Pride and Panic

Russian Imagination of the West in Post-Soviet Film

Yana Hashamova

• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781841509594
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Through the looking-glass of Russian national cinema, Pride and Panic explores Russia's anxious adjustment towards the expansion of Western culture. Russian film is shown, in both its creation and perception, to expose the intriguing dynamics of societal psychological conditions. Using specific film examples, the book delves into the subterranean recesses of Russian national consciousness, exposing an internal ambivalence and complex cultural reaction towards the rise of the West. These fears, fantasies and tremulous anxieties are examined through the representation of the West in films by both established and lesser-known Russian directors. Using a highly original and unorthodox approach, the author parallels the shifting dynamics of attitudes and identity in Russia, caused by globalization, to stages of development in an individual human psyche. The book cohesively unveils the psychological turmoil experienced by Russia towards a change in global relations. A text of particular interest to scholars, students and readers involved with contemporary film and, in particular, Russian cinema and culture.

1

THE WESTERN OTHER (FOE AND FRIEND): SCREENING TEMPTATIONS AND FEARS

In the not-so-rare moments of the conflation of the two pro- and anti-western discourses in Russia, which exemplify the dialectics of Russia’s relations with the West, one locates the dynamics of Russian national identification. The West has long functioned as a cultural screen for Russian fantasized identification.¹ On the one hand, the screen presents an idealized image to the Russian collective imagination as a model for identification. On the other hand, the screen opens a possibility of a disjunction between Russian national identification and its idealized (western) model – a disjunction generated by historical, political, and cultural differences. It is in the space of this process that I begin to look for dramatic conflicts that in turn propel fantasies and fears.

Since the time of Peter the Great, Russian writers and thinkers have engaged in heated debates regarding the nature of Russian political and cultural identity in relation to the West. So-called Westernizers and Slavophiles argued about the authenticity of the Russian mind and spirit: the former advocated western values as a path to Russian modernization, and the latter rejected them so as to establish a unique ‘Russianness’. In his study about the development of Russian identity in relation to Europe, Iver Neumann writes: ‘The Russian state spent the eighteenth century copying contemporary European models, the nineteenth century representing the Europe of the anciens régimes, which the rest of Europe had abandoned, and the twentieth century representing a European socialist model which most of the rest of Europe never chose to implement’ (1996, 1).

Russia and the (Western) Other

To trace collective identity formation as it has been conceptualized around the nexus of self/other, one can follow various paradigms. Neumann identifies four different paths used mainly by social theorists: the ethnographic path, the psychological path, the Continental philosophical path, and the ‘Eastern excursions’ (1999, 1–20). In this study, I rely on ideas of identity formation that have psychological and psychoanalytic foundations, some of them identified by Neumann, as well as some ideas that belong to the path he calls ‘Eastern excursions’, notions proposed by Bakhtin and later developed by Tzvetan Todorov and Kristeva.

In the early 1920s, Bakhtin maintained that the subject’s knowledge of itself or the world is impossible without the other, because meaning occurs in discourse where consciousnesses meet. He attributed to the other epistemological as well as ontological necessity and criticized all nineteenth20and early-twentieth-century philosophy in which ‘epistemologism’ – reification of a sovereign self separated from the other’s consciousness or, in other words, a single consciousness – prevailed:

In this sense, epistemological consciousness cannot have another consciousness outside itself, cannot enter into relation with another consciousness, one that is autonomous and distinct from it. Any unity is its own unity; it cannot admit next to itself any other unity that would be different from it and independent from it (the unity of nature, the unity of another consciousness), that is, any sovereign unity that would stand over against it with its own fate, one not determined by epistemological consciousness. (Bakhtin 1990, 89)

