1931

Source: ‘Chto znachit ‘Proletarskoe kino”?’, Proletarskoe kino, 1931, no. 1, January, pp. 3–5.

Soviet cinema is in crisis. Its present condition cannot meet even the most modest demands. In order to meet the enormous and quite legitimate demands that socialist construction makes even of cinema there must be a complete reorganisation in all areas of film work. This reorganisation is none other than the process of socialist reconstruction. Cinema enters the period of reconstruction very late, with almost no preparation and displaying a large number of conservative and reactionary tendencies.

This is the real context in which our journal is born. It determines both the title of the journal, the programme and the obstacles that will appear in its path.

What is the socialist reconstruction of Soviet cinema? In short it is the complete and final overcoming of the experience of our class enemy, bourgeois cinema, the transformation of Soviet cinema into a consistently socialist system of work that differs fundamentally from the bourgeois method not merely in its political content but also in its whole character, its methods and forms, and that has its own as yet unseen path of development, producing an unprecedented socially useful effect.

What do we need above all to realise this task? A correct political line, created solely on the basis of very great experience of the struggle of the working class, the experience condensed in the teaching of Marx, Engels and Lenin. Hence we must study the practice of preceding classes, overcome it and construct a genuinely socialist cinema. Thus the most important task of the journal is to elaborate a Marxist-Leninist theory appropriate to the field of cinema and to win the latter over to the hegemony of the method of dialectical materialism. The elaboration of problems of Marxist philosophy is unthinkable in isolation from practice. Socialist practice is violent class struggle. That is why the journal is bound to be a militant organ and to fulfil its theoretical functions in the implacable struggle against openly bourgeois theories, against any attempt at pretence, at dissembling Marxism, at capitulationism in the face of bourgeois experience and any deviations from the revolutionary philosophy of the proletariat.

Cinema is not created by itself: it is created by people and we need certain human material to ensure that Soviet cinema becomes genuinely Soviet, i.e. socialist. In the process of the socialist reconstruction of cinema the leading force can be a mere proletarian nucleus because it is, unfortunately, still proportionately very weak. The journal cannot be indifferent in the matter of creating proletarian cadres of film workers, it has no right to reject the important and complex work of ‘converting the intermediate social strata’ (i.e. the fellow travellers) who even now comprise the basic mass of productive cadres ‘to the rails of proletarian ideology’.

What other name could our journal have if not Proletarian Cinema?

The proletariat is re-making the world and, as a class builder, it is distinguished by its tremendous hatred for everything that is conservative and stagnant and by its active striving for everything that is really new and progressive. Nowhere, except in the country that is building socialism, are there conditions that will fully guarantee the flowering of vital creative thought, of innovation and inventiveness. A journal that calls itself proletarian’ must reflect as fully as possible in its activity these characteristics of the working class. By exposing pseudo-innovation, innovation for its own sake, which is the reverse side of reaction, our journal is obliged to follow attentively the slightest manifestations of creative initiative and, with all the resources at its disposal, to render assistance to those film workers who are storming the elements of stagnation that are firmly implanted in Soviet cinema.

Cinema is a powerful medium for cultural work but it is also a branch of the economy, of industry and of technology. For this reason our journal will not confine its programme to problems of an ideological or creative order. Organisational, technical and economic problems must also find their place in its pages. We must just remember that they are not an end in themselves, that their correct resolution will be achieved only if everything is seen in the light of the tasks of socialist reconstruction, i.e. on the basis of a definite political line.

That basically is the programme of our journal. Common sense will appreciate how great and difficult it is.

What resources do we have to realise this programme? First of all, the undoubted demand for a journal of this type. Without any doubt we can say that film workers and all those who are seriously interested in the work of Soviet cinema feel an acute need to give theoretical meaning to their practice, a need to have a place for the organised exchange of experience. Consequently there exists ‘naturally’ a sizeable number of future collaborators and readers for our journal. We have merely to organise matters the right way and the journal will find firm foundations. Secondly, we have in our favour the pressing desire of the revolutionary part of Soviet cinema to realise the reconstruction of the whole film industry as quickly as possible. If the journal emerges on the crest of this wave, if it can prove itself to be a real aid to the cause of reorganisation then it will be as indispensable as the factory that produces film stock, the optical-mechanical plant, the film studio, the educational institutions and research laboratories. Thirdly, we have the vast experience accumulated by Marxist scientific thought in a whole series of fields and above all we have the experience of the proletarian literary movement. Lastly, we can and must rely on the existing and emerging research and educational institutions of cinema itself: without an organic link with these the journal is simply unthinkable.

Thus the journal has real opportunities for completely successful work but the difficulties before it are not insignificant.

It is true that the research institutions of cinema can and must render assistance to the journal but we must not overestimate their resources. In the film industry the idea of research is still in an almost rudimentary embryonic state. It is true that the journal can and must rely on theoretical experience in other fields of research but we must remember that that experience was acquired in a different non-cinematic specificity and that it cannot be mechanistically transferred. Even the experience of proletarian literature, which is the field closest to cinema, cannot be used without taking account of the difference between cinema and literature. For this reason we need not so much wariness but knowledge of the matter, both of cinema and of the field the experience is drawn from, in short we need to stand on our own two feet. It is true that the reconstructive tendencies of a certain section of film workers are growing bigger and stronger but apart from them there are other tendencies that are reactionary and we must not underestimate their strength. Lastly, it is true that, while there is a strong desire among film workers to give theoretical meaning to their work, it has to be said frankly that the level of theoretical knowledge in cinema is beneath all criticism. It is not just that there are not enough people systematically carrying out theoretical work, there is in addition no elementary habit of this kind of work. Cinema discussions are often fruitless for one reason: because even the scantiest terminology has not been established. This gives rise to a babel, a mixture of a dozen languages.

As for habit: de mortuis nil nisi bonum. But we cannot play the hypocrite and say that the film journals that existed in the past have left us a rich legacy. Some of them have not even left a good name behind. The cinema press exists roughly to the extent that Soviet cinema exists but where are the cadres from this press, whom has it prepared for the time when film production will create its own masters? We do not ask for Eisensteins and Pudovkins from the press – we have them already! – but we can ask for people who are literate in the most primitive sense of the word. There are some but no more than one or two.

The first issue of the journal is a month late. To a significant extent this occurred because, even with the reduced requirement for material for the first issue, the editorial board had difficulty in putting the issue together: there was no lack of quantity in the material, but the quality …

When the first issue of a journal is published the new journal must be judged not so much on the way it actually presents itself as on the way it wants to be. The editorial board has more or less objectively assessed the quality of the first issue. It realises that it is only after a certain period equivalent to the publication of a number of issues that both the right type of journal to match its programme and the right format will be found. It is important that, with the aid of a core of collaborators and readers that must be created as soon as possible, this period of ‘establishment’ will be as short as possible.

To whom is our journal directed? As the organ of the Association of Workers in Revolutionary Cinematography it expects to find its readership among the progressive section of film workers. As the organ of ARRK, a social and militant organisation, it is aimed at the members of the Society for the Struggle for Proletarian Cinema, without whose active help Soviet cinema cannot develop, and at workers on the cultural front, who are bound to assist in the cause of the socialist reconstruction of cinema, and with understandable persistence it will try to link its work to the mass proletarian literary movement.

If the journal finds these readers, if they wish to play an active part in its fate, – and that is their duty and their right – then the journal will live, it will cope with the responsibilities it has taken upon itself, overcoming the difficulties that cannot be avoided in any cause and that, in a just and useful cause, only stimulate an appetite for work.