 1930. From these

rather optimistic figures, Shumyatskii deduced that the state would be able to deduct

taxes and duties of between R200 and 220 million, as opposed to R100 million in 1931

and R20 million in 1930. He wanted to see a clear profit for Soviet cinema of R200

220 million instead of the zero profit of 1930 and the R17 million made in 1931. As

well as a dramatic increase in financial growth, Shumyatskii aspired to massive

5B. S. Ol'khovyi (ed.) (1988) 'Party Cinema Conference Resolution: The Results of Cinema

Construction in the USSR and the Tasks of Soviet Cinema', document 148, translated in Taylor, Richard & Christie, Ian (eds) The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents, 1869-1939

(Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press), pp. 383-384.

6Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Literatury i Iskusstva (RGALI), f. 2497, op. 1, ed. khr. 22,1. 182,

'BoFshaya programma Soyuzkino na 1932'.




industrial projects including the building of a gigantic film stock factory, three new

studios in Central Asia, Belorussia and Eastern Siberia, 100 new cinema theatres in

new areas and kolkhoz centres, 8,500 sound cinema installations and 50,000 new

mobile installations. Shumyatskii's plan was extremely ambitious. While it was

intended to be a programme for 1932, in terms of the figures suggested, it would really

prove to be a programme for the entire decade.7

Sound

In 1929 - 30 the central issue of the time for Soviet cinema was the transition to sound.

Such a transition, of course, had huge political and artistic significance. In the 1930s,

illiteracy was still a significant problem and while cinema certainly played its role in

eliminating this dilemma, sound cinema still provided the ideal means of reaching the

masses in a more effective way. Sound also represented a technical and economic shift.

The director, cameraman, scriptwriter and journalist Nikolai Anoshchenko recognised

that the rhetoric of the political leadership on 'catching and overhauling the West'

could, ironically, not be realised without the technical help of the West. Other

journalists, such as Ippolit Sokolov, believed that the Soviet sound devices invented by

Pavel Tager and Aleksandr Shorin were important and not inferior to their American

rivals.8 But in March 1930 Anoshchenko argued that, despite Tager and Shorin's

impressive efforts, sound cinema in the USSR was still at an 'elementary stage of

development'. In effect, the materials that Tager and Shorin were working with to

develop their ideas were not sophisticated enough and therefore the quality of their first

experimental films was fairly low. Anoshchenko realistically contended that if Soviet

cinema wanted to make a speedy and effective transition to sound cinema for the benefit

of quality, propaganda and the overseas trade of Soviet films, then the cinema

administration simply had to rely on American help and technical advice.

Anoshchenko concluded that help from America should take two forms: first,

Soyuzkino should pay for equipment and expert advice on sound application to be

brought over to the Soviet Union. Second, personnel from various sectors of the Soviet

cinema industry should be sent to American factories and studios in order to acquaint

themselves with the specifics of the production and application of sound equipment.9

Regardless of the official government line on independent Soviet economic

development, the government and the cinema administration succumbed to the

practical need for technical assistance. On 25 June 1930, Soyuzkino established an

agreement with a New York company called Audio-Cinema to 'give Soyuzkino

technical help in the planning, design and installation of equipment for sound studios

and theatres, applying the most up-to-date methods of the cinema industry'.10 The

American specialist Joey Koffman arrived in the Soviet Union in the autumn of 1930,

bringing with him all the latest equipment to satisfy Soyuzkino's requirements,

including microphones and modulators. His payment of $10,000 also included

7RGALI, f. 2497, op. 1, ed. khr. 22, 1. 182-183.

8I. Sokolov (1930), 'Tekhnicheskaya baza Sovetskogo tonkino', Kino i zhizr?, 12, pp. 18-19.

9N. Anoshchenko (1930), 'Tekhnicheskaya pomoshch' zagranitsy nashemu kino', Kino i zhizr?, 9, p. 14.

10RGALI, f. 2497, op. 1, ed. khr. 3, 1. 229, 'Protokoly zasedanii fraktsii pravleniya "Soyuzkino'".



108 JAMIE MILLER

advising Soyuzkino's specialists on how to operate and develop the sound system.

Soyuzkino's reaction to Koffman's visit was frank. In a letter from Soyuzkino to the

VSNKh (Supreme Council of National Economy) it was stated that, with the

availability of the American equipment, it was now possible to order the laboratories

of Leningrad and Moscow (where Tager and Shorin were based respectively) to

'immediately copy these samples significantly improving the construction of our sound

recording and sound producing apparatuses'.11

Anoshchenko's other suggestion that a delegation be sent to America to study was

realised almost immediately. Many filmmakers and journalists, such as Ippolit

Sokolov, travelled to the West in the late 1920s and early 1930s to observe how cinema

industries operated and produced in Europe and America. One Soyuzkino delegation

included Sergei Eisenstein, Grigorii Aleksandrov and Eduard Tisse, who had already

left the USSR in 1929 for America, with the central aim of 'mastering the American

experience' of sound in cinema.12 To a large extent, their journey seems to have been

based on their personal fascination with sound and the making of sound films.

However, after they returned in 1932, Aleksandrov provided Soyuzkino with an

extremely detailed report on America's sound studios and how effective they were in

practice.13 This report was intended to have had some influence on Moscow's new and

developing sound-equipped studios. Regardless of the efforts of the Soviet technicians and the help and ideas that they

had received from Europe and America, the development of sound proved to be a

much slower process than Soviet politicians, administrative and creative personnel had

envisaged. To a large extent, this was a consequence of financial poverty. Between 23

October and 23 November 1930, when Martem'yan Ryutin was sacked and

Shumyatskii became the head of Soyuzkino, Konstantin Shvedchikov took temporary

control of the administrative body. Shvedchikov had been impressed by the Fotofon

device that Joey Koffman had brought to the USSR and Soyuzkino bought one of the

sound projectors from America with a plan to buy another 50. The plan was to import

some foreign sound films and recover the expenditure within a few weeks.

Simultaneously, Soyuzkino ambitiously ordered the production of 1,000 Soviet sound

projectors, as well as 120 sound recording apparatuses. However, neither of the plans

went ahead, mainly due to rising prices and a lack of funds. Indeed, it took until 1935

before around 30 of Shorin's sound recording machines could be produced in one

year. 14 Consequently, the studios were under-equipped with sound recording devices.

For instance, in 1932, the more prosperous Mezhrabpomfil'm studio only had one

version of Tager's model, one version of Shorin's device and one mobile sound

recorder. Poorly equipped studios meant that even the production of sound films

developed extremely slowly with five being produced in 1931 and only 52 by 1939.15

nRGALI, f. 2497, op. 1, ed. khr. 20,1. 269-273, 'Materialy k postanovleniiam pravleniya Soyuzkino'.

12Grigorii Aleksandrov (1976) Epokha i kino (Moscow, Politizdat), pp. 115-116.

