DOCSLIB.ORG

Bergelson on World War Ii and the Holocaust

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Bergelson on World War Ii and the Holocaust WHERE DOES THE WAR END A ND THE HOLOCAUST BEGIN? BERGELSON ON WORLD WAR II AND THE HOLOCAUST David Shneer University of Denver The National Council for Eurasian and East European Research 2601 Fourth Avenue, Suite 310 Seattle, WA 98121 TITLE VIII PROGRAM Proj ect Information* Principal Investigator: David Shneer Council Contract Number: 821-15g Date: February 1 2th, 2007 Copyright Information Indivi dual researchers retain the copyright on their work products derived from research funded through a contract or grant from the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research (NCEEER). However, the NCEEER and the United States Government have the right to duplicate and disseminate, in written and electronic form, reports submitted to NCEEER to fulfill Contract or Grant Agreements either (a) for NCEEER’s own internal use, or (b) for use by the United States Government, and as follows: (1) for further dissemination to domestic, international, and foreign governments, entities and/or individuals to serve official United States Government purposes or (2) for dissemination in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act or other law or policy of the United States Government granting the public access to documents held by the United States Government. Neither NCEEER nor the United States Government nor any recipient of this Report may use it for commercial sale. * The work leading to this report was supported in part by contract or grant funds provided by the Nati onal Council for Eurasian and East European Research, funds which were made available by the U.S. Department of State under Title VIII (The Soviet-East European Research and Training Act o f 1983, as amended). The analysis and interpretations contained herein are those of the author. ii Executive Summary In the Soviet Union, the story of the Nazi war against the Jews was subsumed into the total war between the Soviet Union and the fascist enemy, a war that took between 20 and 30 million Soviet lives, 2 million of them Jews. We forget that many of those who told the Soviet story of war were themselves Jewish. With Ilya Ehrenburg (1891-1967) and Vasily Grossman (1905- 1964) writing for the important military newspaper Red Star, Jewish photojournalists visually recording the war, and the many Jews as members of the editorial staff of most major Soviet newspapers, Soviet Jews were the ones charged with telling the war to the entire Soviet audience. And at the same time, this was a Soviet war told in all of the languages of the Soviet Union — in Ukrainian, Georgian, Uzbek, and even in Yiddish, the official language that marked Soviet Jews as a nationality. Ehrenburg and Grossman had been relatively well-known Russian- language journalists before the outbreak of war. Who would be called on to tell the story of the war in Yiddish? That task fell to many important twentieth-century Yiddish writers, among them David Bergelson. iii Where Does the War End and the Holocaust Begin? Bergelson on World War II and the Holocaust1 ___________________________________________________________________ — Lo amut ki ekhye. Va’asaper ma’asei yah: yasor yisrani ya velamavet lo netanani. — Ikh vel nit shtarbn nor lebn, un dertseyln di maysim fun yah. Ober tsum toyt hot er mikh nit gegebn. — I will not die, but will live to tell the great deeds of God. He has not brought me to death. –Psalm 118: 17 (The first four Hebrew words of Psalm 118: 17 formed the title of David Bergelson’s speech made on behalf of the Jewish Antifascist Committee in August 1941.) In the Soviet Union, the story of the Nazi war against the Jews was subsumed into the total war between the Soviet Union and the fascist enemy, a war that took between 20 and 30 million Soviet lives, 2 million of them Jews. We forget that many of those who told the Soviet story of war were themselves Jewish. With Ilya Ehrenburg (1891-1967) and Vasily Grossman (1905-1964) writing for the important military newspaper Red Star, Jewish photojournalists