The Thinking Reed

In 1979-81 such commercial films flooded on to our screens, to an extent that aroused serious concern in intellectual circles. Figures from the world of art and criticism protested in the pages of Literaturnaya Gazeta and Sovetskaya Kultura against this encroaching ‘Hollywoodization’. It was mentioned, in particular, that the propagation of violence in Soviet commercial films was having the same consequences as in the West. Militiamen acknowledged that ‘the number of acts of hooliganism committed by young people increases sharply when a film like Pirates of the Twentieth Century is shown, especially in a small town.’1 Well-known producers complained that the screen was being filled with Soviet-produced films that had been made ‘according to the outdated patterns of the American conveyor-belt of the forties and fifties’.2 V. Motyl' wrote, bitterly: ‘It appears that some novelty or other can simply be organized, its success planned and also organized, and then it is “issued in many copies”.’3

In the seventies Soviet society increasingly assumed the characteristics of a consumer society, with all the ensuing consequences. Cultural values were also transformed into objects of mass consumption. Izvestiya wrote that ‘into the category of “prestige articles” have moved not only cars, flats, clothes, furniture and rings but also books, shows and concerts.’4 The transformation of cultural objects into commodities, objects of speculation, is certainly not a very positive phenomenon, even though it is quite logical under the new conditions. It is felt especially painfully in a society where traditional values are not moribund but still alive. Some social strata are becoming embourgeoisé (which is sometimes mistaken for ‘Europeanization’). But these processes must not be viewed in a one-sided and moralizing way. The development of a consumer society in a country chronically suffering from shortages of consumer goods will have far-reaching — perhaps revolutionary — consequences. It is in consumer society that culture acquires ‘prestige’ and whole social groups come into contact with art for the very first time. Many people speak of a ‘book boom’ in our country (actually we had two such booms, the first at the end of the fifties, the second after 1967). It was noted that the increased interest in books was connected with an improved standard of living, and especially with improved housing conditions. The complaint is heard that many people buy books but do not read them. All the same, there are now more books in people’s possession, and that cannot fail to have consequences. Moreover, note this — the ‘book boom’ did not apply to the works of the official ideologues. People not only do not read them, they do not even buy them. They do not regard them as ‘books’!

In the same way, the commercial cinema played a role more complex than the one assigned to it by the heads of the propaganda department. It finished off ‘socialist realism’. More precisely, ‘socialist realism’ was dead and buried by the seventies as a result of the objective development of events. But the commercial art of the late seventies drove the traditional aspen stake into its grave. That old thing would not rise again.

The spiritual emptiness of the commercial cinema reflected the ideological crisis in society. On the other hand there appeared the theatre of A. Efros, in which the problems of spiritual emptiness, stagnation and bankruptcy were brought to the fore. The spiritual vacuum became, so to speak, the content and theme of art, and a matter for study. Efros created a sort of poetry of stagnation. From one performance to the next there floated an atmosphere of enigmatic expectation, but it was still not known what was being expected or whether, anyway, there was any sense in this expectation. A similar motif was present in all the productions. Perhaps one might name Samuel Beckett the most ‘Efrosish’ playwright. His plays could not be seen in the official theatres — except in the Baltic republics, where the local bureaucracy is a little more liberal, or just wiser. Efros’s theatre shows people at a turning point in their lives, but that moment, it seems, goes on for ever. The heroes continually balance between belief and unbelief, awareness and unawareness, and are incapable of making the only right choice. This was remarkably poetic art, but it faced towards the past.