History Is Made in the Dark 4: Alexander Nevsky: the Prince, the Filmmaker and the Dictator

1 History Is Made in the Dark 4: Alexander Nevsky: The Prince, the Filmmaker and the Dictator In May 1937, Sergei Eisenstein was offered the opportunity to make a feature film on one of two figures from Russian history, the folk hero Ivan Susanin (d. 1613) or the mediaeval ruler Alexander Nevsky (1220-1263). He opted for Nevsky. Permission for Eisenstein to proceed with the new project ultimately came from within the Kremlin, with the support of Joseph Stalin himself. The Soviet dictator was something of a cinephile, and he often intervened in Soviet film affairs. This high-level authorisation meant that the USSR’s most renowned filmmaker would have the opportunity to complete his first feature in some eight years, if he could get it through Stalinist Russia’s censorship apparatus. For his part, Eisenstein was prepared to retreat into history for his newest film topic. Movies on contemporary affairs often fell victim to Soviet censors, as Eisenstein had learned all too well a few months earlier when his collectivisation film, Bezhin Meadow (1937), was banned. But because relatively little was known about Nevsky’s life, Eisenstein told a colleague: “Nobody can 1 2 find fault with me. Whatever I do, the historians and the so-called ‘consultants’ [i.e. censors] won’t be able to argue with me”.i What was known about Alexander Nevsky was a mixture of history and legend, but the historical memory that was most relevant to the modern situation was Alexander’s legacy as a diplomat and military leader, defending a key western sector of mediaeval Russia from foreign foes. His career as Prince of Novgorod took on particular relevance to the USSR in the late 1930s. Prince Alexander was credited with protecting the city and its surrounding territory from threats from the north (Swedes), the east (the Mongol empire), and most importantly from the west (the Teutonic Order). In 1240, Novgorod’s newly installed Prince Alexander commanded a small force that defeated a Swedish army at the Neva River, after which he took on the honorific “Nevsky” as a permanent reminder of his victory. Meanwhile, through diplomacy that apparently included paying tribute, Prince Alexander was credited with protecting Novgorod from attack by Mongol armies, the powerful Golden Horde that had already overrun most of the territory that is now modern Russia. Briefly deposed in 1241, Alexander was soon summoned back to Novgorod to defend the region from the Teutonic Order which had launched a “Northern Crusade” to subjugate the Slavs of west-central Russia. On 5 April 1242, Prince Alexander and a force of lightly armed infantry and militia defeated the experienced army of the Teutonic Knights, which included heavy cavalry. The Russians maneuvered the battle to the frozen surface of Lake Peipus, where some Teutonic Knights fell through the spring ice and drowned. The conflict would become known in Russian lore as the “Battle on the Ice”. Alexander Nevsky was treated as a national hero through Russia’s tsarist era (he was canonised in the 16th century), but he was not in the pantheon of great historical figures as far as most Soviet era party-line historians were concerned. Under Stalinist versions of Russian history, more praise went to the forward-thinking but despotic tsars who effected change through political force and who could be seen as Stalin’s precursors. Tsars Ivan the Terrible (1530-1584) and Peter the Great (1672-1725) particularly fascinated Stalin, and he authorised major commemorative films on each (Eisenstein would take on the important Ivan project). Alexander Nevsky was rehabilitated by the Stalin régime in the late 1930s, however, because of issues on the international landscape. Eisenstein’s finished film on Alexander Nevsky was designed to take the record of aggression by the 13th century Teutonic Order and reapply it as a lesson about the threat from Nazi Germany. Because of its immediate relevance to the national security issue, Alexander’s Novgorod princeship became the focus of Eisenstein’s film, to the exclusion of the rest of Alexander’s otherwise important political career. When Alexander Nevsky was ready for release in November 1938, it was immediately hailed as a triumph. It was given saturation bookings and maximum publicity; although most Soviet features in the 1930s were circulated in only about 250 copies, 900 prints of Alexander Nevsky went into simultaneous release. It proved to be by far Eisenstein’s most popular film with Soviet audiences. 2 3 The movie’s success with audiences and critics was not entirely due to the timely political message. It also reflected Eisenstein’s effective transition to the possibilities of sound. His silent features of the 1920s, most notably Battleship Potemkin (1925), manifested a montage aesthetic that stressed dynamic editing. By the time he had the chance to take up Alexander Nevsky, Eisenstein had broadened the idea of montage to include the relationship between sound and image, with particular attention to the role of music. He conceived of the score as a forceful ingredient that would dynamically interact with the image track, and to achieve this end he worked closely with the esteemed Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. Their partnership produced a grandiloquent style – both visual and auditory – that evoked epic mediaeval tales. So satisfying and synergistic was their experience that Eisenstein and Prokofiev again partnered brilliantly on the quasi-operatic historical epic, Ivan the Terrible (1944-46). As far as the Soviet leadership of the 1930s was concerned, however, the primary mission of Alexander Nevsky was to heighten a sense of Russian patriotism while warning about the modern German menace. That message became obsolete within months of the movie’s première. In August 1939, the USSR entered into a “Nonaggression pact” with Germany, and the Nazis suddenly became Soviet allies. Anti-German propaganda came to a quick halt and Alexander Nevsky was withdrawn from distribution. While Alexander Nevsky sat on the shelf, Eisenstein was permitted to mount a production of the Wagner opera Die Walküre (1940), with a high-level German delegation in attendance at the Bolshoi. Then, just as abruptly, Alexander Nevsky was reissued in 1941 after Operation Barbarossa (the Nazi invasion of the USSR), and the country’s wartime propaganda machine portrayed the movie as a newly relevant, even urgent, account of Russia’s capacity to defeat invaders. Prince Alexander’s mystique has apparently carried over into the 21st century and to the era of Vladimir Putin, who has consistently confirmed his ambition to reestablish Russia as a world superpower and as a counter-force to NATO. In that climate, over 50 million Russians participated in a 2008 national poll to rank the great figures in the nation’s history. Prince Alexander Nevsky received the most votes and was duly honoured as the “greatest Russian of all time.” For the record, Stalin came in third.ii Vance Kepley, Jr University of Wisconsin-Madison i Quoted in Ronald Bergan, Sergei Eisenstein: A Life in Conflict (Woodstock, NY: Overlook, 1997) 297. ii The Guardian, December 28, 2008. 3.

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