Valérie Pozner, Natacha Laurent, eds.. Kinojudaica: L'image des juifs dans le cinéma russe et soviétique. Toulouse: La Cinémathèque de Toulouse, 2012. 585 pp. no price given, paper, ISBN 978-2-84736-575-7.

Reviewed by Stuart Liebman

Published on H-Judaic (December, 2012)

Commissioned by Jason Kalman (Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion)

The thirteen chapters of this large new exhibition circuits of the empire from Warsaw in French-language anthology focus primarily on the the East to in the South, although the Bol‐ representation of in Russian cinema from its sheviks’ seizure of power led many to follow origins to the era of perestroika. Inevitably, how‐ Drankov and Ermoliev into Western exile. Over ever, the authors’ concerns branch out to include the decade under the last Romanov czar, the cre‐ observations about the participation of Jews in ation of Jewish flm companies catering to the in‐ the broader flm industry and, even more impor‐ creasingly assimilated and Russifed Jewish audi‐ tant, analyses of the pressures the czarist and So‐ ences not surprisingly led to Jewish-themed flms viet governments brought to bear on producers that appeared with considerable frequency on attempting to portray Jewish life across decades Russian screens. Animated by contemporary Jew‐ of Russian social and political turmoil. In every ish character types, such flms not only attracted respect, the various authors provide crucial infor‐ large numbers of Jews eager to see themselves mation about chapters of Russian flm history that and their problems dramatized, but industry have been almost entirely ignored in the standard records suggest that Gentile audiences also pa‐ English-language sources.[1] tronized these movies, apparently for what they As in other Western countries, Jews were ac‐ regarded as their “exotic” content. tive at all levels of the Russian flm industry from After the revolutions of 1917, which removed its earliest days. Abram (alias Alexander) Drankov many of the constraints on where Jews could live and Iosif Ermoliev were among the leading pro‐ and eliminated long-standing barriers to Jewish ducers soon after the arrival in the empire of the employment in many government positions and new French invention, the “cinématographe,” business enterprises, even larger numbers of Jews around the turn of the twentieth century. Jews were able to enter the cadres of the new, state- soon also became leaders in the distribution and sponsored cinema. Famous actors, such as H-Net Reviews

Solomon Mikhoels, Venyamin Zuskin, and Seraf‐ garded as the heavy yoke of religious tradition ma Birman, lit up Soviet screens from the late and social custom. 1920s onward, while an extraordinary wave of Anti-Semitism has always been very much talented directors of Jewish origin, such as Boris present in Russian gentile society, and Pozner de‐ Barnet, Abram Room, Grigori Kozintsev, Leonid votes another excellent chapter to a brief period Trauberg, , Yuli Raizman, Mikhail in the late 1920s when the Communist Party itself Romm, Mark Donskoi, Grigori and Pavel actively encouraged flms combating this scourge. Chukhrai, and Iosif Kheifts, contributed many of The economic downturn during the period be‐ the most memorable fctional flms in the frst tween the ending of the New Economic Policy, ffty years of Communist rule. Meanwhile, their which had allowed Jewish small entrepreneurs a nominal coreligionists who specialized in docu‐ measure of independence, and Joseph Stalin’s ef‐ mentaries--Dziga Vertov (born David Abelevich fort to collectivize agriculture during the frst Five Kaufman in Bialystok), Esfr Schub, Mikhail Kauf‐ Year Plan primed many Russians’ traditionally man, and Roman Karmen--ofered ideological negative views of Jews. However, the Communists “truths” in their flms that the Communist regime needed the Jews who, though only 2 percent of wished to publicize from the beginning of the the population, were far better educated and 1920s almost until the fnal collapse of the USSR in could serve the Soviet state in important ways, in‐ 1991. cluding stafng the state-controlled economic One of the volume’s coeditors, Valérie Pozner, ministries and dreaded CHEKA (the Soviet secret ofers a pioneering, vividly detailed look into the police). Many Jews, moreover, were grateful to the role Jews played in the development of the flm Soviet state for their new social mobility and were industry during the ’s last days therefore responsive to the allure of the regime’s and the ways in which both Jewish and non-Jew‐ grand plans. The Agitprop campaign that Commu‐ ish producers represented Jewish characters. nist authorities mounted produced dozens of Most of the Jewish frms were managed by assimi‐ brochures, newspaper articles by famous authors lated, Russian-speaking businessmen who never‐ like Maksim Gorki, stage plays, and flms. Most of theless were alert to the needs of the vast majori‐ the latter apparently reverted to “conversion” ty of Jews who spoke Yiddish as their frst lan‐ plots set in pre-Bolshevik times in which Jews guage in the so-called Pale of Settlement. Most of gradually came to see the iniquity of the czarist the flms she describes--apparently, almost all regime in order fnally to embrace the social liber‐ were melodramas--were made during the last ation that Communist ideology ofered. Interest‐ years of czarist power. These are almost entirely ingly, these flms often targeted rabbis as particu‐ unknown in the West and, sadly, many no longer larly sinister fgures supporting czarist repres‐ exist. By using accounts in the trade press (often sion, and they also beckoned younger Jews to as‐ sponsored by Jewish frms), however, Pozner similate through intermarriage and participation manages to provide the basic story outlines, de‐ in sports. All the while, representations of tradi‐ scribes the religious rituals they portrayed, and tional ways of life in the shtetls, most especially defnes the typical characters they deployed. A the evocation of religious practices, were closely major theme was the emergence from the ghettos monitored by authorities who regarded such im‐ in the Pale of ever larger numbers of younger ages as dangerously nostalgic and a potential Jews and the temptations posed by assimilation, threat to the state. something very much on the minds of those en‐ Four chapters concentrate on single flms or gaged in the process of casting of what they re‐ the work of individual directors. Coeditor Natacha

