Stalinist Cinema and the Production of History: Museum of the Revolution

'This is a major study of the place of Soviet film within the Soviet cultural system.'
Jeff Brooks, The Johns Hopkins University
This book explores how Soviet film worked with time, the past, and memory. It looks at Stalinist cinema and its role in the production of history. Cinema's role in the legitimization of Stalinism and the production of a new Soviet identity was enormous. Both Lenin and Stalin saw in this 'most important of arts' the most effective form of propaganda and 'organisation of the masses'. By examining the works of the greatest Soviet filmmakers of the Stalin era - Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Grigorii Kozintsev, Leonid Trauberg, Fridrikh Ermler - the author explores the role of the cinema in the formation of the Soviet political imagination.
Key Features
    The first study of Stalinist cinema, which fills a gap in the history of Soviet film.
    Covers the works of great Soviet film directors.
    Focuses on Stalinist political imagination, one of the most understudied aspects of Stalinism.