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New Babylon I
Posted 4th December 1999
Louis Blois writes: "Fay makes it clearthat the reasons for New Babylon'sultimate failure was a combination of political and musical difficulties. Fairand complete enough." I'm sorry tohave to disagree. lmost all of whatFay says about the "failure" of New
Babylon revolves around technicalproblems. !or has she eplored thecontet sufficiently deeply tocomment on the reported mismatch
between the artistic principles of F#$% &$ointsev and (rauberg's(heatre of the #ccentric ctor) andthe epectations of %oviet cinemaaudiences* let alone to reveal
anything of the political background* which* in +,-,* was tense andominous. %hostakovich* though*specifically cites political"interference" as a key factor: "y troubles on the political side began
with New Babylon... (he $I/0ommunist 1outh International2leaders decided that New Babylon
was counter3revolutionary." lthoughLaurel Fay declines to 4uote fromTestimony* she would neverthelesshave been wiser to deal with thispolitical "interference"* since ignoringit risks the suspicion that she hasdeliberately played it down.
5uoting this passage from Testimonyin +,,6 in 7%08 9ournal* 9ohn iley &the leading epert on %hostakovich'sfilm music) did not mi his words insaying that "the New Babylon affair
was one of several /similarflashpoints2 that pointed to a changein %oviet artistic life in the late +,-;sand early +,<;s as the avantgarde=proletarian split was forcedtogether and pushed down theproletarian path". Indeed* as iley reports it &7%08 9ournal + /%ummer+,,62. pp. <+3-)* "the New Babylonaffair" became something of apolitico3cultural cause celebre:"/$I2 denounced it as counter3revolutionary* though >> &ussian
ssociation of >roletarian ?riters)defended it* with leander Fadeyev'ssignature heading the letter. (here
were calls for a public debate &acommon way of addressing issues inthe +,-;s) and for its makers to beput on trial for '@eering at the heroicpages of revolutionary history and theFrench proletariat'." (hat is to say:some Leftist critics* havinginterpreted F#$%'s and%hostakovich's @utapositiontechni4ues as satirical attacks on the0ommunards &sacred ikons in %ovietmythology)* indignantly demanded
that the film's creative team bearrested and arraigned before a%oviet court. !ot surprising* then*
that %hostakovich in Testimonyrecalls* "things could have ended very
badly and I was only in my early twenties then". (his was* after all* thestart of the 0ultural evolution.
?ithin months* other artists would be similarly denounced and put ontrial in @ust this way.iley continues: "Factory workers to
whom / New Babylon2 was showndisagreed about its 4uality* andnewspaper opinions were divided*some urging their readers to see itand some calling for the makers to bepunished /sic2. (he level of hostility can be gauged from an article by
>avel >etrov3Bytov /"?hy ?e 8ave!o %oviet 0inema"* Zhizn Iskusstva*-+=6=-,2. New Babylon is mentionedrarely by name 33 />etrov3Bytov2prefers to speak of the poor generalstate of cinema 33 but it is obviousthat / New Babylon2 was the catalyst*and the article foreshadows many criticisms that would be made of artists in the following years.">etrov3Bytov wrote as follows: "I amnot denying the virtues of these films/ New Babylon* #isenstein's October*and others2. (he virtues do of courseeist and they are not negligible.Areat formal virtues. ?e must study
these films @ust as we study the bourgeois classics'." iley* however*observes that >etrov3Bytov nevertheless "subtly denounced/these films2 as irrelevant* or evenpositively harmful* to the revolution.etrogressive and possibly counterrevolutionary* /in >3B's view2 theironly 'virtue' was the possibility they gave of learning from their mistakes."
New Babylon was premiered @ust as%talin's proletarianisation campaign
was reaching its peak. t that time* to be denounced as "alien to the >eople"or "divorced from ordinary life" was*
by inference* to be condemned as"bourgeois" or tainted with the"depraved and unprincipled" valuesof !#>. >etrov3Bytov voiced @ust suchcriticisms: "(he people who make up%oviet cinema are ,C alien*aesthetes or unprincipled. Aenerally speaking none of them have any eperience of life." (here is no doubtthat* by this* he meant to attack*among others* F#$% and%hostakovich.iley notes: "/>etrov3Bytov's use of2the word 'alien' 33 and /his2 plea notto 'transform the ussian languageinto Babylonian' 33 echo theenophobia encouraged by /%talin's2
policy of %ocialism in Dne 0ountry./?ith2 %oviet life /becoming2increasingly seen in physical terms*
/the2 aestheticism and lack of eperience /of the film3makers whom>3B was attacking2 meant that they could have no role in the revolution."Dnly by a process of ideologicalrehabilitation could they be "re3generated" so that "their hearts/could2 beat in unison with themasses". ddressing his enemiesdirectly* >etrov3Bytov concluded: "Iam sorry* but you will not lead /themasses2 with Octobers and New
Babylons* if only because people donot want to watch these films." &(hatthis proved to be true was blamed by F#$% and %hostakovich on the
technical problems caused by latecuts enforced by the oscow filmcensorship committee* and by thehostility of cinema bands 33 which isall that Laurel Fay reports of this
whole "affair".)9ohn iley adds: "(his sort of criticism had been mounting for sometime and* though it was probably notorchestrated by the government* they certainly encouraged it. s early asay +,-6 %talin had noted that'(hings are going badly in the cinema.(he cinema is the greatest means of mass agitation. (he task is to take itinto our own hands.'" iley shrewdly
concludes &re the situation in +,-,)"%hostakovich must have seen what was happening and began to take anactive part in the productions of theLeningrad 1outh (heatre* whoseproletarian credentials were beyonddoubt. Ep to this point 'other work'had been his ecuse for doing no
work for them in two years* despite being on the musical staff* but thetime had come to buy some time andhe 4uickly knocked out music for acouple of frankly propagandist/"proletarian"2 plays..." /(hese wereThe Shot * Dpus -6* and Virgin Land *Dpus -.2
(hat Fay fails to address whatamounted to %hostakovich's firstclash with %talinist ideologicalaesthetics is* on the face of it* anothercase of misrepresentation by omission 33 the familiar methodology of anti3revisionism. llan 8o hasalready shown me her treatment of
rom !ewish olk "oetry* whichseems largely to repeat the evasionsand misrepresentations of her ill3starred New #ork Times article of +6th pril +,, &see my criticisms in
Shostakovich $econsidered * pp. G3H-;). I gather that Louis Blois has*
with admirable fairness* conceded
that Fay's conduct in this instance is4uestionable* to say the least. I shall
be interested to learn of his verdict on
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her treatment of "the New Babylonaffair" as reported by 9ohn iley in7%08 in +,,6 &and* in case shemissed it* again in 7%08 9ournal 6 in
?inter +,,).Indeed* to these two cases of ostensible misrepresentation* I mustadd a third 33 right opposite the
paragraph dealing with New Babylon* on p. +. (his concerns%hostakovich's net work* hisincidental score for ayakovsky'sThe Bedbug* which Fay describes as a"scathing satire of the new bourgeoisspirit" &i.e.* !epovshchina* the ethosof the !ew #conomic >olicy* or !#>).I wonder if she bothered to read thisplay If she did* she hasmisunderstood itJ if she did not* shehas presumably followed the
@udgements of earlier musicologists who accepted the disingenuous %ovietinterpretation. In fact* it's standard inayakovsky studies that The Bedbug
embodies not so much an attack on!epovshchina as an appearance of this designed to accommodate theepression of its author's re@ection of the increasingly coercive collectivismof the %oviet regime under %talin andhis Left proies. &#.g.* %ally Laird*Voices o% $ussian Literature /DE>*+,,,2* p. +,: "/ayakovsky2 becamedisillusioned with the development of the new regime* a scepticismepressed in satirical plays such asThe Bedbug. 7espair at the %talinistclamp3down on literary eperiment*compounded by personal difficulties*led to his suicide at the age of <H.") Infact* ayakovsky was hounded by >> for counter3revolutionismduring +,-,3<;. #ventually he @oined>> in a desperate effort to escapepersecution* but they would not leavehim alone and he shot himself threemonths later. (his persecution began
with the Left's furious reactionagainst The Bedbug. (he play* tomusical accompaniment by %hostakovich* can fairly be said tohave ultimately cost ayakovsky hislife.%ince Fay has presumably read my
book &+,,;)* she must have seen thepassage in it about the background toThe Bedbug &pp. G3;). The New
Shostakovich is out of print* so here itis:"/The Bedbug2 was the theatricaldebut of the legendary ayakovsky*
whose notorious willingness to placehis muse at the disposal of every
whim of %oviet propaganda musthave been* if nothing else* aphenomenon of pressing curiosity to%hostakovich. s a boy* %hostakovichhad* like most of his contemporaries*admired ayakovsky's pre3evolutionary verse. 8owever* thepoet's later role as a mouthpiece forthe 0entral 0ommittee had alienatedmuch of his audience and none more
than %hostakovich's literary friends* who no doubt let their feelingsconcerning the proposed
collaboration be known to him. &!or would their case have been difficult tomake. %ome of ayakovsky's work of this period resembles recruitingnotices for the A>E* and lines like'(hink = about the $omsomol...= reall of them = really = $omsomols =Dr are they = only = pretending to be'
were bringing vers libre intodisrepute.) n additional source of potential tension lay in the fact thatthe composer* as rising star of %ovietmusic* was poised to inherit thepoet's mantle as figurehead of %oviet
youth culture. Ender thesecircumstances* their meeting was
bound to be chilly.ayakovsky* whose musical taste wasrough and ready* appears to havetreated %hostakovich as a @umped3up
bourgeois poseur* which* whether ornot true at the time* was certainly aninstance of bickering amongst soiledkitchen utensils. (he dislike was
mutual and the description of ayakovsky given by the composer to Literary &azette in +, as 'a very gentle* pleasant* attentive person'appears to be one of his deadpan
@okes. &#ugene Lyons recalledayakovsky as 'a burly* bellowingfellow'* whilst to a #astman he was'a mighty and big3striding animal 33physically more like a prie3fighterthan a poet 33 and with a bold shoutand dominating wit and nerves of leather... probably the loudest andleast modulated thing and nearest tothe banging in of a cyclone thatpoetry ever produced'.) (he irony isthat* professional @ealousy aside* thetwo artists almost certainly hadsomething important in common:disaffection with the ruling regime.
?estern musicologists* who haveeither never read The Bedbug or areinsusceptible to its sarcasm* tend toaccept the line* fed them by %ovietcritics* that the play satirises the!#>men or 'grabbers' of the mid3(wenties private enterprise culture.(his is untrue. Like Dlesha* $atayev*and Ilf and >etrov* ayakovsky wasusing apparent satire on !#> as afront for satirising the government.(he poet's disillusion with0ommunism set in after his idealised
view of progress had foundered onfirst3hand ac4uaintance with itduring a visit to the industrialheartland of merica in +,-. By +,-,* his revulsion against thesoulless banality of the 0ollective was
bitter and 33 owing to hiscompensating interest in alcohol 33incautiously frank. (hough The
Bedbug uses the yurodivy techni4ueof voicing its criticisms through themouth of a buffoon &in this case* theayakovsky3like drunkard DlegBard)* they are open and becomesteadily more blatant as the play proceeds.
