Russian War Films: On the Cinema Front, 1914-2005 (review)

Denise Youngblood employs a multidisciplinary approach to explore topics in Soviet history through the medium of fiction mainstream films about combat and wartime. She bases this "filmic history" of wars on a selection of 160 titles that met the criteria of simultaneously engaging "in key issues of war and wartime" and having been popular with general audiences or garnering critical acclaim. Youngblood's approach is indebted to Hayden White's argument that film is "a distinctive form of historical discourse" (p. 3) and much can be gained by judging films by standards such as their effectiveness in capturing Russian experiences during wars, whether and how such films kept to the official version of events and inspired patriotism, and how well they facilitated the production of a "usable past." This approach yields tangible rewards.

The book begins with a discussion of films set in the context of World War I, the Russian Civil War, World War II, and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and concludes with the cinematic depictions of the Chechen wars. Youngblood opens each chapter with a "historiophoty," a helpful brief summary of how the history of wars was interpreted for the screen in a given epoch. The bulk of each chapter is devoted to several important films for the period with plot summaries, descriptions of particularly illuminating moments, including combat scenes and depictions of enemies, box office data, and an assessment of how well each work kept to the official line of its era.

The crux of Youngblood's argument is that films about war have a special meaning in Soviet cinematic history and this primacy of war films also gave filmmakers an opportunity "to subvert official history in the guise of art or entertainment" (p. 3). Youngblood is most original in the second half of the book where she takes on prevailing assumptions about the ossified martial culture of the late Soviet period and the contested representations of wars in present day Russia. She contends that although there was pressure on directors to make superficial combat epics in the 1960s and 1970s, as Brezhnev's government increasingly emphasized the "cult" of World War II, complex films with young and uninspired soldiers dying senselessly continued to be made and seen by millions. This dynamic resurfaced in Putin's Russia where the government hopes to use the memory of the Second World War to drum up patriotism and support, while at the same time popular tastes continue to push for exposés of unsavory aspects such as the use of penal battalions. Films about Afghanistan and Chechnya are now another fraught arena for contested interpretations. In such films, Russian soldiers, abandoned to their fates by their own government, appear as prisoners in the hands of their sometimes worthy enemies who at least know why they fight.

This work is a pleasure to read with a useful filmography of war-related films listed by war, director, or by title in both English and Russian. The author deftly avoids jargon and includes enough information about the films for those who have not seen them. This book will spur readers to see the films and view them in a new light. It will also attract scholars for its interpretive insights and as a reference tool. Its scope should work well in graduate seminars on Soviet history, seminars on historical methods, or in undergraduate courses where films figure prominently as sources.