Olga Grǎdinaru
Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
olgagradinaru@gmail.com

 

 

The Myth of the New Man in Soviet Cinema: A Story about a Real Man

 

Abstract: The article is focused on Stolper’s film adaptation (1952) of Boris Polevoi’s novel A Story About a Real Man (1946), revealing the hero archetype in the socialist realism interpretation. Although the novel and the film adaptation were designed to explore the myth of the New Man, of the Soviet “real man” in crisis, becoming aware of his special status as a “Soviet man”, both of them unveil the mediation between the desire – virile, ideal body seen in Soviet art and architecture – and the reality – dismembered, harmed, mutilated and physically disabled bodies after the Great Patriotic War. The film adaptation A Story about a Real Man directed by A. Stolper is a prolongation of the representations of Stalinist masculinity in Socialist Realism texts, characterized by masterful cinematographic devices and symbolic usage of lights and shadows.

Key words: Film Adaptation; Soviet Heroism; New Man; Stalinist Masculinity; Socialist Realism Storytelling Patterns; Cinematographic Devices.

 

Introductory Considerations

The myth of the “new man” represents more than a 20^th century political phe­nom­enon, although it is closely linked to com­munist revolutions and especially to the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union. One may trace the initiative of remodeling people back to the Enlightenment era, the French Revolution and to other important social and political events in the world his­tory. Karl Marx was the one to refer to the fundamental aspects of the new man (a­mong which we mention the favorite Soviet means of shaping human nature – education, including literature, media and arts), aspects that were interpreted or culturally translated on the Russian soil by Plekhanov, the founder of Russian Marxism, and by Lenin. The communist attempt to create the “new man” and to re-create the myth of the “great family” reveal the human tendency through­out world history to overcome the human limits and to reach a new stage of human development, to educate and reform human nature under new social and political cir­cum­stances. The concept of the “new man” was developed by the Russian intelligentsia, a group of revolutionary elite, in the middle of the 19^th century in order to replace the values and ideas of the old world, looking forward for a revolution that would change Russia’s destiny. In fact, the 1825 Decembrist Uprising attempted to bring social and po­lit­ical changes in the feudal and tsarist Russia. Nikolai Chernyshevsky gave literary shape to the idea of new man in his revolutionary novel What Is to Be Done? (1863)[1], influ­enced by the ideas of Alexander Herzen, L. A. Feuerbach and Vissarion Belinsky. Cher­ny­shevsky and other representatives of the Russian intelligentsia militated for the crea­tion of an ideal socialist society, supporting the working people and the overthrow of the autocracy; his novel was mentioned in laud­a­tory terms by V. I. Lenin[2] and many ideas took shape in the newly established Soviet Union, among which we mention Mikhail Suslov’s[3] words regarding the main efforts of the Soviet State: “the formation of the New Man is the most important component”[4].

Yinghong Cheng highlights in his book the importance and the impact of the Rus­sian Revolution, as it represented the start­ing point of the first consistent and signif­i­cant experiment of reshaping people with the help of various methods, institutions and strategies that were regarded as exemplary for Chinaand Cubalater.[5] In his compre­hensive research, the author briefly high­lights the Soviet leaders’ vision of the “new man” and analyzes the means of producing the Soviet New Man: the establishment of the party school system, the educational rev­o­lution (a refined system based on special textbooks and disciplines, reports etc.), the specificity of the extreme and abusive po­lit­ical socialization of childhood and ado­lescence, which supposed not only a special type of ideological education, but also the practical involvement of children in various activities of ideological nature, starting with the establishment of Young Pioneers (May 1922), Komsomol (Russian Communist Youth League established in October 1918) and ending with the Communist Party membership. Among the models of the So­viet New Man, Cheng mentions the impor­tance of Rakhmetov, the main hero in Cher­nyshevsky’s novel, and the reiteration of the model of a selfless and sacrificial man over the years with an attitude of sexual subli­ma­tion or even denial. Another type of the So­viet New Man is the labor hero in the es­tablished Stakhanovite tradition[6], refueled with Ostrovsky’s novel How the Steel Was Tempered and many other subsequent So­viet “production novels” that popularized the daily “great deed” of the common Soviet worker.

