Images of Flight and Aviation and Their Relation to Soviet Identity in Soviet Film 1926-1945

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Images of Flight and Aviation and Their Relation to Soviet Identity in Soviet Film 1926-1945 ‘Air-mindedness’ and Air Parades: Images of Flight and Aviation and Their Relation to Soviet Identity in Soviet Film 1926-1945 Candyce Veal, UCL PhD Thesis 2 I, Candyce L. Veal, declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 3 Abstract Taking Soviet films from 1926 to 1945 as its frame of reference, this thesis seeks to answer the question: is autonomous voicing possible in film during a period defined by Stalin’s concentration of power and his authoritarian influence on the arts? Aviation and flight imaging in these films shares characteristics of language, and the examination of the use of aviation and flight as an expressive means reveals nuances in messaging which go beyond the official demand of Soviet Socialist Realism to show life in its revolutionary movement towards socialism. Reviewing the films chronologically, it is shown how they are unified by a metaphor of ‘gaining wings’. In filmic representations of air-shows, Arctic flights, aviation schools, aviation circus-acts, and aircraft invention, the Soviet peoples’ identity in the 1930s became constructed as being metaphorically ‘winged’. This metaphor links to the fundamental Icarian precursor myth and, in turn, speaks to sub-structuring semantic spheres of freedom, transformation, creativity, love and transcendence. Air-parade film communicates symbolically, but refers to real events; like an icon, it visualizes the word of Stalinist- Leninist scriptures. Piloted by heroic ‘falcons’, Soviet destiny was perceived to be a miraculous ‘flight’ which realised the political and technological dreams of centuries. But aviation and cinematographic flights communicate multi-valently, beyond that of the ideological dominant. Film based on the myth of the ‘Russian Icarus’ points to the possibility of the Revolution as an Icarian flight perceived as a fall in Stalin’s time. Cinematographic flights, both actual and metaphorical, can be communicated on levels of psychology, cinema-philosophy and allegory, and ‘gaining wings’ is a universal metaphor for self-expansion in love, creative work and gaining knowledge. The expressive use of flight and aviation may have been directed towards the communication of a ‘bright’ socialist future, but this thesis shows its communication of Soviet identity is more complex. 4 Table of Contents Table of Figures........................................................................................................... 5 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 6 Chapter One: ‘Russian Icarus’ and Inaugural Flight ................................................... 25 Chapter Two: Air-mindedness and the Opening of New Worlds ................................ 77 Chapter Three: Air Parades: Symbolic and Rhetorical Transformations .................. 147 Chapter Four: Lyrical Flights and Pravda zhizni ...................................................... 208 Chapter Five: Inculcating Courage........................................................................... 250 Chapter Six: Conclusion .......................................................................................... 263 Bibliography............................................................................................................ 265 Filmography by Director.......................................................................................... 278 5 Table of Figures Figure 1: Projecting a New Socialist World: Lenin and Trotskii watch a Nieuport Fighter on May Day 1918 ............................................................................................ 9 Figure 2: Fima’s wings .............................................................................................. 31 Figure 3: Nikishka – aeronautic-study........................................................................ 31 Figure 4: Love and Flight.......................................................................................... 31 Figure 5: Velikii stiag ................................................................................................ 43 Figure 6: Nimbus ....................................................................................................... 43 Figure 7: Flight: Freedom from earthly hierarchies..................................................... 45 Figure 8: Shadow of flight ......................................................................................... 45 Figure 9: ‘A man is not a bird...’ - Leonid Leonidov as Ivan....................................... 47 Figure 10: Aerial premonition.................................................................................... 