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ИМАГОЛОГИЯ
СОВЕТСКО-АМЕРИКАНСКИХ ОТНОШЕНИЙ В ПЕРИОД ХОЛОДНОЙ ВОЙНЫ -
DOI: https://doi.oig/10.15688/jvolsu4.2024.1.1
UDC 327.83 LBC 66.4
Submitted: 31.08.2023 Accepted: 04.11.2023
THE ENEMY WITH HUMAN FACE? REHUMANIZATION OF THE IMAGES OF AMERICANS IN THE SOVIET THAW CINEMA1
Oleg V. Riabov
Herzen University, Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation
Abstract. Introduction. The article focuses on the changes that happened in the portrayal of U.S. characters in Soviet Thaw cinema. The contribution of the article in the field of cultural Cold War is threefold: for the first time, it studies the American characters' images through the prism of the concept of rehumanization; establishes common and particular traits of deconstruction of the image of the enemy in Soviet and American cinema; and introduces new materials into scientific circulation. The materials consist of the movies on which Soviet cinematography worked in the early 1960s; reviews in film magazines; and archival data of discussions on movies and their scenarios that took place in film studios. Analysis. Specifics of the dehumanization of 'enemy number one' in Soviet cinema. The Soviet anti-Americanism was based on the idea of 'two Americas': dehumanization has been subjected only to class and politically alien Americans. Deconstructing the image of the enemy in Thaw cinema. Humanizing U.S. characters was achieved with the help of endowing them with kindness, empathy, creativity, emotionality, moral behavior, ability for love, friendship, and comradeship, emphasizing the similarity of the basic values of 'us' and 'them', and demonstrating the possibility of peaceful coexistence through cases of mutual aid, cooperation, and the occurrence of friendly and romantic relations. The humanness of U.S. characters becomes less dependent on political factors. The cinema expressed the idea that man by nature was good, and this original human goodness was noticeable most of all in children, including American ones. The limits of rehumanization. The conservative part of the Soviet elite accused 'abstract humanism' of forgetting the class principle and juxtaposed it to 'revolutionary humanism'. Criticism of 'abstract humanism' in ideology was accompanied by a tightening of demands for representing America that representatives of the Soviet controlling bodies made. Results. In the 1960s, Soviet cinema (just like U. S. cinema) had the tendency of deconstructing the image of 'enemy number one', which took the form of rehumanization. The rehumanization had its limitations.
Key words: Cold War, image of the enemy, anti-Americanism, Thaw cinema, dehumanization, rehumanization.
Citation. Riabov O.V. The Enemy with Human Face? Rehumanization of the Images of Americans in the Soviet Thaw Cinema. Vestnik Volgogradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Seriya 4. Istoriya. Regionovedenie. Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya [Science Journal of Volgograd State University. History. Area Studies. International g Relations], 2024, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 6-15. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15688/jvolsu4.2024.L1
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УДК 327.83 Дата поступления статьи: 31.08.2023
ББК 66.4 Дата принятия статьи: 04.11.2023
ВРАГ С ЧЕЛОВЕЧЕСКИМ ЛИЦОМ? РЕГУМАНИЗАЦИЯ ОБРАЗОВ АМЕРИКАНЦЕВ В КИНЕМАТОГРАФЕ «ОТТЕПЕЛИ»1
Олег Вячеславович Рябов
Российский государственный педагогический университет им. А.И. Герцена, г. Санкт-Петербург, Российская Федерация
Аннотация. Введение. В статье анализируются изменения, которые в период «оттепели» происходили в изображении американских персонажей советским кинематографом. Вклад статьи в исследовательское поле «культурной холодной войны» состоит в том, что впервые: изучаются образы американских персонажей советского кино сквозь призму концепта регуманизации; устанавливаются общие и различные черты деконструкции образа врага в кинематографе СССР и США; вводятся в научный оборот новые источники. Источниками являются фильмы, над созданием которых кинематография СССР работала в начале 1960-х гг.; рецензии в журналах; архивные данные, посвященные обсуждению на киностудиях фильмов и их сценариев. Анализ. Специфика дегуманизации «врага номер один» в кино СССР. Особенность советского антиамериканизма заключалась в том, что он был основан на идее «двух Америк»: дегуманизации подвергались только классово и политически чуждые американцы. Деконструкция образа врага в кинематографе «оттепели». Очеловечивание американских персонажей достигалось за счет: наделения их такими чертами, как доброта, сострадание, креативность, эмоциональность, следование моральным нормам, способность