Authors

Pavel Stepanov¹;  ¹ University of Cambridge, MMLL, UK

Discussion

One of the core pillars of early Soviet ideology—the narrative of the Bolshevik Revolution—was carefully controlled and disseminated across the republics through various organizations and media forms. By the mid-1920s, cinema was officially recognized as the most powerful tool of propaganda. In this context, the Commission on the History of the October Revolution and the Russian Communist Party (Istpart) initiated a series of films commemorating the 1905 and 1917 revolutions. These historical epics, created by central studios and directors such as Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Shub, and Barnet, established a visual canon for representing revolutionary events. Beyond merely depicting 1917, these films shaped a broader revolutionary narrative that legitimized a new Soviet national identity and reinforced the unity of the Soviet state.

This paper focuses on films produced at Ukrainian and Belarusian studios, including Vladimir Balliuzek’s Hamburg (1926), Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s Arsenal (1929), Arnold Kordium’s Mirabo (1930), Iurii Tarich’s Do zavtra (1929), and Vladimir Korsh-Sablin’s V ogne rozhdennaia (1930). It examines how these films challenged the standardized narrative of the center by incorporating regional histories and perspectives, thereby proposing alternative national narratives. The analysis of these films will be contextualized by examining the centralized pedagogical frameworks intended to shape their reception and interpretation, highlighting tensions between local creative expression and state-controlled propaganda.