visually recording the war, and the many Jews as members of the editorial staff of most major Soviet newspapers, Soviet Jews were the ones charged with telling the war to the entire Soviet audience. And at the same time, this was a Soviet war told in all of the languages of the Soviet Union — in Ukrainian, Georgian, Uzbek, and even in Yiddish, the official language that marked Soviet Jews as a nationality. Ehrenburg and Grossman had been relatively well-known Russian-language journalists before the outbreak of war. Who would be called on to tell the story of the war in Yiddish? That task fell to many important twentieth-century Yiddish writers, among them David Bergelson. Bergelson was not a journalist. He had never been trained to write quickly and simply to ‘tell the facts,’ but in truth, most Soviet journalists were not trained simply to ‘tell the facts’. Moreover, the fact that Bergelson had made his reputation as a writer of 1 Thank you to Harriet Murav and Joseph Sherman for their incisive reading of an earlier version of this paper. 4 impressionist fiction meant that he had a keen eye for describing, or at least envisioning, scenes, a talent that served him well as a wartime essayist. In his four years of writing in Yiddish about this very Jewish and very Soviet war, Bergelson crafted a narrative that placed the Jewish story at the centre of his Yiddish readership’s narrative universe, while also situating it within the universal tragedy unfolding around him. His was a story of victimhood and revenge and ultimately, a story of the loss and destruction that Bergelson personally lived through. Jewish Heroes and Jewish Victims On 6 July 1944, as Red Army soldiers crossed the old Soviet border and moved into Poland, Bergelson published an interview with General Yakov Kreyzer (1905-1969), an official Hero of the Soviet Union and the victor of the Battle of Sevastopol who, by 1944, was easily one of the most popular and visible of Soviet Jews. In addition to his military position, Kreyzer was also an honorary member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAFC), the organization established in 1941, along with four other outreach organizations, to build international support for the Soviet war.2 Passing through Moscow in the summer of 1944, Kreyzer attended one of the JAFC’s meetings when Bergelson met him and described their encounter on page two of the JAFC’s newspaper, Comment [js1]: What happened to Eynikayt (Unity), the only remaining national Yiddish newspaper in the country. Based Der emes? Close down in 1938 after Litvakov’s arrest. on his account, Bergelson seemed shy, almost intimidated, by being in the presence of probably the greatest living Soviet Jewish hero, the man who proved that Jews were not weaklings fleeing the front but were leading the Red Army. Bergelson claims that by 1944, with the eastern front nearing the former frontier of the Soviet Union and the Allies opening a second front in France, the war had turned from one of survival and defence to one of revenge: 2 The history of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee has been well documented in recent years. See, for example, Shimon Redlich, War, Holocaust, and Stalinism: A Documentary Study of the Jewish- Antifascist Committee of the USSR (Luxemburg: Harwood, 1995); Vladimir Naumov and Joshua Rubenstein (eds.), Stalin’s Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). 5 Zey veysn, az er iz a yid, un az akhuts dem groysn khezhbm, vos er hot mit zey far zayn sovetish land, hot er mit zey a khezhbm far zayn folk. They [ the Germans] know that he [Kreyzer] is a Jew, and that aside from the great need to get even with them for what they did to his Soviet country, he also has to get even with them for his people.3 Although by 1944, revenge was a common trope in the Soviet press, such an article about specifically Jewish revenge would never have appeared in the Russian-language press, which was in general reluctant to highlight the particular suffering of any ethnic group during the war.4 One month later, on 17 August1944, Bergelson wrote about the other side of this very Jewish war — not as