New Republics, Old Wounds

Khrushchev's attack on the 'cult of personality' at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party presented the film industry with a set of specific problems, given the contribution made by the cinema to the celebration of Stalin's leadership. The problems were particularly acute in the so-called 'new republics', those added to the USSR in 1939–40, and re-annexed in 1944–45. Here, the entire period of Sovietization coincided with the Stalin years. Accordingly sensitive was the issue of how to represent the period of Sovietization for film audiences, since any suggestion that this was problematic might easily be classified as generically 'anti-Soviet' (the period of Nazi occupation also fell into the category of 'difficult history', but for reasons that the article explains, was in some ways less problematic). This article represents a pioneering attempt at a comparative treatment of films about 'difficult history' in the four 'new republics'. It closely examines the discussions in studios and film vetting bodies about five movies that made an especial impact inside the republics where they were made, and in several cases went from high ratings to removal from the screen, to re-emerge only in the late 1980s

Communism · Fell · Movie theater · Nazism · Period (music · Vetting · Electrical and Electromagnetic Research · Geochemistry and Geologic Mapping · Geological Modeling and Analysis