13RGALI, f. 2498, op. 1, ?d. khr. 32, 1. 26-29, 'Byulleten' informbyuro Moskovskoi Ob"edinennoi

Kinofabriki RosfiTm Soyuzkino'. 14K. Gladkov (1931) 'Etapy razvitiya zvukovogo kino v SSSR', Proletarskoe kino, 5-6, p. 56. Vladimir

Verlinskii (1936) 'Recent Progress in the Soviet Motion Picture Industry', in Alicoate, Jack (ed.) The

1936 Film Daily Year Book of Motion Pictures (New York, The Film Daily), pp. 1130-1131.

15Anon. (1940) 'Sovetskoe kino v tsifrakh', Iskusstvo kino, 1-2, pp. 82-83.




Cinefication

The development of sound in Soviet cinema was closely associated with the

development of 'Kinofikatsiya' (cinefication) in the country at large. In essence, this

referred to the expansion of the cinema network and the availability of viewing

facilities in both the urban and rural environments. Even if the production of sound

films had been more substantial, the chances of the majority of the population being

able to see them were fairly slim. By June 1931, the Soviet enterprises concerned had

only managed to produce one sound projector, which was set up in a theatre that

month.16 The situation remained difficult throughout the 1930s. By the end of the first

Five-Year Plan in 1933, there were 27,578 cinema installations, but only 224 had

sound projectors. In 1938 there were still only 28,574 cinema installations overall. It

seems that many of the silent projectors had been decommissioned as the number with

sound projectors included in this figure had now reached 11,242. It was only by the

end of 1938 that the quantity of sound projectors within the overall network reached

the 54% mark.17 Overall, despite the dramatic increase between the mid-1920s and the

beginning of the new decade, the growth of cinema outlets was fairly meagre in

the 1930s, largely due to the slow transition to sound. It made no sense to produce

more silent projectors, yet the technological base was not developed enough to enable

the mass production of sound projectors. We can gain a strong idea of just how poorly

the cinema network was serving the population from the proposals of the third Five

Year Plan declared in 1939. In order to adequately provide cinema facilities

throughout the USSR, Molotov announced that the network of sound producing

stationary and mobile projectors would have to be increased by six times.

Urban cinefication

The cinefication programme undoubtedly favoured the urban and European part of

the Soviet Union. Throughout the 1930s, the major towns and cities of the USSR

consistently had over one third of the viewing facilities of the entire Union. Moreover,

the quality of cinefication in the urban environment was far superior to that in the

countryside. In the towns and cities citizens were more likely to see films in proper

theatres as opposed to the more makeshift installations that predominated in the rural

areas. It is also notable that while the growth of sound cinema was generally slow, the

urban zones saw a much quicker growth than the villages. For example, in the

wealthier capital Moscow, there were 48 cinemas by the end of 1934. In 1932 only

seven theatres had been wired for sound but by the end of 1934 this figure had risen to

32, or two thirds of the total. In contrast, only 24 installations in the entire rural Soviet

Union had sound at the same time. It was only towards the end of the decade that the

countryside began to catch up. This meant that the large cities, such as Moscow,

Leningrad and Kiev, had a much better quality of cinema provision than their rural

16B. Shumyatskii (1931) 'Signal Trevogi', Proletarskoe kino, 5-6, pp. 5-7.

17See 'Cinema Installations and Their Distribution in the Russian Empire and the USSR, 1914-41', Table 1,

translated in Taylor & Christie (eds) The Film Factory, p. 423. M. Ryzhkov (1940), 'Kinofikatsiya SSSR', in Semenov & Chernyabskii (eds) Dvadtsat' let Sovetskoi kinematografii, p. 170.



110 JAMIE MILLER

counterparts.'8 The fact that the urban working class were considered to be the more

natural supporters of Bolshevik ideology may have played some part in this bias.

Rural cinefication

The cinefication of the countryside had been given a great deal of support at the Party

Conference on Cinema in 1928. The Bolsheviks were very conscious of their ever

decreasing popularity among the peasantry and the expansion of a pro-Bolshevik

cinema was considered to be a matter of urgent priority. The leadership clearly thought

that propaganda feature films, showing only the positive side of communist rule, would

help legitimise the regime in the eyes of a peasantry that had been subjected to

starvation and brutality during the government's collectivisation campaigns. In 1929

the development of the cinema network in the country was often described as 'anarchy'.

In that year there were 3,477 mobile and 863 permanent cinema installations in the

country, and a range of poorly organised bodies controlled those facilities. 19 Moreover,

in reality the countryside was always at the bottom of distribution priority.

Consequently, peasants would only see films after they had been well circulated

among theatres and workers clubs in the towns, which meant that prints were often in

bad condition by the time they reached the rural locations. In 1929 Narkompros

introduced a project to bring the countryside's network under central control to rectify

the aforementioned difficulties. Narkompros aimed at creating a network over a five

year period that would give the majority of the peasant population cinema access.

Yet, despite the intentions of the government, the rural network grew slowly during

the 1930s. By the end of 1935, there were only around 14,000 mobile and 3,850

permanent cinema installations, which was nowhere near enough to cover all rural

areas throughout the Soviet Union. Of those installations that did exist, just over 2,000

were not operating and there were too few projectionists and spare parts available to

correct this situation. Even those installations in operation still largely consisted of

silent projectors, which were often aged and subject to constant technical problems,

leading to persistent film stoppages. Due to the frequently poor state of the film copies,

projectionists sometimes had to piece film together with fragments of different films,

causing either confusion or amusement among the peasants. It was clear that in practice

the countryside still took second place to the urban centres. Throughout the mid-1930s,

films were still being shown in small rooms in kolkhoz administrative offices of about

five or six square metres, which were crammed to capacity and generally did not even

have seats. Such places were often dirty, dark, cold and sometimes had leaking roofs.

Moreover, the projectionist, who was expected to deliver and set up the mobile cinema

on-site, as well as prepare the premises and advertise the showing, sometimes did not

turn up.20 This grim situation did not improve until the end of the decade.

18Moskovskii Partiinyi Arkhiv (MPA) f. 3, op. 44, ed. khr. 1953,1. 155-156, Tz otcheta Moskovskogo

soveta o kinoobsluzhivanii naseleniya', in M. Akifeva & A. Sleshina (eds) (1983), Vo glave kul'turnogo

stroitel'stva, Kniga 1 (Moscow, Moskovskii rabochii), p. 310.

19Anon. (1930) 'Kinoprokat na sluzhbu kul'turnoi revolyutsii', Kino i zhizr?, 12, p. 3.

20B. Kotiev (1935) 'Zvukofikatsiya sela', Kino, 6 November. B. Bagrin (1936) 'Bol'nye voprosy

kinofikatsii derevni', Kino, 16 February. E. Sheval (1934), 'Kinoset i prodvizhenie fil'mov', Kino, 22

December.




At the beginning of 1939, there was a total of around 19,500 cinema installations

throughout the rural areas of the Soviet Union, revealing a very slow development.

Moreover, only 7,500 of these installations were equipped with sound.21 As I have

indicated, the issue of sound was of central importance in persuading the peasantry

throughout the USSR that the Soviet political system was working for their interests.

