Цензура в кино в период Советского Союза

It might seem to be quite a simple task to separate a harmful publication from a «good» one taking in account only ideological reasons. A censor had to be aware of the political platform of an author and his loyalty towards the Soviet Union and Communist Party. In case of political or economical publications it was true. In case of fiction, poetry, or art it appeared to be much more difficult for censors to judge.
The access to the original works of foreign art had been controlled by the state in different ways:
general limitation of the traveling abroad and instant control of the behaviour of the Soviet citizens while in the foreign countries;
strict limitation and censorship of the type of art objects to be displayed in the museums both at the permanent and temporary exhibitions;
limitation of the import of the art objects by private persons;
prohibition of the private art galleries and thus strict state control of each public presentation of the private art collections.
As one Russian researcher wrote: “В зоне повышенного внимания находились произведения американских и западноевропейских мастеров. Из “О, счастливчик” Линдсея Андерсена вырезали 32 минуты экранного времени, изменив и сюжет, и концепцию. Но самым наглядным примером варварства цензуры может послужить прокатная версия “Конформиста” Бернардо Бертолуччи. Фильм сократили на 30 минут, события в нем были самочинно «выстроены» в хронологическом порядке — взамен авторского ассоциативного сюжетосложения” [10].
Within the country it became vital for the sake of «the mental health» of the Soviet people to intrude in the very process of creation of an art object regardless to its media. This task was articulated shortly after the Revolution on the earliest days of the Soviet state, but it was not an easy one. Perception of the art works is more a sensation than a rational understanding. For example, the Russian avant-garde art of that period was predominantly non-figurative and the subjects could hardly be guessed or were too abstract. In this regard the decision of the Soviet cultural authorities was as simple as brilliant: To avoid any kind of double or hidden meaning, equivoques, misunderstanding of the contents of the art works the socialist realism was declared the one and only acceptable style and method of all arts in the Soviet Union.
After the Revolution the foremost Russian artists were forced to emigrate. It was a great tragedy of the national art. Those who for various reasons refused to leave the country had either to accept the communist dictatorship in art or to give up working. It took about 10 years (1922-1932) for the final break down and to put an end to «the art of the bourgeois past». Every -ism of the early 20th century art became the synonyms of the rudest words, generalised in the worst two terms: «formalism» and «modernism». Thus a great man-made gap had been generated in the evolution of Russian art. Every single attempt to change the direction of the main trend was suppressed and the guilty artist badly prosecuted [10].
After the death of Stalin, Soviet filmmakers were given a free hand to film what they believed audiences wanted to see in their film's characters and stories. However, the industry remained a part of the government and any material that was found politically offensive or undesirable, was either removed, edited, reshot, or shelved. In rare cases the filmmakers managed to convince the government of the innocence of their work and the film was released. The definition of "socialist realism" was liberalized to allow development of more human characters, but communism still had to remain uncriticized in its fundamentals. Additionally, the degree of relative artistic liberality was changed from administration to administration.
Oddities created by censorship include:
The first chapter of the epic film Liberation was filmed 20 years after the subsequent three parts. The film's director, Alexander Dovzhenko, had refused to minimize the errors of the Soviet High Command during the first year of the war, and instead waited for a time when he could film this portion accurately. [9].
Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible Part II was completed in 1945 but was not released until 1958; 5 years after Stalin's death [10].
Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky was censored before the German invasion of the Soviet Union due to its depiction of a strong Russian leader defying an invading army of German Teutonic Knights [10]. After the invasion, the film was released for propaganda purposes to considerable critical acclaim.


















CONCLUSION

Regimes and their interpretation varied between jurisdictions; in Australia for example particular films could be exhibited in one state but were not permitted in another state after failing to meet the requirements of local censorship agencies.
Any censorship regime is dynamic. Some subjects did not appear on screen - or only in a coded form.
The reasons of censorship in USSR are mostly political (criticism of the Soviet Union, CPSU, Soviet regime, particular political bodies and figures). They are: political unreliability (temporary or permanent) of an artist, whose work was the subject of the publication; political unreliability (temporary or permanent) of an author of a publication; mentioning an unreliable person, unworthy fact or event in the text unless it was criticized (possible cuttings of the text or plates); generally prohibited subject (for instance: unofficial Soviet art); propaganda of fascism, violence or terror (horror films belonged to that category); pornography (a magic word - none of the censors could ever give a distinct definition of this term in their special vocabulary; the most frequent reason for art publications to become banned as most of the artists, since the ancient times, had made the studies of the nude models); themes, subjects, facts, events which caused or might have caused undesirable thoughts, associations or illusions not in favor of the Soviet state.














LITERATURE

Katherine Eaton Enemies of the People: The Destruction of Society Literary, Theatre & Film Arts in the 1930's. Evanston: Northwestern Uni Press 2002.
Marianna Choldin & Maurice Friedberg The Red Pencil: Artists, Scholars, and Censors in the USSR. Boston: Unwin Hyman 1989
Mette Newth. The long history of censorship. Norway. 2001. // Электронный ресурс, режим доступа: http://www.beaconforfreedom.org/about_project/history.html
Блюм А. В. За кулисами «Министерства правды». Тайная история советской цензуры, 1917—1929. — СПб.: Академический проект, 1994. 320 с.
Блюм А. В. Советская цензура в эпоху тотального террора. 1929-1953. СПб.: Академический проект, 2000. 283 с.
Жирков Г. В. История цензуры в России XIX—XX вв. М.: Аспект пресс, 2001. 358 с.
История советской политической цензуры. Документы и комментарии / Составитель Т. М. Горяева. М.: Российская политическая энциклопедия, 1997. 672 с.
Мир и фильмы Андрея Тарковского / Сост. А.М. Сандлер. - М.: Искусство, 1991, с. 382-386
Новейшая история отечественного кино. 1986-2000. Кино и контекст. Т. IV. СПб, Сеанс, 2002
Энциклопедия отечественного кино. СССР/СНГ / Под. Ред. Л. Аркус. М. 2006-2009. // Электронный ресурс, режим доступа: http://russiancinema.ru/








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