The “New Soviet Person” is David L. Hoffmann’s concern in his book Stalinist Values[7], describing them as “free of egotism and selfishness”, ready to “sacrifice per­son­al interests for the sake of the collective”[8]. The New Person was created or transformed through education, living and working envi­ron­ment, culture (as productive, not only repressive means), aiming to mold their way of thinking. As Hoffmann points out, the new men’s thinking and behavior would be based on the awareness of their role in build­ing socialism, which was not a new idea among modern political systems. However, the Soviet authorities promoted an “illiberal subjectivity”[9](the denial of private life, in order to achieve a full commitment in the social-political life), opposed to capitalism values and worldview.

The New Man represented the new stage in human evolution and it is signif­i­cant that it was successfully achieved within the Soviet state, as along with the contro­ver­sial and disputed ethnogenesis of the “So­viet people”, there was the community of new men or Homo sovieticus[10]. Although Homo sovieticus was presented as the new and enhanced type of Homo sapiens and even a new biological specimen, it is clear that he was, first of all, an ideological con­struct, a desirable social-political result and a socialist specimen, even if with a new moral code and engaged in a spiritual trans­for­mation[11]. The New Man of China andCuba are variations of the same ideological type – the Soviet Man – steeped in the cul­tural background and specificity (see the influence of the Chinese Cultural Revo­lu­tion (1966-1976) and the importance of the Revolutionary Offensive (1968-1970) in the Cuban case).

As the Soviet man needed to be edu­cated, modeled and reshaped, literature, media and arts appeared to be the suitable means, and cinematography played a huge role of propaganda, often offering repre­sen­ta­tions of the famous and party-minded[12] literature. Socialist Realism became the officially established doctrine, method and style in 1934, and its norms regarded not only literature, but also art and especially cinema. The film adaptations of successful Soviet novels – Gorky’s Mother, Sho­lo­khov’s And Quiet Flows the Don, Furma­nov’s Cha­payev, Fadeyev’s The Young Guard, Bogo­molov’s Ivan, Ostrovsky’s How Steel Was Tempered, Vasilyev’s The Dawns Here Are Quiet, Polevoy’s The Story about a Real Man – aimed at educating the public in the spirit of the “communist morals”, producing thus ex­em­plary and obedient citizens concerned with building the “golden future of humanity”.

 

On War, Men and Heroes

The Second World War became the most inspiring theme for Soviet writers – war journalists and during the ’50s former soldiers of the Red Army. This was had a different nature (if compared with World War I, which ended up with the Russian Revolution) and was entitled the “Great Fatherland Liberation War” or “Great Patri­otic War”, as it had the role of defending not only physically the Soviet Empire, but also ideologically and spiritually – from the threat of the bourgeois world and its deca­dent way of life and thinking. Besides, World War II mobilized the entire Soviet country and served as a binding patriotic element, generating many types of stories and novels over the time, as well as film adaptations, each of them significant for the decade of their creation[13].

Before offering a brief analysis of Boris Polevoy’s novel A Story about a Real Man, we need to explore several specific traits of Socialist Realism. One of them is the tension (and sometimes the contra­diction) between “what is” and “what ought to be” or, in other words, the dichotomy between realism and idealization, utopia or mythic representation[14]. As the task of art and literature was to generate official myths and to provide the necessary material for the education of the people, that opposition was vital and the main source of inspiration was reality. As in the case of Chernyshevsky’s novel characters, the heroes of the Soviet war prose were simple men and women who became heroes due to their heroic deed[15]. The idealistic representation of these deeds was the trait of the first wave of Soviet war prose until the ’50s[16]. There was a cycle of getting the inspiration from popular real heroes and situations and re-presenting them with an idealistic (and ideolog­i­cal) aura. This was entitled a “mass-copying” phenomenon by Elena Seniavskaia, as it resembled the “mass edition of heroic deed”[17] and sup­posed the creation of a symbol, pretending that many other heroes form the special “Soviet people”. Several examples of auto/­biographical novels would be Ostrovsky’s How the Steel Was Tempered and Fadeyev’s The Young Guard – novels with a huge success and with film adaptations.