During the 1930s, the campaigns against mass illiteracy were in full swing.

Nonetheless, this took time and showing peasants sound films was a far more

effective means of conveying the communist message. The failure to produce a good

quantity of sound projectors for the country represented a major shortcoming in the

attempt to reach the masses during the 1930s.

As noted above, cinefication favoured the European part of the USSR and

especially its towns and cities. Many rural regions in the RSFSR had no cinema

facilities at all until the end of the decade. This included the northern Chukchi and

Koryak regions where primitive transport meant that it was very difficult to bring

heavy projectors to these areas. Republics, such as Tadzhikistan, Turkmeniya and

Kirgiziya, very rarely had the opportunity to see films and millions of peasants had

never seen a film.22 It was only in 1939-40 that some of these areas received portable

16mm projectors and some film copies, usually one copy of each film. In addition,

people in many regions and republics of the USSR spoke a multitude of languages and

in these parts of the Soviet Union Russian speakers were still in the minority of the

population as a whole. It became clear to the cinema administration that sending silent

or even sound films with solely Russian subtitles or only in Russian language to these

regions and republics, would have little impact in persuading these people that the

Bolshevik cause was one that they should support. Again it was only at the very end of

the 1930s that some films were made with inter-titles in many of these less well-known

indigenous languages.

Films and cinemas

In the latter half of the 1920s, journalists constantly complained that Soviet cinema was relying far too much on commercialism. This largely referred to the import of

mass entertainment foreign films, which continued after 1928, regardless of the

demands made by the Party. However, in 1930 a combination of such demands for

Soviet cultural and economic independence, as well as the USSR's growing trade

deficit, led to a drastic cut in imports of foreign films. In fact the closest the Soviet

cinema industry came to achieving complete independence in any area in the 1930s was

in the area of film production. During the early part of the decade, more and more

Soviet-produced films could be seen, especially in urban areas, due to the sudden

curtailment of foreign products. Nonetheless, regardless of the demands from above,

figures in the cinema industry still thought of box office returns as being very

important. Consequently, foreign films that had been imported in the mid to late

1920s were shown in many of the main cinema theatres in Moscow and other Soviet

21Iu. Kalistratov (1939) 'Ulushchit' kinoobsluzhivanie sela', Kino, 23 November.

22Anon. (1939) 'Kino na severe', Kino, 17 February. I. Dyakonov (1939), 'Ogromnye zadachi', Kino, 11

February.



112 JAMIE MILLER

urban centres until as late as 1935. These films were mainly mass entertainment films, including comedies featuring Harold Lloyd and Monty Banks, escapist westerns or

German thrillers, such as the film Angst, which was a huge hit in 1930 and was shown repeatedly in subsequent years. In the summer of 1933, one critic demanded to know

why Moscow's theatres were dominated with dated foreign films that had been seen time and time again with the exception of the occasional new import.23

By 1934, in urban areas, the presence of foreign films was significantly reduced and Soviet movies began to dominate cinemas. Nonetheless, although the import of new foreign films was now reduced to a few on a yearly basis, it did not completely stop. Such events as the first international film festival in Moscow in 1935, kept interest in foreign products alive. Shumyatskii ordered the purchase of some of the best films shown at the festival for the benefit of the wider public. Most of these were light entertainment films, including The Invisible Man (1933), a film about a scientist who finds a way of becoming invisible then loses his mind; La Cucaracha (1934) about the rise to fame of a Mexican dancer; and the Walt Disney cartoons Three Little Pigs (1933), Peculiar Penguins (1934) and The Band Concert (1935), featuring Mickey

Mouse. Shumyatskii's administration also bought some of the more socially concerned films that had been shown at the festival, including Henry Koster's Peter (1934), which

told of the life of an unemployed girl, and Rene Clair's The Last Billionaire (1934), a

satirical comedy. All of these were dubbed into Russian, using new technology and released during 1935-36.

Yet many of the Soviet films shown in the early to mid 1930s were the hits of the 1920s, such as The Bears Wedding (Medvezh'ia svad'ba, 1926) or Miss Mend (1926) rather than the politicised classics. It was clear by the way films were being advertised that urban film exhibition still had an essentially commercial face. In many cases, Soviet films were deliberately advertised to look American in order to draw in audiences and maximise profits. For instance, a film entitled Slava mira (1932) was advertised in Vecherniaia Moskva during March 1933 with an English translation of its

title, The Glory of the World, and an illustration which made it look like an American import. The film was in fact produced at Belgoskino, a studio based in Leningrad.

Despite the huge reduction in foreign imports, foreign films still had a significant presence in urban cinemas. Rossnabfil'm, the film distribution agency, knew that

ordinary people would still pay to see endless repeats of foreign entertainment films rather than repeats of the Soviet films favoured by the government.

Lower down the distribution ladder the situation was equally problematic. Since the

1920s workers' clubs had established themselves as a cheap and popular means of

watching films compared to the commercial cinemas in the main cities, which were often too expensive for the average citizen. During the 1930s, the clubs remained

popular, yet the films exhibited in these establishments were often several years old.

For instance, in the autumn of 1933, the workers' clubs of the Ivanovo region, to the

east of Moscow, were shown films, such as Aleksandr Tsutsunava's Riders from the

Wild West (Naezdniki iz uail'd-vesta, 1925), a Georgian social historical drama, Georgii Tasin's Jimmy Higgins (Dzhimmi Khiggins, 1928), about an American factory worker coming to revolutionary consciousness, Iurii Tarich's screen version of

23N. Lyadov (1933) 'Sledya za reklamoi', Vechernyaya Moskva, 26 July.




Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter (Kapitanskaya dochka, 1928), and Charlie Chaplin's

City Lights (1931).24

In the countryside a similar situation prevailed. The problem in both workers' clubs

and rural areas was not an excess of foreign films, but rather the lack of films

generally. In 1936 one commentator claimed that 80% of the installations were

showing dated films, which in many cases, were not in a condition worthy of public

exhibition. The typical sort of film shown would again be Soviet product from the late

1920s, such as Grigorii Roshal's Salamander (1928), a film about the biologist Paul

Kammerer, which was unpopular on its original release, or Amo Bek-Nazaryan's

Khaz Push (1928), a film about a revolt of Persian peasants and craftsmen in 1891.

Older foreign films were also shown in the countryside, such as Duke Worne's Blue

Fox (1921), an American adventure movie. The obvious concern for Party officials was

not only that the more prestigious urban theatres and, to a lesser extent, the workers

clubs and kolkhoz buildings, were still showing many dated foreign films, as well as old

domestic product, but that most new Soviet films were hardly being shown at all

throughout the USSR. Soviet citizens, especially in the smaller towns and countryside,

could only be offered the same films from the 1920s over and over again. It was clear

to all that the new cinema for the millions was not actually reaching the millions.25

The crux of the problem was the lack of prints available for new Soviet films. In the

mid-1930s, it usually took two to three years before the areas with cinema provision

had seen the majority of new Soviet films due to the low productivity of the newly

established copy factories and this was compounded by the slowness of production.