%hostakovich thought the piece 'fairly lousy' and few would disagree withhim. hasty* manic* and finally
insufferable farce* The Bedbug wasknocked out chiefly in the hope of earning its author enough foreignroyalties to pay for a sports car. Dnthe other hand* it is also* in parts* afunny and occasionally brilliantsatire* at least some of which musthave rung a reluctant chuckle from
the composer. &%erious* too. (hescene where the 'Kones of theFederation' block3vote on whether to'resurrect' the cryogenically3preserved hero >risypkin alludes tothe %oviet regime's liberal recourse tocapital punishment. '?e demandresurrection' chorus the conformistKones where* a few years before* they
would @ust as confidently havedemanded death.)7oing The Bedbug partly for themoney and partly to pleaseeyerhold* %hostakovich was himself too much the satirist not to haveknown eactly what ayakovsky was
saying and must therefore have still been sufficiently naive to imaginethat there would be no repercussionsto himself for having participated inthe pro@ect. If this is true* he was sooncured of his illusions. Dpening inoscow in February +,-,* The
Bedbug was attacked by the>roletkult for its form and by the$omsomol for its content.eyerhold's theatre was soon findingaudiences hard to come by and Leftactivists marked ayakovsky downfor special treatment. 8is passport
was confiscated and* within a year*they had hounded him to suicide.I must own that it pules me thatLaurel Fay should be content torecycle the old %oviet whitewashabout The Bedbug being an attack on!epovshchina 33 unless she has donethis to further reinforce the thesis&which she proposes with ichard(aruskin) that %hostakovich was anobly earnest "civic servant" who
became embittered in his old age&subse4uently turning to late musicaldissidence in works like the #ighth5uartet and the (hirteenth%ymphony).
Further to my post concerning Laurel
Fay's omission of the information, provided by John Riley in DSCH in
!!", about the political furoresurrounding the screenings of New
Babylon in #arch !$!, % &ould lie to
support (llan Ho in his vie& that Fay notonly disregards the politics of the state)
mandated Left's reaction against New
Babylon, but sets aside the aims of the
artists &ho made the film, prominentamong &hom, of course, &as Dmitri
Shostaovich* +his omission casts doubt
not only on her understanding of the man
&ho is nominally her subect, but also onher basic grasp of the politico)cultural
conte-t he &ored in*
+he creative organisation behind New Babylon &as F./S, the Factory of the
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.ccentric (ctor, founded in 0etrograd in!$$ by a group of young Je&ish artists
from the provinces, chief among them
being the subse1uent directors of New
Babylon2 3rigory /o4intsev 5b* !678and Leonid +rauberg 5b* !6$8* 9&ing to
the clash &ith the authorities in !$!
&hich caused the ban on New Babylon,
F./S and its &or for stage and screen&ere effectively erased from official
Soviet history, obliging :estern scholars
to piece together from available data&hat this turbulent group &as about*
Since doing so depends on understanding
the dynamics of cultural life in the ;SSR
of the !$6s 5and since, till recently, thetruth of this mythical 3olden (ge has
been difficult to discern through the soft
focus of nostalgia proected on it by
Soviet disinformation and the credulity of :estern arts pundits8, F./S has
remained an enigmatic body, rendered
more obscure by its apparent
contradictions*
For e-ample, /aterina Clar, in her !!7 boo Petersburg, Crucible of Cultural
Revolution, introduces F./S as <thecontemporary masters of parody< in early
!$6s 0etrograd2 <+he F./S members,
or F./Sy, &ere most representative of
=the blend of Russian revolutionaryculture &ith the Ja44 (ge> )) :esternism,
co)option of :estern lo&bro& culture,
(mericani4ation, a44, and a racy pace*
+hey &ere young )) they sa& the 3reat:ar as teenagers )) and they too these
trends to an e-treme*< :ith their
proclaimed enthusiasm for clo&ns,
acrobats and circuses, the F./Syinherited the pre) revolutionary shoc
tactics of #eyerhold as &ell as elementsfrom Radlov's 0eoples Comedy +heatre5&hich, Clar points out also called itself
<eccentric<8* She continues2 <+hey &ere
nevertheless careful to define themselves
as younger and more truly avant)gardethan such predecessors* %n this endeavor
they &ere oined by their #osco& friend
and ally, Sergei .isenstein 5some claim
that .isenstein's theory of montage &asreally first conceived by F./S8*** +he
F./Sy &ere more radical than .isenstein
and &ent &ell beyond him in the area of
epatage*<F./S revered (merica as the home of
.dison 5<as emblem of electricity and
inventor of the cinema<8, of stridentsounds, advertisements, and lo&bro&
culture, including a44, film thrillers, and
<0inertons< 5the pulp genre of the
detective novel8* <?et,< says Clar, <they&ere also fervent revolutionaries,
insisting that art be 'truly agitational,
entertaining, and eccentric'*< For her,
these u-tapositions are <a conundrum<2<%n some senses, F./S represents a sort
of 4any version of Constructivism ))
Dadaist Constructivism, if you &ill<*
=?et> the F./Sy did not, lie manyDadaists, <loo to the 'gratuitous gesture'
as a paradigm for =their> system)
confounding art@ though they too the
ideal of playful e-perimentation to ane-treme, they &ere also absolutely
serious about their pro)Soviet message*<
+he e-tent of the contradictions in
F./S's &or &hich Clar is struggling toreconcile is best illustrated by her
account of their staging of 3ogol's The
Marriage2
=+his production> affronted its audienceof !$$ &ith a cacophony of competing
sounds, flicering lights, and a confusion
and profusion of action on the stage*
Figures dressed in garish clothinge-changed shouts and reprises about
topical issues@ they sang couplets and
acted out strange pantomimes &ithdances and acrobatic feats* +he affianced
pair from 3ogol 5in conventional
theatrical guise8 &ere mi-ed in &ith
constructions moving about on &heels*+hen, in a flash, the bacdrop &as
changed into a screen on &hich &as
proected a clip of Charlie Chaplin
fleeing from the cops* (ctors dressed andmade up in the same &ay as those on the
screen burst onto the front of the stage to
act in parallel play &ith the movie* (
circus clo&n, shrieing ecstatically,
turned on a salto mortale right throughthe canvas of the bacdrop, &hile
<3ogol< bounced around on a platform&ith springs from &hich he &as
propelled to the ceiling* =op* cit* A6>
Solomon Bolov, in his fine study
Petersburg: A Cultural History 5!!8,describes the same production as follo&s2
+he poster had promised operetta,
melodrama, farce, film, circus, variety,
and grand guignol all in one* +he &holething &as called <( +ric in +hree (cts<
and /o4intsev and +rauberg &ere its
<engineers,< reecting the antediluvian
term <director*< +he characters in thisama4ing Marriage &ere (lbert .instein,
Charlie Chaplin, and three suitors &hocame on stage on roller sates2 robotsrunning on steam, electricity, and
radioactivity* +he latter e-plained,
<#arriage today is ridiculous* +he
husband a&ay, the &ife suffers* Radium,a ne& force, &ors at a distance* (
radioactive marriage is truly modern*<
+he outraged public, suspecting it &as
being moced, &ent &ild* /o4intsevcame out on stage and thaned the
shouting patrons <for a scandalous
reception of our scandalous &or<*
Bolov further describes F./S's unusualmethods and ideas2
+he action of The Marriage &as a
cascade of acrobatic trics, satiricalcouplets, tap dancing, fo-trot music, and
sound)and)light effects* +he performers
had to be specially trained, because no
one in Russia ne& ho& to do all thesethings* +he Factory of the .ccentric
(ctor prepared them in a marvelous old
to&n house &hose o&ner had fled to the
:est* Here seventeen) year)old/o4intsev and t&enty)year)old +rauberg
and their acolytes lived according to the
motto borro&ed from #ar +&ain, <%t's
better to be a young pup than an old birdof paradise*< =Here> is a description by
Sergei ?utevich, a leader of the early
F./S, of a visit by (nnenov, &ho &as
already a famous avant)garde artist anddirector, in a letter to .isenstein from
0etrograd2 <?uri (nnenov, a fine fello&,
oined 'eccentricity', and our respect for
him gre& &hen he came to see us instriped paamas 5blac and orange8, in
&hich he previously appeared in the
circus, riding on the bac of a doney*
esides &hich, he can do handstands, tapdance, and dra& smutty pictures* He
&anted to get in on an e-hibit of
eccentric posters and &e said ':ell, &ell,
&here &ere you beforeE'<*** F./S'se-perimentation resembled 5in some
cases outstripped8 the attempts by
#eyerhold and the early .isenstein* %n ahuge hall &ith marble figures in niches
along the &alls reflecting in a multitude
of mirrors, students dressed in
<fesosuits< )) &hite shirts and blac overalls &ith big breast pocets and &ide
shoulder straps )) bo-ed, tumbled, and
danced the fo-trot to piano
accompaniment* =op* cit* 6)$>%n the light of such accounts of
.ccentricity, as F./S called its o&n
artistic movement, it's no &onder that
/aterina Clar is pu44led by precisely
ho& this gang of seemingly completelyanarchic Russian dadaists related to
Soviet ideology and its high 5and almostentirely solemn8 Leninist idealism*
Bolov, &hile considerably more at home
&ith the 0etersburgian arts, having
intervie&ed so many of its latterday stars,is no more inclined to e-pound on the
subect of F./S's politics than Clar* He
does, though, refer to Lenfilm, the studio
to &hich /o4intsev and +rauberg &ereaffiliated, as <'a collective of committed
individualists', as it &as sometimes
called<* Go one &ho understands Soviet
cultural politics in the !$6s &ill havedifficulty decoding this phrase*
%ndividualism &as the credo of thoseindependent &riters of the period &hodistrusted Soviet collectivism and, in
various obli1ue &ays 5some not so
obli1ue, e*g*, amyatin's We8, &ored
against it in their novels and plays* :asthe eccentricity of F./S, then, no more
than an obstreperous and surreal <young
man's< individualismE %f so, can it be
true, as /aterina Clar suggests, thatthese &earers of fesosuits &ere
<absolutely serious about their pro)Soviet
message<E
Bolov's account of F./S arose from his
intervie&s &ith alanchine, &hose ballet
corps &ored &ith /o4intsev and+rauberg at F./S's 0etrograd HI*
+hough an e-pert on the Leningrad
dadaist group 9beriu 5(ssociation for
Real (rt8 &ho recognised F./S asfello& absurdists, Bolov laced other
information on F./S for the same reason
that most &riters have until recently2 the
Soviet documentary dearth on them* +hisis &here #are 0ytel 's boo New
Babylon: Trauberg, o!intsev,
"hosta#ovich 5.ccentric 0ress, !!!8,
recently announced on DSCH)L by JohnRiley, is important*
0ytel began researching F./S over
t&enty years ago &hile a student at the
Slade, maing it the subect of his !Athesis 5unpublished8* #eeting +rauberg
on several occasions, 0ytel subse1uently
researched everything ever published on
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F./S as &ell as translating the original!$$ F./S #anifesto and carrying on a
long and detailed proect to reconstruct
the original, pre)censorship cut of New
Babylon 5matching it, so far as possible,shot for shot &ith Shostaovich's score,
as F./S and the composer intended it8*
0ytel is in no doubt that individualism