к любви, дружбе, товариществу; подчеркивания сходства базовых ценностей «своих» и «чужих»; демонстрации возможности мирного сосуществования через взаимопомощь, кооперацию, возникновение дружеских и романтических отношений. Изображение человечности американских персонажей становится менее зависимым от их политических характеристик. Высказывается идея о том, что все люди от природы являются добрыми, что в наибольшей степени обнаруживает себя в детях, в том числе американских. Пределы регуманизации. Консервативная часть советской элиты обвиняла «абстрактный гуманизм» в забвении классового принципа, противопоставляя ему «революционный гуманизм». Критика «абстрактного гуманизма» в идеологии сопровождалась ужесточением требований к изображению США со стороны представителей инстанций, контролирующих создание кинокартин. Результаты. В 1960-е гг. в советском кино (так же, как и в американском) заметна тенденция деконструкции образа «врага номер один», которая принимает форму регуманизации. Регуманизация американских киноперсонажей имела свои пределы.
Ключевые слова: холодная война, образ врага, антиамериканизм, кинематограф «оттепели», дегуманизация, регуманизация.
Цитирование. Рябов О. В. Враг с человеческим лицом? Регуманизация образов американцев в кинематографе «оттепели» // Вестник Волгоградского государственного университета. Серия 4, История. Регионо-ведение. Международные отношения. - 2024. - Т. 29, № 1. - С. 6-15. - (На англ. яз.). - DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.15688/ггоки4.2024.и
Introduction. Cooperation between the USSR and the USA in the field of culture, which had already resumed in 1955 [8], affected the transformation of the images of 'enemy number one'. In creating these images in 1940s and 1950s, Soviet and American cinema actively exploited the technique of dehumanization [12]. Dehumanization as a denial of humanness of representatives of out-groups is one of the most widespread and effective means of military propaganda, which is intended to eliminate a sense of pity for the rival and legitimize the destruction of human beings. Deconstruction of the images
of the enemy can be best expressed using the concept of rehumanization, the return of the human form to 'them'.
One of the most outstanding examples of rehumanization in the history of cinematic Cold War is considered to be Norman Jewison's film The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! It was released in 1966, but Jewison had been preparing it as a joint U.S.-USSR project since the early 1960s [14, pp. 238-240]. According to the plot, the Soviet submarine Octopus accidentally approached the island off the northeast coast of the USA so close that it ran
aground. A part of the crew went to the American territory to find a tugboat and remove the submarine from the shoal before the U.S. military noticed it. As a result of many adventures, when it almost came to an armed clash between the sailors and the inhabitants of the island, everything ended well, warm relations were established between them, and the Octopus went to sea. The film does not seek to convince the audience that Russians are the same humans as Americans but shows that they are also humans, with whom it is possible to negotiate the conditions of peaceful coexistence. They have the same basic values as U.S. citizens: they want to live; they therefore strive to prevent the outbreak of a nuclear war; they are able to love; they take care of children; and so on (for a detailed analysis of the film, see [11; 14]).
According to Nick Haslam's dual model of dehumanization, two forms of dehumanization are used: the animalistic and mechanistic ones. In the former, representatives of the out-group are declared to be coarse, uncultured, lacking in self-control, unintelligent, and deprived of moral sensibility and cognitive capacity [7, p. 254, 260]. The mechanistic form of dehumanization includes the denial that out-group representatives have agency, subjectivity, individuality, emotionality, inter-personal warmth, empathy, and flexible thinking [7, pp. 257-258]. In Jewison's film, the Soviets display such qualities as creativity of thought, humor, curiosity, fear of death, and religiosity. Mutual help and caring for each other distinguish them. The Soviets are shown to be quite well-mannered; some of them speak English. The image of love between a Soviet sailor and an American girl played the most important role in rehumanization [11]. In the USA, the main message of the film was perceived exactly in this way; a review published in the New York Times in 1966 noted that the film reveals 'the fundamental fact that, after all, Russians and Americans are basically human beings and, therefore, share basic human qualities' (quoted in: [14, p. 242]).