There simply were not enough copies to distribute. At the beginning of 1934, there was

an average of 39 copies of each film for the entire USSR. Over the next few years, this

figure slowly increased and prints for sound projectors also began to emerge. By the

end of the decade, this had risen to between 250 and 300 sound and silent copies per

film, which was still less than sufficient. It is useful to draw a comparison with America

in this case. In 1940 the USA had fewer than 20,000 cinemas compared to just over

29,000 viewing facilities in the USSR. The average number of prints for major

American films at this time was 250, similar to the Soviet figure. However, the fundamental difference was that America produced 673 movies in 1940 compared to

the USSR's 40 films. So, in addition to the fact that US theatres were well provided

with film prints, they also had a higher level of choice.26

24Eberhard Nembach (2001) Stalins Filmpolitik: Der Umbau der Sowjetischen Filmindustrie 1929 bis

1938 (St. Augustin, Gardez! Verlag), pp. 67-68.

25N. Ivanov (1936) 'Kinoobsluzhivanie derevni v zagone', Kino, 22 June. Anon. (1936), 'S prokatom

plokho', Kino, 22 December.

26B. Kotiev (1935) 'Problema kopii', Kino, 5 May. Kotiev also notes that the overall quantity of prints available in the USSR in 1934 was 24,355. This figure actually decreased over the next few years to

17,000 in 1938 and only returned to just over 25,000 the following year. This was probably due to the

sizeable number of Soviet and foreign silent films that were gradually falling out of circulation and the

failure of the copy factories to compensate by producing sufficient quantities of new films. On later

print runs, see Anon. (1939) 'V komitete po delam kinematografii', Kino, 3 November. K. Svetlanin

(1939) 'Neskol'ko voprosov Soyuzkinoprokatu', Kino, 11 October. For the American statistics, see

Chester Bahn (1941) 'Industry Statistics', in Alicoate, Jack (ed.) The 1941 Film Daily Year Book of Motion Pictures (New York, The Film Daily), pp. 35-47.



114 JAMIE MILLER

The Soviet industry which, in theory at least, believed that every Soviet citizen

should see its major films, failed to produce and distribute enough films and copies for

the necessary communication of the communist message. There were some exceptions

to this rule, such as Sergei Eisenstein's Aleksandr Nevskii (1938) and Fridrikh Ermler's

Peasants (Krest'iane, 1935), which were eventually released in 900 copies. A few more,

including part two of Ermler's The Great Citizen (Velikii grazhdanin, 1939) were

released in approximately 500-600 copies. But, even for this minority of films, such

figures were still less than sufficient, especially when we take into account the low

output of film production and the rapid decline of the copies. On the whole, the

distribution of most films, including ideologically important propaganda movies such

as Lenin in 1918 (1939), was meagre. In 1939 one observer noted that Tula, one of the

better-served regions of the Soviet Union, which had 79 installations, had been

presented with only five copies of the film. Moreover, although the sound network

would increase sharply over the next two years, at this point nearly half of the network

still consisted of silent projectors. Despite this, no silent copies of Lenin in 1918 were

produced and this applied to other films such as Shchors (1939) and The Tractor

Drivers (Traktoristy, 1939).27

A great deal of the blame for what was being shown on the screens throughout the

USSR in the early to mid 1930s was placed on the shoulders of the film distribution

agencies. Rossnabfil'm and its Union representatives remained outwith the cinema

administration's control until 1938. This meant that throughout the decade a policy of

profit making with the films that were available still prevailed over planned,

ideologically orientated distribution. In 1930 one critic in the cinema press argued

that the distribution agencies were not living up to the demands of the Party and the

mass spectator. Instead of helping to transform cinema into a 'weapon of culture in

the service of the proletariat', the distributors were overwhelmingly concerned with the

commercial imperative, focusing more on the wealthier city audience than the worker

and peasant masses.28

Although distribution did not fall under Shumyatskii's jurisdiction, he and his

successors gave their full support to the idea of planned repertoires, thus helping to

level the imbalances that favoured urban centres, as well as ending commercialism and

competition between theatres. In 1938 distribution was centralised under Semen

Dukel'skii, formally giving the new Cinema Committee more control over what was

being shown on Soviet screens. However, by the end of the decade, Soyuzkinoprokat,

the division of the cinema committee now responsible for distribution, was failing to

evenly distribute films. Instead of planning, the old commercial system of dividing

cinemas up into first, second and third screens remained in place, suggesting that the

administrators of Soyuzkinoprokat were not prepared to distribute some new film

prints to the less profitable regions and villages first, even in the interests of ideology.29

Theatre managers in Moscow regarded the new system of planned repertoires as

chaotic. They complained that Soyuzkinoprokat often did not provide them with

details of film content and duration, which meant that planning timetables and selling

27Anon. (1939) '570 kopii', Kino, 1 December. Svetlanin, 'Neskol'ko voprosov Soyuzkinoprokatu'. 28Anon. (1930) 'Kinoprokat na sluzhbu kul'turnoi revolyutsii', Kino i zhizr?, 12, pp. 3-4.

29S. Osipov (1938) 'Stolichnyi kinoteatr', Vechernyaya Moskva, 7 September.



SOVIET CINEMA, 1929 -41 115

tickets in advance was impossible. Managers also complained that Soyuzkinoprokat

frequently promised individual theatres specific films. In response to this, the theatres

would arrange advertisements and sell a large quantity of advance tickets only to learn

that they would not receive the film after all.30 These complaints suggest that the very

opposite of planning was taking place in the area of film distribution.

Some argued that the theatres themselves should also be under a consistent,

centralised control structure. When the autonomous Cinefication Administration was

established in 1933, the theatres that had formerly fallen under Sovkino and Soyuzkino

control were placed in its hands while equivalent administrations were established in

the republics. Yet, although private ownership had by now been officially liquidated,

urban theatres were controlled by a variety of organisations that still competed with

each other for the biggest profits. Moscow provides an interesting example: cinema

outlets, that did not constitute part of the Cinefication Administration trust system

were under the control of Moscow City Council, the autonomous Mezhrabpom, which

controlled several top theatres in the capital, and other organisations, such as

Vostokfil'm, which also owned a theatre in Moscow. These different outlets were all in

competition with one another to maximise profits. Gradually, ownership was narrowed

down. In 1936 Mezhrabpom was liquidated, as was Vostokino. In 1938 the Cinefication

Administration was also liquidated, handing over the control of many cinemas to the

centralised Cinema Committee. In Moscow the majority of theatres were now under

the control of the city council's cinema trust (Mosgorkino). In effect, the competition

had been significantly reduced. Nonetheless, even in Moscow there was a clear divide

between the quality of theatres located in the centre of the city and those further outside

the main metropolis. Managers of the top theatres knew that they would be most likely

to receive the best films and the newest prints. Consequently, they could charge as much

as four rubles per ticket whereas the lesser theatres usually charged less than two rubles

per ticket. In contrast, tickets for the most basic rural cinema installation cost as little as

50 kopecks. Ultimately, the desire to eliminate competition and introduce an

ideologically sound, planned, equal system of film access was compromised by a

distribution and theatre system that was stratified and which inevitably succumbed to

the practical necessity of making money for the state.

