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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



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



.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



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



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

http://www.siue.edu/~aho/musov/witness/wit.html




http://www.siue.edu/~aho/musov/reccom/reccom.html







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



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*



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



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



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



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



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<*

Novyy Vavilon5

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