CINEMA FOR THE "SOVIET EAST": NATIONAL FACT AND REVOLUTIONARY FICTION IN EARLY AZERBAIJANI FILM*
Michael G.SMITH** (USA)
Before the eyes of the vast, ignorant masses of the eastern nationalities, the fast-moving frames of cinema will reproduce the many achievements of human knowledge. For the illiterate audience, the electric beam of the magic motion-picture lamp will define new concepts and images, will make the wealth of knowledge more easily
accessible to the backward mind. Bakinskli rabochii, 18 September 1923
Pictures, so the first Bolsheviks believed, speak louder than words. Visual propaganda was essential in their campaign to reach the illiterate and poorly literate masses, to engage them in a new Soviet style of life. By the end of the civil war, every leading member of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party'valued the political uses of film. As commissar of nationalities, Iosef Stalin recognized its potential; in his simple expression, film was "the greatest means
* This article was originally published in the winter 1997 issue of "Slavic Review" (volume 56, issue 4, pp.645-670) by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. It is reprinted here with permission.
