This essay represents a fragment of a text devoted to issues offigurative representation in Soviet and Russian cinema. It briefly analyzes theevolution of the image of the scientist during the period of Stalinist cinema. Theauthor’s theoretical reasoning is based on the definition of nihilism given byNikolai Berdyaev in his essay “Russian Socialism and Nihilism”.In their policy towards the intelligentsia, including the policy in the sphereof cinema, the Soviet authorities used those attributes of nihilism whichconstituted the main essence of the Russian and Soviet intelligentsia. Theauthor discusses four periods in the history of Soviet cinema: the 1920s, the1930s, the World War II period and the consequent period of “malokartinye”(film scarcity). Beginning with the film Congestion (1919), an attempt had beenmade to convince representatives of the intelligentsia that the Soviet form ofgovernment carried the ideas of freedom, equality and fraternity, so there wasno more reason for nihilistic attitudes towards reality as to a world ruled byevil. In the 1930s, the Soviet culture formed a full-fledged positive image of ascientist who accepted Soviet power. A most important domestic political taskwas outlined: the state was to carry out a tremendous job of bringing up its ownSoviet intelligentsia and scientists who would not be tainted by the “wrong”nihilism of their pre-revolutionary predecessors. If it ever arose, nihilism wasto be tightly controlled and transformed into the search for scientific truth andintransigence towards the enemies of the Soviet regime. During the World WarII (the Great Patriotic War), intellectuals became the highest embodiment ofspiritual aspirations and the denial of everything hostile to the nation; it maybe said that their faith was deemed as an achievement comparable to the faithof Christian martyrs. And in the post-war period and the period film scarcity,cinema renewed the demonstration of the possibility of an ideal relationshipbetween the scientists, the intelligentsia and the Soviet government. Filmrepresentation system included images of what the Soviet government gaveto the scientists (and, more broadly, to the intelligentsia) and of their debt ofgratitude for everything given to them.