Siberia the Soviet': the region's image as portrayed in Alexander Litvinov's kulturfilm

Based on previously unpublished archival material, the article studies the image of regions as portrayed in Soviet documentaries of the 1930s-1940s - a question insufficiently explored within the national history so far. Being part of Soviet cultural policy, educational and propaganda documentary films (Kulturfilms) of the time dealt with ideological questions of uniting USSR regions on screen. Among them, films drawing on local material and produced in regional film studios had a special role to play. The article brings to the fore one of the most indicative of such films titled "Siberia the Soviet" filmed by Alexander Litvinov, the founding father of Soviet 'expedition' documentary cinematography, in the West Siberian studio 'Sibtechfim'. The article discusses the cinematographic image of Siberia as a construct; it looks into the scenario and cinematographic techniques used for the film creation; major episodes of the film such as 'Siberian city', 'Siberian industry', 'Siberian collective farms (sovkhozy)', and 'the Russian national agricultural exhibition' are studied. To present a broader context, the authors consider processes that ran parallel with one another in the Soviet cultural policy, cinematography, and media. Also explored are objective and subjective conditions in which the cinematographic image is created as a document of its time, with a special emphasis being put on studying filmmaker's (director's) role in film production. The conclusion drawn is that, on the one hand, the film 'Siberia the Soviet' is a valuable contribution to historical studies that adds to the corpus of documents on the development of Siberian populated areas, industrial enterprises, collective farms, etc. On the other hand, the film contains evidence of the state national policy reflected in filmed events held by Soviet authorities' organizations in Siberia in the 1930s-1940s. Being a historical document of that time, the film by A. Litvinov successfully accomplished the mission entrusted to it by the state - that of cinematographic representation of the Soviet Siberia.

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