TYPOLOGY AND EVOLUTION OF THE IMAGE OF A MILITARY VILLAGE IN THE SOVIET ART CINEMA
L.N. MAZUR
Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin, Mira avå., 19, 620002, Ekaterinburg, Russian Federation
Keywords: Great Patriotic War, cinematography, village, peasantry, film, image, myth, propaganda, memory
Abstract
The article examines features of representing the Soviet war-time village in art cinematography. The Soviet village image under war conditions was determined by the propaganda tasks related to mobilizing collective farmers for labor exploits or fighting the enemy, on the one hand, and, by the myth-making purpose, on the other hand. The latter had the great symbolic load as the countryside and village community were associated with the concepts of “victim”, “people” and “homeland”. Based on the analysis of the war-time filmography, the author identified four main variants of the Soviet village figurative presentation: 1) a symbol of the Motherland; 2) a space for the people’s struggle against the enemy; 3) a sacrifice symbol; 4) a “fortress of defense”. The constructed images were determined by the tasks of propaganda and performed mobilization functions. They all were further developed in the cinema of the second half of the XX century, but had a different fate. In particular, the village image as the Mother land symbol was used in cinematography until the 1980s, gradually losing its semantic content under the completion of urbanization. The theme of the countryside as a “fortress of defense” was relevant for historical science, but not for cinematography. The most popular, both politically and cinematically, turned out to be the images of the occupied village as a victim and as a space of the people’s war, which became necessary elements of the heroic military myth. It has been supported by the politics of memory, and in the modern Russian society it gets a new life in remythologizing military history wave. The heroic myth of the war created by propaganda in the second half of the XX century experienced certain transformations related to the war phenomenon’s reflection in public consciousness during “ottepel’” and “perestroika” periods. However, rational rethinking affected to a greater extent science and art, but not political institutions, that is, remained unfinished. As a result, the war propaganda myth was transformed into the propaganda historical myth of the Great Victory, the main instrument of the memory politics.
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