According to Bakhtin, the absence of the other in this kind of thinking precludes the knowledge of either the self or the world. Pressed by the political practice of totalitarianism, which denied the possibility of a dialogue, Bakhtin sought to reconfigure the problematics of a community, a society, or a way of thinking that erased the space between self and other. Exposing the nature of a totalitarian system, Hannah Arendt spoke of a totalitarian loneliness that permeated through the core of existence under the totalitarian regime. According to her, one thing that unites fascism and communism, despite their radical ideological differences, is the collectivization of people as a mass, which in turn paradoxically produces social isolation. ‘The chief characteristic of the mass man is not brutality and backwardness, but his isolation and lack of normal social relationships’ (Arendt 310). She resists totalitarian loneliness because it prevents her from thinking. For her, thinking always requires a dialogue between ‘me and myself’, but for this dialogue she needs the other (Arendt 301–429). The totalitarian system erased the space between self and other and transformed society into one mass man. Although Bakhtin’s dialogism has remained largely a literary-studies concept, it is, I believe, a political concept as well, concerned with how totalitarian totality erased meaning produced precisely in the meeting space between self and other (1981).

In the late 1960s, at the time of structuralism and the emergence of post-structuralism, Bakhtin’s understanding of dialogism was embraced and introduced to western readers by two Bulgarians living and working in Paris – Todorov and Kristeva. Todorov’s later monograph, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other, is one of the first studies to tackle self/other problematics, especially its application to a historical and cultural discourse. Analyzing Columbus’s perception of Indians, Todorov outlines two major attitudes to the other that are in practice to this day. The first approach perceives others as equal human beings having the same rights as the subject thus making them identical and leading to the projection of one’s own values on the others and consequently to their assimilation. The second views the other as different, which immediately creates feelings of superiority and inferiority. ‘What is denied is the existence of a human substance truly other, something capable of being not merely an imperfect state of oneself’ (Todorov 42). Bakhtin’s insistence on the recognition of a consciousness separate from the self, which generates the knowledge of the self and the other, underlies Todorov’s discoveries.

Kristeva has not only familiarized the West with Bakhtin’s ideas but has enhanced them and has developed a strong conceptualized theory based on what she calls ‘intertextuality’:

The notion of dialogism, which owed much to Hegel, must not be confused with Hegel’s dialectics, based on a triad and thus on struggle and projection (a movement of transcendence), which does not transgress the Aristotelian tradition founded on substance and causality. Dialogism replaces these concepts by absorbing them within the concept of relation. (1986a, 58–59)

The dialogical principle or the concept of relation, as Kristeva calls it, is the basis of this study’s investigation of Russia’s identity formation. Later in her work and particularly in her book Strangers to Ourselves, Kristeva enriches her understanding of the dialogism between self and other, and maintains that individual and collective identity formation is composed not merely in the dialogue and relations between self and other but in the rare moments when one is other to oneself. Deploying Freud’s discovery of the unconscious, Kristeva insists that the unconscious integrates into the ‘unity of human beings an otherness that is both biological and symbolic and becomes an integral part of the same. Henceforth the foreigner is neither a race nor a nation… Uncanny, foreignness is within us: we are our own foreigners, we are divided’ (1991, 180). When one opposes a foreigner, one actually fights against one’s own unconscious. She believes that individuals and nations, which are capable of recognizing the other and of experiencing the feeling of being strangers and foreigners to themselves, foster the potential for healthy and positive development. She imagines ‘a mankind whose solidarity is founded on the consciousness of its unconscious – desiring, destructive, fearful, empty, impossible’ (Kristeva 1991, 192). Like Bakhtin, Kristeva also knows totalitarian loneliness (formulated by Arendt), and one can safely argue that her insistence on the recognition of otherness within the self is politically motivated.

Similar to Kristeva’s engagement with the other is Renata Salecl’s discussion of the dynamics of the nation-other relationships. She contends: ‘But the Other who outrages “our” sense of the kind of nation ours should be, the Other who steals our enjoyment is always the Other in our own interior’ (Salecl 1994, 21). Following the Lacanian tradition, Salecl argues that fantasy stimulates and structures enjoyment. ‘Therefore hatred of the Other, in the final analysis, is hatred of one’s own enjoyment’ (Salecl 1994, 22). In this sense, intolerance and aggression toward the other produce fantasies which organize or bring together members of a community or a nation on the basis of their own enjoyment.