The development of the industry's technical base

The problems of establishing an industry and infrastructure were particularly acute in

the sphere of equipment production. The production of Soviet film stock was

considered to be a matter of urgent priority as the USSR had become accustomed to

importing it from Western Europe and America on a large scale and at a high cost for

the cinema industry. In 1929 construction began on the USSR's first film stock factory

in Shostka in northern Russia and this was soon followed by the building of a second

factory at Pereslavl'-Zalesskii near Moscow. In the Shostka case a deal was reached

with Lumiere to help with the construction and equipping of the film stock factory,

while a company called SIPM was hired to provide similar support in Pereslavl'

Zalesskii. Both factories began operating at the end of 1931. However, the Soviet desire

30P. Tikhonravov (1939) 'O strannostyakh prokata', Kino, 29 June.



116 JAMIE MILLER

to move towards fully independent film stock production proved to be a slow and

difficult process. The official figures suggest that, in 1930, 46 million metres of foreign

film stock were imported, but in 1933 this figure had dropped to 1 million metres.

Between 1932 and 1941, the output of Soviet film stock remarkably soared by nearly

eight-fold. Nonetheless, this quantitative increase was not, at least until the end of the

1930s, accompanied by qualitative improvements. Filmmakers were consistently

presented with low quality Soviet film stock. Cameramen and directors came to expect

'new' film stock that might be scratched, covered in fingerprints, cut to the wrong size,

unevenly perforated, or even partly or completely lacking the silver compound

chemical emulsion necessary to shoot the images.31 Consequently, despite the apparent

abundance of film stock, a great deal of it was not up to professional standards.

In practice this meant that there were shortages of good quality Soviet stock and

this was undoubtedly a factor in the low levels of film production. Although the

import of foreign film stock had been curtailed, evidence suggests that, throughout the

1930s and beyond, the cinema administration continued to import it, as well as

chemical emulsion for the Soviet stock from countries, such as Germany and Italy.

Indeed, during April 1935, Shumyatskii informed Stalin that film stock was being

produced at approximately two times below demand, but also at roughly two times

more than was being imported from abroad. This indicated that film stock imports

were still very significant. Foreign companies were aware of the fact that their products

were still fairly widely used in the Soviet Union and in 1934 the German company

Agfa was even allowed to advertise its film stock in the cinema newspaper Kino. Soviet

filmmakers much preferred to use well known brands, including Agfa or Kodak and

on many occasions they did so. For instance, Iakov Protazanov used either foreign

film stock or a combination of foreign and Soviet stock. In 1936 he argued with the

director of Mezhrabpomfil'm over the lack of Soviet film stock to create a master

positive print for his film Girl Without A Dowry (Bespridannitsa, 1936); in response he

was given a Kodak print. Important Soviet films were often granted foreign film stock,

including Kozintsev and Trauberg's The Return of Maxim (Vozvrashchenie Maksima,

1937). Imported film stock was also used for specialist projects such as Valentin

Kadochnikov and Fedor Fillipov's fairytale The Magic Pearl (Volshebnoe zerno,

1941), produced using 50% foreign film stock.32

If the import of foreign film stock had been significantly reduced, then the area of

film camera production was less successful. In 1931 a series of mechanical factories

were under construction in Odessa, Samara, Leningrad and Moscow, which would be

used to develop cameras, projectors, lighting equipment and so on.33 Nonetheless, the

production of cameras and projectors developed very slowly. Throughout the mid

1930s, much of the key equipment used in Soviet studios was of foreign origins,

31A. Kalyuzhnyi (1932) 'Sovetskaya kinoplenka i ee nedostatki', Proletarskoe Kino, 17-18, pp. 46-50.

32RGALI, f. 2496. op. 2. ed. khr.l, 1. 1-10, 'Otchety i obzory o deyatel'nosti torgpredstv SSSR po

eksportu i importu kinofiPmov i kinofoto-materialov'. Aleksandr Troshin (ed.) (2003) '"Kartina

sil'naya, khoroshaya, no ne Chapaev". Zapisi besed B. Z. Shumyatskogo s I. V. Stalinym posle

kinoprosmotrov 1935-1937 gg.', Kinovedcheskie Zapiski, 62, p. 132. V.S. Rebrov (1994) 'Za moe

opozdanie s otvetom vini B. Z. Shumyatskogo', Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 24, p. 208. Nembach, Stalins

Filmpolitik, p. 123. RGALI, f. 2453. op. 2, ed. khr. 23, 1. 52-54.

33RGALI, f. 2497. op. 1, ed. khr. 20, 1. 269-273.




including cameras and lighting equipment. By the end of 1932, there were around 200

cameras in Soyuzkino's studios all of which were imported models. The cinema

journalist Bluvshtein argued that Soyuzkino was not taking the issue of producing

Soviet cameras seriously enough. It simply continued to import expensive foreign

models, an approach that could not be sustained. In his view, if the production of

Soviet cameras were not rapidly launched, the industry would face a crisis.34 The

production of cameras only really began in 1933, but again the quality was poor,

necessitating a continued reliance on foreign models. Soviet camera operators

particularly liked the cameras made by Andre Debrie's French company as well as the

German 'Kinamo' model. By the late 1930s, most cameramen, such as Mikhail

Kaplan, still preferred to use Debrie cameras that had been imported in the late 1920s

and early 1930s for studio work, as well as newer models that were harder to obtain.

Although the aging Debrie camera gave Kaplan problems during the filming of The

Baltic Deputy (Deputat Baltiki, 1937), the quality of result was still superior to that of

the emerging Soviet models. As with film stock, the import of cameras slowed down in

the 1930s, but still continued and by the end of the decade Ivan Bol'shakov declared

that Soviet studio equipment was still dominated by imported cameras and lighting

products. As well as cameras for feature films, specialist cameras were imported,

including the 20 models approved for purchase by Stalin in June 1935, for filming

Party parades.35

The production of Soviet projectors had begun in Leningrad in 1919 and the

manufacture of TOMP and GOZ projectors started in 1924. These models served their

purpose, but with the advent of sound, the industry struggled to produce both the

right quantity and quality of sound projectors. As in every other sphere, Soviet

technicians combined their own ideas with foreign designs. For example, in 1935 an

American Super-Simplex sound projector was purchased for the 20,000 capacity

Green Theatre in Gorkii Park, Moscow. Before being installed at the theatre it was

delivered to the Scientific Research Cinema Photographic Institute where a team

under Professors Goldovskii and Tager studied and examined the device.36 While the

Soviet projectors were of a higher quality than Soviet film cameras, there were still not

nearly enough of them to be installed in exhibition outlets throughout the Soviet

Union and older foreign models, especially the Pathe silent projectors, were still

common in the countryside. In the urban centres, the more modern and expensive

foreign sound projectors were preferred for the best theatres, including Stalin's own

cinema, which contained several Super-Simplex projectors.