Boris Polevoy’s novel is part of that genetic process, as A Story about a Real Man was inspired by a Soviet pilot Mare­syev and it was written “in the armchair of Nürnberg” – at Göring’s trial. Polevoy was considered the “singer of the legendary her­oism of the masses”[18] by the Soviet critics and his book is certainly part of a heroic-romantic perspective on World War II, re­sembling Fadeyev’s The Young Guard (1946 and 1951) and Kataev’s Son of the Regiment (1944). According to the Soviet criticism, the main motivation of the Soviet pilot Alexei Meresyev without limbs was the patriotic feeling, and his survival was due to that patriotism and desire to fight again. The incredible story of a pilot with both feet amputated because of frostbite and his dif­ficult return to combat flying was supposed to be a demonstrative lesson to Western lit­er­ature and especially to Jack London’s Love of Life[19]. Although Jack London’s story was a clear inspiration for Polevoy, he spe­cif­ic­ally mentioned that his character was not moved by mere desire for survival, but by patriotism[20]. This mental pattern was em­bedded in Stalinist culture, as the Soviet people was supposed to defy nature, circum­stances and hardships and to succeed[21]. Perhaps it is not random that metaphorically speaking Stalin began his different reign in the Soviet Union with his eulogy at Lenin’s funeral, stating: “We communists are people of a special mold. We are made of special material”[22]. This remark is also related to his pseudonym (Stalin is derived from the Russian stal`, meaning “steel” with another reference to the metaphorical title of N. Ostrovsky’s book How the Steel Was Tem­pered[23]) and to his favorite metaphorical title for teachers, writers and propaganda workers – “engineers of the human soul”.

The entire structure of the novel gravi­tates around the key-words “Soviet man” and “real man” and it is only when Mere­syev realizes his status as a Soviet citizen, he finds strength to overcome his condition and to fight for his right to be considered normal and fit for combat fight again. The one who inspired him and encouraged him not to give up hope, Vorobyov, was con­sidered a “real man, a Bolshevik” and his memory throughout the novel is also significant for the development of the plot and of Meresyev’s successful return to war. The novel aimed at encouraging Soviet people to take pride in their citizenship and inspiring them for great deeds for their Soviet motherland.

We propose a reading of the novel in Propp’s approach, as many conventional Soviet novels tend to have a ritual form and several plot functions to perform by the positive hero[24]. The Russian folktales were analyzed by Vladimir Propp from a struc­tural perspective[25], pointing out the func­tions of each phase of the tale and those performed by the heroes and heroines. Sim­plifying the issue, we support the ideas that the Socialist Realism novels have a certain pattern (“master plot” in Katerina Clark’s terms) and the characters are constructed, taking into account an “alphabet”[26]. In the case of the Soviet pilot from Polevoy’s novel, we may draw a parallel between the folktale hero going into the forest and being helped to enter the other world by Baba Yaga (through initiatory rituals like bath­ing[27] or being sewed into animals’ fur[28], or eating Baba Yaga’s food and drinking her water in order to become alike her) to rescue her mother and/or lover from Kas­chei Bessmertnyi[29], while Meresyev escapes the bear, the threat of the natural forces and enemies, being saved and nurtured in an underground dwelling and managing to fight in order to “save” his mother and lover from the imminent danger represented by Germans.

Although it is a war novel, the war is represented indirectly or as a mere back­ground with the focus on the result of the war – the limbless pilot, his pain and his despair of not being useful anymore to his country and family. There are some brief descriptions of the effects of war – the bombed villages,MoscowandStalingradat war, and the hospitals with a huge number of patients.

The exceptional pilot, who had sur­vived for 18 days in the forest during win­ter, is caught between his condition – a limbless, useless cripple – and his desire – to fly again and to fight. Only when his desire fulfilled, he would tell the truth to his mother and girlfriend. And this was possible due to the great discovery of his citizenship and membership within a great family namedSoviet Union.

Both the novel and the film adaptation unveil the mediation between the desire – virile, ideal body seen in Soviet art and ar­chitecture – and the reality – dismembered, harmed, mutilated and physically disabled bodies after the Great Patriotic War. As Lilya Kaganovsky[30] highlights, the Socialist Realism was characterized by a tension between the ideal hyperbolically healthy and strong Stalinist man (or, in other terms, “what ought to be”) and the mutilated, limp­ing, blind or paralyzed male body (or “what is”). The exemplary Stalinist masculinity appears under two opposing forms: the healthy and virile male body or the sick, mutilated and suffering invalid. The bodily sacrifice for the Soviet cause was the induced direction of reading Ostrovsky’s and Polevoy’s nov­els – in the first case for the sake of the Russian Revolution, in the sec­ond case for the victory of the Soviet Army against the Hitlerist plague. “The damaged male body became a model of exemplary masculinity”[31], according to Kaganovsky, opposed to the Bolshevik/Stakhanovite fan­tasy of the Stalinist era. The two mentioned novels are representative for the Soviet ob­session with usefulness and productivity, while the invalid status attracted some no­tions that were linked to the demonized capitalist self: lazy, non-working, exploit­ing, useless, thus parasitic.