A reasonable question therefore arises as to whether rehumanization of 'enemy number one' was in the Soviet cinematic culture. Answering this question looks especially intriguing because images of 'enemy number one' produced by Soviet and American propaganda in the 1940-
1950s were characterized as 'mirror images' since the early 1960s [2]. The researchers of the Thaw films (e.g., [15; 22; 24]) note that in comparison with the Late Stalinist cinema, the essential changes occurred in the images of Soviet characters, which became more complex and multidimensional. As for transformations of the images of the USA, Yana Hashamova states, 'even in the films of the Thaw period, anti-American propaganda appropriates tendencies of Stalinist aesthetics' [6, p. 27]. We try to check to see if this really is.
Thus, the research objective is to analyze whether the images of Americans changed in the Thaw cinema. The first section of the article considers the specifics of the dehumanization of U.S. characters in the Soviet films of the 1940-1950s. Then, we examine how some Thaw films made attempts to deconstruct the images of 'enemy number one'. Finally, we discuss the opposition these attempts faced in Soviet cinematography.
The study is based on the analysis of the movies on which the cinematography worked in the 1960s. Among them are: Grigoriy Aleksandrov's Russian Souvenir (Russkiy suvenir, 1960); Aleksandr Alov and Vladimir Naumov's Peace to Him Who Enters (Mir vkhodyashchemu, 1961); Yuri Vyshinsky's Submarine (Podvodnaya lodka, 1962); Genrikh Gabay's Forty-Nine Days (Sorok devyat dney, 1962); Mark Donskoi's Hello Children! (Zdravstvuyte, deti!, 1962), as well as materials of the movie Meeting at a Far Meridian (Vstrecha na dalekom meridiane), which was never filmed; reviews in magazine Iskusstvo Kino; archival data of discussions on movies and their scenarios, which took place in film studios.
Specifics of dehumanization of 'enemy number one' in Soviet cinema. When comparing the Soviet cinematic images of 'enemy number one' with American ones, it should take into account, besides similarity, important differences. The essential trait of Soviet anti-Americanism was the idea of 'two Americas': a 'reactionary' and a 'progressive' one. The very essence of Soviet ideology - emphasizing class over the national principle and highlighting the contradictions within capitalist societies - called for images of not only 'bad Americans' but also 'good Americans', who included Communists,
workers, the 'champions of peace', African Americans, and common people.
The idea of 'two Americas' appeared in Konstantin Simonov's play The Russian Question (Russkiy vopros, 1946) (see detailed analysis of the emergence of this idea in [3, pp. 108-116]). Since then, the image of the 'Second', that is, progressive America, opposing the 'First', i.e., reactionary America, has become a mandatory requirement for showing the USA in Soviet art works of the 1940s and 1950s. This showed itself, for example, in the way the Agitprop reacted to the manuscript of the book by Ilya Ehrenburg, The Night of America. The Agitprop report to Mikhail Suslov, Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, informed him that a publishing house hesitated to publish the book because 'there wasn't the "Second America" in it' [5, p. 497]. 'Shortcoming of the book is lack of distinct border between U.S. simple people and its oppressors. Characterizing a contemporary American who lynches Negroes, yells about the Red menace, makes a business, and so on, I. Ehrenburg calls him "serial" and under this type describes, essentially, all American people throughout the book - in other words, a "serial" American is shown not in class treatment' [5, p. 497]2
It should be emphasized that the trope of 'good Americans' served as an integral and natural part of Soviet anti-Americanism. It helped to shape the image of the enemy by, first, showing that internal contradictions tore apart the USA and Americans were not united. Secondly, it demonstrated the correctness of the MarxistLeninist ideology with its class principle and prediction of the inevitability of the collapse of capitalism on a global scale. Thirdly, it contributed to forming the positive collective identity, Sovietness, which was built on the principles of internationalism (unlike U.S. society, which was accused of being built on national egoism and racism). Fourthly, it contributed to the legitimation of foreign policy by the Soviet authorities, which was supported not only by the Soviet people but also by all people of 'good will', including those in the USA.