&as the inner orientation of F./Sthroughout its film oeuvre
5not&ithstanding that, as +rauberg
acno&ledged, each film used anaesthetic method different from its
predecessor8* F./S's films, insists 0ytel,
&ere indeed <revolutionary<, but
certainly not in any collectivist or proletarian sense2
+o my mind, the three surviving F./S
period films focus on the sense of
revolution in the individual* ( humanist, pacifist sense pervades all three films*
Gone of their heroes or heroines ever
&in* %t's about ho& innocence and
vulnerability get hammered every time*
+he crucial difference bet&een themessage of the full length original New
Babylon and the last) minute re)edit&hich got premiered is that the former
loos and feels lie the t&o previous
F./S period films The Cloa# =!$> and
"$% =Soyu4 Beliogo Dela, or theSociety for the 3reat CauseK!$A>@ that
is2 a linear narrative &ith emphasis on the
personal* +he re)edit is something ain to
a 0roletult version of =.isenstein's>&ctober =lie&ise re)cut>* +his changes
the meaning of both the film and of
Shostaovich's music for it*
%t &ould be &rong to pre)empt 0ytel'sinterpretation of the original message of
New Babylon )) for that you should buyhis boo, &ith its accompanying <$7fpsreconstructed .uropean .-port edit<
video)transfer of the film itself )) but it's
true to say, from his &or on F./s and
his personal no&ledge of +rauberg, thathe believes New Babylon &as in no sense
a communist film, instead being
conceived, lie all of F./S's &or, as
<psychologically revolutionary<2 a call tothe individuality of each member of its
audience to a&ae, <real)i4e<, and thence
transform society in a &ay &hich the
merely political revolution of olshevismcould never do, even by totalitarian rule*
+he latter, of course, &as &hat Stalin
attempted &ith his <revolution fromabove< of !$!), the psychological by)
product of &hich &as to be the fully
<collectivi4ed< and <proletariani4ed<
Homo Sovieticus* +hough F./S &assuppressed in the first stages of Stalin's
revolution, it can be said to have
embodied a sort of <anticipatory
resistance< to Homo Sovieticus2 anattempt, by dropping artistic depth)
charges into the minds its audience, to
propel them into self)a&areness before
they became robotised by Stalinist terror and propaganda* 9n the other hand, it
&ould not do to idealise F./S, no matter
ho& bright and talented its members*
+hey &ere also young men in a time of a<revaluation of all values< 5G.0, !$)A8,
and as e-cited by the moral chaos this
induced as anyone else of their age* (t
least some of their &or &as done simplyto scandali4e, riotous epatage for the hell
of it* #are 0ytel2
:hen % ased +rauberg &hat &as the aim
of New Babylon, he told me2 <Scandal* %nthose days it &as very easy@ you ust
sho&ed &omen &ith big cleavages* ut
&hat &ored then is not necessarily &hat
&ould &or no&*< % later gave him a present of /enneth (nger's Hollywoo'
Babylon &ith Jayne #ansfield's rouged
nipples spilling out her dress on the cover 5first paperbac edition8* He ble& me a
iss from across the room* :hen %
sho&ed him my !A thesis manuscript
=on F./S>, he called me a <scholar<* Healso called me a <freebooter< after %
sho&ed him my &oring script of New
Babylon* % too it as a great compliment*
+hat's &hat F./S &ere2 <Freebooters*<+his, of course, &ill upset those &ho
accept the 3olden (ge version of the
Soviet !$6s in &hich all avant)garde
artists &ored earnestly for communism
and the olshevi revolution* Ho&ever,the fact is that this Soviet)generated myth
is no longer accepted in contemporarySoviet studies* #ost of the primary
research into Soviet history has been
done in the :est over the last thirty
years* 5For obvious reasons, suchresearch &as impossible &ithin the
Soviet ;nion until after c*!A*8 +he
volume of :estern Soviet studies is no&
vast and, in the !A6s generated a bitter &ar over statistical interpretation bet&een
revisionists and anti)revisionists
5signifying the e-act reverse of &hat
these labels mean in Shostaovichstudies8* During the !!6s, that &ar
simmered do&n and something of a spiritof co)operation ensued, partly broughtabout by the sheer profusion of primary
research materials available under
glasnost' and after the fall of the ;SSR*
9ne product of this rene&ed primary
research has been the documentary
demonstration of hitherto unsuspected
depths of popular socio)culturalautonomy and resistance to the Soviet
regime among peasants, &orers, and
intelligenty, e-tending through the &orst
period of Stalin's repressions in the later !6s 5e*g*, Sarah Davies' Po(ular
&(inion in "talin)s Russia, Sheila
Fit4patric's *very'ay "talinis+8* ut thereal bombshell dropped last year2
Bladimir rovin's Russia After enin:
Politics, Culture - "ociety, ./0.10/*
rovin's primary research on the !$6shas found that, far from the Soviet myth
of a people basically united behind <the
great 0arty of Lenin<, the olshevis
then occupied only the upper positions of po&er, &ere else&here thinly spread and,
as the decade progressed, found
themselves losing most of the support
they'd managed to muster, mostly fromthe proletariat, during the Civil :ar
5!A)$8* +he peasants &ould have
nothing to do &ith them, urban &orers
&ere either apathetic or divided across a political spectrum ranging from revived
SRK#enshevi groupings to varieties of
far)right nationalism, and the Russian
intelligentsia &as so fundamentallyalienated that, in !$)A, the 30;
reported that professors and students
across Russia &ere campaigning against
Communist candidates in local sovietelections*
rovin's chapter <+he /omsomol and
youth< is particularly remarable in its
documentary depiction of drunennessand cynicism among Soviet youth* Here's
part of his summing up2
+he gap bet&een the officialrepresentations of Soviet youth and
reality &as enormous* %nstead of
conscious proletarians building socialism
under party leadership, Soviet youthsho&ed hostility to G.0, denounced
miserable living conditions, and openly
attaced ine1uality, party privilege, and
lo& &ages* +he /omsomol as atransmission belt of Communist ideology
into urban &oring)class youth failed
dismally in the !$6s* Bery fe& &ere
inspired to become class)conscious
fighters for the party of Lenin* +he trend&as, in fact, in the opposite direction* %n
the realm of political ideas the/omsomol &as a breeding ground for
many <anti)Soviet< political and religious
associations*
+he !$6s sa& the revival of interest in populism, liberalism, #enshevism, and
religiosity* Dissident groups proliferated
and religious associations eclipsed the
official <transmission belt< in their popularity* #any espoused preudice
against Je&s and other ethnic minorities*
+he vast maority remained apolitical and
could not have cared less aboutsocialism* +hey craved entertainment, not
politics@ for voda, se-, and fo-trot rather than for Lenin or the (Cs of communism* (ttitudes to &omen &ere
anything but socialist* olshevi <ne&
morality< campaigns seem to have made
things &orse* Se-ual contact becamefreer and the family structure &eaer*
#ost youths &ere attracted to :estern
popular culture and music, ignoring
(gitprop's message and propaganda* %ntheir lifestyles, tastes, dress, and
aspirations, Soviet youth espoused
<bourgeois< values rather than some
ephemeral proletarian consciousness*Despite hundreds of thousands of rural
members, the /omsomol remained a
marginal force in the countryside* %tattracted only those &ho &anted to leave
and mae a career in administration
else&here* #oral standards alienated
&omen, and anti)religious campaignsoffended the rest of the rural community*
+he sheer numbers of young people
affiliated &ith religious congregations
and the 0easant ;nion d&arf the/omsomol's presence in the countryside*
+en years of ceaseless Communist
propaganda among the youth in the
conditions of a press monopoly,e-penditure of enormous financial
resources, and the absence of a legally
tolerated opposition failed to generate
enthusiasm or e-citement* =op* cit* $)>.verything in the F./S #anifesto is
consistent &ith the !$6s youth culture*
:hat they stood for &as &hat young
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people enoyed 5and vastly preferred toSoviet Communist propaganda82 Chaplin
movies, detective stories, clo&ns and
cardsharps, pop songs, fo-trots, funfairs,
fast cars, se-, free e-pression, and voda)) mi-ed &ith a dry dislie of the
business shars of G.0, the privileges
flaunted by the 0arty's place)men, the
persisting fact of slum housing, thedemand for greater productivity &ithout
&age rises, and the social programmes of
<positive discrimination< &hich sa&uneducated proletarians promoted over
the heads of those genuinely 1ualified to
occupy their posts* Lie most young
people, and most artistic groups of thatera, F./S resented the olshevi
usurpation of po&er* (s far as they &ere
concerned, the revolution belonged to the
people and should be 5a8 democratic and5b8 an ongoing carnival*
+his ethos encompassed revolutionary
conviction but not in any revolution
imposed and enforced from above* +his5!$)$A8 &as the only period in Soviet
history in &hich it &as possible to dra& adistinction bet&een <soviet< and
<communist<, even if that difference &as
delusory* %n trying to claim bac the
revolution for the people, certain youngradicals did dra& this distinction )) only
to collide &ith the 30; and /omsomol
a#tiv, &ho vie&ed such discrimination as
heretical and counter)revolutionary*:hen Stalin came to po&er in !$A, he
set about totalitariani4ing the Soviet
;nion, eradicating any lingering
sentimental distinction bet&een <soviet<and <communist<* +here &as to be only
one socialism2 olsheviKLeninistsocialism* Bladimir rovin sho&s thatthe olshevi party &as fighting for
survival* %t &as a 1uestion of crushing
politico)cultural pluralism or losing
control of the country* +his &hy Stalinordained the policy of proletarianisation
and encouraged the Cultural Revolution2
not ust to crush dissent in the
intelligentsia, but to end dissent across allclasses in general* Similarly, the
collectivisation campaign &as aimed at
destroying deeper dissent in the
countryside* 9ctober ! &as a coup&ithout any &idebased support* :hat
happened during !$!) &as, in effect,
a consolidating second 5totalitarian8revolution*
+he special interest for Shostaovich
students is that it's liely that the Cultural
Revolution itself, lie the later culturalconvulsions of ! and !"A, &as
spared by a &or involving
Shostaovich2 New Babylon* %ts title
reflecting both the sobri1uet of A6s0aris and the clamorous social and
ethical pluralism of the Soviet ;nion of
the mid)!$6s, the film e-plosively fused
the t&o genres Lenin considered the mostimportant in terms of propaganda2 film
and music* .mbodying the clash bet&een
free thought and &hat &e no& no& to
have been a fairly beleaguered olshevi government &hose polices &ere failing
and &hose credibility among the maority
of its citi4ens &as at roc bottom, New
Babylon &as caught in the crossfire at the precise moment at &hich Stalin too
political control* (s such, this film may
come to be seen as the inaugural event in
the cultural transition from G.0 pluralism to Stalin's <revolution from
above<*
/aterina Clar's idea that F./S &as
seriously <pro)Soviet< is either amisunderstanding of a distinction
bet&een pro)soviet and pro)communist
&hich &as current only in the !$6s )) or a complete misreading of F./S's
essential apoliticism* Called to endorse