Since becoming head of the cinema industry in November 1930, Boris Shumyatskii's

initial approach to developing Soviet cinema's technical base had been to try to reduce

the emphasis on imported materials and machines, emphasising the need to develop

the production of domestic cinema equipment. But Shumyatskii developed a more

realistic attitude by the mid-1930s, realising that Soviet technical development in

cinema had not reached acceptable standards. He was not afraid to tell the political

34V. Bluvshtein (1932) 'V poiskakh za utrachennym vremenem', Proletarskoe kino, 21-22, p. 62.

35Ivan Bol'shakov (1939) 'O prieme del novym rukovodstvom komiteta i o zadachakh vtorogo

polugodiya', Kino, 18 August. Troshin (ed.), 'Kartina sil'naya', pp. 145-148.

36Anon. (1935) 'Kino v zelenom teatre', Vechernyaya Moskva, 20 February.



118 JAMIE MILLER

leadership what he thought about the quality of domestic equipment and was

instrumental in persuading Stalin and the Central Committee that the import of more

foreign products, as well as expertise, was absolutely necessary. Following a viewing of

an American film at the Kremlin, Shumyatskii praised the quality of the camera work

and American film stock in comparison to the Soviet version. Stalin responded to

Shumyatskii: 'But you say that we have probably already overtaken America in terms

of film stock'. Shumyatskii replied:

No, Josef Vissarionovich, I am not saying that to either you or anyone else. On the contrary, I always underline our backwardness and the necessity of helping ourselves through imports and of sending people abroad on practical work.

Stalin modestly responded:

We need to say directly that we still have not caught up. We need to catch up. Yet in our country we are all boasting that we have overtaken them, but in reality we are lagging behind and working badly in our blissful conceit.

Shumyatskii went on to point out that the problem with cinema industry production

lay in the poor quality of raw materials, as well as the low technical knowledge of

personnel in places, such as Shostka and Pereslavl' Zalesskii, and the poor

administration of these factories. He concluded that the cinema administration had

to import equipment. Stalin accepted Shumyatskii's advice, stating that he would

speak to Molotov, regarding the necessary financial means.37

Shumyatskii's realistic approach to economic development and his subtle pressure

on Stalin and the Central Committee, which happened more than once, did bear fruit.

In May 1935, Shumyatskii was permitted to lead a delegation to America to examine

technical equipment and production processes. The main requirement for a better

understanding of film stock production was satisfied during this period. The

delegation visited the Fridmen laboratory in New York where the group studied

film developing and film copying machines and were impressed by their speed,

efficiency and quality. After the delegation had returned home, several American film

technicians were invited to the USSR to help with further technical improvements and

development in the various areas of production. When the technicians arrived, they were posted at Mosfil'm and Lenfil'm to carry out support work. In addition, the

cinema administration ordered a sizeable quantity of technical equipment to be

imported into the Soviet Union. In 1936 Shumyatskii's administration spent nearly

$500,000 purchasing American equipment that was used to update the Soviet

studios.38

Thus, under Shumyatskii, the aspiration to achieve complete autarky for the Soviet

cinema industry was gradually brushed aside as importation continued in almost every

single area associated with cinema. All the key technical items were still imported,

37Aleksandr Troshin (ed.) (2002) '"A dryani podobno 'garmon" bol'she ne stavite?" Zapisi besed

B. Z. Shumyatskogo s I. V. Stalinym posle kinoprosmotrov 1935-1937 gg.', Kinovedcheskie zapiski,

61, p. 293.

38Vladmir Verlinskii (1937) 'Ten Years of Soviet Films in The United States', in Alicoate, Jack (ed.) The 1937 Film Daily Year Book of Motion Pictures (New York, The Film Daily), pp. 1170-1171.




including film stock, cameras and projectors, but Shumyatskii and his successors also

imported other items. Amongst them were film printing and developing machines,

cranes, special automobiles for carrying out moving shots, as well as more minor

items, such as cables. This meant that imports varied from, for example, the 3,000

rubles released by the government in 1940 for Ivan Bol'shakov's administration to

make some purchases in France, Germany and Switzerland to the $300,000 spent by

Bol'shakov's representatives in New York in the same year, with plans to spend three

times that amount.39

Exports

The relative weakness of the industry's development was also manifest in levels of

exports. Due to the fact that in the 1930s the USSR had to construct its own cinema

industrial base, its levels of exports were relatively low. The export of raw film stock

only really began in the mid-1930s. In 1935 the Soviet government earned a modest

R10,000 from raw film stock export. This income peaked at R65,000 in 1938, before

dropping over the next few years. The export of cameras, projectors, sound recording

devices, lighting and so on was also relatively minimal. This began with the export of

one item in 1934, yielding R25,000, before reaching its height in 1939 with the export

of 29 items at a profit of R216,000. However, in 1940 the number of items exported

dropped to ten and the previous year's profit was halved. As the USSR was relatively

new to these areas of production, demand for its raw film stock and equipment was

almost non-existent in the West. Most of the income from exports in the late 1930s

came from neighbouring countries, such as China and Mongolia, which were at a

fairly early stage of cinema industry development.40 By far the most profitable area of export for the Soviet film industry was of the films

themselves. In the mid to late 1920s, Soviet films achieved both critical and financial

success in countries, such as Germany and the USA. Yet, despite financial success, the

USSR was receiving relatively little in terms of a currency equivalent due to relatively

weak connections and understandings of Western markets, as well as a lack of specialised personnel to trade with foreign partners and establish more beneficial price

policies.4' Moreover, by 1933 the close relationship with Germany was ended by the

rise of the Nazi regime. Despite this setback, the USSR began to develop a more

professional approach to film export with the establishment in 1930 of a specialised

department called Intorgkino, which became Soyuzintorgkino in 1933. The closure of its Berlin offices led to the establishment of a new permanent Paris office and stronger trade links were set up with America through the Amkino Corporation in New York.

Overall however, Soviet trade links with foreign cinema industries remained

extremely basic, partly due to the general decline of world trade in the 1930s and also

to the increasingly inward nature of the Soviet economic system. The export of Soviet

39See endnote number 34, in Andrei Artizov & Oleg Naumov (1999) Vlast' i khudozhestvennaya

intelligentsiya (Moscow, Demokratiya), pp. 777-778. Paul Babitskii & John Rimberg (1955), The

Soviet Film Industry (New York, Praeger), p. 260.

40Anon. (1960) Vneshyaya torgovlya SSSR za 1918-1940: statisticheskii obzor (Moscow, Vheshtor

gizdat), pp. 126, 160.

41Efraim Lemberg (1930) Kinopromyshlennost SSSR (Moscow, Teakinopechat'), p. 89.



