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Corrected transcript of I. V. Stalin's speech at the session of the TsK VKP(b) Orgburo on the film A Grand Life and an excerpt from a resolution of the TsK VKP(b) Orgburo “On the film A Grand Life”

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By Dzhugashvili, Iosif Vissarionovich (Stalin) Orgburo TsK VKP(b) - Organizational Bureau of the CC of the VKP(b), Orgburo of the Central Committee RKP(b) (Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union)

Soviet Culture and Power: A History in Documents, 1917-1953

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Document 177

Corrected transcript of I. V. Stalin's speech at the session of the TsK VKP(b) Orgburo on the film A Grand Life. 9 August 1946. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5325, ll. 23–27. Copy. Typewritten.

Excerpt from a resolution of the TsK VKP(b) Orgburo “On the film A Grand Life.” 4 September 1946. Published in Kul'tura i zhizn', 10 September 1946; Literaturnaia gazeta,

14 September 1946.

Page 449

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Page 451

We have viewed this film, we have viewed its first part, too. The first part is better, though it too has provoked criticism. Right now by association I link this film with Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible (the second part) and Pudovkin's Admiral Nakhimov. You get the general impression that the producers and directors are doing very little work on the subjects they are trying to demonstrate and are treating their obligations very lightly, sometimes lightly to the point of criminality, I would say. People are not studying their subject, don't have a good picture of the matter, but they're writing screenplays. This is an unconscientious attitude.	How are we to explain such frequent instances of the production of false and erroneous films? Why have the famous Soviet directors Page 448 Comrades Lukov, Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Kozintsev, and Trauberg, who in the past created pictures of high quality, suffered failure? The problem is that many masters of cinematography, producers, directors, and screenplay authors treat their obligations lightly and irresponsibly and do not work in good conscience on the creation of their films. The main shortcoming in their work consists in the fact that they do not study the matter they take up. < … >
Take the good producers and directors, and also the American Charlie Chaplin. For a few years the man is silent, works hard, conscientiously studies the technique and details of the matter, because nothing can be studied without details, and you can't make a good film without details. Details have to be studied. And here good producers and directors work for years on a film, two, three, four years, because they have a very scrupulous and conscientious attitude toward what they're doing. We have poets, for example, who can write two long poems in a month, but take Goethe, he worked on Faust for thirty years, that's how honestly and conscientiously he regarded what he was doing. A light attitude toward what they're doing on the part of authors of some works is the basic sin that leads directors and producers to releasing these kinds of films. Just take Admiral Nakhimov. Pudovkin is a capable producer and director, he knows what he's doing, but this time he didn't take the time to study the matter as he should have. He decided this: I am Pudovkin, they know me, I'll write it and the public will “swallow” it, they're going to watch any film. People are starving, there's lots of curiosity and inquisitiveness, so naturally they're going to watch it. Meanwhile, people's tastes have become more expert, and they aren't going to “swallow” just anything. People are starting to distinguish the bad from the good and are making new demands. And if this matter is to go any farther, and we Bolsheviks are going to try to develop tastes in our viewers, I'm afraid they're going to take some of our screenwriters, producers, and directors out of circulation.	<…> Ignorance of their subject and a frivolous attitude on the part of screenwriters and directors toward what they are doing comprise one of the main reasons for the release of unfit films.
In the film Nakhimov there are also elements of an unconscientious approach by the producers to the study of the subject they wanted to show. They try to get by with all kinds of trifles, they showed a few. paper ships, and the rest was dancing, various trysts, all kinds of episodes to engage the viewer. This really is not a film about Nakhimov but a film about something or other with a few episodes about Nakhimov. We sent the film back and told Pudovkin that he hadn't studied this matter, didn't even know the history, didn't know that the Russians were at Sinope. The matter is depicted as if the Russians weren't there. Russians took lots of Turkish generals prisoner, but the film doesn't convey this. Why? We don't know. Maybe because this takes a lot of work and it's much easier to show dancing. In short, it's an unconscientious attitude toward what the man has taken up, something that was going to be shown throughout the world. If a man respected himself, he wouldn't do this, he would have produced the film differently. But Pudovkin evidently doesn't care how viewers and public opinion might respond to him.	Thus film director V. Pudovkin decided to make a film about Nakhimov, but he did not study the details of the matter and distorted the historical truth. He ended up with a film not about Nakhimov but about balls and dances with episodes from Nakhimov's life. As a result, such important historical facts as that the Russians were at Sinope and that an entire group of Turkish admirals led by their commander were taken captive in the Battle of Sinope were left out of the film.