0roletult demands for the
proletariani4ation of Soviet literature,+rauberg, speaing on st January !$!,
fired bac2 <Re)education is an absurdity*
:e don't endorse reading a series of
increasingly inferior hacs before readingthe classics*< Soon after this came the
cracdo&n, and free speech ended*
Ge&ly camouflaged as Soviet artists,
/o4intsev and +rauberg continued to
&or for Lenfilm )) <highly paid prostitutes<, as they ironically noted*
+rauberg had the last laugh, observing to+heodore Ban Houten during the !A6s
that his enemy 0etrov)ytov finished his
days in an asylum*
(s for Shostaovich, the New Babylon
affair begins to loo far more significant
in his career than hitherto* His score for
The Be'bug , &hile mostly composedafter New Babylon, &as premiered a
month earlier, and thus started the
succession of clashes he e-perienced
&ith the Leftists of the CulturalRevolution during the ne-t three years*
ut, perhaps because Stalin put moreemphasis on cinema than on theatre, thescandal over The Be'bug &as almost
immediately superseded by that attendant
on New Babylon* Follo&ing the Stalinist
<rule of t&o<, the film &as lined, as atarget of censure, &ith .isenstein's
&ctober * Later in !$!, amyatin's We
&as lie&ise paired &ith 0ilnya's
Mahogany, and, in !6, The Nose &ascoupled &ith Lev /nipper's The North
Win' * 9f course, The Nose &as as much
a reflection of !$6s Soviet youth culture
as New Babylon 5for e-ample,incorporating a prurient assault on a
&oman, this being one of the dominant
se-ual themes of the time2 rapes andgang)rapes &ere constant ne&s8* 0erhaps
no opera could have achieved the impact
of the <first< film)&ith)music@ in any
case, The Nose had to &ait nearly t&oyears to be performed )) &hereupon more
scandal ensued* Go surprise, then, that
Shostaovich slipped a&ay to the lac
Sea to dash off his +hird Symphony 5the1uicest)composed of all his symphonic
scores8* .arly in !$!, the times had
suddenly changed* He needed to tae
rapid evasive action*:hat's most striing about this ne& vie&
of New Babylon is Shostaovich's
relationship &ith F./S* +his
considerably sharpens our perception of him, reinforcing the contentions of those
then ac1uainted &ith him that he had no
serious interest in politics, and certainly
none in ideology* =See :itnesses for theDefence*> His opus list of the period 5as %
argued in The New "hosta#ovich and as
.li4abeth :ilson concurred in
"hosta#ovich: A ife Re+e+bere' 8 is,under a superficial appearance of Soviet
conformity, essentially individualist
5trending to&ards a more considered
form of dissidence in the mid)!6s8* +o udge by his attitude to e4ymensy's
verses and his o&n feelings e-pressed to
+anya 3liveno &hilst composing it =seeRecent Commentary>, Shostaovich
imbued his Second Symphony &ith no
genuine Soviet ardour* The Nose, Tahiti
Trot, New Babylon, The Be'bug )) all&ere individualist &ors, accordingly
attaced by olshevi critics, or their
Leftist cohorts* Shostaovich hated the
libretti for The 2ol'en Age and The Bolt ,neither of &hich he appears to have
thought much of as compositions* The
"hot, $irgin an' , and Rule, Britannia
&ere hac &ors noced out for +R(#
in order to gain bro&nie points &ith the proletarian groups* a'y Macbeth of
Mtsens# is arguably the most e-treme of all of Shostaovich's individualist pieces*
+hat leaves the +hird Symphony, &hich
is not hard to interpret as 5a8
opportunistic and 5b8 darly forebodingand pessimistic*
%ncidentally, Solomon Bolov, in "t
Petersburg , gives a clue as to ho&Shostaovich might originally have
become a&are of F./S* %n !$", the
Leningrad maga4ine Teatr published a
satirical attac on the impresario (imBolynsy* +his &asn't signed, but
everyone ne& the authors &ere/o4intsev and +rauberg* Shostaovich'so&n run)in &ith Bolynsy )) mentioned
in Testi+ony and :ilson's "hosta#ovich:
A ife Re+e+bere' 5p* 68 )) may have
dra&n his attention to F./S's satire onhis employer, a man he &as then about to
sue* He &ould also presumably have
approved F./S's membership of the
3ogol cult and enoyed their advertisedaddress2 <.ccentropolis 5formerly
0etrograd8*< John Riley 5in DSCH
Journal =Summer !!">, p* "8 records
a claim by /o4intsev that Shostaovichhad, during his time at the cinema piano,
accompanied F./S's third film The
%evil)s Wheel 5!$8* +rauberg thoughtnot, and it &ould have been very late in
Shostaovich's accompanying days*
5(part from being a funfair attraction, the
<devil's &heel< &as also a collo1uialreference to the life of disaffected Soviet
youth in the mid)!$6s2 listless and
underpaid at &or, bored &ith political
indoctrination, longing to get a&ay fromfactory or office to <polish< the street all
night, strolling, taling, drining, fighting
and fornicating before snatching a fe&
hours sleep, and bac to &or*8Laurel Fay's shallo& treatment of New
Babylon confirms &hat %'ve suspected2
she reads no Soviet history and has little
idea of &hat's been going on in Sovietscholarship over the last fifteen years* %n
effect, her boo seems to be an attempt to
turn the cloc bac in Shostaovich
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studies to !A )) before Testi+ony* Fe&music critics &ill grasp this, since most
of them no& no more history than she
does@ but, in time, &hat amounts to a
historical &hite&ash and a grotes1uelydistorted vie& of Shostaovich &ill
become more obvious*
--Ian MacDonald
G9+.* Bladimir rovin is G(+9
research fello&, adunct professor of
history, and scholar in residence at the(merican ;niversity, :ashington DC* (
colleague of Sheila Fit4patric and
Richard 0ipes, he is the author of The
Menshevi#s after &ctober: "ocialist &((osition an' the Rise of the Bolshevi#
%ictatorshi( 5Cornell ;0, !A8@ %ear
Co+ra'es 5Stanford, !!8@ Behin' the
3ront ines of the Civil War: Political Parties an' "ocial Move+ents in Russia
50rinceton ;0, !!"8@ The Bolshevi#s in
Russian "ociety: Revolution an' Civil
Wars 5?ale ;0, !!8@ Russia After
enin: Politics, Culture an' "ociety,./0.10/ 5Routledge, !!A8*
%n this third post on New Babylon, %'d lie
to tal about #are 0ytel's boo andvideo, and mae one or t&o further
suggestions about the bacground to the
film* +he last time % sa& New Babylon
&as in the version televised by C)$ onth January !A7* #y impression &as
much the same as the Ti+es revie&er's
51uoted by 0ytel, p* 7"82 <a virtuosic, if
highly propagandist, montage of fact andsymbol*< Having anticipated a
measurable alteration of emphasis in0ytel's reconstructed synchronisation of the film and music in the !$! .uropean
.-port .dit, % confess that, at first sight, %
retained my original impression*
/o4intsev and +rauberg's u-taposition of virtuous do&ntrodden &orers against
top)hatted bourgeois <bloodsucers<
5standard imagery in late !$6s Soviet
cinema8 seems too sustained, indeed toocrude, to be readily interpreted other&ise*
:hen, for e-ample, the melodramatically
do&ncast 0arisian &asher&omen per up
and start to scrub &ith beaming smiles because the Commune lets them &or for
themselves and not for <the bosses<, it's
difficult to discern any ironic intention*5Coarse hatred for <bosses< is the
standard fare of Communists, &ho,
naturally, al&ays leave themselves out of
it*8 9nly Shostaovich's music gainsaysthis initial impression )) often very
provocatively* ?et other evidence
suggests that something else is going on
&hich does not immediately meet theeye* (t the very least, there is reason to
thin that the story behind New Babylon
is pregnant &ith significance both for our
understanding of Soviet culture in the!$6s and for Shostaovich's role in it*
:hat is important to realise is that the
!$! .uropean .-port .dit 5used by0ytel for his synchronisation
reconstruction8 is the shortest e-tant
version of New Babylon, removing
around ten minutes of film from the3osfilmofond version approved by the
#osco& censorship board at the
beginning of !$!* 5+hese shots consist
mostly of female cleavage, come)hither e-pressions from prostitutes, and other
erotic images then unacceptable to
censors in France, ritain, and (merica*8
+he 3osfilmofond edit, in turn, is shorter by nearly a third of its length 5about
66m of film8 than the 3erman .-port
.dit 5Cinemate1ue Suisse8, &hich &assomeho& despatched to erlin before the
censorship process intervened* (nd even
the 3erman .-port .dit &as cut for its
local maret 5including a lopped ending8*Furthermore, the incarnation of the New
Babylon shooting script used for the pre)
censorship <3erman< version is itself a
substantial revision of the version of thescript approved by the Sovino board at
the beginning of !$A* %n other &ords,
the version of New Babylon &hich
appears in 0ytel's early !A6s video
reconstruction is at least three stagesremoved from /o4intsev and +rauberg's
!$ scenario*0ytel's boo contains many evocative
stills from the film, as &ell as some
posters, a fe& rare photographs of the
F./Sy themselves, a bibliography andfilmography, and a mass of information
on every aspect of New Babylon* (mong
this profusion of data &e find the curious
coincidence that the Commune's militaryleader, 3eneral Jarosla& Dombro&si,
&as aided in escaping a +sarist prison
camp 5to &hich he &as sent for his part in
the A 0olish ;prising8 by none other than Shostaovich's paternal grandfather,
olesla&* :hether this held any greatsignificance for the $)year)oldShostaovich is, for no&, impossible to
say, though he's sure to have no&n
about it, if only because it &as for this act
of 0olish nationalist solidarity that hisgrandfather and family &ere internally
e-iled to Siberia* 5Dombro&si plays no
part in the film, so the subect need not
have arisen*8(s a producerKdirector, 0ytel sho&s his
e-pertise in several &ays, some of them
subtly perceptive* For instance, among
citations of New Babylon &hich heunearths is an e-tract from 3raham
3reene's film ournalism published in
!A2+rauberg, the director of New Babylon,
that magnificent, ludicrous, and savage
version of the 0aris of A =***> has a
genius for legend* 9ne is sometimes stillhaunted on evenings of rain and despair
by the midinette of New Babylon &ith her
rain)soaed face and her ga&y body, her
e-pression of dumb simplicity andsurprise, as she plods painfully in her
o&n person through the stages of
evolution and dies &ith the first glimmer
of human intelligence*0ytel stresses that 3reene ac1uired this
impression from the .uropean .-port
.dit of New Babylon in &hich the central
portion of the frame &as 4oomed into andenlarged, thereby forfeiting
<appro-imately 7 of the film's screen
area<* +his distortion of the original
image, says 0ytel, creates a close)upnarrative <.isensteinian in its intensity<*
+hus &as 3reene's haunting memory
1uite unintentionally created*
:as 3raham 3reene nevertheless correct
in identifying the transformation
undergone by ?elena /u4mina's
character 5&ith its accompanyingsuggestion of an obective, critical stance
on the part of the directors of this
<ludicrous< film8E %f so, can thistransformation be addressed as an
instance of the <revolution in the
individual< to &hich 0ytel has referred in
attempting to isolate a unifying creativeaim in F./S's seven filmsE 9n the face
of it, this is a matter of opinion* Fe&
&ould lightly demur &ith the udgement
of so insightful a &riter as 3reene, evenif his conception &as arrived at from
vie&ing unintentionally intensified
cinematic images* 9n the other hand,
nearly all dramatic art involves change in
