Gendering the American Enemy in Early Cold War Soviet Films (1946–1953) ✣ Oleg Riabov “Greta Garbo Wins Elections,” proclaimed a conservative Italian newspaper when reporting the defeat of the Italian Communist Party in the 1948 par- liamentary elections.1 The results of the vote constituted one of the turning points of the Cold War in which the spread of Communism to the West was inhibited. The widespread distribution in Italy of the 1939 Hollywood film Ninotchka (starring Garbo and directed by Ernst Lubitsch) had in fact been among the numerous efforts sponsored by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the election campaign. At the same time, the film could be seen as nothing more than a love story between a Western man and a Soviet woman. The plot of Ninotchka concerns the devoted Communist Nina Yakushova, who defects from the USSR because of her love for Count Leon d’Algout. Her choice, nonetheless, is ultimately determined by the superiority of Western men over their Soviet counterparts as well as the material abun- dance of capitalist society, which gives women the opportunity to be attractive and feminine. This episode allows us to suppose that gender discourse served as an effective Cold War weapon that was actively used in cinema. The intersections of gender and national discourses in U.S. filmmak- ing during the Cold War have been intensively explored over the past two decades. This research demonstrates the mutual influence of collective iden- tity and gender rhetoric and investigates the role that the two superpowers’ cinematic representations of gender orders played in constructing the Soviet enemy, creating American-ness, and legitimizing and delegitimizing the po- litical system of the United States.2 As for Soviet cinema, the historiography 1. Tony Shaw, Hollywood’s Cold War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), p. 26. 2. Tony Jackson, “The Manchurian Candidate and the Gender of the Cold War,” Literature-Film Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 1 (2000), pp. 34–40; Dana Heller, “A Passion for Extremes: Hollywood’s Cold War Romance with Russia,” Comparative American Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 (March 2005), pp. 89–110; Michael Kackman, Citizen Spy: Television, Espionage, and Cold War Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005); and Helen Laville, “‘Our Country Endangered by Underwear’: Fashion, Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 19, No. 1, Winter 2017, pp. 193–219, doi:10.1162/JCWS_a_00722 C 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 193 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JCWS_a_00722 by guest on 02 October 2021 Riabov includes some remarkable works devoted to early Cold War films, including works by researchers who have analyzed how the films created images of the Soviet gender order.3 Nonetheless, exploration of the gender dimension of cinematic representations of the American enemy is just beginning.4 This article discusses how Soviet films exploited gender discourse to construct images of the American enemy. The article first characterizes the films and other sources discussed here and then elucidates methodological approaches to researching gender discourse as a Cold War weapon employed by cinema. The next two sections focus on the creation of images of the enemy through cinematic representations of American femininity and masculinity. Finally, the article demonstrates how Soviet representations of U.S. men and women varied depending on their class, race, and political beliefs. The article shows that gender discourse was used in Soviet Cold War films as a means of explaining to audiences who the USSR’s enemies were, as well as to demonstrate the superiority of the Soviet way of life. No homogeneous cinematic image of U.S. masculinity and femininity existed. The Soviet view of the world implied priority of the class principle over the national one Femininity, and the Seduction Narrative in Ninotchka and Silk Stockings,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 30, No. 4 (2006), pp. 623–644. I share Robert Connell’s interpretation of gender order as being both a system of power relations between men and women and a specific understanding of masculinities and femininities. See Robert W. Sonnell, Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. 98–99. 