HIST 392 - Soviet History and Cinema: Art, Propaganda, and Politics, 1908-1949

FC ARHU CD WADV

4 credits
Lenin famously declared cinema the “most important of all arts,” and under the Bolsheviks the medium developed into an effective tool of propaganda and a popular form of mass entertainment. This course uses film as a historical source to examine how cinema shaped the public image of the Soviet Union. Students will analyze films in terms of Communist ideology, the “woman question,” collectivization, socialist realism, the Stalin cult, Soviet nationality policy, and the Holocaust.