the protagonists, even if this amounts tolittle more than a rise in pulse)rate due to
physical e-ertion* /u4mina's character can certainly be said to realise the ghastly
truth of her situation, but it's a moot point
as to &hether this cocsure young
&oman &ould have modified her abrasive behaviour had she not perished
&hile maing her discovery* (t first
glance, the thrust of the film is that such
abrasiveness is the very stuff of revolutionary consciousness and &ill in
time prevail* Do not all surviving prints
of New Babylon perorate on the avenging
cry of Communard utopianism, <:e shallreturn<E
?es, acno&ledges #are 0ytel, but/o4intsev and +rauberg's original scriptended differently2 the soldier Jean digs
the grave of Louise 5the character,
subse1uently anonymous, played by
/u4mina8@ a photographer shouts <Striea poseM %'ll tae your picture for the
(lbum of Heroes<@ a sergeant pats Jean
on the shoulder and says <Don't &orry,
son, you'll get used to it<@ +H. .GD* )) (much darer, more do&nbeat conclusion*
For 0ytel, this indicates an entirely
different interpretation2
:ith this ending, the film is changed* Golonger an e-hortation for revenge, New
Babylon becomes an incitement to
mutiny and an e-ercise in sedition* +hefilm's message =is> no longer <:e shall
return< but the far more specific and
unspoen <Don't oin the army<*
+here is a certain ustification for this pacifist reading in the opening images of
the film, &here ingoism is lined,
satirically, &ith decadent eroticism and
business interests* +he trouble &ith this isthat there &as no pacifist conte-t in
contemporary Soviet Russia* +rue, there
&as a &ar scare in the ;SSR during !$
5offering Stalin a conte-t for his finalmoves to&ards supreme po&er8 and there
&ere constant popular rumours during
!$)! that Russia's enemies &ere about
to invade and that the Soviet government&ould thereupon collapse*** but there &as
no Russian anti)&ar movement* (t the
very most, the original ending of New
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Babylon can be described as bitter andcynical )) 1uite subversive enough in the
Soviet conte-t* 5.ndings &ere a perennial
issue for Soviet arts &atchdogs* +he
fundamental proposition of SovietCommunist doctrine &as that society &as
advancing to&ards the <radiant heights<
of the <final victory of Socialism<2
pessimism &as counter)revolutionary andendings had to be upbeat* (ccordingly,
ulgaov's play The %ays of the Turbins
had its ambiguous ending changed intosomething more acceptable to Russia's
ne& rulers in !$@ nor are musical
instances of this syndrome hard to
adduce*8 Gevertheless, in dra&ing attention to the
evolution of the script of New Babylon,
0ytel raises a ey 1uestion2 ho& did the
original script 5described by +rauberg in!A" as <a real love story, an e-cellent
melodramatic scenario lie "4$4%4<8
become the stylish but schematically
propagandist final &orE (s a film)
maer, 0ytel's main interest is in F./Sand its opus of seven cinematic features2
The A'ventures of &ctiabrina 5!$"8, Mich#a $ersus 5'enich 5!$78, The
%evil)s Wheel 5!$8, The Cloa# 5!$8,
ittle Brother 5!$8, "4$4%4, The "ociety
for the 2reat Cause 5!$A8, and New Babylon 5!$!8* 9ne of his upcoming
proects &ill be a history of F./S,
incorporating an account of ho& their
aims and methods changed, from thedadaist anarchy of their stage production
of The Marriage 5!$$8 to New Babylon
&ith its evolution from melodramatic
love story to melodramatic <historical< propaganda during the course of its
maing* :e shall have to &ait for the fullstory, but #are has mean&hile given mesome clues as to F./S's creative
evolution &hich cast light on the curious
conceptual transitions behind New
Babylon*
F./S began in a mocing spirit, treating
Soviet institutions as subects for obli1ue
satire 5as in the contemporary &or of .hrenburg, ulgaov, and oshcheno8*
(ccording to the first study of F./S
5Gedobrovo, !$A8, the group's no& lost
debut film The A'ventures of &ctiabrinafeatured a surreal se1uence in &hich
aviators &ho hadn't oined 9DBF
5Boluntary Share (ssociation for (ssisting the Development of (viation8
&ere thro&n out of an aeroplane* 50ytel2
<a satire on the fairly &ell)no&n !$
Rodcheno Dobrolet poster*<8 ( cameldeclines to assist these unfortunates
because they don't eat caes baed by the
state monopoly@ a tractor regards them as
enemies because they're opposed to the<alliance< bet&een city and village@ and
so on* Similarly, the finale of The %evil)s
Wheel contains an e-hortation to turn the
guns of the cruiser Aurora once moreagainst Leningrad )) this time in order to
demolish its slum tenements 5&hich the
Soviet government had done nothing
about during nine years in office8*+hereafter, says 0ytel, F./S's angle
shifts2
The Cloa# is more Formalist in structurethan New Babylon, using mirror)images
and levels of filmic dream subectivity*
"4$4%4 is more linear and uses different
photographic te-tures* The Cloa# contains no politics, but has a gentle anti)
bureaucratic slant and loos &ith horror
at parade)ground punishments* +he
scenario of "4$4%4 deals sympathetically&ith the failed uprising of the
Decembrists in A$7* Geither film,
though, is intensely propagandist* +here'sno didacticism in them*
F./S's focus, insists 0ytel, remained
<humanist, pacifist< in these films, a trait
still visible in the final version of New Babylon* #oreover, the group's interest
in individuals )) as opposed to the
contemporary 0roletult emphasis on
<mass< representations 5choral songs,corps dances, spectacles, etc8 )) persisted
into the original script for New Babylon,
&ith its intricate love story and sub)plots*
/o4intsev 5The %ee( "creen, #osco&,
!@ i*e*, under Soviet constraint8 spoeas follo&s of the development of the
script for New Babylon2%n Assault on the Heavens 5the first
version of the scenario8, various episodes
of the subect &ere elaborated across
numerous pages* Little by little, &e lostour taste for the labyrinthine comple-ities
of the plot*** ( social generali4ation
appeared*** a collective portrait of the
epoch interested us infinitely more* +he pages of the scenario d&indled, to be
replaced by the <uni1ue musical thrust<
of the era, a dynamic fresco*
+his passage, 1uoted by 0ytel, bears thehallmars of Soviet reportage rather than
the actual &ords of /o4intsev himself*+he phrase <the 'uni1ue musical thrust' of the era< is Soviet officialese, analogous
to the phrase <the rhythm and pace of the
Revolution< ascribed to Lev (rnshtam in
the article that appears on pp* $6)$ of .li4abeth :ilson's "hosta#ovich: A ife
Re+e+bere' * Such vague politico)
aesthetic formulae, inherited from
0roletult te-ts of the !$6s, &ere asmuch a refle-ive feature of official
discourse throughout the Soviet period as
the notorious <stormy applause rising to
an ovation< 5customarily said of thereceptions <given< to the speeches made
by 0olitburo figures8* Sometimes such
routine locutions &ere used byintervie&ers or their subects to alert
readers to the presence of opinions
&hich, o&ing to Soviet censorship, could
only be e-pressed by means of their mirror opposites* Hence, /o4intsev
could, in fact, have been hinting that
F./S, &hile developing the scenario of
New Babylon, &as obliged by official pressure to give up its artistic focus on
individual psychology and turn to the
collectivist ethos then being promoted by
R(00, R(0#, and the /omsomol*9n the other hand, +rauberg 5speaing to
+heodore Ban Houten in #osco& in
!A"8, ascribed the change of direction in
the New Babylon scenario to his vie&ingof Bsevolod 0udovin's The *n' of "t
Petersburg in December !$2 <% called
/o4intsev and told him that something
had happened &hich &ould change allour plans and that &e couldn't &or
according to our scenario*< Seeing The
*n' of "t Petersburg &ith +rauberg and
0udovin in erlin in early #arch !$A,/o4intsev supposedly agreed &ith his
colleague's vie& and the original scenario
&as dumped in favour of the one no&
most fully preserved in the 3erman.-port .dit* ?et speaing to Gatasha
Gusinova in !!6, +rauberg seemed
rather less confident and adopted adistinctly opa1ue line of argument2
:hat &ill be difficult for me &ill be
1uestions regarding the F./S movement
itself, because from a certain point 5this point began around the middle of maing
New Babylon8 &e follo&ed the path of
treason* :hat do % mean by thatE
=#ihail> Romm says that &e dideverything &e &ere ordered to* ut this
&as not because &e &ere mere
bootlicers, that &e &anted to get one up
on anyone, or ust &anted to mae
money* :e sincerely thought that, in theSoviet interest, it &as right to do this or
that*%t's unclear ho& far old scores are being
settled here 5&ith respect to Romm8 )) or
&hether +rauberg's evasive obscurity
indicates a compromise he &ished toavoid taling about, even si-ty)one years
later* 5He never emigrated from the
Soviet ;nion and so, in old age,
remained at the mercy of the state, unablefreely to spea his mind*8 %t is, in fact,
more than possible that he and /o4intsev
had been pressured by the Soviet
authorities*
Lie Lenin, Stalin sa& cinema as a vitalarm of revolutionary e-pression and, in!$", urged that the film industry be
placed under direct 0arty control* During
!$, Soviet cinema &as mandated to
produce films in celebration of the tenthanniversary of the 9ctober Revolution*
(mong these &ere The *n' of "t
Petersburg by 0udovin, .sfir Shub's
propagandist documentaries The 3all of the Ro+anov %ynasty and The 2reat
Way, and .isenstein's &ctober * +he latter
film, made &ith the participation of the
Soviet armed forces, &as four hours long&hen delivered in Govember !$*
Stalin, though, had ust ousted +rotsy, so
a third of the print had to be cut toremove references to him* Furthermore,
.isenstein had used &ctober to
e-periment &ith <intellectual< montage ))
a step for&ard from the theories of histeacher, Lev /uleshov, &hose ideas on
montage &ere predicated solely on visual
or emotional associations 5the so)called
</uleshov effect<8* .isenstein, though,&anted to &or &ith ideational
associations 5&hat &e no& call
Conceptual (rt8* +his ne& approach,
lined &ith the theories of the Formalistgroup of literary critics, &as too much for
Stalin's ideological &atchdogs and the
proletarian art groups &ho, together,
attaced &ctober for <Formalist e-cess<5intellectual <elitism<, <bourgeois
aestheticism<8*
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Stalin, &ho ept up &ith Soviet arts5e-cept for painting8 but &hose favourite
genre &as film, decided that the ;SSR's
cinema intelligentsia re1uired reform*
During 7)$ #arch !$A, the 0artyconvened a conference on film &hich,
among other things, produced a
resolution signed by .isenstein,
0udovin, ?utevich, /o4intsev,+rauberg, and others, &hich called for
<the forming of an organ directly under
the Central Committee's (gitprop section&hich &ill present producers &ith
comprehensive tass of a political and
cultural nature< )) in effect, a
recommendation for the removal of film planning from 3lavrepertom 5State
Repertoire Committee8 and the placing of
all such control in the hands of the 0arty*
Go doubt this call for ideologicaldictatorship in the film industry &as itself
dictated to the signatory directors, &ho
had no choice but to add their autographs*
5( formal end to semi)independence in
the Soviet film industry follo&ed in !$!&hen Stalin removed Sovino from the
aegis of the Commissariat for .nlightenment, renaming it Soyu4ino,