 

Stolper’s Film Adaptation

    

The famous novel A Story about a Real Man couldn’t remain just a novel and it inspired the director Aleksandr Stolper to offer the Soviet public a film. Mariya Smir­nova is the writer of the script, mainly fol­lowing the novel and thus offering a close film adaptation of the novel. The composer isN. Kriukov, Pavel Kadochnikov is the actor playing Alexey Meresyev and Nikolai Okhlopkov is KommissarVorobyov. The film was released in October 1948, pro­duced by Mosfilm; it is black and white, its sound mix is mono and its runtime is 96 minutes.

We propose an “iconic analysis” of the film[32] or a “compositional interpretation”[33], based on the main aspects of the movie – content, space, light, image and sound – as we consider it the most relevant for our subject. The expressive features of the film adaptation are more important than the structural, narrative or psychoanalytic ap­proach, as they also point out some crucial aspects of Stalinist era, its cultural climate and mentality. The audience and its edu­ca­tion being the main aim of the film adaptation, the other features seem to be subordinate to these ones. As we are to discover, in some cases the visual material or its absence (ellipsis) conflicts with verbal messages or sometimes successfully represents some i­deas expressed in the novel.

Despite the fact that the film adaptation is close to the novel, it has a different accent and perspective on events. The book may be roughly separated into two parts: first, Ale­xey Meresyev’s struggle to survive in the forest and then to overcome the drama of losing his feet in the hospital and secondly, the pilot’s struggle against the Soviet bu­reauc­racy to be allowed to return to combat fight and his ultimate success. The film focuses mainly on the events of the first part of the novel (70 minutes of the film) and it gracefully silences the difficult bureaucratic aspects, moving to the scenes of the school for combat pilots and Meresyev’s invol­ve­ment in the war.

It is interesting to mention the fact that the 18 days of pilot’s survival period in the forest benefited of a generous mise-en-scène of 18 minutes and remarkable images with a suggestive power regarding the dimensions of the crisis and the heroic struggle of a man at war. The ideological montage is obvious and we would mention the expressive or metaphoric montage (in Balăzs’ terms) in the case of some image successions (see Mere­syev’s close-up pretending to be dead when the bear approached, the shooting and then the bears’ close-up). The depth of the image is given by the scene of Alexey’s difficult advance in the background and the traces in the snow in the foreground. The suggestive usage of the fade after the pilot fell asleep in the blizzard or the image of big traces on the snow refer to the great difficulty and yet the incredible strength of a wounded man.

The expressive montage has the crea­tive function, inducing the idea of difficult movement, continuous effort, advancement and suggesting a certain rhythm of this move­ment in the same space – winter forest. The sounds of the wind and blizzard are alter­nated with discrete non-diegetic music that imitates the sounds of nature. The symbolic composition of the image plays a huge role during these first 18 minutes, as it reveals the real situation of the character and his earning for life and return to the battle. This type of image is the one when Alexey is in a dark pit in the forest and while hearing the sound of a Soviet plane, he whispers with excitement and hope: the image of the plane is accompanied by pilot’s whispering and this event determined him to find the neces­sary strength to get out of the pit to light. The temporary victory is marked by a suc­ces­sion of a low-angle shots – the image of the trees and the sky – and high-angle and medium shots – the moving body, accom­pa­nied by triumphal tuning, followed by calm sounds.

The meeting with two boys in the for­est marked Meresyev’s salvation and the next days spent in the hidden village of refugees in the forest is represented by the succession of daily and nocturnal light on pilot’s face, suggesting not only the lapse of time, but also his recovery. After his sym­bolic death during his time spent in the forest, follows a period of rebirth, prepared for a different life and destiny.

The use of light is most impressive during the time spent by Meresyev in the hospital: the light on his bed while doctors discussed his case, the light on his face whenever he talks to his colleagues, espe­cially to Vorobyov (even if the window is behind him). The camera movements are also suggestive, as the camera is moving forward in case of important dialogues and it offers close-ups in key-scenes of great despair or profound thinking (see the scene when the commissar enters the room or while the others discuss Ostrovsky’s book, making clear reference to Alexey’s situa­tion; the camera focused on the doctors dur­ing their visit, not on Meresyev).