one of Jewish pride, but of Jewish victimization and German criminality on a scale unprecedented in history. In ‘The Germans Did This,’ Bergelson writes about Majdanek, the first extermination camp liberated by the Allies on 25 July 1944. This was the only article about the Nazi extermination camps to appear in the Soviet Yiddish press, and it was one of the most powerful pieces Bergelson wrote during the war. Together, these two pieces show how Bergelson crafted a particularly Jewish war in Yiddish out of the universal Soviet experience. Bergelson as War Essayist and Soviet Jewish Propagandist During the war, Bergelson was called on to become more than a novelist; he was aske d to become a public Jewish cultural figure, and a leader of Soviet Jewry. He began writing essays about the war as soon as it broke out on 22 June 1941 from his home in Mos cow, but as the German army reached the outskirts of the capital, he was evacuated 3 Dovid Bergelson, ‘Der general Yakov Kreyzer,’ Eynikayt, 6 July 1944, 2. All translations are my own. 4 For more on wartime correspondence, see Ilya Ehrenburg, The War: 1941-1945 (Cleveland: World Publications, 1965); Ehrenburg and Konstantin Simonov, In One Newspaper: A Chronicle of Unforgettable Years (New York: Sphinx Press, 1985); V.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 16/10/2017 LIBRARY Rds 701-800 1 Call Number RD-701 KHEIFITS
    16/10/2017 LIBRARY RDs 701-800 1 Call number RD-701 KHEIFITS, Iosif Edinstvennaia [The Only One] Lenfil´m, Pervoe tvorcheskoe ob´´edinenie, 1975; released 17 March 1976 Screenplay: Pavel Nilin, Iosif Kheifits, from Nilin’s story ‘Dur´’ Photography: Genrikh Marandzhian Production design: Vladimir Svetozarov Music: Nadezhda Simonian Song written by: Vladimir Vysotskii Nikolai Kasatkin Valerii Zolotukhin Taniusha Fesheva Elena Proklova Natasha Liudmila Gladunko Boris Il´ich Vladimir Vysotskii Maniunia Larisa Malevannaia Iura Zhurchenko Viacheslav Nevinnyi Anna Prokof´evna, Nikolai’s mother Liubov´ Sokolova Grigorii Tatarintsev Vladimir Zamanskii Judge Valentina Vladimirova Ivan Gavrilovich Nikolai Dupak Scientist Aleksandr Dem´ianenko Train passenger Svetlana Zhgun Tachkin Mikhail Kokshenov Train passenger Efim Lobanov Wedding guest Petr Lobanov Black marketer Liubov´ Malinovskaia Anna Vil´gel´movna Tat´iana Pel´ttser Member of druzhina Boris Pavlov-Sil´vanskii Tania’s friend Liudmila Staritsyna Serega Gelii Sysoev Lekha Aleksandr Susnin Head Chef of the Uiut restaurant Arkadii Trusov 90 minutes In Russian Source: RTR Planeta, 13 March 2015 System: Pal 16/10/2017 LIBRARY RDs 701-800 2 Call number RD-702 SAKHAROV, Aleksei Chelovek na svoem meste [A Man in His Place] Mosfil´m, Tvorcheskoe ob´´edinenie Iunost´, 1972; released 28 May 1973 Screenplay: Valentin Chernykh Photography: Mikhail Suslov Production design: Boris Blank Music: Iurii Levitin Song lyrics: M. Grigor´ev Semen Bobrov, Chairman of the Bol´shie bobry kolkhoz Vladimir Men´shov
    [Show full text]
  • Russisk Strategisk Kultur Under Putin
    Rapprt FEBRUAR 2018 Russisk strategisk kultur under Putin Af Jørgen Staun, Ph.d, Lektor i international politik, Institut for Strategi, Forsvarsakademiet, e-mail: [email protected] FORSVARSAKADEMIET Russisk strategisk kultur under Putin Af Jørgen Staun, Ph.d, Lektor i international politik, Institut for Strategi, Forsvarsakademiet E-mail: [email protected] © Forsvarsakademiet Alle rettigheder forbeholdes. Mekanisk, fotografisk eller anden gengivelse af eller kopiering fra denne publikation eller dele heraf er kun tilladt i overensstemmelse med aftaler mellem Forsvaret og Copy- Dan. Enhver anden udnyttelse uden Forsvarsakademiets skriftlige samtykke er forbudt i følge gældende lov om ophavsret. Undtaget herfra er korte uddrag til brug ved anmeldelser København februar 2018 Forsvarsakademiet Svanemøllens Kaserne Ryvangs Allé 1 2100 København Ø Tlf.: +45 728 17000 Ansvarshavende redaktør: Anja Dalgaard-Nielsen, Chef for Institut for Strategi Layout: FAK ISBN: 978-87-7147-225-7 Russisk strategisk kultur under Putin INDHOLDSFORTEGNELSE Abstract .................................................................................................... 4 Indledning ................................................................................................. 5 Strategisk kultur-teori ................................................................................. 6 Indledende drøftelser: Ruslands strategiske kultur under Putin ........................ 8 Internationalt niveau: Rusland som stormagt .............................................. 11 Realisme og