and placing it under the control of the
Socialist Realist bureaucrat oris
Shumyatsy*8+hose in the Soviet film industry &ould
have been a&are of this change in the
&eather from as early as December !$*
?et there &as no possibility of overt protest against the <proletarianisation< of
their art@ indeed, for public purposes,
they &ere obliged to conform &ith the
&ay in &hich such issues &ere presented by the 0arty* /o4intsev and +rauberg's
references to The *n' of "t Petersburg may be evasions of this sort 5or possiblyeven (esopian statements, 0udovin
having &arned them of the coming
cracdo&n8* Certainly they &ere not at
liberty to say, in so many &ords, &hat&as almost certainly the truth2 that 0arty)
deputed &atchdogs had overruled the
original, Sovino)approved, scenario for
New Babylon, informing them that theycould un it completely or re&rite it on
propagandist lines*
%f, in #arch !$A, /o4intsev and+rauberg had been given direct orders to
<proletarianise< New Babylon, setting
them on <the path of treason< 5treason totheir o&n artistic principles8, they could
only have confided this in private*
%ndeed, they seem to have done ust this,
to udge from a statement by .isensteinmade soon after the !$A Conference2
<F./S can tell you a funny story about
ho& and &hy the 0aris Commune &as
accepted, reected and then acceptedagain* +here &as no&here they could go
and complain*< (s for the horse's mouth,
there is very obviously something
(esopian being <signalled< in the ointstatement made by /o4intsev and
+rauberg in the December !$A issue of
"ovets#ii *#ran 5given as (fter&ord % in
0ytel's boo82:e have been ased to communicate
some of &hat &e no& about the
modernity of our picture* ;nfortunately
the modernity of New Babylon is asnothing to us* #odernity is ust a name***
+his is also unfortunate* +he film &as
originally to be called Assault on the
Heavens@ a name reected as tooindefinite and unconvincing* +hen &e
&anted its name to be a Canaille =the
mob, the vulgar rabble@ also2 rogue,
rascal>2 regrettably that, too, &as reectedas being too inflammatory and too
convincing =***> :e no& nothing else
e-cept that the thematic plan of New Babylon definitely means that =it> is in
the <historical)revolutionary< genre* ut
&e can't tal about this theme nor about
the message of the film, even if it &ere possible=***> :e are surprised at the late
realisation of something unnoticed at the
time of release of The Cloa# or that of
"4$4%4 9ur film &ould have been lieneither of these, but at first our faces
&ere found to be a little too alarming to
interested vie&ers* +herefore &e have no
time to &rite or spea )) rushing to
assemble the film because &e thirst tono& and &ant to see the reels of the
film New Babylon* =(ct of the film isreproduced in the same issue of "ovets#ii
*#ran*>
+hese virtually uncoded lines suggest
that the authors, being under constraint,&ished to urge a special alertness among
vie&ers &ith respect to their film, and
that the particular point at issue involved
both <outside interference< and a hiddenagenda in the &or itself* #are 0ytel,
&hose family is 0olish and &ho thus has
(esopian blood in his veins, is convinced
of such a hidden agenda, partly on the basis of pure instinct but also on the
rational grounds that Formalist theory 5asimported into F./S by the &riter andcritic ?uri +ynianov, scenarist for TheCloa# and "4$4%48 indicates not only
consistent use of double meaning but also
historical double)images, i*e*, using onehistorical event as an analogy for another
recent or contemporary one 5as Lev
Lebedinsy, among others, claimed of
!7 in respect of Shostaovich's.leventh Symphony, The 6ear ./788*
0ytel2 <% have al&ays thought that New
Babylon carries a strong subte-t about
contemporary Soviet society, vi4*, theFirst :orld :ar, the mutiny of the
Russian troops, the revolution, etc*<
5(nother possible candidate &ould be the/ronstadt ;prising of !$, &hich, as a
barometer of anti)olshevi unrest
throughout the country follo&ing the
Civil :ar, prompted Lenin to decree the Ge& .conomic 0olicy as a palliative to
allo& the national economy to recover
and let off some social steam*8 :hat &e
can be fairly sure of is that, &hen/o4intsev and +rauberg &rite <:e no&
nothing else e-cept that the thematic plan
of New Babylon definitely means that =it>
is in the 'historical)revolutionary' genre<,they mean that their film is definitely
G9+ merely <historical< but also
contemporary*
+here is little evidence of such seditious
intent in the filmic side of New Babylon
as it survives in the t&ice)cut .uropean
.-port .dit* +he character of theJournalist, played by Sergei 3erassimov,
is made up to resemble a young Lenin
5cf* 3erassimov as #edo- from "4$4% on
0ytel, p*A8* His visible shoc at thefailure of the Commune, of &hich he is
represented as the rather smug
ideological convener, might perhaps be
construed as subversive* Some other facets of the film are lie&ise open to
speculative interpretation* +he main
visual impression, though, ismelodramatically propagandist*
+he only aspect of New Babylon &hich
systematically casts doubt on the surface
impression of the film is Shostaovich'smusic* Ho& far 0ytel's synchronisation of
music and image is dependable is
unclear* +he full)length film,
appro-imated by the 3erman .-port.dit, runs about $6 minutes longer than
the .uropean .-port .dit used by him for
his e-perimental reconstruction 5made in
(bbey Road, !A8* He has detailed cue
notes and is satisfied that the structuralrelationships of music and image in this
video are <fairly accurate<* 59n the other hand, he has also made a video rough)cut
reconstruction of the full length film,
assembling frames from the .uropean,
3erman, and 3osfilmofond versions andusing music from the !A7 C
broadcast2 <asically it fits lie a hand
and glove*<8
:ithout a definitive full)lengthsynchronisation it's hard to mae secure
inferences about Shostaovich's intent in
respect of specific u-tapositions* His
stipulations about proection speeds51uoted and e-plained by 0ytel8 indicate
that he &as concerned to preserve hissynchronisation structure in some detail,especially at ey transitions* (s for the
theory behind his imageKmusic
u-tapositions, he 5defensivelyE8
e-plained some of his intentions in"ovets#ii *#ran in #arch !$!2
%n composing the music for Babylon, %
&as led least of all by the principle of
obligatory illustration of each shot*.ssentially % started from the principal
shot in each se1uence* For e-ample2 at
the end of the second reel* +he principal
movement is the attac on 0aris by the3erman cavalry* ( deserted restaurant
closes this section* ( deep silence* ut,
despite the absence of the 3ermancavalry on the screen, the music of the
cavalry persists, reminding the vie&er of
the terrible force that has been unleashed*
%t is the same &ith the music for theseventh act, &hen the soldier stumbles
into a restaurant full of bourgeois in the
throes of hilarity after the Commune has
been crushed* +he music, despite thegaiety &hich reigns over the restaurant,
taes on the sombre sentiments of the
soldier &ho is searching for his
s&eetheart, condemned to death*% also constructed a great deal on the
principal of contrasts* For e-ample, the
soldier &ho meets his love on the
barricades is filled &ith despair* +hemusic becomes more and more cheerful
and is finally resolved in a giddy and
<obscene< &alt4 reflecting the Bersaillais
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army victory over the Communards* (ninteresting process is used in the opening
of the fourth reel* :hile rehearsals for an
operetta are being sho&n, the music
performs variations on a &ell)no&n<galop< &hich taes on different nuances
in relation to the action* Sometimes a gay
mood, sometimes bored, sometimes
terrifying*Shostaovich's techni1ue of u-taposition
contradicted the approach he'd been
obliged to use during his years as acinema accompanist, &here his
5improvised8 music &as e-pected to
complement, if not further <illustrate<,
the images* (s such, he may have brought his o&n disruptive ideas to the
commission for New Babylon* ?et the
F./S team seems to have conceived this
novel approach before Shostaovich became involved* Reflecting, under
conditions of constraint in Russia in
!, /o4intsev spoe as follo&s2
9ur ideas coincided* %n those years, film
music &as used to strengthen theemotions of reality or, to use the current
terminology, to illustrate the frame* :eimmediately came to an agreement &ith
the composer that the music &ould be
lined to the inner meaning and not to the
e-ternal action, that it should develop bycutting across events, and as the
antithesis of the mood of a specific scene*
9ur general principle &as not to
illustrate, and not to complement or coincide on this point*
+he most e-treme instance of
<antithetical< synchronisation 5and one of
the fe& such u-tapositions of &hich &ecan be certain8 occurs in the ostensibly
tragic final scenes &here +he Soldier digshis lover's grave and the Communardsdie by firing)s1uad in a gloomy
do&npour of rain* +his is set to a
mutation of 9ffenbach's can)can,
segueing into the burles1ue circus march&ith &hich the score commences* +he
contrast here is too violently
confrontational to have been missed by
New Babylon's audiences* .ven if Leftactivists had not obected to the
<personalisation< of the film's subect)
matter 5the individual love story of Jean
and Louise, as they &ere called in thefirst draft8, they could scarcely have
avoided being outraged by the
imageKmusic u-tapositions of the finale*%ndeed, this contrast remains shocing
today and it is no surprise that proletarian
and /omsomol voices &ere soon
accusing F./S and Shostaovich of <eering at the heroic pages of
revolutionary history and the French
proletariat<* +o the Left of the time, this
apparently bra4en insult to canonicalrevolutionary principles must have been
highly offensive* %t's less pu44ling that
/%# should have attaced the film than
that its maers managed to survive theensuing furore at all*
:hat &as /%# and &hy did it adopt the
<vanguard< role in attacing New BabylonE +he Communist ?outh
%nternational 5/%#8 &as one of a cluster
of organisations affiliated &ith
Comintern in #osco&* 59thers includedthe +rade ;nion %nternational, the
0easant %nternational, the %nternational
Labour Relief Committee, and so forth8*
Comintern itself &as founded by Lenin in#arch !! to sideline his rivals 5<social
traitors<8 in the Second %nternational, its
ob being to fund and coordinate the
activities of communist and socialist parties abroad* ;ntil !$, Comintern
represented the core of olshevi
internationalism* %n !$7, ho&ever,Stalin had staed his political future on
the policy of Socialism in 9ne Country
5simultaneously calculated to save
resources for building up the ;SSR andto give him a platform from &hich to
oust his main <internationalist< enemies2
+rotsy and the head of Comintern,
inoviev8* uharin replaced inoviev ashead of Comintern in !$ but, under
Stalin's orders, the organisation &as
already being penetrated by the 930;*
%n !$A, Stalin ordained a shift in
Comintern policy from so)called <unitedfront< internationalism to one of
polarised isolation* Foreign socialdemocratic parties &ere denounced as
<social fascists< and, under #ihail
#osvin 5#eer +rilisser8, Comintern's
role s&itched to subversion of all foreign parties not under 930; control* 5Stalin
