The Russian Intelligentsia: Taming Nihilism in the Stalin Period

Abstract

This essay represents a fragment of a text devoted to issues of
figurative representation in Soviet and Russian cinema. It briefly analyzes the
evolution of the image of the scientist during the period of Stalinist cinema. The
author’s theoretical reasoning is based on the definition of nihilism given by
Nikolai Berdyaev in his essay “Russian Socialism and Nihilism”.
In their policy towards the intelligentsia, including the policy in the sphere
of cinema, the Soviet authorities used those attributes of nihilism which
constituted the main essence of the Russian and Soviet intelligentsia. The
author discusses four periods in the history of Soviet cinema: the 1920s, the
1930s, the World War II period and the consequent period of “malokartinye”
(film scarcity). Beginning with the film Congestion (1919), an attempt had been
made to convince representatives of the intelligentsia that the Soviet form of
government carried the ideas of freedom, equality and fraternity, so there was
no more reason for nihilistic attitudes towards reality as to a world ruled by
evil. In the 1930s, the Soviet culture formed a full-fledged positive image of a
scientist who accepted Soviet power. A most important domestic political task
was outlined: the state was to carry out a tremendous job of bringing up its own
Soviet intelligentsia and scientists who would not be tainted by the “wrong”
nihilism of their pre-revolutionary predecessors. If it ever arose, nihilism was
to be tightly controlled and transformed into the search for scientific truth and
intransigence towards the enemies of the Soviet regime. During the World War
II (the Great Patriotic War), intellectuals became the highest embodiment of
spiritual aspirations and the denial of everything hostile to the nation; it may
be said that their faith was deemed as an achievement comparable to the faith
of Christian martyrs. And in the post-war period and the period film scarcity,
cinema renewed the demonstration of the possibility of an ideal relationship
between the scientists, the intelligentsia and the Soviet government. Film
representation system included images of what the Soviet government gave
to the scientists (and, more broadly, to the intelligentsia) and of their debt of
gratitude for everything given to them.