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Spring 2012 Prof. Jochen Hellbeck [email protected] Van Dyck Hall 002F Office Hours: M 3:30-5:00 and by Appointment Hi
    Spring 2012 Prof. Jochen Hellbeck [email protected] Van Dyck Hall 002F Office hours: M 3:30-5:00 and by appointment History 510:375 -- 20 th Century Russia (M/W 6:10-7:30 CA A4) The history of 20 th century Russia, as well as the world, was decisively shaped by the Revolution of 1917 and the Soviet experiment. For much of the century the Soviet Union represented the alternative to the West. When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917 they were committed to remake the country and its people according to their socialist vision. This course explores the effects of the Soviet project—rapid modernization and ideological transformation—on a largely agrarian, “backward” society. We will consider the hopes and ideals generated by the search for a new and better world, and we will address the violence and devastation caused by the pursuit of utopian politics. Later parts of the course will trace the gradual erosion of Communist ideology in the wake of Stalin's death and follow the regime’s crisis until the spectacular breakup of the empire in 1991. Throughout the course, we will emphasize how the revolution was experienced by a range of people – Russians and non-Russians; men and women; artists and intellectuals, but also workers, soldiers, and peasants – and what it meant for them to live in the Soviet system in its different phases. To convey this perspective, the reading material includes a wide selection of personal accounts, fiction, artwork, films, which will be complemented by scholarly analyses. For a fuller statement of the learning goals pursued in this class, see More generally, see the History department statement on undergraduate learning goals: http://history.rutgers.edu/undergraduate/learning-goals The Communist age is now over.
    [Show full text]
  • Rock in the Reservation: Songs from the Leningrad Rock Club 1981-86 (1St Edition)
    R O C K i n t h e R E S E R V A T I O N Songs from the Leningrad Rock Club 1981-86 Yngvar Bordewich Steinholt Rock in the Reservation: Songs from the Leningrad Rock Club 1981-86 (1st edition). (text, 2004) Yngvar B. Steinholt. New York and Bergen, Mass Media Music Scholars’ Press, Inc. viii + 230 pages + 14 photo pages. Delivered in pdf format for printing in March 2005. ISBN 0-9701684-3-8 Yngvar Bordewich Steinholt (b. 1969) currently teaches Russian Cultural History at the Department of Russian Studies, Bergen University (http://www.hf.uib.no/i/russisk/steinholt). The text is a revised and corrected version of the identically entitled doctoral thesis, publicly defended on 12. November 2004 at the Humanistics Faculty, Bergen University, in partial fulfilment of the Doctor Artium degree. Opponents were Associate Professor Finn Sivert Nielsen, Institute of Anthropology, Copenhagen University, and Professor Stan Hawkins, Institute of Musicology, Oslo University. The pagination, numbering, format, size, and page layout of the original thesis do not correspond to the present edition. Photographs by Andrei ‘Villi’ Usov ( A. Usov) are used with kind permission. Cover illustrations by Nikolai Kopeikin were made exclusively for RiR. Published by Mass Media Music Scholars’ Press, Inc. 401 West End Avenue # 3B New York, NY 10024 USA Preface i Acknowledgements This study has been completed with the generous financial support of The Research Council of Norway (Norges Forskningsråd). It was conducted at the Department of Russian Studies in the friendly atmosphere of the Institute of Classical Philology, Religion and Russian Studies (IKRR), Bergen University.