3. Peter Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, 1917–1953 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992); Maya Turovskaya, “Soviet Films of the Cold War,” in Richard Taylor and Derek Spring, eds., Stalinism and Soviet Cinema (London; New York: Routledge, 1993); David Gillespie, Russian Cinema (New York: Longman, 2002); Denise J. Youngblood, Russian War Films: On the Cinema Front, 1914–2005 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2006); Evgeny Dobrenko, Stalinist Cinema and the Production of History (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008); Peter Rollberg, Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema (Lanham, MD; Toronto; Plymouth, UK: Scarecrow Press, 2008); Stephen M. Norris and Zara M. Torlone, eds., Insiders and Outsiders in Russian Cinema (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008); Birgit Beumers, A History of Russian Cinema (New York: Berg Publishers, 2009); and Aleksandr V. Fedorov, “Obrazy kholodnoi voiny: Proektsiya politiki protivostoyaniya na ekrane,” Polis, No. 4 (2010), pp. 48–64. For works analyzing the gender dimension of Soviet films, see John Haynes, New Soviet Man: Gender and Masculinity in Stalinist Soviet Cinema (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2003); Jill Steans, “Revisionist Heroes and Dissident Heroines: Gender, Nation and War in Soviet Films of ‘the Thaw,’” Global Society,Vol.24,No.3 (2010), pp. 401–419; and Marko Dumanciˆ c,´ “Rescripting Stalinist Masculinity: Contesting the Male Ideal in Soviet Film and Society, 1953–1968,” Ph.D. Diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2010. 4. Tony Shaw and Denise Youngblood, Cinematic Cold War: The American and Soviet Struggle for Hearts and Minds (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2010); Oleg V. Ryabov, “‘Mister Dzhon Lankaster Pek’: Amerikanskaya maskulinnost’ v sovetskom kinematografe Kholodnoi voiny (1946– 1963),” Zhenshchina v rossiiskom obshchestve, No. 4 (2012), pp. 11–27; and Rhiannon Dowling, “Communism, Consumerism, and Gender in Early Cold War Film: The Case of Ninotchka and Russkii vopros,” Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History, Vol. 8 (2014), pp. 117–132. 194 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JCWS_a_00722 by guest on 02 October 2021 Gendering the American Enemy in Early Cold War Soviet Films and stressed the contradictions and conflicts within capitalist societies. These priorities created a demand for images not only of “bad Americans” but of “good Americans” who resembled the exemplary images of Soviet men and women. Films Discussed The early stages of the Cold War are notable in Soviet cinema historiography for malokartin’e, or “film famine.” From 1946 to 1953, only 165 films were released, 124 of which were deemed “feature films.”5 The four that focused on depicting the American way of life constitute the main sources of this article. The Russian Question (Mikhail Romm, 1947) is an adaptation of Kon- stantin Simonov’s play of the same name.6 It was very popular among filmgoers and was shown in more than 600 theaters, including those in Eastern and Central European countries.7 The film depicts New York in the year 1946. Macpherson and Gould, owners of “reactionary bourgeois newspapers,” send correspondent Harry Smith to the Soviet Union. As part of an anti-Soviet propaganda campaign, Smith is assigned to write a book about Soviet leaders’ desire to go to war with the United States. However, after returning from the USSR, Smith decides to write a positive portrayal of the Soviet Union. As a result, he loses his job and is blacklisted in the journalistic community. He is deprived of money as well as his home, and his wife, Jessie, deserts him. Nonetheless, Smith continues fighting against the media tycoons and their bosses on Wall Street, becoming a mouthpiece for the opinions of progressive Americans. The film scholars Mira Liehm and Antonin Liehm thus call The Russian Question “the first film of the Cold War.”8 Meeting on the Elbe (Grigorii Aleksandrov, 1949) is set in the immediate postwar period and describes relations between the population of an imaginary German town, Altenstadt, and Soviet and U.S. troops.9 Major Nikita Kuzmin and Major James Hill meet each other on the Elbe in April 1945 and become friends. Later, they are made commanders of the Soviet and U.S. sectors of 5. This includes 22 films in 1946, 22 in 1947, 16 in 1948, 17 in 1949, 12 in 1950, 9 in 1951, 23 in 1952, and 44 in 1953. See Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, p. 210. 6. The Russian Question, directed by Mikhail Romm (Moscow: Mosfilm, 1947). 7. David Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 110–111. 8. Quoted in Dowling, “Communism, Consumerism, and Gender in Early Cold War Film,” p. 28. 9. Meeting on the Elbe, directed by Grigorii Aleksandrov (Moscow: Mosfilm, 1949). 195 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JCWS_a_00722 by guest on 02 October 2021 Riabov the town, respectively. The Nazis, with the help of a U.S. journalist, Janet Sherwood, hatch a plot in the Soviet sector. Hill tries to fulfill his duty to his Soviet allies and fights against the Nazis hand-in-hand with Kuzmin. The conspiracy is unveiled, but Sherwood turns out to be an emissary of the CIA. For foiling Sherwood’s efforts, Hill is fired from the U.S.Army and awaits a summons to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The film ends with Kuzmin’s words, “Friendship between the Russian and American peoples is the most important question facing humanity today.” Farewell, America! (Aleksandr Dovzhenko, 1950) is based on the book The Truth about American Diplomats (1949) by Annabelle Bucard, a U.S.