In the context of our study, it is important that the 'good Americans' had all attributes of humanness: intellect, creativity, morality, emotionality, compassion, and the ability to love, friendship, and comradeship. However, in the Late
Stalinism films, their humanness was caused by their belonging to a certain social group, their sympathy for the USSR, or their communist or left-leaning beliefs. Besides that, the 'good Americans' images were shaped through a sort of symbolic Sovietization; their common feature was their similarity with Soviet characters. In other words, only one version of humanness, associated with the canon of the new Soviet man, was recognized, and the more an American character resembled exemplary Soviets, the more his or her image corresponded to the canon of humanness [12].
Deconstructing the image of the enemy in the Thaw cinema. Many Thaw films tried to present different images of Americans in terms of stated goals and the employed cinematic techniques. This is indicative that the first one among them was Russian Souvenir (1960), whose director Aleksandrov, the maître of Soviet cinema, had earlier shot the movies that bitterly criticized the vices of the American way of life: Circus (Tsirk, 1936) and Encounter at the Elbe (Vstrecha na Elbe, 1949). Russian Souvenir tells how a group of Western tourists, after their plane emergency landing in Siberia and experiencing a whole range of adventures, reach Moscow, becoming acquainted with the successes of the USSR in building communism. The production of the film was preceded by Aleksandrov's article in the Iskusstvo Kino in 1957, in which the director described the characters of the film and outlined its main goal: to show the 'possibility of peaceful coexistence of countries with different systems' [1, p. 55]. How were the American characters shown in this context? Aleksandrov defined the basic rule of one of them, millionaire Adlai Scott, as follows: 'Everything, including honor, consciousness, innocence, and love, is possible to buy. The only question is price' [1, p. 54]. However, having become acquainted with the Soviet way of life, Scott changes: he sees the outstanding achievements of the USSR in all spheres and recognizes that communism is defeating capitalism in the historical competition. While remaining a 'shark of capitalism', he turns out to be quite a nice and friendly person. Aleksandrov, apparently, sought to show that some of the representatives of the U.S. ruling circles were ready for constructive cooperation with the USSR in the name of peace.
The theme of romantic relations was intended to humanize more this idea of peaceful coexistence. A writer, Homer Johns, another U.S. character, falls in love with the main heroine, Varvara Komarova, whose image was conceived as an ideal Soviet woman. In response to his courtship, she says that their joint happiness is possible, but only if politicians are able to agree that the world should live in peace. The historical optimism of the Thaw was reflected in their hopes for a future without nuclear disasters; as it was stressed in the Russian Souvenir, it was in the interest of both the Soviet and American peoples.
These hopes for peace are clearly visible also in Gabai's Forty-Nine Days (1962), devoted to the story of what happened in the Pacific Fleet of the USSR in 1960. A severe storm carried four sailors to the ocean. For seven weeks, they had been struggling with the element before they were discovered and rescued by the crew of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier. This story, in itself unusual, completely corresponded to the tasks of ideological work, showing, on the one hand, the superiority of communist morality and, on the other, the benefits of peaceful coexistence with the USA.
The ideological message of the work was most clearly expressed in the following scene on the deck of the aircraft carrier: when an American seaman says admiring the brave four, 'The Russians are strong', in response he hears from one of the heroes, 'That is not the point. The matter is we were together all the time. Had I been alone I wouldn't have survived. But when all are for one - then everyone is stronger'. The American recognizes the rightness of Soviet collectivism and embraces the heroes, and, looking for the hugging seamen of the two countries, the ship's doctor notes: 'The political climate in our planet seems to be warmed up. That is good when soldiers do not shoot but help each other. That is good when humans recall that they are humans'. It is noteworthy that in the initial version of the literary scenario (1960), these words are said by the narrator, who apparently expressed the position of the film's authors [16, p. 87]. In the director scenario, prepared by Gabai in 1961, after Yuri Gagarin's flight, the narrator says in addition, 'We believe that this is only the beginning. We are humans of our common planet - the Earth. There are fewer of us on Earth than planets in the skies above us. And we are
stronger when we are together, when we live holding hands!' [17, p. 93].
