"Ivan the Terrible" and Stalinist Russia

When Part II of Ivan the Terrible was released in the West, Dwight Macdonald wrote a review which attempted to interpret the film in terms of the circumstances in which it was made. He assumed that, Taken on the surface, Ivan II is a parable, justifying Stalin's policies.1 He equated the Oprichniki2 with the GPU, the boyars with the kulaks, and Ivan's treacherous relatives with the Old Bolsheviks. But, Macdonald adds, this surface reading is-superficial. Ivan is shown becoming a bloodthirsty beast, of course from the highest motives.3 He goes on to claim that Ivan the Terrible is in fact a subtle anti-Stalinist allegory. This type of interpretation is not often questioned; it is tempting to view Eisenstein as a heroic figure, tricking Stalin while appearing to do his bidding. It is also evidently tempting to some who do not like and/or understand the film to try to attribute its strangeness to Eisenstein's lack of freedom and to his cynical disappointment late in his life. But are such readings justified by the film itself, by Eisenstein's statements, or by the historical circumstances under which it was produced? Macdonald's views, as we shall see, are based primarily on his slight knowledge of Eisenstein' s late career, on a (presumably single) viewing of the film, and upon his own apparent resentments about Stalin. Let us look at the background of the film and attempt to determine more clearly how Ivan the Terrible relates to the period of Stalinist Russia in which it was created. Ivan the Terrible was the film on which Eisenstein spent the most time and energy; it was also the only one which he wrote alone. Yet the original impulse to make the film seems to have come, as with so many of his works, not from an independent inspiration, but as the result of an official assignment to the project. Most sources on Ivan do not discuss how Eisenstein came to make it, but according to Marie Seton

Ancient history · Art · Humanities · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · European history and politics · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society

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