    [Show full text]
  • Soy Cuba, Océano Y Lisanka: De Lo Alegórico a Lo Cotidiano
    Revista Iberoamericana, Vol. LXXIX, Núm. 243, Abril-Junio 2013, 479-500 SOY CUBA, OCÉANO Y LISANKA: DE LO ALEGÓRICO A LO COTIDIANO. TRANSFORMACIONES EN LAS COPRODUCCIONES CUBANO-SOVIÉTICO-RUSAS POR DAMARIS PUÑALES-ALPÍZAR Case Western Reserve University Por motivos diferentes, entre los cuales se repiten las carencias económicas y técnicas (aunque no son los únicos), y con resultados no siempre halagüeños, la industria cinematográfi ca cubana ha recurrido tradicionalmente a las coproducciones. Dentro de la historia del cine de la isla pueden identifi carse tres períodos principales: el pre-revolucionario, donde imperaban las coproducciones musicales con México; el revolucionario –entendido como el que va de 1959 a 1989–, donde las coproducciones obedecían más bien a compromisos políticos; y el pos-socialista –entendido como posterior al fi n del socialismo europeo a principios de los noventa– en el que prevalecen las relaciones con otros países ante la incapacidad del Instituto Cubano del Arte y la Industria Cinematográfi cas (ICAIC) para producir películas debido a la crisis económica. En esta última etapa, llaman la atención las nuevas relaciones fílmicas que se establecen con los viejos aliados ideológicos. Este ensayo intentará establecer una comparación entre tres coproducciones de dos de estos períodos: Soy Cuba (1964), Océano (2008) y Lisanka (2009).1 A las primeras las une el hecho de haber sido los dos únicos fi lmes dirigidos por un soviético y un ruso, respectivamente, en coproducción con los cubanos. En ambos, además, se intenta desentrañar “lo cubano”; llegar más allá de la poca y mítica información que se poseía sobre la isla en las gélidas tierras eslavas; informar al mundo de la realidad cubana, de su singularidad.
    [Show full text]
  • The Arts in Russia Under Stalin
    01_SOVMINDCH1. 12/19/03 11:23 AM Page 1 THE ARTS IN RUSSIA UNDER STALIN December 1945 The Soviet literary scene is a peculiar one, and in order to understand it few analogies from the West are of use. For a vari- ety of causes Russia has in historical times led a life to some degree isolated from the rest of the world, and never formed a genuine part of the Western tradition; indeed her literature has at all times provided evidence of a peculiarly ambivalent attitude with regard to the uneasy relationship between herself and the West, taking the form now of a violent and unsatisfied longing to enter and become part of the main stream of European life, now of a resentful (‘Scythian’) contempt for Western values, not by any means confined to professing Slavophils; but most often of an unresolved, self-conscious combination of these mutually opposed currents of feeling. This mingled emotion of love and of hate permeates the writing of virtually every well-known Russian author, sometimes rising to great vehemence in the protest against foreign influence which, in one form or another, colours the masterpieces of Griboedov, Pushkin, Gogol, Nekrasov, Dostoevsky, Herzen, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Blok. The October Revolution insulated Russia even more com- pletely, and her development became perforce still more self- regarding, self-conscious and incommensurable with that of its neighbours. It is not my purpose to trace the situation histori- cally, but the present is particularly unintelligible without at least a glance at previous events, and it would perhaps be convenient, and not too misleading, to divide its recent growth into three main stages – 1900–1928; 1928–1937; 1937 to the present – artifi- cial and over-simple though this can easily be shown to be.
    [Show full text]
  • War and Rape, Germany 1945
    Lees-Knowles Lectures Cambridge 2002-3 Antony Beevor 2. War and Rape, Germany 1945 „Red Army soldiers don't believe in “individual liaisons” with German women‟, wrote the playwright Zakhar Agranenko in his diary when serving as an officer of marine infantry in East Prussia. „Nine, ten, twelve men at a time - they rape them on a collective basis‟. The Soviet armies advancing into East Prussia in January 1945, in huge, long columns were an extraordinary mixture of modern and mediaeval: tank troops in padded black helmets, Cossack cavalrymen on shaggy mounts with loot strapped to the saddle, Lend-Lease Studebakers and Dodges towing light field guns, and then a second echelon in horse- drawn carts. The variety of character among the soldiers was almost as great as their military equipment. There were freebooters who drank and raped quite shamelessly, and there were idealistic, austere Communists and members of the intelligentsia genuinely appalled by such behaviour. Beria and Stalin back in Moscow knew perfectly well what was going on from a number of detailed reports sent by generals commanding the NKVD rifle divisions in charge of rear area security. One stated that „many Germans declare that all German women in East Prussia who stayed behind were raped by Red Army soldiers‟. This opinion was presumably shared by the authorities, since if they had disagreed, they would have added the ritual formula: „This is a clear case of slander against the Red Army.‟ In fact numerous examples of gang rape were given in a number of other reports – „girls under eighteen and old women included‟.