Rehumanization of 'them' and shifting symbolic boundaries, as a result of which the belonging of Soviets and Americans to the humankind that unites them became the most important, is a distinctive trait of one more Thaw film, Vyshinsky's Submarine (1962). It tells about one day of the crew submarine of the U.S. Navy -April 12, 1961. Having heard the announcement about the first human space flight, most submariners feel happiness and pride for humankind. It is not so important that Gagarin is not an American; the essential is that he is a human. With the biggest sympathy, the film's authors showed not 'simple Americans', but the captain (though it would seem that the commander of the submarine with a nuclear weapon on board had to be an embodiment of 'American voenshchina'). Meanwhile, not only does he speak highly of the Soviet seamen, he also seeks to save his own carrier, seaman Temple, who received a fatal dose of radiation, even at the cost of a violation of the service regulations and his own risk. Images of other members of the crew are also humanized; they take care of each other. There is nothing like the 'law of the jungle', which underpinned social relations in the USA. The main evil is, rather, militarist psychosis, which could lead the world to nuclear disaster.
Let us note one more change that looks essential: now the audience saw among the positive characters those Americans who varied from exemplary Soviets. In this regard, special attention should be paid to the image of a driver, a soldier of the U.S. army, from Alov and Naumov's Peace to Him Who Enters (1961), who helps Soviet militaries rescue a pregnant German woman by taking her on a drive to a hospital in the last days of the war in May 1945. The directors made his image different from exemplary Soviet images and, apparently, made it intentionally. He speaks only English, and, in all probability, he was the first U.S. character in the Soviet Cold War cinema whose speech was not translated into Russian. The Soviet and American militaries do not understand foreign speech, but they understand each other because they discuss the problems that are essential for both of them.
Another detail of the driver's image is also hardly accidental: the cabin of his 'Studebaker' is
covered with pictures of pin-up girls. Meanwhile, in Soviet films, it was one of the symbols of the vulgarity of the American way of life - the decay of bourgeois culture, which cultivates basic, bestial instincts in humans [12].
Finally, the driver's image is remarkable because of his way of dancing. When, after the news that Germany capitulates and the war is over, all Soviet militaries start dancing, the American also begins to dance, and it is easy to recognize components of the Twist in his steps (and by that, he begins to resemble the images of stilyaga from the Soviet films of the 1950s and early 1960s [12]).
These features, however, do not prevent the American from being a reliable ally and a fearless warrior. However, the most important thing is that he shares the same values for which the Soviet soldiers are fighting: he, just like them, believes that a helpless woman needs to be helped by taking her to the hospital, even if she is a German woman, even risking his own life, and a newborn is just a baby, a little human being, whose salvation adults are obliged to take care of by all means.
The idea that all humans are the children of a common mother, the Earth, is carried out in Donskoy's 1962 film Hello Children!, the action of which takes place in the mid-1950s in the pioneer camp on the Black Sea coast, where children from many foreign countries come. The movie is also interesting as an example of using another form of rehumanization in Thaw cinema. According to the director, the film should serve as a call to create a world in which wars would be impossible in principle. Donskoy called war an unnatural state [19, p. 7] because the human being by nature was not inclined to aggression, contrary to the claims of bourgeois ideology. This original human goodness is noticeable in children most of all [19, p. 9].
In this regard, the image of the American boy Johnny, the central and most interesting character of the film, is indicative. At first, having arrived from the USA, he demonstrates those qualities that Soviet propaganda considers an integral part of the American way of life: racism, egoism, the cult of war, and the cult of violence. He comes, apparently, from a wealthy family, far from sympathizing with the politics of the USSR. However, later, Johnny becomes the most sympathetic among young foreigners and, in fact,
their leader. Fundamentally, this change is not due to the influence of the Soviet way of life or ideology. Rather, it is a return to a natural state, a consequence of a normal human reaction to what is happening around, compassion for a Japanese girl from Hiroshima, dying of radiation sickness, and the desire to save her. The conclusion that the viewer can draw is that all Americans are born kind people. Of course, the position on the influence of the social environment on a person does not contradict Marxist ideology. However, in regards to 'enemy number one', this idea has not been expressed clearly before3.