120 JAMIE MILLER

films to America in the mid to late 1930s represents a good example of how

underdeveloped trade links were at this time. In 1935 Soyuzintorgkino established an

agreement with Amkino, giving that corporation the rights of sale and rent on all types

of Soviet film. However, these rights not only covered the USA, but also South

America, Central America, Mexico, Cuba and Canada, indicating that Soyuzintorgkino

was reliant on one trading partner for the length and breadth of an entire continent.

Moreover, while the price of each individual film was negotiable, the copies of all

feature films were to be sold for ten cents a metre, which represented a very modest

figure for the time. Given such an undeveloped export system, it is not surprising that

the actual overall income from film exports, while important, was even lower than the

levels of the late 1920s. In 1929 the Soviet Union received R1,509,000 from film

exports. Throughout the 1930s, exports often failed to yield even a third of this figure,

falling to R216,000 in 1940.42

An assessment of administrative achievements

Shumyatskii has been most commonly depicted as a grey 'party hack', who simply

acted as a mouthpiece for the Soviet government's policies on cinema. It is true that

most of his policies reflected the Soviet government's central concerns of economic

growth and development, although this emphasis shifted somewhat under Dukel'skii.

But Shumyatskii was not merely a compliant bureaucrat. He was fully committed to

the communist system, yet he was an energetic, determined administrator. Despite

this, he and the Cinefication Administration must share a large part of the blame for

failing to achieve the most fundamental goal of the government and cinema

administration. The Bolsheviks wanted to reach out to the masses through the

medium of cinema to persuade them of the righteousness of communist ideology and

convince them that their everyday hardships were not in vain, but in the interests of

a future communist paradise. However, the cinefication campaigns only had limited

success. The transition to sound was slow and ineffective, cinema facilities were

unevenly distributed and, on average, Soviet films were not being reproduced in

nearly enough copies to cover the entire distribution network. It is more accurate

therefore, to see the 1930s as the period when the communist authorities and the

cinema administration attempted to establish the means by which cinema

propaganda would be conveyed to the masses, rather than the period in which

propaganda was effectively conveyed throughout the USSR. Instead of the

sophisticated cinematic propaganda machine that the Bolsheviks had envisaged in

1928, the masses were presented with an unsophisticated system that exhibited the

same dated films time and time again.

By 1941 the aspiration of the late 1920s to build a strong, independent and purely

Soviet cinema industry free from dependence on the capitalist West had made

42Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Ekonomiki (RGAE), f. 413. op. 13. ed. khr. 1536, 'Dogovor

mezhdu aktsionernym obshchestvom "Amkino Korporeishin" i Soyuzintorgkino ob isklyuchitel'nom

prave prodazhi produktsii sovetskoi kinematografii na territorii SShA, gosudartsv Latinskoi Ameriki i

Kanady', in G. Sevostyanov & E. Tyurina (eds) (2001) Rossiya i SShA: ekonomicheskie otnoshenyia 1933-1941: Sbornik Dokumentov (Moscow, Nauka), pp. 124-127. Anon., Vneshnyaya torgovlya, pp.

126, 160.



SOVIET CINEMA, 1929 -41 121

significant strides forward. Before the onset of war with Germany, the USSR was

much closer to making the full transition to sound with all of its 14 studios able to

make sound films. In addition, the industry was now manufacturing its own sound

recording devices and cinema theatre sound systems were on the increase. The

successive cinema administrations had overseen the construction of factories for the

production of film stock, cameras, projectors, lighting equipment, as well as factories

for creating mass prints of completed films. In the space of a decade, the USSR had

created its own cinematic technical foundations from scratch, which was an enormous

achievement in itself.

Yet, despite the rhetoric of 'catching up with and overhauling the West', Soviet

industry in 1929 was still at a very early stage of development. It lacked the experience

and infrastructure of the West, which had industrialised over a much longer period of

time. Stalin's political vision of an autarkic USSR closed off from the capitalist world,

industrialising at breakneck speed and overtaking the West would prove the

superiority, so he thought, of the Soviet socialist idea. Soviet cinema would not be

exempt from this political vision of isolation and growth under a strict dictatorial,

command structure. Nevertheless, the reality for Soviet cinema's economic develop

ment was rather different from the political ideal. The desire to see an instantaneous

cinema infrastructure develop meant that the USSR, as in many other areas of

industry, would realistically need to learn from the experience and knowledge of

foreign specialists who were working in much more favourable conditions than their

Soviet counterparts. Yet, while the trips of Soviet representatives abroad were given

coverage in the cinema press, the extent of the foreign influence was generally not

publicly acknowledged and subsequent official histories on Soviet cinema tended to

either ignore or play down this influence. The main reason for this was political. As

with economic development more generally, Stalin and the Party leaders wanted the

masses to think that any progress or success could be attributed to the Soviet way of

organising political, social and economic life. This in turn would help legitimise his

dictatorial, arbitrary style of government. Thus, the goal of an economically

independent Soviet film industry was not achieved. While many sectors of the Soviet

economy did achieve this independence in the mid-1930s, specialist equipment as well

as technical advice for cinema was imported throughout the decade in significant

quantities. One of Shumyatskii's most important achievements was to maintain contact with

the Western film industry at a time when the USSR was becoming increasingly

isolated. His insistence on continuing to import equipment and knowledge from the

West was partly based on practical necessity. Nevertheless, it helped keep the young

Soviet film industry functioning and in touch with external technological develop

ments. This explains why, in the mid to late 1930s, he constantly persuaded Stalin and

Molotov of the need to grant him substantial extra budgetary sources to pay for

imported equipment. Shumyatskii believed that the cinema's contribution to a strong

Soviet economy that would eventually surpass the West and help provide political

legitimacy to the regime, could only be realised through practical measures. As with all

the other branches of industry, Soviet cinema could only grow rapidly if constant

dialogue and trade of up-to-date equipment were to be maintained with the already

vastly experienced American industry.



122 JAMIE MILLER

Reasons for limited achievements: administrative ambiguity and context

In the first place, Soviet cinema was relatively poor in terms of the financial means

available. In reality the cinema industry struggled for much of the 1930s to accumulate

capital and sometimes had to rely on state loans. This was, of course, partly due to the

huge investments required to build a cinema infrastructure from scratch. Nonetheless,

the dilemma partly caused by a persistently burdensome tax regime added to the

overall difficulties. Cinema was still looked upon as a vital source of tax income for the

state. Indeed, as discussed earlier, Shumyatskii was perfectly satisfied with the state

taking a massive chunk of revenue from the cinema industry, provided that the

industry would experience the optimistic levels of growth that he foresaw.

Unsurprisingly, Shumyatskii's figures were rather unrealistic. Despite a rise in the

number of film spectators, the industry was far from reaching the one billion ruble

turnover mark in 1932. In fact, by the mid-1930s, the industry still had a turnover of

between R400 and 450 million compared to the alcohol producers, who annually made

several billion rubles. The approximate figure of R400-450 million was also a gross

amount; the state took over half of this in the form of taxes on ticket sales and on the

cinema trusts and enterprises. This meant that Shumyatskii and his successors had

very tight budgets to work with. In 1937 Shumyatskii's budget amounted to R127

million. Of this around R60 million was allocated for film production.43 Given that

many films cost well over R2 million each, it is clear that the aim of Shumyatskii and

his successors of producing hundreds of feature films was financially impossible.

