Overview

Certain aspects of American popular culture had a formative influence on early Soviet identity and aspirations. Traditionally, Soviet Russia and the United States between the 1920s and the 1940s are regarded as polar opposites on nearly every front. Yet American films and translated adventure fiction were warmly received in 1920s Russia and partly shaped ideals of the New Soviet Person into the 1940s. Cinema was crucial in propagating this new social hero. While open admiration of American film stars and heroes of literary fiction in the Soviet press was restricted from the late 1920s onwards, many positive heroes of Soviet Socialist Realist films in the 1930s and 1940s were partially a product of Soviet Americanism of the previous decade. Some of the new Soviet heroes in films of the 1930s and 1940s possessed traits noticeably evocative of the previously popular American film stars such as Douglas Fairbanks, Pearl White and Mary Pickford. Others cinematically represented the contemporary trope of the 'Russian American,' an ideal worker exemplifying the Stalinist marriage of 'Russian revolutionary sweep' with 'American efficiency. 'Russian Americans' in Soviet Film analyses the content, reception and underlying influences of over 60 Soviet and American films, the book explores new territory in Soviet cinema and Soviet-American cultural relations. It presents groundbreaking archival research encompassing Soviet audience surveys, Soviet film journals and reviews, memoirs and articles by Soviet filmmakers, and scripts, among other sources. The book reveals that values of optimism, technological skill, efficiency and self-reliance - perceived as quintessentially American - were incorporated into new Soviet ideals through channels of cross-cultural dissemination, resulting in cultural synthesis.

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9781784530310

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Reviews

This is a book that sparkles with fresh insights and information. Marina L. Levitina has studied the impact of American films, actresses, and actors on Soviet authorities, critics, and the broad film-going public. The result is a novel and convincing reading of Soviet film and cultural politics in the 1920s and 1930s. The popularity of American films in the early Soviet era is well known but here readers will discover much that is new about the cultural interchange in the heyday of American imports and long afterwards as well. More fascinating still is her elucidation of the links between the pop culture of the American film industry and the officially promoted heroes and heroines of the Leninist-Stalinist social order. One can only say, well done. I recommend it highly for students and scholars alike. - Jeffrey Brooks 'Russian Americans' in Soviet Film provides a meticulously-researched discussion of the American films that Russians were seeing in the NEP-era 1920's and the varied messages they took from them. Levitina argues convincingly that the American character traits of optimism, physical fitness, and energy, epitomized by stars like Pearl White and Douglas Fairbanks, continued to influence film images of the new Soviet man and woman well into the 1930's and 40's, long after American films were withdrawn from the Soviet market and America was officially a decadent rival, not an object for emulation. - Jane A. Taubman, Professor of Russian (emerita) Amherst College (USA), author of Kira Muratova (I.B Tauris, 2005)

The book is so informative, engaging, and accessible that it deserves a readership that extends beyond the relatively small circle of Soviet cinephiles to scholars and and students of Soviet culture, Russian-American relations, gender studies, and American silent film. Highly recommended. -- Denise Youngblood, University of Vermont, author of Cinematic Cold War: The American and Soviet Struggle for Hearts and Minds

Author Information

Marina Levitina teaches Russian Cinema and Russian Cultural Studies at Trinity College, University of Dublin. Her research interests include early Soviet cinema and culture, the cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky and cinema and memory. She is also a documentary filmmaker.

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