Or the other film, Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible, the second part. I don't know whether anyone has seen it, but I have—a vile thing! The man got completely distracted from the history. He depicted the oprichiniki as rotten scoundrels, degenerates, something like the American Ku Klux Klan. Eisenstein didn't realize that the troops of the Oprichnina were progressive troops. Ivan the Terrible relied on them to gather Russia into a single centralized state, against the feudal princes, who wanted to fragment and weaken it. Eisenstein has an old attitude toward the Oprichnina. The attitude of old historians toward the Oprichnina was crudely negative because they equated the repressions of Ivan the Terrible with the repressions of Nicholas II, and got completely away from the historical circumstances in which this occurred. In our era, there is a different view of the Oprichnina. Russia fragmented into feudal principalities, i.e., into several states, had to unite if it didn't want to fall under the Tatar yoke a second time. This is clear to everyone else and it ought to have been clear to Eisenstein, too. Eisenstein can't help but know this because there is a literature to this effect, whereas he depicted degenerates of some kind. Ivan the Terrible was a man with a will and character, but in Eisenstein he's a weak-willed Hamlet. This is Formalism now. What do we care about Formalism—give us the historical truth. Studying takes patience, and some of our producers don't have enough patience and therefore they mix everything up into a single whole and present it as a film: here you are, “swallow it,” especially since it has Eisenstein's stamp on it. How are we supposed to teach people to treat their obligations and the interests of the viewers and the state conscientiously? After all, we want to educate our youth on the truth, not distort the truth.	Director S. Eisenstein, in the second part of Ivan the Terrible, exposed his ignorance in his depiction of historical facts, presenting the progressive force of Ivan the Terrible's oprichniki in the guise of gangs of degenerates, similar to the American Ku Klux Klan, and Ivan the Terrible, a man with a powerful will and character, as weak of character and will, something like Hamlet.
Finally, the third film, A Grand Life. What's depicted there, of course, is not a grand life at all. Everything is taken in order to interest the undemanding viewer. One likes the harmonica and the gypsy songs. There is that. Another likes cabaret songs. There's that, too. A third likes a few discussions on diverse topics. And there's that. A fourth likes drinking—and in the film there's a worker you can't get to wake up unless he smells vodka and hears the clinking of glasses and then he quickly jumps up. There's that. There are amorous escapades, too. After all, viewers have all kinds of tastes. There's also a little about reconstruction, however, even though it's a film about the reconstruction of the Donbass the process of the Donbass's restoration takes up only one eighth, and it's all given in a toylike, humorous form. It's simply painful when you look, can it really be that our producers, who live among golden men, among heroes, can't depict them as they should but must necessarily dirty them? We have good workers, damn it! They showed themselves in the war, they came back from the war and should especially show themselves in the reconstruction. This film smells of the old ways, when instead of an engineer they put in an unskilled worker, as if to say, you're ours, worker, you're going to guide us, we don't need an engineer. They kick out the engineer, put in a simple worker, and he's supposedly doing the guiding. It's the same in this film, they make an old worker into a professor. The workers had moods like these in the first years of Soviet power, when the working class took power for the first time. That happened, but it was wrong. How much time has passed since then! The country has risen to unprecedented heights with the help of mechanization. We've started producing seven to eight times more coal than in the old days. Why? Because all labor has been mechanized, because coal-cutters are doing all the work. All the devices, taken together, comprise a system of mechanization. If it weren't for mechanization, we would simply perish. All this has been achieved with the help of machines. What kind of reconstruction is shown in the film where not a single machine figures? It's all as of old. People simply have not studied the matter and don't know what reconstruction means under our conditions. They've confused what took place after