The light on Meresyev’s face has a symbolic role when he starts sharing his feelings with the commissar and when he dreams of flying again after commissar’s encouragement: “You are a Soviet man”. The commissar’s funeral is marked by the same words, as the colleagues describe the man who is buried as a “real man, a Bol­shevik”. The hospital space is a tight and partially dark, bleak space where the limb­less pilot’s hope is born and the constant ap­pearance of a window in the background seems to represent the seduction or the pro­mise of a future in the sky. Alexey’s ardent desire to fly again is represented by images of him exercising and learning to walk on his “new feet” – specially designed pros­the­ses. The limbless pilot becomes a New Man once he regains the perspective of flying again as an exceptional Soviet citizen (a moment marked, as we’ve already men­tioned by the light on his face) and a dif­ferent man once he gets his new “feet”. These prostheses are much more than sim­ple tools for the everyday life needs, they represent Alexey’s new addition to the body, his re-filled body (and his new self or re-subjectification) eager to prove his useful­ness during World War II.

Another symbolic image from Mere­syev’s recovery period in the hospital is when he stands on his prostheses between the beds, with the opened window behind in the background, forming a huge shadow of his legs in the foreground. Probably meant to suggest the greatness and determination of the Soviet airman, the image rather sug­gests the fears, hardships and uncertainty of an invalid with a gloomy future[34].

The next step in Meresyev’s recovery is in a sanatorium for pilots, where he sets a new goal – to dance on his prostheses and to impress the members of the committee who would decide upon his future. While the doctors examine his prostheses, the gross-plan is of Alexey’s face with an expression that marks his hopes fading away. All his efforts are to pass as a normal person, not as a cripple needy victim of war, and all he desires is to be treated as a normal pilot, not as a hero. The famous scene with Meresyev dancing with nurse Zina has a special composition – the pilot and the nurse in the middle, the crowd surrounding them and the focus on Meresyev’s and Zina’sfeet (there is a danc­ing dialogue between the two mise-en-scène through close-ups, medium and long shots while presenting the doctors’ reaction to the incredible limbless dancer). The prostheses are another symbolic close-up after the danc­ing scene, while Alexey rests in a tub. This artful game of showing and hiding pilot’s condition is represented through ellipsis or the display of the symbol of that condition.

Alexey’s healthy appearance was con­fusing both for the members of the com­mittee and for the inspector at the school for combat pilots, as they couldn’t tell about the pilot’s condition. These are some key-scenes of the film that suppose a certain tension between the real condition of the pilot and the desirable status of a normal useful man. This contrast unveils the status of a Soviet “real man”, of a war hero – an exemplary of the desirable Soviet new man, the product of the Soviet education, prop­a­ganda and ideological remodeling[35].

It is interesting to observe the way in which an aerial battle is represented in the film: a succession of close-ups: Meresyev’s face, the German plane, more planes in ac­tion, the German pilot shot and the plane falling down, then the lack of fuel in Mere­syev’s plane represented by Alexey realiz­ing a change brought by a special technical sound and the long shot of a plane falling gradually. The ending of the film presents Meresyev’s gratitude to “a real man, a Bolshevik” who supported him – an encouraging speech for the wounded comrade Petrov.The last images are the representation of Ale­xey’s now fulfilled dream: planes taking off and flying toward the aerial battle against the enemy. The last 25 minutes of the film counterbalance the tight space of the hospi­tal by providing aerial scenes and open spaces, revealing thus the symbolic freedom of the main character and suggesting the imminent victory on exalting non-diegetic music.

 

Conclusive Remarks

 

The myth of the New Man received the first coherent and consistent representation in a new society and state (Soviet Union) with new values, ideals and morals. The Soviet authorities perfected the means of producing the perfect citizen: institutions, education, political socialization, literature, arts and media. Literature and cinematog­raphy played an important role in educating the masses and popularizing the main traits of the desirable Soviet citizen. A. Stolper suc­cessfully adapted several Soviet novels, including Polevoy’s novel, which had a special place, as we have seen, in the Sta­linist imagery of masculinity. The victim of war – combat pilot Meresyev – became a hero once he realized his special status as a Soviet citizen and his citizenship marks the most important stages of the film. The motif of the “real man” (and Bolshevik) is re­peated in key-scenes throughout the film and represents the reason for Alexey Mere­syev’s rise like a phoenix.

While the novel displays some story­telling patterns specific to Socialist Realism, the film represents that story with cinemat­o­graphic devices. The repeated usages in key-scenes of meaningful close-ups, ideo­log­ical montage, symbols and symbolic composition, as well as the suggestive and artful actuation of light and shadow are as many examples of some of the most suc­cessful Soviet techniques. Stolper’s film adaptation is a great example of the Soviet contradictory aspects of the new man’s image torn between the ideal and desirable (fantasy) and the harsh reality.

 

 

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            Notes