The Unforgettable Year 1919 [USSR 1952]

Незабываемый 1919 год
Director: M. Chiaureli
Cinematographers: L. Kosmatov, V. Nikolayev

An incredible piece of Chiaureli's work as (according to the BFI Companion) one of the principal cinematic architects of the Stalin cult of personality. The film, like Love and Hate, takes place in 1919 and tells a civil war story; but unlike that movie, this one is focussed clearly on a particular leading personality in the struggle against the whites: Stalin.

The film is centred around the attack on Petrograd by Yudenich's army, slightly embellished by the presence of the British fleet (the British invasion force was not involved in the attack on Petrograd as far as I know). Notably, there is a strong emphasis on the presence of a large number of traitors within the Red Army and working inside the city; mostly these are tsarists. But one of them is actually Zinoviev, who has ordered the sailors to scuttle their ships rather than have them be taken by the British, but about whom it is implied he is working for the whites. In the face of all this, and the order given by a traitor to evacuate Petrograd, a phone call is made to Lenin, who, outraged to hear this, calls in Stalin to take over.

The emphasis is then on Stalin, who, the film notes, was responsible for many victories on the front during the war (this is not entirely false; he did in fact act as commissar with success on several parts of the front). But the film makes him out to be practically a superhero; when he arrives in Petrograd, the white conspirators learn of this and start to worry that their time may be up, etc. Throughout, people show great love for Stalin, who always shows wise leadership by asking for everyone's personal opinion, preferring this to the opinion of 'experts'. And he shows great modesty--as does Lenin, who is shown doing volunteer work lifting logs, and on a first name basis with passersby. Though other characters in the film are shown adulating Stalin, he himself says he is just a servant of the people, and Lenin is the true hero; probably evidence that Stalin's famous 'modesty' was an integral part of the personality cult itself.

The main thrust in this film is really that the forces of good and right, led by Stalin but composed also of the great mass of Bolshevik sailors, soldiers and workers, must navigate through and push aside various and sundry dishonest, conniving, power-hungry forces in order to achieve victory.

One of these forces, interestingly portrayed, is the foreign invaders. We see Clemenceau and Wilson at a summit in Paris discussing the 'Russian question', Churchill consulting with representatives of white generals etc. All of this part is of course historically accurate enough; these men did in fact publicly proclaim the need to crush the revolution, and they did send troops. But what is interesting is the repeated emphasis on Churchill as a significant figure here. It seems this is an attempt to remind the Soviet people that their allies in the war against the fascists were really just their enemies in the long run; that that war in fact represented a continuation of the first one. There is therefore a considerable amount of building up here of the idea of Russia (specifically Russia, rather than the USSR) against the world, which is plotting against her. Though it is also made clear by a veteran French soldier who refuses to fight that the ordinary working people of other countries are on the side of the Bolsheviks; it is the bourgeoisie who are against them.

Related to the nationalistic theme are a couple of interesting comments made by Stalin. At one point one of the traitorous military leaders advises him that it is impossible to bombard a fort on land from ships; it has been proved by the best international naval science--by British naval science. Then of course Stalin says do it anyway, it works, and at the end he makes a comment to the effect that 'science' cannot always be trusted, and he intends to continue overriding it when necessary. In all of this there is the clear message, as in Pirogov, that the haughty West Europeans with their supposedly advanced science are really just putting Russia down, and Russian ingenuity and self-confidence are enough to win the day.

There is in general in this film a large amount of focus on the individuals Stalin and Lenin, and their authority; Stalin makes repeated reference to comrade Lenin having decided this or that, etc. Although it is the ordinary sailors, workers and soldiers who win the day, it is clear that much responsibility lies with Lenin and his loyal deputy Stalin for providing leadership and doing away with traitors and spies. I wonder how much this emphasis on traitors and spies--appropriate as it probably actually was in 1919--has to do also with re-emphasising it for the paranoid atmosphere of the later Stalin years.

In any case, it is interesting to think that probably when this film was released, not much criticism would have been made of it; Chiaureli's previous films about Stalin all won the Stalin prize, and of course this was the period of high socialist realism. So a viewer of this film probably would have been expected to view it as representing historical fact and as genuinely paying tribute to a great man. One can expect that even if many had quiet reservations, such a thing would have had a great effect on many, especially the young and those who were already believers in the personality cult. Given this kind of atmosphere, one can understand better the outpouring of grief upon Stalin's death.

Cinematographically, this is not a very interesting film. Many of the shots are composed to look very like socialist realist paintings, with leaders leaning at an impossibly diagonal angle as they give a speech to a perfectly attentive, eager crowd, on a backdrop of a big building with neoclassical columns etc. The battle shots are competently done, and not all of this film feels like socialist realism in style, but it is nevertheless highly stylised and not particularly artistic fare. However, it is of course of interest because of the way it fits into socialist realism. Additionally the score by Shostakovich is fairly strong.