The Missing Renaissance Man

The work is devoted to an attempt to find the "hero of freedom" in the material of Soviet cinema of the pre-Stalinist, Stalinist and post-Stalinist period.

The need to use the cinematography of that period is connected with the cultural situation of the USSR in the first half of the 20th century, the consequences of which still have an impact.

The leaders of the October Revolution of 1917 attempted a radical rethinking of the conventionally Russian history from the point of view of Marxist ideology. These efforts coincided with a broad campaign to eliminate illiteracy together with the ideologization of education.

As Stalin's ideological policy became more established, the Marxist approach was replaced by an imperialist approach. It assumed the widespread use, interpretation and visualization of historical and pseudo-historical themes in the sphere of mass culture, the leading tool of which was cinema. Mass culture came under the strong influence of products created under the direct ideological control of the party.

In this way, stereotypical images were created for the culture of the new social formation, the "Soviet people". The former population of the Russian Empire received a new culture, adapted to the needs of the ruling party. Despite the fact that in the history of conventionally Russian culture there was no period of renaissance associated with the humanist movement in society, in the new Soviet culture the primacy of the state over the individual was established without an alternative.