the Civil War, in 1918–1919, with what is taking place, say, in 1945–1946. They've confused one with the other. People now say that the film needs fixing. I don't know how to do this. If it's technically possible, it should be done, but what will be left there? The gypsy stuff has to be tossed out. The fact that eight young girls happen to show up and turn everything around in the Donbass, that's a fairytale, that's something unthinkable. That has to be fixed, too. The fact that people are living in terrible conditions, almost out in the open, that the engineer in charge of the mine doesn't know where to sleep, all that will have to be thrown out. This may happen here and there, but it isn't typical. We've built entire towns in the Donbass, not all of that was blown up. If this film gets called the first assault on reconstruction, then interest will drop off, but in any case, this is not a grand life after the Second World War. If the film is called A Grand Life, then it's going to have to undergo cardinal changes. You're going to have to bring in other new actors (although the actors act pretty well). The whole spirit of haphazard work, as if we didn't need educated people, didn't need engineers—those stupidities have to be thrown out. What's left then? The film can't be released like this, and 4,700,000 rubles have gone to waste. If it can be fixed, fix it, please. But it's going to be very hard, everything has to be turned completely around. It will be a new film in essence. You watch, we suggested to Pudovkin that he fix his Admiral Nakhimov, he asked for six months, but he's evidently not going to be able, since he has to turn everything completely around. He approached this major problem lightly, and now his film still isn't ready, and he's essentially remaking it. Here too, everything is going to have to be turned completely around. Let them try, maybe they'll succeed.	What do the sins and deficiencies of A Grand Life consist of? The film depicts only one minor episode in the first assault on the reconstruction of the Donbass, which does not give a correct picture of the actual range and significance of the reconstruction work carried out by the Soviet state in the Don basin. In addition, the restoration of the Donbass occupies a small part in the film, while the main attention is paid to the primitive depiction of all kinds of personal sufferings and scenes from daily life. In view of this, the film's content does not correspond to its title. Page 452 Moreover, the film's title, A Grand Life, sounds like a mockery of Soviet reality. The film obviously mixes up two different eras in the development of our industry. According to the level of technology and culture of production shown in A Grand Life, the picture reflects more the period of the Donbass's restoration after the end of the Civil War, not the modern Donbass with its advanced technology and culture created during the years of Stalin's Five Year Plans. The film's authors create a false impression for the viewer, as if the restoration of the Donbass mines after their liberation from the German aggressors and coal mining were being carried out in the Donbass not on the basis of modern advanced technology and the mechanization of labor processes but by the application of crude physical force, long since outdated technology, and conservative work methods. In this way the film distorts the prospects for the postwar reconstruction of our industry based on advanced technology and a high culture of production. […] A Grand Life preaches backwardness, a lack of culture, and ignorance. The film's producers show in a completely unmotivated and wrong way the mass advancement to supervisory posts of technically illiterate workers with backward views and attitudes. The film's director and screenwriter didn't understand that in our country Page 453 it is cultured, modern people who know what they're doing who are highly valued and boldly promoted, not backward, uncultured people, now that Soviet power has created its own intelligentsia, it's clumsy and absurd to depict the promotion of backward and uncultured people to supervisory posts as a positive phenomenon. A Grand Life gives a false, distorted depiction of Soviet people. The workers and engineers who are restoring the Donbass are shown as backward, uncultured people with very low moral qualities. Most of their time the film's heroes spend doing nothing, engaged in idle talk and heavy drinking. According to the film's conception, the best people are the inveterate drunkards.

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Document TitleCorrected transcript of I. V. Stalin's speech at the session of the TsK VKP(b) Orgburo on the film A Grand Life and an excerpt from a resolution of the TsK VKP(b) Orgburo “On the film A Grand Life”

AuthorDzhugashvili, Iosif Vissarionovich (Stalin); Orgburo TsK VKP(b) - Organizational Bureau of; the CC of the VKP(b), Orgburo of the Central Committee RKP(b); (Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet; Union)

RecipientN/A

RepositoryRGASPI

ID #f.558, op.1, d.5325, ll.23-27

DescriptionN/A

Date1946 Aug 9

AOC VolumeSoviet Culture and Power: A History in Documents, 1917-1953

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