Therefore, in the conditions of the warming in USSR-USA relations, cinematic representations ofAmericans changed. Featuring humanness in U.S. characters becomes less dependent on political factors (the images of representatives of social groups, whom earlier the Soviet culture was not fond of, became humanized). Besides that, the audience saw among the positive characters those Americans who lived according to the norms of U.S. society and differed in many other respects from exemplary Soviets. Finally, recognition of the value of belonging to the humankind of both Soviet and American characters was accompanied by asserting the idea that human beings by nature were good, and this original human goodness was noticeable most of all in children, including American ones.
The limits of rehumanization. The references to humanity, to humanism, and to humankind were visible in showing U.S. characters, both in movie dialogues and in reviews of film critics, but this was not the only tendency; even during the Thaw, films imbued with the spirit of Soviet anti-Americanism continued to be screened. Here are some of them: Aleksandr Faintsimmer's Night without Mercy (Noch bez miloserdiya, 1961), Grigory Koltunov's The Black Seagull (Chernaya chayka, 1962), Mikhail Chiaureli's The General and Daisies (General i margaritki, 1963), Anatolii Karanovich'sMister Twister (1963), Roman Davydov's The Shareholders (Aktsionery, 1963) [12].
The ideological climate in the country gradually changed. It was influenced both by the domestic factors (struggle of various political groups within the party and cultural elites) as well as the external ones: difficulties in USSR-USA
relations, including the 1960 U-2 incident, construction of the Berlin Wall (1961), and the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), which compelled us to look at the prospects of international cooperation more soberly and to make necessary adjustments in cultural policy.
The dynamics of ideological confrontation in Soviet cinema are investigated in Josephine Woll's monograph. In her estimation, the autumn of 1962 was the period of the full blossoming of the climate of tolerance in Soviet culture [24, p. 106]. After Nikita Khrushchev visited the Manege exhibition, his meeting with the workers of literature and art (December 17, 1962) was organized, where the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Leonid Ilyichev, made a report and emphasized that peaceful coexistence between socialist ideology and the ideology of the bourgeois would not be tolerated.
In the context of our study, it is noteworthy that issues of humanism occupied one of the central places in the ideological discussions. For instance, Oktjabr magazine, the tribune of conservative circles of the cultural elite, indicted the authors of Peace to Him Who Enters for 'sentimentality' and 'false humanism' [24, p. 123] 4.
The CPSU Central Committee Plenum (June 1963) was devoted to the tasks of the ideological work; on its demands, the Iskusstvo Kino reacted with an editorial, in which the question on the danger of the 'abstract humanism' took a prominent place. The article noted: '...bourgeois views and tastes sometimes infiltrate the circles of the Soviet artistic intelligentsia and find expression... in forgetting the differences between abstract universal human humanism - deceptive and fruitless - and active, real revolutionary humanism' [9, p. 2]. Meanwhile, 'bitter experience of history proved: only revolutionary reconstruction of society brings victory to the good humanist principles; without it, the most humanist feelings are powerless' [9, p. 2]. That is why 'the revolutionary spirit of socialist art does not permit dissolution of our communist ideals in liberal chatter about humanism classless, apolitical, socially uncertain' [9, p. 3].
Criticism of 'abstract humanism' in ideology was accompanied by a tightening of demands for representing America in the art works (e.g., [24, p. 148]). The story of the film Meeting at a Far Meridian, an adaptation of Mitchell A. Wilson's
novel of the same title, became indicative of the struggle that was fought in the Soviet film community around the representations of 'us' and 'them'. The novel tells the story of two physicists, Nicholas Rennett and Dmitri Goncharov, who, working on the same problem in the field of atomic energy, join forces by helping each other. The film was conceived as one of the first joint Soviet-American film projects [13].
The April 25, 1964, discussion of Wilson's screenplay and the director's screenplay by Igor Talankin based on it is instructive in this regard. The conclusion of the script-editorial board stressed that Talankin's script 'proceeds from the principles and ideas of peaceful coexistence, which now form the basis of our international relations' [4, p. 8]. However, during the discussion, a lot of comments on the scenarios were made that provided insights into debates about how exactly 'us' and 'them' should be imaged on the screen in the condition of peaceful coexistence. Thus, according to one of the speakers, Talankin's script reflected 'idyllic impressions about America'; in particular, the director's categorical statements that 'America is a peace-loving country', that 'Americans do not want war', seemed to him 'overdone' [4, p. 16].
