Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

254 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe
“Of all the arts, for us the most important is cinema.” 1 Whether Lenin
referred to the propaganda potential of the media or its ability to satisfy the
country’s need for entertainment is unclear. Nonetheless, during the course
of rebuilding the country after war and revolution, the new Soviet state went
to great efort and expense to develop this young art form. two of the earliest
and most artistically innovative flms of this era featured space travel and
were adaptations of a Soviet science fction novel that promoted the idea of
interplanetary socialist revolution. 2 the reopening of Soviet cinemas and the
frst portrayal in spacefight in flm coincided with the cinematic production of
aleksei tolstoy’s Aelita in 1924. Months later, a team of animators created their
own version of tolstoy’s tale, replicating the ambitious tone of revolutionary
fervor of the time. By the end of the decade, Stalin had redirected that fervor
internally towards transforming the u.S.S.r. into an industrialized country.
Ideologically, transforming nature and political loyalty replaced the concept of
exporting revolution. Man and machine traveling through space matched the
prevailing political metaphor of the time of man using technology to master
nature. Science fction that emphasized man’s ability to engineer mastery over
nature and political and personal loyalty gained favor during that brief period
when ofcials tolerated speculative literature.
1. translated and quoted in: The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents, 1896-1939,
1988, trans. richard taylor, ed. richard taylor and Ian Christie, paperback (London:
routledge, 1994), p. 56 from the original citation in G. M. Boltyanskii (ed.), Lenin i kino
(Moscow/Leningrad, 1925), pp. 16-19. although many historians cite Lenin’s quotation,
there is thin evidence that Lenin actually said precisely those words. In the introduction to
Josephine Woll’s book on the cinema of the thaw era, richard taylor describes the quote
thus, “Cinema has been the predominant popular art form of the frst half of the 20th century,
at least in europe and North america. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the former
Soviet union, where Lenin’s remark that ‘of all the arts, for us cinema is the most important’
became a cliché and where cinema attendances were until recently still among the highest
in the world.” Josephine Woll, Real Images: Soviet Cinema and the Thaw, Kino: the russian
Cinema Series, ed. richard taylor (London: I. B. tauris publishers, 2000), p. vii. denise
Youngblood casts doubts on whether Lenin actually made the statement, but does support
the idea that Lenin had the intention to promote cinema as a means to propaganda, denise J.
Youngblood, Movies for the Masses: Popular Cinema and Soviet Society in the 1920s (Cambridge,
uK: Cambridge university press, 1992), p. 35. peter Kenez discusses the likelihood that
the words were consistent with Lenin’s actions, peter Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society: From
the Revolution to the Death of Stalin, Kino: the russian Cinema Series, ed. richard taylor
(London: I. B. tauris publishers, 2006), p. 22.
2. the two flms were adaptations of aleksei tolstoy’s novel, Aelita. aleksey Nikolayevich tolstoy,
Aelita, trans. antonnia W. Bouis, ed. theodore Sturgeon, Macmillan’s Best of Science Fiction
(New York, NY: Macmillan, 1981). the frst was Yakov protazanov’s flm by the same name:
Yakov protazanov, Aelita:Queen of Mars,Kuinzhi,Valentina;tseretelli,Nikolai;eggert,Konstantin;
Solntseva, Yulia; Zavadsky, Yuri; Ilinsky, Igor; Batalov, Nikolai (Mezhrabpom-rus, 1924), 120
minutes.the second was an animated version: Nikolai Khodataev, Zenon Komisarenko, and Yuri
Merkulov, Mezhplanetnaia revolutsiia (Interplanetary Revolution), animation (Biuro gosudarstvenno
tekhnicheskogo kino, 1924), 7:40 min.