    [Show full text]
  • Lenin's Troubled Legacies: Bolshevism, Marxism, and the Russian Traditions
    Lenin's Troubled Legacies: Bolshevism, Marxism, and the Russian Traditions by Vladimir Tismaneanu I will start with a personal confession: I have never visited the real Russia, so, in my case, there is indeed a situation where Russia is imagined. But, on the other hand, my both sisters were born in the USSR during World War II, where my parents were political refugees following the defeat of the Spanish Republic for which they fought as members of the International Brigades (my father, born in Bessarabia, i.e., in the Russian empire, lost his right arm at the age of 23 at the battle of the River Ebro; my mother, a medical student in Bucharest, worked as a nurse a the International Hospital in Barcelona, then, during the war, finished her medical studies at the Moscow Medical School no. 2, where she was a student of one of professor Kogan, later to be accused of murderous conspiracy in the doctors' trial). They all returned to Romania in March 1948, three years before I was born. So, though I never traveled to Russia, my memory, from the very early childhood was imbued with Russian images, symbols, songs, poems, fairy tales, and all the other elements that construct a child's mental universe. My eldest sister was born in Kuybishev (now Samara), where my mother was in evacuation, together with most of the Soviet government workers--she was a broadcaster for the Romanian service of Radio Moscow. My sister was born on November 25th, 1941 in an unheated school building, under freezing temperature, without any medical supplies, food, or milk.
    [Show full text]
  • He Who Has Not Been to Moscow Has Not Seen Beauty
    STRATEGIES FOR BUSINESS IN MOSCOW He who has not been to Moscow has not seen beauty A PROPOS “To Moscow, to Moscow, to Moscow!” Like a mantra, However, the majority of people who live abroad know this phrase is repeated by the sisters in Anton nothing about this. Old habits, as they say, die hard. Chekhov’s famous play “Three Sisters.” The play is Many foreigners still think that the sun never rises about three young women dreaming of escaping their in Moscow, that the city is always cold and that it boring small town and coming to the capital. Although snows year round. Not to mention the rumors of bears the play was written in 1900, people from all over roaming the streets at night. Disappointing as it may Russia, as well as people from CIS countries, still want be, these myths are still around. to move to Moscow. Of course, we are partially responsible for this – we Moscow has always been a magnet. At least this is the tell the world very little about ourselves. We need to way things have played out historically – all the best spend more resources on attracting tourists to Moscow things could be found in the capital: shops, libraries, by letting them know how convenient and comfortable clinics, schools, universities, theatres. At one point, the city has become. According to official statistics, coming to Moscow from Siberia was like taking a trip to over 5 million foreigners visited Moscow last year. This a foreign country. is obviously a small number – about 15 million tourists visit places like London and Paris every year.