Following such an understanding of the other (as both an outsider needed for a dialogue and production of meaning and as the strangeness within the self or the enjoyment that is unbearable and cannot be acknowledged), one asks several questions in analyzing Russian films: How does the idea of the other permeate Russian national identity as reflected in these films? Do the conditions of the period of transition provide the necessary space for a dialogue between self and other (Russia and the West)? The meeting of two consciousnesses is a necessary but often traumatic experience. What is the psychological cost at the level of both the individual and society of the dialogue (all too often confrontation) between Russia and the West?

To begin to answer these questions, I will briefly touch on historical, political, and cultural examples of Russia’s confrontation with the (western) imaginary other. Neumann has studied in detail Russian collective identity formation in relation to the other from the Napoleonic wars and the Decembrist uprising to the present, and he finds evidence of the Russian debate about its relation to Europe as early as the mid-fifteenth century (1996). He interprets as the first sign of the debate the decision by Muscovy (the Russian state) to reject a union with the Roman Church in the name of one unitary Christendom (Neumann 1996, 6–7). The fall of Byzantium and the marriage of Ivan III to Sofia Paleologue, the niece of Byzantium’s last emperor, gave birth to the idea that Russia was Byzantium’s historical successor and a great power. Moscow as the Third Rome emerged in political and cultural symbolism, which further encouraged a belief in Russia’s moral superiority and western decline and inferiority.

Conversely, Peter the Great ignored this belief in Russia’s uniqueness and began the process of modernization, which included the introduction of western ideas, beliefs, technologies, and practices. Opposition to Peter’s reforms insisted on the West’s moral inferiority and corruptive practices and on the fruitlessness and fraudulence of his efforts. Peter the Great, however, effectively marginalized the opposition and circumscribed the official discourse in favor of the West, setting the tone for the entire eighteenth century. The nineteenth century was marked by controversy and heated debate about Russia’s relation to the West, waged by two distinct groups within Russia’s intelligentsia: Westernizers and Slavophiles.²

The argument between Westernizers and Slavophiles continued well into the twentieth century, and, depending upon the political climate Russia exhibited either strong interests in the West or cold and hostile attitudes toward it. What clearly emerges in these polemics was Russia’s constant preoccupation with western ideas and models. The dialogical nature of identity formation creates meaning exactly where the two consciousnesses meet. Despite (and because of) the fact that there has always been an opposition to Russia’s involvement with the West, Russia’s identity has developed against the backdrop of its constant relationship to the West. In this dialogical relation between self and other, one comes to read the other and to know oneself. Neumann asserts: ‘In discussing Europe, the Russians have always clearly been discussing themselves, and so the debate is an example of how Russians have talked themselves into existence’ (1996, 194).

Europe, in turn, regarded Russia ambivalently over the centuries and constructed it as its own other. Russia’s Christianity was seen as something positive, but at the same time Russia’s ties with nonChristian cultures troubled Europe (Neumann 1999, 113–43). Russians were often referred to as ‘Scythians’, ‘Tartars’, and ‘Kalmucks’. Such representation hinted at Russia’s ‘Asiatic’ and ‘barbaric’ nature. Other accusations and pejorative attitudes targeted Russia’s ‘questionable’ civility and the character of its regime. Throughout the nineteenth century, however, Russia was recognized as a great power and an equal player in European politics.³

Karl Marx, for instance, epitomized this ambivalent European attitude toward Russia. In the 1850s, he reminded Europe of Russia’s territorial gains since Peter the Great and warned that unless Russia was stopped, it would engulf and barbarize the whole continent.⁴ At that time Marx firmly denied the possibility of a revolution in Russia because of her backward economic conditions. Marx’s argument was entirely motivated by his hatred of tsarism and his theory of revolution. Later on in the 1860s, however, Marx changed his views and considered the possibility that a revolution could begin in the East and spread westward.⁵ He reevaluated drastically his early belief in the natural phases of evolution and the natural historical process on the basis of the Russian question.