48 Figure 11: Vladimir Malevich, ‘Composition of Suprematist Elements Expressing the Sensation of Flight’ (pencil on paper, 1914/1915) ...................................................... 85 Figure 12: Beyond iconicity Den ′ aviatsii, 1935 ....................................................... 152 Figure 13: The ‘Maksim Gor ′kii’, Pravda feature, 21 June 1934............................... 160 Figure 14 a. b. c. ‘Moguchie kryl ′ia’: the L760, 1939............................................... 162 Figure 15: Vasilii Molokov ...................................................................................... 191 Figure 16: Mikhail Vodop ′ianov .............................................................................. 191 Figure 17: Ivan Doronin........................................................................................... 192 Figure 18: Sigizmund Levanevskii........................................................................... 192 Figure 19: Sergei Stoliarov (Aerograd, 1935)........................................................... 192 Figure 20: Den ′ aviatsii, 1935 .................................................................................. 193 6 Introduction The definition of aviation , according to an article in the Soviet Encyclopaedia of 1953, has three aspects. It is ‘a means of air travel on machines heavier-than-air’; it is ‘an organization or service using heavier-than-air technology for flight’; and it is also ‘one of the state’s armed forces, Voenno-vozdushnye sily .’ 1 In the Soviet Union of the 1930s aviation could be said to have been in a second ‘Golden Age’. 2 It was proving to be one of the most successful industries under Stalin’s first two Five-Year Plans (1928-32 and 1933-37). Alexander Boyd, in his chapter ‘Higher! Faster! Further!’, in The Soviet Airforce since 1918 says ‘A dramatic increase was to occur in the decade covered by Stalin’s first two Five -Year Plans; from less than a thousand aircraft in 1928 the number of Red Air Force machines rose to some 2,700 by January 1933 and to over 5,500 by 1938’. 3 Reina Pennington gives somewhat different figures for the Five-Year Plans but stresses aviation’s importance as a symbol of modernity and their success: ‘While aviation was just one component of Soviet modernization, it served as an exemplar of modernity. […] aviation production grew from 860 per year in 1930-31 to 2,595 per year in 1933. During the Second Five-Year Plan, the combat strength of the VVS ( Voenno-vozdushnye sily ) quadrupled, and aviation grew to 3,578 per year in 1937.’ And ‘The second Five -Year Plan dictated a tripling of civil-aviation routes throughout the country.’ 4 Moreover, as the aviation historian, John T. Greenwood, 1 ‘“Aviation”, From The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia (1953)’, in Mass Culture in Soviet Russia: Tales, Poems, Songs, Movies, Plays and Folklore 1917-1953 (hereafter: Mass Culture ), ed. by James von Geldern and Richard Stites (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press: 1995), pp. 479-86 (p. 479). 2 Von Hardesty, ‘Early Flight in Russia’ (hereafter: ‘Early Flight’) in Russian Aviation and Air Power in the Twentieth Century (hereafter: Russian Aviation and Air Power ), ed. by Robin Higham, John T. Greenwood and Von Hardesty (London: Frank Cass Publishers: 1998), pp. 18-37 (pp. 21-30). 3 Alexander Boyd, The Soviet Air Force since 1918 (London: Macdonald and Jane’s, 1977), pp. 35-55 (p. 35). 4 Reina Pennington, ‘From Chaos to the Great Patriotic War, 1922-41’, in Russian Aviation and Air Power , pp. 37-62 (p. 42); Reina Pennington, Wings Women and War, Soviet Aviation in World War Two Combat (hereafter: Wings, Women and War ) (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2001), pp. 8-9. 7 says, ‘A native aviation industry took more definite shape during these years […] At the beginning of the First Five-Year Plan 12 aircraft industry enterprises were at work, but by its end there were 31 plants, mostly new, reconstructed, or still under construction.’ All of this testifies to the fact that ‘Stalin, describing the accomplishments of the First Five-Year Plan [in January 1933], could justifiably declare: “We had no aviation industry. Now we have one.”’[U nas ne bylo aviatsionnoi promyshlennosti. U nas ona est ′ teper.] 5 Designers such as Nikolai Nikolaevich Polikarpov (1892-1944), Andrei Nikolaevich Tupolev (1888-1972), Aleksandr Sergeevich Iakovlev (1906-1989) and Sergei Vladimirovich Il ′iushin (1894-1977) developed aircraft that would break world- wide long-distance records, and created planes, such as the I-16 fighter and the TsKB- 26 (DB-3) long-distance bomber, that would be used right through the Second World War. 6 The Soviet Union benefited from the close relationships that its designers had with
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