Even more criticism was aroused by Wilson's script, above all by the interpretations of the main characters it offered. One of the board members noted: 'The Americans obviously know what they want: in order to shade their hero, they must present our hero in a more primitive way' [10, p. 13]. Talankin's observation of Wilson's script is formulated as follows: '...there appears a wise reflective American, a complex and contradictory organization, who then helps a dull gray Russian peasant... All this, of course, was shown from the position of a White man...' [10, p. 11]. In estimation of Sergey Gerasimov, who was appointed a supervisor of the film, helping young director Talankin, Wilson contrasted the 'intellectual pathos of Rennet' and 'soldier's pathos of Goncharov', who followed the party's order to solve the major scientific task that had defensive value [10, p. 16]. In this context, Gerasimov's view on the casting is of special interest. The various candidates were considered for the roles of the main heroes; Goncharov's role was planned to give Innokenty Smoktunovsky, and Gregory Peck was one of the candidates for the role of his U.S.
vis-a-vis [13, p. 179]. So here, apparently, not by accident, attitudes toward Peck's candidature were changing; Gerasimov claimed: 'Gregory Peck is not what we need; Tony Perkins would be a completely different turn - this is a tragic story right away, and everything will be fine for Smoktunovsky' [10, p. 17].
Thus, the rehumanization of American characters had its limits. They could be portrayed with compassion (as victims of the capitalist system) or with understanding (since they were forced to behave in an inhumane society according to its requirements). However, the excuse of individuals did not mean justification for the system. The essential superiority of one social system over another and the historical doom of capitalism had not been questioned, and in the conditions of the ideological struggle, the overtures to the American way of life weakened the positions of the Soviet ideology both on the international scene and within the USSR. An overemphasis on the peacefulness of the USA led to diluting the image of the enemy; meanwhile, this image performed important functions, including legitimating power in the USSR.
In addition, 'abstract humanism', ignoring the class approach, questioned the key postulate of Marxist anthropology, according to which only transformation of the system of social relations can make a person more humane. Good, humane individuals are a product of humane society; departing from this postulate to a large extent belittles the orientation toward socialist reorganization of the world and devalues the feats of the building of communism.
Results. The remarkable tendency in the Soviet cinema of the late 1950s and early 1960s was the deconstruction of the image of 'enemy number one', first of all with the help of rehumanization. Humanizing the U.S. characters was achieved by endowing them with kindness, empathy, creativity, self-control, moral behavior, and ability to love, friendship, and comradeship. Besides that, the similarity of the basic values of 'us' and 'them' was emphasized. Then, the symbolic boundaries were shifting: belonging to the humankind of both Soviet and American characters was accentuated as the most valuable trait. Finally, the possibility of peaceful coexistence was demonstrated through mutual aid, cooperation, and the occurrence of friendly and romantic relations.
In the Soviet culture of the 1940s and 1950s, dehumanization of the enemy was based on the class principle; only socially and ideologically alien Americans were its target. Now, the in 1960s, the humanness of U.S. characters becomes less dependent on political factors: class-alien persons (even millionaires or highranking officers) are humanized; they do not criticize the American way of life, do not display admiration for USSR policy or Communist ideology, and differ in other respects from exemplary Soviets.
Finally, the cinema expressed the idea that human beings by nature were good, and this original human goodness was noticeable most of all in children, including American ones.