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Laurent provides an astute profle of Romm, in set up for the Jews in the desolate Far East of whose long career began in the early 1930s. the USSR. Romm’s cinema always remained very much Films about this mythical Soviet homeland within the confnes of the prevailing ideological for the Jews and the Jewish agricultural com‐ strictures, so much so that his most notable work, munes that were in a sense its precursor were the compilation propaganda flm about Nazi part of Soviet propaganda from the mid-1920s on. atrocities, Ordinary Fascism (1964), failed even to Eric Aunoble’s and Alexander Ivanov’s essays de‐ mention Jews as Adolf Hitler’s special victims. scribe the many propaganda “documentaries” Still, as early as 1943, at the very start of the gov‐ about the Soviet programs to transform the tradi‐ ernment-controlled, anti-Jewish campaign that tionally urban-dwelling Jews into progressive erupted in full force after the end of World War II, peasants. Most were never screened in the West, Romm proudly asserted his ethnic origins, a dan‐ although the few that were did inspire some emi‐ gerous move. In later years, moreover, when grants to go back to their country of origin to Romm worked as a major pedagogue at the state build socialism. Much better known is Roman institute for cinematography, he continued to sup‐ Karmen and Elizaveta Svilova’s flm about the tri‐ port the work of his students--Alexander Askoldov al of major German war criminals at Nuremberg is only the most prominent--who referenced Jew‐ (Sud Narodov [The Peoples’ Tribunal], 1946), ish themes at a time when they were not welcome which scooped Western flmmakers by ofering on Soviet screens. One of the rare occasions in the frst account of the proceedings. Jeremy Hicks which Jews were included in a flm about the gives a lucid account of the vicissitudes of its pro‐ “Great Patriotic War” is explored by Olga Ger‐ duction against the background of Soviet eforts shenson. Donskoi’s The Unvanquished (1945), to document Nazi atrocities, both in the USSR and based on a novel by Jewish writer Boris Gorbatov, in several Polish camps, including Auschwitz. He featured scenes of a Nazi massacre by bullets of a stresses how much the Soviets attempted to name Jewish community in the Soviet heartland. That specifc victims, some of whom were clearly of such a flm came to be made at all was a minor Jewish origin. Yet he also notes how often punch‐ miracle given the obvious bias of Communist Par‐ es were pulled, as it were; Jewish victims were ty ofcials, but the support of the eminent direc‐ routinely not identifed as such, nor that they tor Sergei Eisenstein was evidently decisive. were particular targets of Nazi violence. Soviet Eisenstein, the son of a converted Jewish father policy insisted that Jews not be singled out--they from Riga, was then at the height of his post- were to be designated only as “peaceful Soviet cit‐ World War II power and infuence. Solid archival izens.” research grounds Gershenson’s study, and this Not the least merit of this volume is an exten‐ commitment is equally in evidence in Pozner’s sive flmography listing key flms representing searching essay on Mikhail Dubson’s fctional por‐ Jews made in . Inevitably, there are omis‐ trait of a shtetl (Frontier, 1935), and the well-writ‐ sions. I would have liked someone to discuss ten chapter on Leon Mazroukho’s In the Name of Mikhail Kalik’s Goodbye, Boys (1964), set in the Living (1964) by Vanessa Voisin. Throughout Odessa, the city in which Isaac Babel’s famous the volume, the authors’ documentary grounding criminal character Benya Krik briefy reigned allows for a clearer understanding of the shifting over the underworld. This is outside the scope of Soviet bureaucratic controls over representing a Oleg Budnitzki’s otherwise fascinating look at this problematic minority group the authorities would ostensibly Jewish “motherland of crime.” One no doubt have been all too happy to see disappear might also have looked more closely at the depic‐ in distant exile in Birobidzhan, the homeland Stal‐

3 H-Net Reviews tion of Jewish life in Askoldov’s The Commissar (1967), based on a short story by the eminent Jew‐ ish writer and journalist Vasily Grossman. Much more also needs to be said about the legion of So‐ viet flmmakers, scriptwriters, and editors, includ‐ ing Eisenstein and Vertov, who are best described in Isaac Deutscher’s famous phrase as “non-Jew‐ ish Jews.” What contributions, if any, did they make to the topic of representing Jews, and if not, why not? To what extent are Jews still involved in the Russian cinema and media in the post-Soviet, post-immigration era? What role, if any, do Jews play in the flm culture of other states within the former like and Belarus? These and other tantalizing questions remain. Happily, this important book provides a useful framework and scholarly standard for future re‐ search. Note [1]. Jay Leyda, Kino (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1960); Denise Youngblood, Soviet Cin‐ ema in the Silent Era, 1918-1935 (Austin: Universi‐ ty of Texas Press, 1991); Denise Youngblood, Movies for the Masses. Popular Cinema and Sovi‐ et Society in the 1920s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Yuri Tsivian, Early Cine‐ ma in Russia and Its Cultural Reception (New York: Routledge, 1994); Josephine Woll, Real Im‐ ages: Soviet Cinema and the Thaw (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000); Peter Kenez, Cinema and Soviet So‐ ciety: From the Revolution to the Death of Stalin (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001); and Birgit Beumers, A History of Russian Cinema (New York: Berg Pub‐ lishers, 2009).

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Citation: Stuart Liebman. Review of Pozner, Valérie; Laurent, Natacha, eds. Kinojudaica: L'image des juifs dans le cinéma russe et soviétique. H-Judaic, H-Net Reviews. December, 2012.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=36824

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