mean&hile steadily purged Comintern of
9ld olshevi intellectuals until finally
terminating it in !"*8/%#'s function &as to organise and
control communist youth associations
abroad* Little has been &ritten about
/%# and &e can only speculate as to ho&it came to be used to denounce New
Babylon* 3iven that Comintern and itsaffiliates &ere being purged and broughtunder Stalin's control in !$A, the year in
&hich New Babylon &as being shot
abroad, /%#'s interest in the film can
hardly have been coincidental* Sinceforeign communist youth organisations
&ere prime targets for Soviet propaganda
cinema, /%# very probably shared some
responsibility for vetting ne& films*Conceivably, a fe& /%# delegates sat on
the #osco& film censorship board@
e1ually conceivably, since cinema &as
very much a young person's medium5+rauberg &as $6 and /o4intsev at the
time of the F./S manifesto8, /%#'s
/omsomol activists might have beendeputed to eep a special &atch on Soviet
cinema in general* ;nder Stalin's internal
reform of Comintern during !$A)! 5and
in vie& of the strictures on the cinemaindustry laid do&n at the 0arty
conference on film in #arch !$A8,
/%#'s spying eyes &ould have been
especially sharp and censorious*(s for ho& the 3erman .-port .dit of
New Babylon, &ith its e-tra t&enty
minutes of pre)censorship footage,
managed to get out of Russia in late!$A, that, too, &ould probably have
been via a sub)operation of Comintern*
/%# may have been involved 5they
&ould not, then, have heardShostaovich's score in conunction &ith
the film8@ but a lielier route &as the
e-port side of #e4hropohmfilm Russ, the
Comintern)controlled #osco& filmcompany &hich distributed the &or of
0udovin, D4iga Bertov, and (lesandr
Dov4heno* +his company &as part of
the net&or run by :illi #Nn4enberg, aComintern agent &ho, from erlin,
organised the clandestine operations to
recruit :estern Leftist intellectuals
5<fello& travellers<8* 0rometheus Films,the 3erman distribution company for
Soviet films, &as also #Nn4enberg)
o&ned )) the channel through &hich.isenstein's films &ere e-ported to the
:est or sent to left&ing student groups
5i*e*, it &as lined to /%#8* +rauberg's
brother %lya, himself a director, happenedto &or for ;F( in erlin, &here the
creators of New Babylon stopped off on
their &ay to 0aris, ostensibly to see
0udovin's The *n' of "t Petersburg *;F('s studio, courtesy of cash)inections
by 0aramount and #3#, &as very &ell)
e1uipped and advanced in the coming
development of soundtracs* #are 0ytel
thins the idea of an orchestral score for New Babylon may have sprung from
&hat /o4intsev and +rauberg sa& at;F(2 that their final intention &as to
record their envisaged score to
soundtrac* 5%lya +rauberg &as then
shooting Blue *9(ress &ith a score byHonegger* He subse1uently made a disc)
soundtrac version &ith music by :illi
#Nn4enberg's in)house composer
.dmund #eisel*8
So much, then, for the /%# connection ))
e-cept to add that there is a possibility
that Bolov misheard Shostaovich, &homight actually have been referring to
/.# 5.-perimental Cinema :orshop8,a censorious left)&ing productioncollective organised in Leningrad in !$"
by the feared 30; officer turned film
director Fridrih .rmler* ut &hat &as
the imageKmusic u-taposition techni1ue,&hich so annoyed /%# 5or /.#8,
originally intended to conveyE +he fact
that /o4intsev and +rauberg found that
their ideas <coincided< &ith those of Shostaovich presumably means that it
&asn't a matter of mere anarchic
irresponsibility or misudgement on the
part of the $)year)old composer* +heyagreed together &hat &as re1uired and
Shostaovich gave them &hat they
&anted* +here must therefore have been aconceptual basis for the choice* :as this
concept purely aesthetic or in some &ay
politicalE
+he nearest thing to pure aesthetics in!$6s Russia &as the Formalist literary
school, centred on the theoretical
&ritings of Bitor Shlovsy, oris
.ihenbaum, and ?uri +ynianov*+ynianov &as head of scenarios for
F./S during !$), scripting The
Cloa# and co)scripting "4$4% &ith ?uri
9sman* 9f the first of these, DmitryShlapentoh and Bladimir Shlapentoh
&rite2
(nother e-cellent e-ample of a movie
brimming &ith hints of the oppressivenature of the Soviet regime* +he very fact
that &ell)no&n &riter %urii +ynianov
&rote the script demonstrated that the
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movie had an oppositional politicalvie&point* +ynianov's dislie of the
regime &as &ell no&n* His &ritings
often dealt &ith the era of Gicholas % ))
an era characterised by bureaucratisation,regimentation, and brutal repression*
During this time, not only &as real
political protest suppressed but even the
most innocent deviation from the prescribed &ay of thining &as enough
to invite disaster*
+hese characteristics of the reign of Gicholas % &ere also prevalent during the
G.0 period* Lie the tsarist regime, this
&as a time of intense bureaucratisation of
Soviet life* (dditionally, as in Gicholas'stime, the Soviet government allo&ed a
certain degree of freedom for those
engaged in purely economic activity* 9n
the other hand, it &as suspicious of intellectuals, especially freethining
&riters* 3iven its parallels &ith the
Soviet G.0 period, the reign of Gicholas
% provided e-cellent allegorical material*
%t &as also open to attac because the period &as officially designated as
having been reactionary***+he use of 3ogol's theme &as additional
protection for +ynianov and the movie's
directors against criticism for portraying
the life of a cler, &ho &as a petty bourgeois and deserved neither attention
nor sympathy* %n the film, the cler &as
formerly a part of the state bureaucratic
machinery but had become alienatedfrom it and victimi4ed by it* +he
leviathan confronting the cler not only
represented the bureaucratic machinery
itself, but, together &ith all aspects of lifein the city, represented a cruel and
repressive regime* +he entire movie &asinfused &ith an air of irrationality thatemphasised the omnipresent bureaucratic
regime as poisoning society* From this
perspective, the movie follo&ed the
familiar anti)olshevi theme of therevolutionary period that vie&ed the
olshevi victory as the ultimate victory
of the forces of evil*
+he director=s> too a very fatalisticapproach, implying that any attempt to
change the e-isting order &as doomed
and &ould ultimately result in the
subugation of the individual and thecreation of an all)embracing bureaucracy*
+o compound this pessimistic vie&, the
film also implied that any attempt by theindividual to absorb him) or herself in
private life, or see solace in family ties,
&as also doomed to failure* %t is clear that
the director=s> sa& no hope for humanity*=Soviet Cinematography !A)!!2
ideological conflict and social reality
5(ldine de 3ruyter, G?, !!8, pp* 7)*>
+ynianov left F./S before New Babylon&as originated, becoming head of the
cinema department of the %nstitute of the
History of (rts in Leningrad* #are
0ytel sees elements of +ynianov'sFormalist ideas in his t&o F./S
scenarios and identifies similar structural
concepts 5e*g*, mirror)symmetry of
<acts<8 in the mostly uncut 3erman.-port .dit of New Babylon* Could the
shoc effect of the musical mirror)
symmetry at the beginning and end of the
film have resulted from blindly follo&ing+ynianov's ideasE +his is unliely )) if
only because, &hile Formalism might
seem purely aesthetic to :estern readers,
in Soviet Russia its principles of <defamiliarisation< 5Shlovsy8 and
multiple voices or <heteroglossia<
5ahtin8 &ere innately opposed to
monopolistic ideology and certainlyagainst totalitarianism*
Formalism inescapably stood in a political relationship &ith olshevi rule*
+he Jaobson)+ynianov theses of !$A,
no& important to postmodern literary
theorists, &ere dra&n up by RomanJaobson and ?uri +ynianov partly in
defence of a movement &hich &as about
to be proscribed under the Cultural
Revolution* +here is, then, no chance thatF./S and Shostaovich could have
follo&ed +ynianov's precepts in New
Babylon &ithout an a&areness of their
political conse1uences* Shostaovich,
according to Bolov 5"t Petersburg , p*A!8, read +ynianov <avidly<, importing
aspects of the critic's &or on 3ogol intohis treatment of The Nose 5and later,
perhaps, becoming a&are of the poet
/iuhelbeer through +ynianov's
iu#hlia: The Tale &f A %ece+brist 8*Lie&ise, %van Sollertinsy, a friend of
ahtin, introduced Shostaovich to the
critic's Proble+s of %ostoyevs#y and
dre& his attention to the presence, in The Nose, of ahtin's <carnival< principle*
During the late !$6s, Formalism
flourished in Leningrad's underground
intellectual circles, including those of theindividualist ethos )) and Shostaovich
and F./S &ere part of this*+he 1uestion arises2 ho& could people asintelligent as /o4intsev, +rauberg, and
Shostaovich )) &ith their often even
more brilliant colleagues among the
Leningrad arts intelligentsia looing, as it&ere, over their shoulders )) possibly
have been serious about the propaganda
aspect of New BabylonE +hat the
proletarianisation of Soviet culture hadcommenced early in !$A could not have
been lost on such astute minds* %t &as
clear by late #arch of that year, &ith the
0arty conference on film, that things&ere on the turn* %n #osco&, the
proletarian 9tyabr 3roup, &hich
included the film directors Sergei.isenstein and .sfir Shub, issued its
manifesto in the #arch issue of
"ovre+ennaya ar#hite#tura2
=+he purpose of 9tyabr> is to unite themost advanced production)artists =sic> in
the fields of architecture, industrial art,
film)maing, photography, painting,
graphics, and sculpture, &ho &ish todevote their creative efforts to the
concrete demands of the proletariat in the
&or of ideological propaganda, and in
the production and shaping of thecollectivist &ay*
+he 9tyabr #anifesto &ent on to
castigate individualism as mere bourgeois
aesthetic elitism &hich <canonises the old&ay of life and saps the energy and
depresses the &ill of the culturally under)
developed proletariat<* +here &ere,
among Russia's artistic avant)garde, morethan a fe& &ho vaguely incorporated
&hat they understood to be <#ar-ism<
into their &or and tried, if only for a
&hile, to &or &ith the Soviet bureaucracy 5rather than, surreptitiously,
against it, as those of both the
progressive and retrogressive
individualist type did8* ut appearancescould be as deceptive as the times &ere,
to some, confusing* #any &ho signed
proletarian)collectivist declarations 5andeven, lie Shostaovich &ith +R(#,
&ored for organisations that operated
&ithin the proletarian ethos8 &ere
ambivalent or even franly cynical aboutideology in art*
.isenstein's anecdote concerning the
vicissitudes of F./S's Communescenario sho&s that he &as one such*
(nother, (drian 0iotrovsy, &ho &ored
&ith both F./S 5the scenario for The
%evil)s Wheel 8 and +R(# 5the (gitprop
play Rule Britannia &ith music byShostaovich8, &as e1ually hard to pin
do&n* ( leading classical scholar, henevertheless put himself at the service of
the olshevi arts bureaucracy in !$6,
deploring petty entrepreneurialism and
middlebro& taste 5he &as himself ahighbro&8 and issuing the slogan <Let the
theatres be empty, let the philistines stay
at homeM<* +his &as not far from the
F./S manifesto of !$$ 5e-cept that, being young and disposed to annoy
aesthetes by embracing popular vulgarity,
the F./Sy &elcomed the culture of the
caf; chantant &hich offended men of 0iotrovsy's cultivated bacground8*