Rehumanization of 'enemy number one' had its limitations. That is, while accepting the idea of peaceful coexistence, the representatives of the Soviet controlling bodies had to keep their guard up and paid serious attention to exactly how 'us' and 'them' should be portrayed on the movie screen. Nevertheless, the study makes it possible to conclude that rehumanization of the enemy was characteristic of not only U. S. cinema of the 1960s but also of Soviet cinematography. Tony Shaw notes that 'the Soviet film industry produced nothing like an equivalent of The Russians Are Coming... during the 1960s, or, indeed, in any other period of the Cold War' [14, p. 243]. One can agree with this assessment when it comes to the films' artistic merits, financial success, or popularity. Besides that, the analyzed Soviet films did not doubt the USSR's superiority in respect of ideology (if the rivalry of communism and capitalism is put outside the brackets in The Russians Are Coming... in the Thaw cinema, Soviet characters were absolutely confident in the rightness of their system of values). However, in some respects of rehumanization, Soviet cinema went further than Jewison's comedy.
One more difference is that The Russians Are Coming... was the exception in the history of portraying Soviet characters in U.S. cinema. Shaw remarks that Hollywood did not really take a Cold War 'turn' at all in the 1960s but carried on plowing a similar furrow until the Eastern bloc imploded twenty years later [14, p. 247]; as for the Soviet cinema, it after the Thaw films never returned to showing Americans in the manner of the 1940s and 1950s.
Concluding the article, let's outline some perspectives on research on the topic. Above all, it is of interest to study the reaction of the Soviet audience to these changes in portraying the U.S. characters. This task is as important as it is difficult since it is hardly possible to ensure the representativeness of the sources for conclusions about the social views of the whole Soviet society. However, even individual facts may have scientific value.
Then, it would be curious to find evidence of these cinematic images' influence on those who participated in foreign policymaking, including in the sphere of USSR-USA relations. To what extent did they take the information that these films disseminated at face value?
Finally, a special subject of the study might be examining the humanization of the cinematic characters as a technique of making a more plausible and, hence, more effective image of the enemy that would correspond to the changed consciousness of the Soviet audience. This view was repeatedly expressed in critics' reviews and in discussions in the artistic councils of film studios. For instance, in a review of Aleksandr Faintsimmer's Night without Mercy (Noch bez miloserdiya, 1961), a film critic noted that its characters - pilots from the U.S. military base, where a provocation against the USSR with nuclear weapons was planned - were archaic and stressed that it would be far more convincing if they were "not manequines of bad guys, but really smart and cunning persons" and had "even a small movements of the soul and even tiny emotions" [23, p. 34]. In other words, representing the movie villains in a more humane manner can help to create a more effective and believable image of the enemy, amplifying the sense of danger. But this is also the subject of a separate study.
NOTES
1 The reported study was funded by RSF, Grant № 22-18-00305, https://rscf.ru/project/22-18-00305/ (Herzen University, Saint-Petersburg).
Представленное исследование выполнено при финансовой поддержке РНФ, грант № 22-1800305, https://rscf.ru/project/22-18-00305/ (РГПУ им. А.И. Герцена, Санкт-Петербург).
2 In fairness, Ehrenburg juxtaposed simple Americans and their oppressors in the introduction
and conclusion (e.g., [18, p. 4]). However, overall, the text gives the impression that it intends to describe Americans' national character as such. Its various sides are characterized through the titles of chapters, including 'Robots' (on the cult of machines turning Americans into its appendage), 'Baobabs' (on an extremely low level of culture and intellect), 'Nomads' (on a lack of sense of motherland), and so on.
3 At the same time, there is no kind of idealization of the USA in the film. Moreover, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima ('the slap in the face that the Americans inflicted on the humankind', according to a character, a French doctor) is evaluated as the most terrible event in world history. The director's particular indignation was due to the fact that, as he emphasized, 'to this day, Americans are proud that they dropped a bomb on Hiroshima' [20, p. 50].
4 Moreover, the point of view was frequently expressed that that kind of humanism, which glorified abstract humanism at the expense of class one, was designed to gain Western audience approval (e.g., [21, p. 40]).
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Information About the Author
Oleg V. Riabov, Doctor of Sciences (Philosophy), Professor, Leading Researcher, Herzen University, reki Moiki Emb., 48, 191186 Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation, [email protected], https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5944-9668
Информация об авторе
Олег Вячеславович Рябов, доктор философских наук, профессор, ведущий научный сотрудник, Российский государственный педагогический университет им. А.И. Герцена, наб. реки Мойки, 48, 191186 г. Санкт-Петербург, Российская Федерация, [email protected], https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5944-9668
