In the summer of 1935 a delegation of Soviet film professionals arrived in Los Angeles. They wanted to take a closer look at Hollywood specifically to learn its film production practices in hopes of implementing some of them into the Soviet film industry. On the one hand such a governmental commission study of cinema was not surprising. Soviet politicians and many filmmakers, understood film to be the most important form of propaganda and communication with the masses. For them it was the medium that could deliver necessary information to millions of people practically at once. On the other hand the fact that the Soviet delegation wanted to take lessons from Hollywood, the Pinnacle of capitalist mass culture was surprising. To remind you in the 1930s Joseph Stalin gain to totalitarian control over the Soviet Union. The diverse political and cultural life of the 1920s nearly ceased to exist by 1935. Stalin systematically eliminated his opposition in an effort to unify the population and to mobilize it towards the building of a future communist Society. American mass culture did not fit easily into such politics of unification and depression. Yet it was Stalin who personally approved the film delegations trip to Hollywood. What attracted the Soviet regime to Hollywood? To understand this we will ask three questions, what was Soviet film culture like in the years preceding the trip? What did the Soviet regime want from Cinema, and what did the delegation find in Hollywood that was worthy of implementing in the USSR? First the programming in Solve movie theaters throughout the 1920s was strikingly diverse, foreign productions dominated. The names of American and European Stars such as Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton whereas familiar to Soviet audiences as the wear to any viewer and the capitalist west. American comedies were especially popular because Soviet audiences just like audiences all over the world, especially among the working class went to the movies not to be educated. But to be entertained and to escape the often exhausting reality of everyday life. In the same vein the most popular Soviet films also featured good old adventures common descent mysteries without any particular propagandistic intellectual or artistic agenda. Of course, there were Soviet films that focused on socialist politics and ideology. The entire Soviet avant-garde Cinema of the 1920s was consumed with filmmaking that politically and artistically advanced the goal of the Russian Revolution. Such canonical Soviet masterpieces as Sergei Eisenstein's October or Zigga Veritas man with a movie camera, where conceptually difficult and they sought to engage viewers intellectually. But to put it simply these films could not entertain certainly not to the degree that American comedies could, these films were intended for the masses, but the mass is did not rush to see them. Instead Soviet workers and peasants want to see American productions which for sure delivered a message. But the wrong one celebrating the American values of individualism and capitalism, the issue that was ideology versus entertainment. Soviet industry needed to combine these two to find a way to produce appealing films that would simultaneously carry the needed educational and ideological message. Boris Shumyatsky who was the head of the Soviet film industry since 1930, understood this very, well. He saw the solution in Hollywood convincing Stalin to send him and his colleagues on an expedition to California in 1935. While there, the Soviet delegation carefully studied two major components of what they thought constituted Hollywood success. First it was the industrial organization of film production and second, it was the method of eliciting a desired reaction from viewers. Let us start with the production system, what did the Soviet delegation appreciate about it? Mostly it was the division of labor, in the Soviet system the entire process relied on the artist director. In Hollywood, a series of professionals were assigned to specific tasks, one to write a script, one to integrate sound, one to edit images, one the producer to ensure the seamlessness of the process and so forth. What Shumyatsky liked was that film production was institutionalized, standardized and streamlined not unlike a for just assembly line in a factory that Soviet culture was so excited about. With such a system the message of the entertainment industry could be much more easily controlled. And what about the second element? The Soviet interest in how these films elicited response and generated meanings that were attractive to the audience. For example, Hollywood Cinema became known for its system of continuity editing. The system was rooted in a seamless putting together of thousands of different shots, voices and sounds so as to create a sense of utter clarity and stability of the visual spatial for viewers. The ultimate goal of such editing was to assure continuity, resulting in an emotional and psychological engaging experience of watching. To assure that the audience reliefs love, desire, suspense or fear more intensely than in real life. For Shumyatsky this was the recipe for a perfect film production, ideology that is conveyed in the films were an emotional experience rather than intellectual deliberations. The mobilization of the masses would be more successful when they were made to feel right, rather than forced to think in a particular way. While still in the United States in 1935, Shumyatsky began to advocate for the construction of a Soviet Hollywood on the Black Sea the, sunny beaches of which would replicate the atmosphere of Los Angeles. He sold idea to Stalin suggesting that the USSR could eventually produce up to 600 films a year in the new Dream Factory instead of the meager 50 that were produced at the time. The planning of the Soviet Cinema City and even some of its construction took place in 1935 and 1936, but ultimately were abundant in 1937. There were plenty of enemies of this project plus the country did not have the finances to support it, worst Shumyatsky himself fell out of Stalin's favor. He was arrested in Winter of 1938 and shot later that year along with many other politicians and artists who perished during the late 1930s Stalinist purges. The Soviet Hollywood was never built, nonetheless, a number of highly successful films were made as a result of Shumyatsky efforts. The best known example is Grigory Aleksandrovich 1936 film circus, it features a gripping plot with intrigue, chase escape and the romance. It has a lavish technically advanced dance performance in the concluding part of the film. It carries a crystal clear ideological message of the greatness of the Soviet land, and its message is conveyed through the emotionally-charged conflicts of the narrative. The film presents in fact a fictional dialogue with the United States, as it focuses on an American dancer who performs as a guest in the Moscow circus. She falls in love with the Soviet performer, and after many trials and tribulations recognizes how much better more just and equal Soviet Society is in comparison to her homeland. The final scene shows from marching on Red Square with her immediate family and her newfound enormous Soviet family, all celebrating together the greatness of the USSR. It was indeed a great adaptation of the Hollywood style, the film's entertaining and emotionally charged qualities where the very means by which the ideology was conveyed. By the end of the film, the audience could feel nothing but arising enthusiasm for the expansive Soviet community. We will start our next discussion with the same film and address the specifics of what exactly made Soviet life so much better for the American dancer. This will also allow us to analyze Soviet perceptions of race in the United States.