    [Show full text]
  • The Soviet Home Front and Cultural Exchanges with the Republic I
    Stalin and the Spanish Civil War: Chapter 8 2/23/04 1:47 PM Email this citation Introduction 8. The Soviet Home Front and Cultural Exchanges with the Republic I. Diplomacy 1 1. Pre-July 1936 Although Soviet cultural interventions in the Spanish Republic experienced a decline in the 2. Civil War 3. To Moscow second half of 1937, very nearly the opposite phenomenon was occurring at the same time II. Soviet Aid in the Soviet Union itself, where Spanish Republican culture was being deployed in the 4. Solidarity service of solidarity and humanitarian aid. Before undertaking a comparison of Moscow's 5. Children cultural policy as it was implemented in the Republican zone and on the Soviet home front, III. Cultural Policy it is first necessary to examine the extent of Spanish cultural influences in the USSR both 6. Pre-War before and after the beginning of the civil war. 7. Agit-prop 8. Home Front The discussion in the previous chapter of VOKS's initial contacts with Spanish citizens IV. Military Aid indicated that, before the civil war, Moscow had never placed a high priority on acquiring 9. Operation X 10. Hardware Spanish cultural information or materials. One of the curious paradoxes of VOKS's relations 11. Spanish Gold with its Iberian correspondents was that there was remarkably little cultural exchange V. Soviet Advisors occurring in the activities directed by an organization calling itself the Society for Cultural 12. Command Exchange with Foreign Countries. From the late 1920s until the summer of 1936, VOKS 13. Activities was interested in disseminating Soviet propaganda in Spain, acquainting the Soviet regime 14.
    [Show full text]
  • Self/Other Representations in Aleksei Balabanov's 'Zeitgeist Movies'
    SELF/OTHER REPRESENTATIONS IN ALEKSEI BALABANOV‟S „ZEITGEIST MOVIES‟: FILM GENRE, GENRE FILM AND INTERTEXTUALITY Florian Weinhold School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2011 2 Contents ABSTRACT……………….……………………………..….............…............... 6 DECLARATION………………………………………………….......................7 COPYRIGHT STATEMENT.....……………………………………................. 7 THE AUTHOR...………………………………………………….......................8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………..………....…................... .9 Chapter 1: Introduction..............................………………………......……........11 1.1 Background, Rationale, Aim and Structure of the Introduction…………. 11 1.2 Why Balabanov?…………………………………..…….…….................. 13 1.3 Why Balabanov‟s „Genre Films‟?………………………..………............ 16 1.4 Balabanov‟s Genre Films in Russian and Western Criticism..................... 19 1.5 Contributions of the Study......................………………………………… 28 1.6 Aim, Objectives and Research Questions of the Thesis..............…........... 29 1.7 Primary Sources………….......................................................................... 31 1.8 Structure of the Thesis................................................................................ 32 Chapter 2: Methodology.......................................................................................35 2.1 Introduction...........................………………….......................................... 35 2.2 Why Genre?……………………………………...................……............
    [Show full text]
  • Framing 'The Other'. a Critical Review of Vietnam War Movies and Their Representation of Asians and Vietnamese.*
    Framing ‘the Other’. A critical review of Vietnam war movies and their representation of Asians and Vietnamese.* John Kleinen W e W ere Soldiers (2002), depicting the first major clash between regular North-Vietnamese troops and U.S. troops at Ia Drang in Southern Vietnam over three days in November 1965, is the Vietnam War version of Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line. Director, writer and producer, Randall Wallace, shows the viewer both American family values and dying soldiers. The movie is based on the book W e were soldiers once ... and young by the U.S. commander in the battle, retired Lieutenant General Harold G. Moore (a John Wayne- like performance by Mel Gibson).1 In the film, the U.S. troops have little idea of what they face, are overrun and suffer heavy casualties. The American GIs are seen fighting for their comrades, not their fatherland. This narrow patriotism is accompanied by a new theme: the respect for the victims ‘on the other side’. For the first time in the Hollywood tradition, we see fading shots of dying ‘VC’ and of their widows reading loved ones’ diaries. This is not because the filmmaker was emphasizing ‘love’ or ‘peace’ instead of ‘war’, but more importantly, Wallace seems to say, that war is noble. Ironically, the popular Vietnamese actor, Don Duong, who plays the communist commander Nguyen Huu An who led the Vietnamese People’s Army to victory, has been criticized at home for tarnishing the image of Vietnamese soldiers. Don Duong has appeared in several foreign films and numerous Vietnamese-made movies about the War.
    [Show full text]