Despite Russia’s perceived backwardness and underdeveloped capitalist structure, the Russian Revolution took place, and the Soviet government eliminated private property and established a new, modern form of collectivism. The Soviet period opened a new door in Russia’s relation to the West, in which the Soviets rapidly adopted an aggressive anti-western posture in every sphere. The attempt to preserve Russian identity and economic independence from the ‘pollution’ of western ideas and capital was passionately revived during the Soviet period in the form of economic isolation and ideological censorship. Over the years, the prohibition on relations with the West took various forms and emerged with different degrees of persistence in the Soviet Union and in the other countries under socialist systems. There were times of severe persecution and punishment, and times of lessened control over relations with the West.⁶

Political and Cultural Demonology

After the October Revolution, Vladimir Lenin set the tone for Soviet-American relations, which in the first two decades after the Revolution developed in various directions:

Bourgeois civilization has borne all its luxurious fruits. America has taken first place among the free and educated nations in the level of development of the productive forces of the collective United Human endeavor, in the utilization of machinery and of all the wonders of modern engineering. At the same time, America has become one of the foremost countries in regard to the depth of the abyss which lies between the handful of arrogant multimillionaires who wallow in filth and luxury, and the millions of working people who constantly live on the verge of pauperism. (62–63)

On the one hand, Lenin praises American technological advancement and the development of creative and productive resources and, on the other, condemns poverty and the very nature of bourgeois civilization, which opens an abyss between the amorally rich and the besieged poor. This view determined the Soviet attitude toward America, the West, and the capitalist political and economic system in general.

In the 1920s the American work ethic and enthusiasm gained popularity, and the Soviet people were encouraged to learn to work in the American way. American businessmen and workers participated in the construction of the Gorky automobile factory, while Soviet workers went to the States to study methods of modern technology (Zassoursky 15–16). These intensified relations were expressed in I’lia Ilf and Evgenii Petrov’s popular book One-Storey America and Vladimir Maiakovskii’s poem “Brooklyn Bridge”. At the same time, Soviet ideology more vehemently criticized the amoral nature of capitalism, its values and aesthetics.⁷

In a sense, this ambivalent Russian tendency to corroborate and simultaneously contest cultural and political products of American capitalism is best enshrined in two films from the 1920s and 1930s: Lev Kuleshov’s Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924) and Grigorii Aleksandrov’s Circus (1936). In Mr. West, viewers detect Kuleshov’s curiosity and playful envy of the diverse and powerful Hollywood mythology, and at the same time they identify with the director’s belief in his moral superiority, fostered by his belonging to a new progressive revolutionary society.

In a spirit similar to Kuleshov’s admiration for the Hollywood apparatus, Aleksandrov created Circus by generously borrowing from the genre of the Hollywood musical, which he brought back to Russia after a visit to Hollywood. Circus advocates internationalism through the story of an American circus performer, Marion Dixon, who, after a scandal involving her black baby, was forced to leave the US. She ends up in the Soviet Union working for a Russian circus. Western values and aesthetics are attacked on multiple levels. First, Marion is dramatically presented as a victim of American racism. Second, the Russian circus number that replaces Marion’s is far more grandiose and spectacular, no doubt reinforcing a sense of Russian cultural and social superiority. The film naturally proffers a happy and ideologically correct ending, in which spectators – representatives of various nationalities in the Soviet Union – embrace the baby and sing him a lullaby, each in his/her own language, thus celebrating the Soviet policy of equality, internationalism, and collectivism. Not surprisingly, Aleksandrov added a second ending, in which through double exposure, viewers observe Marion, Martynov – her partner both in the circus and in life – and their colleagues happily marching under images of Lenin and Stalin and singing Isaak Dunaevskii’s song “I don’t know another country where so freely a man can breathe…” After the film’s release it became one of the most popular songs in the Soviet Union. The film celebrated Soviet internationalism and at the same time exposed the hypocrisy and racism of American society, which were considered byproducts of the capitalist system. Describing the anti-American fervor in several films from the 1930s,...