Shumyatskii in particular encouraged the development of a Soviet cinema

infrastructure as far as it was realistic in such a short period of time. During his

tenure, the Scientific Research Cinema Photographic Institute grew into an important

body for research into technical matters relating to the development of cinema's

industrial base, from the design and construction of cameras and projectors to the

study of film stock emulsion. Shumyatskii was aware that there was no lack of

inventiveness among Soviet technicians. During the 1930s, a whole series of cinema

inventions were created, ranging from reusable film stock to underwater film cameras.

However, the inventors and technicians lacked the finances, infrastructure support and

experience necessary to fully realise their ideas. Shumyatskii's approach was based on

the fact that these technicians, as well as filmmakers, were working in very difficult

circumstances. Regardless of how innovative or ambitious the invention of, say, a film camera

might have been, Soviet industry as a whole was not able to provide the right quantity

or quality of the necessary parts and there were always shortages of key components,

such as microphones or lenses. Throughout the early 1930s, devices, including sound

recording machines, were made in the laboratories instead of specialist factories, which

inevitably led to a failure to produce even a reasonable quantity of such items. In the

early 1930s, other parts were to be manufactured by existing enterprises many of

which operated in the sphere of heavy industry or areas of light industry where cinema

was not considered to be a priority. In 1929 TOMP (The Trust of Optical-Mechanical

43Troshin, 'A dryani podobno 'garmon" bol'she ne stavite?', p. 318. Nembach, Stalins Filmpolitik,

p. 122.




Production), which was responsible for the production of stationary projectors, fell

into financial trouble and was forced to make a deal with the State Sewing Machine

Enterprise in order to maintain the production of projectors. Unfortunately, the deal

proved to be a failure as the sewing machine enterprise did not carry out the order.

Even when mechanical factories specifically aimed at cinema were established, they

failed to fulfil the demands that were made on them.

Furthermore, shortages of electricity were still a fundamental problem for the

developing cinema industry during the 1930s. Although the blackouts of the 1920s

gradually became a thing of the past, this did not mean that problems of electricity

supply had been resolved. For instance, in August 1934, one commentator pointed to

the need for more powerful lamps in the studios. At the same time he noted that such

powerful devices required around 35-45 volts, which was still not possible in Soviet

studios at that time.44 The provision of electricity was also intimately related to the

development of effective cinefication. Many parts of the Soviet countryside still had no

electricity, which meant that those areas that did have cinema provision often had to

make do with silent hand-cranked projectors with dynamo fed lamps as opposed to

the more sophisticated electrically-driven models. As with many other issues, this

problem was only slowly resolved towards the end of the 1930s as the USSR's

electricity supply rapidly increased.

Another key contextual problem that undoubtedly had an impact on the slow

development of the Soviet cinema industry was the lack of personnel and the often

poorly trained cadres that were available. In 1929 Soviet cinema lacked a significant

quantity of technical personnel who could be relied upon to generate the knowledge

required to create the infrastructural base of the industry. This included the teachers

themselves who often lacked the qualifications to train the workforce or were

sometimes experts in another field, such as chemical applications, but found themselves

teaching mechanical courses on projectors and cameras. Apart from VGIK (State Film

Institute), which had a small department for engineers, the educational system for the

broader mass of mechanics and engineers only reached adequate capacity by the end of

the 1930s. Consequently, by the time that the first film stock, camera, projector, lighting and film copying factories were built between the early and late 1930s, many workers

were not adequately trained to carry out their tasks in the most efficient and effective

manner. This led to constant complaints about the quality of items, ranging from raw

materials, such as gelatine, to the final product, such as film stock. The lack of sufficient

numbers of well-trained specialists had an impact on most of the central areas,

including the production and application of sound projectors.

But the efficiency of those workers who had received the necessary training was also

compromised by the nature of the Soviet economic system. Under Stalin the Soviet

cinema industry was subjected to the same system of central planning that was applied

to every other sphere of the economy. However, despite the industry's ineffectiveness

and inefficiency, the administrations of Shumyatskii, Dukel'skii and Bol'shakov were

fully committed to the attempt to impose planning on every aspect of cinema from the

thematic content of films to their distribution and from the production of film stock to

the building of cinemas. Yet, Shumyatskii displayed ambiguity by simultaneously

44V. Mikhailyk (1934) 'O kachestve osvetitel'noi apparatury', Kino, 16 August.



124 JAMIE MILLER

advocating Hollywood production ideas. During his trip to America in 1935, he had

been impressed by American methods of film and equipment production, especially

the division of labour into specialist tasks. On his return to the USSR, he announced a

series of organisational changes along these lines. However, the changes were never

introduced as Shumyatskii was unable to reconcile them with Soviet planning and his

new American inspired approach was viewed with suspicion, and may have played a

role in his downfall and eventual execution in 1938.

All the administrative leaders supported Soviet-style efforts to improve productivity

such as socialist competition, which began in the film industry in 1929. In the mid to

late 1930s, Shumyatskii gave his full backing to the application of the Stakhanovite

movement to cinema. Both socialist competition and Stakhanovism emphasised high

productivity, the exceeding of planned norms, technical progress, and work discipline.

The treatment of the Soviet film sector as just another branch of industry, similar to

iron or coal production, was arguably a wholly inapplicable means of forcing the pace

of production. The language associated with the creation of Soviet cinema's industrial

base included 'shock workers' conjuring an image of a war-like economy with brigades

of riveters and drillers that was more applicable to the sphere of heavy industry. This

approach led to an emphasis on quantitative targets as indicators of industry

development: the successful production of a given item, such as film stock was more

commonly thought of in terms of how many millions of metres were being produced

with less emphasis on its quality.

Conclusion

In the final analysis, contextual factors made Shumyatskii's chances of success

extremely low, but his limited achievements were also partly due to his irreconcilable

ideas. Throughout his tenure, he called for huge increases in film output, knowing that

he had neither the personnel nor the resources to realise such unrealistic goals. He

wanted the Soviet government to benefit from cinema's substantial tax revenues yet

he fought hard to gain financial resources back for the development of the industry.

He wanted to introduce the best of capitalist production techniques, but still

supported the inefficient and ineffective implementation of planning to every aspect of

Soviet cinema. In the end, Shumyatskii was largely unsuccessful. However, Dukel'skii

and Bol'shakov, who were both more conservative, encountered the same problems.

Nonetheless, regardless of the increasingly dogmatic nature of the leadership, the

cinema trade links established by Shumyatskii were prolonged after his death. By the

early 1940s, however, the Soviet film industry, which had made remarkable leaps

forward during the 1930s, had still failed to reach the masses in the way it had planned

in 1928 and it had not achieved its goal of economic autarky.

The University of Exeter