Seeing to imbue the ne& revolutionaryculture &ith the (ncient 3ree democratic spirit, 0iotrovsy must have
sensed defeat &hen Stalin too over* %n
the turnaround month of #arch !$A, he
commented in <hi!n) is#usstva on the<proletarian< edit of .isenstein's &ctober
5already cut before screening on Stalin's
orders82
+here can only be one conclusion* :or on &ctober cannot be considered
finished* :e have a second version of the
film on our screens no&* %t differs greatly
from the first version, &hich &as sho&nduring the 6th anniversary celebrations*
(nd this is both good and bad* Go& &e
have a right to as for and e-pect yetanother version of &ctober or, more
correctly, several ne& versions*
3iven that 0iotrovsy prostrated his
sophistication before the promise of therevolution 5or at least his vision of its
promise8, is not the absurdity of this
statement of an order arringly
incommensurate &ith a man of hisintelligenceE :ithin the imperium of the
Communist &orld 5(bsurdistan, as it &as
referred to by certain of its inhabitants8,
absurdity &as at once a naturallyoccurring phenomenon and a subect for
the deliberately contrived artifice of
irony* :e have a choice2 either
0iotrovsy &as, in phases, an idiot@ or, onoccasion, he &as sufficiently intelligent
to be able to mimic idiocy for special
effect* 5+here is a third possibility, of
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course2 that he &as mad* :ith tragicirony, he does seem to have gone mad in
prison soon after his arrest in !A*8
+he totalitarian environment offers a
heightened version of the philosophical proposition that one can never really
no& &ho anyone else is )) and our
dilemma in the case of 0iotrovsy is
typical in this respect* 0robability, basedon conte-t, is all that removes such
dilemmas from pure abstraction* %n this
case, the fact of 0iotrovsy's highintellectual gifts, taen together &ith the
ambiguity of his manoeuvring bet&een a
company lie F./S and a company lie
+R(#, suggest that the absurdity of hisre1uest for endless multiple <remi-es< of
.isenstein's &ctober &as 1uite
deliberately calculated* Far from obvious
to all &ho read it, the (esopian absurdityof 0iotrovsy's statement &ould have had
a ready alibi2 the fact that contemporary
proletarian arts ideology advocated
<endless revolution<, a notion &hich, in
an aesthetic rather than a political sense,&as also part of Formalist theory*
50iotrovsy also had lins &ithFormalism*8 %f challenged, depending on
the company, he &ould have a perfect
defence*
Such straightfaced absurdism &as
absolutely integral to &hat, in Soviet
Russia, &as called (esopian discourse
and &hich, as such, has often beenreferred to as form of yuro'stvo* 5Cf*
Shostaovich's notorious observations on
the length and yet also the shortness of
certain aspects of his +enth Symphony*89ften :estern critics tae this sort of
thing at face)value, accepting deliberatelyridiculous statements under politicalconstraint as representative of the real
vie&s of those &ho made them* 5%n a
nutshell, it is this problem &hich bedevils
so much :estern &ould)be evaluation of Shostaovich*8 ?et &e only have to delve
a little into the details of individualist
intellectual life in Russia to see that the
people maing such seemingly ridiculousor self)contradictory statements &ere
often highly intelligent* +ae ?uri
+ynianov, a man among &hose <anti)
olshevi allusions< is the satirical story ieutenant i=e and &hose various
boos, according to Giolai Chuovsy,
<appeared every fe& years =and> &ereread by the intelligentsia eagerly and
an-iously< 5Bolov, op* cit*, pp* A)A8*
%s this a man )) close to F./S and
respected by the young Shostaovich ))&ho could have fallen for propagandistic
art as operatically e-aggerated as that of
New BabylonE (nd are /o4intsev and
+rauberg )) the authors of the barelyencoded announcement reproduced
above from the December !$A issue of
"ovets#ii *#ran )) any more liely to
have done soE (s for Shostaovich, he&as the composer of an opera &hich
Leningrad Formalists had &elcomed, in
terms of its aesthetics, as one of their
o&n*Conte-tual no&ledge, even of this
provisional sort, together &ith reasonable
deduction, leads us ine-orably to the
logical conclusion that either there ismore to the filmic aspect of New Babylon
than meets the eye, or that its ra&
propagandism &as largely forced upon
F./S by a proletarian intervention 5or avisit by the 30;8 during the same month,
#arch !$A, &hich produced the 0arty
conference on film, the 9tyabr
manifesto, and the ambiguous utteranceof 0iotrovsy concerning the infinite
editability of .isenstein's &ctober * Since
neither /o4intsev nor +rauberg ever leftRussia, it is hardly surprising that they
&ere reluctant, after !$A)!, to say
anything about New Babylon &hich
might have indicated other e-planationsfor its metamorphoses* %n !$A,
+rauberg's &ife &as pregnant &ith their
daughter Gatalya 5no& no&n for her
Russian translations of 0* 3* :odehouse8@as a family man, he had no choice but to
nucle under* Later, of course, he
suffered during the anti)Semitic
campaign of !"A)7 )) in itself enough
to e-plain his evasive pronouncements of later years 5e*g*, the <3hent Statement<,
reproduced as (fter&ord %% in 0ytel's boo, &here +rauberg stics firmly to the
line that the e-tra footage in the 3erman
version is illegitimate8*
Self)published, #are 0ytel's boo is not
perfect, lacing the supervising hand of
an editor, the long)stop of a proof)reader,
and, most vital, an inde-* +echnicalglitches aside, this boo is visually
elegant 5courtesy of Clifford Harper's
design8 and is valuable in itself for the
&ay it opens up cultural areas so far littleaddressed 5and there's plenty more to
come8* %t's also valuable to students of Shostaovich in dra&ing attention to thedeeper surroundings of New Babylon,
and the effects &hich understanding this
bacground may have upon our grasp of
the &or itself* 9ne may not agree &ith0ytel's estimate of New Babylon as <a
leading e-ample of libertarian art rarely
seen in any media let alone in national
state cinema<, but one is left deprived of the superficial response of dismissing his
claim outright by the fact that his &or
discloses, in passing, that perhaps nine)
tenths of the Shostaovich story is yet to be revealed* 50ytel, for e-ample, is one of
the fe& people outside the !6s ;SSR
to have seen Alone, Shostaovich's ne-tfilm &ith post)F./S /o4intsev and
+rauberg* He reports its opening reels as
satirising the nascent Socialist Realist
aesthetic*8+here remains the 1uestion of &hat
Shostaovich, together &ith /o4intsev
and +rauberg, intended to effect &ith his
score for New Babylon* %t is, for e-ample,a fair assumption that he &ould have
been a&are of the &ider politico)cultural
hiatus of #arch !$A and of its effects on
the New Babylon proect in particular*5For the First (ll);nion 0arty
Conference on Cinema, see Richard
+aylor, The Politics of the "oviet Cine+a
./.>1./0/, =publ* !!>@ Richard +aylor and %an Christie, The 3il+ 3actory:
Russian an' "oviet Cine+a in
%ocu+ents, .?/@1.// =publ* !AA>*8
Returning, finally, to Laurel Fay, % hope
%'ve sho&n &hy it's so e-traordinary that,
during t&enty years of access to primary
Soviet research material, she has never bothered to loo into &hy /%# chose to
attac New Babylon, let alone to
investigate the &ider culture and politics
of the mid)!$6s or to probe theintellectual company Shostaovich ept
during that time* %nstead, she has chosen
to pursue her conviction 5in the face of personal testimonies to the contrary from
those &ho ne& him8 that Shostaovich
&as a communist throughout this period*
%n her essay <Shostaovich as #an and#yth< 5in the boolet for the Chicago
Symphony 9rchestra concerts of June
!!!8, Fay declares that <there is no
reason to doubt the sincerity of Shostaovich's political or aesthetic
convictions =in !$)>* He &as not an
elitist composer* He &as a patriot &ith a
deep commitment to his people and
culture=***> endeavouring to create a progressive ne& art necessary and
appropriate to the ne& socialist reality*<5+he elementary mistae of confusing
patriotism &ith Soviet orthodo-y is
astonishing in !!!*8 Fay goes on2 <+hat
art did not e-clude overt propaganda@ for the clima-es of his Second and +hird
symphonies, Shostaovich used a chorus
to deliver stirring idealistic te-ts*<
%t is Laurel Fay's prerogative to ignore&hatever documentary material she
&ishes* %t is ours to udge her conclusions
accordingly* +ae, for instance, her
assertion that, in his Second Symphony5!$8, Shostaovich, out of <sincere
political convictions<, used the <overtly propagandistic< verse of (le-ander e4ymensy in the service of <a
progressive ne& art necessary and
appropriate to the ne& socialist reality<*
Ho& can this be s1uared &ithShostaovich's admission, in his
contemporary letters to +atyana
3liveno, that he &rote the Symphony in
haste, became <tired of occupying=him>self< &ith it, and thought
e4ymensy's 5supposedly <stirring,
idealistic<8 poem so <abominable< that he
feared he'd be unable to set itE :e arefurther entitled to en1uire ho& Fay
reconciles her claim &ith the fact that
3liveno told .li4abeth :ilson in !A!that Shostaovich had considered
e4ymensy's propaganda verses <1uite
disgusting<, and that Giolai #alo, &ho
conducted the premiere, recalled that<Shostaovich did not lie
=e4ymensy's verses> and simply
laughed at them@ his setting did not tae
them seriously, and sho&ed noenthusiasm &hatever<* :here is the
stirring, idealistic political sincerity of
&hich Fay speasE 5(nd &hy does she
tal in Communist argon2 <a progressivene& art necessary and appropriate to the
ne& socialist reality<E8
(s those &ho've studied the unfolding of
the documentary record on Shostaovichduring the !!6s &ill be a&are, the case
of the propaganda poem in his Second
Symphony is merely part of an e-tensive
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se1uence of evidence &hich indicates aconclusion about his <political< beliefs
1uite contrary to Fay's assumption*
%ndeed, .li4abeth :ilson comes to
precisely that contrary conclusion in her narrative for "hosta#ovich: A ife
Re+e+bere' , &here Shostaovich is
sho&n as evading or simping his
musico)political responsibilities&herever he could* :hy, then )) aside
from her decision to ignore 5i*e*, not even
try to e-plain a&ay8 testimony in conflict&ith her preudice )) does Fay reach a
conclusion about Shostaovich's beliefs
in !$) diametrically opposed to that
of her <close friend< :ilson 5DSCHJournal !, p*"!8E % &ould suggest that it's
because she lacs the deeper
understanding of the bacground to this
period &hich &ould lead her to )) at thevery least )) lend some consideration to
the aforementioned contrary evidence
&hich :ilson has fully accepted* +he
e-ample of New Babylon is merely oneindication of the lac of depth in Fay's
approach*
--Ian MacDonald
G* % &ish to clarify my statement, made
in my second post on New Babylon, that
#are 0ytel met Leonid +rauberg <onseveral occasions<* +he preface to his
boo states that he and +rauberg began a
<brief< correspondence in ! and met
<for a fe& hours< in !A* %n fact, thesefe& hours too the form of three separate
encounters spread throughout one &ee,
during &hich +rauberg called him a
<friend< and, referring to 0ytel'smanuscript thesis on F./S of !A, told
him, <if anyone ass you about it, tell
them +rauberg has seen it and gives it hisfull authorisation<*