Soviet Epic Film: Alexander Nevsky and Bogdan Khmelnitsky

Alexander Nevsky film poster: 1938

Soviet cinema in the late 1930s turned to the subjects of wartime leadership and international relations. In 1938, Sergei Eisenstein produced his first sound film, Alexander Nevsky. This was also the first in a series of large-scale productions by multiple Soviet film directors which told grand historical narratives of national significance (Kalinowska and Kondratyu 2015, 199). Eisenstein’s film focuses on the medieval Russian prince, Alexander Nevsky, who overcame a number of foreign threats to the city of Novgorod in the 13^th century. Notably, at the Battle of Lake Peipus in 1242 Nevsky defeated the army of the Teutonic Order, German crusaders in the Baltic region. The film gives a highly stylized account of this battle and its lead-up, acting as a thinly veiled allegory for Soviet opposition to Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. In 1941, a similar film was produced by Igor Savchenko telling the story of the 17^th century Ukrainian Cossack leader Bogdan Khmelnitsky. This film also focuses on a historical culture-hero of a particular SSR while presenting its audience with an easily interpretable World War II polemic. But beyond commenting on international wartime politics, these two films are examples of epic historical narratives that bolster specific national cultures while tracing a genealogy of proletarian uprising and inspiring leadership in the Soviet republics.

Alexander Nevsky film poster: 1938

An early scene in Alexander Nevsky shows the Teutonic capture of the Russian city of Pskov. Eisenstein constructs this scene to be as sinister as possible using overt religious imagery. Indistinct chanting is heard in the background, and unmoving knights, dressed in white with black crosses, stand in ranks at the center of the city. This scene includes the massacre of a number of prisoners, and it is important to note that in these scenes of brutality, “The church’s presence is conspicuous, with priests in white habits holding large black crosses high above their heads” (Cohen 2014, 161). The conflict of the film, in fact, is often cast as whether Russia will be ruled from Rome. In contrast, religious imagery is essentially absent from the scenes in Novgorod. In the film there is a “severance of Russian nationalism from explicitly defined religious roots” (Cohen 2014, 168). This move is generally read as a way of equating Nevsky’s leadership with Stalin’s. The historical Nevsky was, of course, a Christian prince with strong ties to the Orthodox Church, but Eisenstein’s realism is far more concerned with fitting nationalism to socialist allegory than with historical accuracy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsOyI8_PQmI&t=1970s

This work is no doubt a work of nationalistic hagiography, but it also attempts to marry its praise of Nevsky (and Stalin) with the glorification of a specifically Russian proletarian culture. Eisenstein himself said of the film:

“The only miracle in the battle on Lake Peipus was the genius of the Russian people, who for the first time began to sense their national, native power, their unity: a people able to draw from this awakening self-awareness an indomitable strength; able to advance, from their midst, a strategist and commander of genius.” (Eisenstein 1938, 144)

This victory provides the nationalist structure of the film’s narrative; it is meant to speak to a specifically Russian triumph. Through this narrative, “Eisenstein was determined to build Russian folk culture into the film” (Cohen 2014, 160). Its rising action spotlights two peasants who are eager to fight in Nevsky’s army, and on the eve of the battle one of them recites a folk tale, “The Vixen and the Hare,” which gives Nevsky a crucial strategic idea (Cohen 2014, 162). Additionally, when Nevsky is recruiting his army, the film shows the nobility and the merchant classes of Novgorod reacting with disdain while the peasants of the city understand the importance of confronting the Teutonic Order and quickly volunteer. By concentrating on the role of the peasants in Nevsky’s campaign, Eisenstein characterizes his victory as one of collective “genius” in which a brilliant leader and a stalwart people triumph through mutual understanding and determination.

It should also be noted that Eisenstein includes a brief scene in which Nevsky strikes a deal with the Golden Horde, a successor state of the Mongolian Empire, which claimed sovereignty over Novgorod. Eisenstein asserted that this moment demonstrates the heroism of defeating an enemy from the west while being oppressed by an enemy from the east (Eisenstein 1938, 141-143). Some commentators have interpreted this moment in the film as being a scattershot recognition of the threat which the Japanese Empire posed to the Soviet Union in the late 1930s, a threat meant to be seen as less important than that of Nazi Germany. Regardless, it is an Orientalizing moment which defines Russian heroism in contrast to the perceived cruelty of central Asian peoples. Bogdan Khmelnitsky creates a similar problem with depicting non-Great Russian nationalities. The film’s titular character was notorious for encouraging pogroms against Ukrainian Jews (Kalinowska and Kondratyu 2015, 171). The film addresses this historical problem by ignoring it. In glorifying their chosen nationalities, both Alexander Nevsky and Bogdan Khmelnitsky attempt to minimize conflict between ethnic groups which could be seen as corresponding to Soviet nationalities and national minorities.

Still from Bogdan Khmelnitsky: 1941

Like Eisenstein, Savchenko attempts to align his titular hero with the common classes through a set of recognizable cultural markers. Bogdan Khmelnitsky builds an image of Ukrainian culture and political heritage using stereotypical depictions of Cossacks. “The Cossack leader-in-the-making does not wear noble garb, but simple Cossack clothes: just a white shirt which contrasts with his black mustache and hair, and baggy pants” (Kalinowska and Kondratyu 2015, 200-201). Using simple traditional dress as the film’s costuming highlights its nationalistic quality and imposes semi-proletarian value on Ukrainian cultural traditions. In the film, Khmelnitsky is a consummate leader, like Nevsky, and builds a ragtag army to defeat his own deeply maligned enemy, the Polish nobility. Savchenko constructs “a binary system of attributes that characterize the Cossacks and the Poles” in which “Khmelnytsky’s virtues are highlighted when juxtaposed with the vices of Polish nobility, in particular the Potockis and Czapliński. The Cossack masses are at odds with the Cossack elders, especially Lyzohub” (Kalinowska and Kondratyu 2015, 202). The film demonizes Poles in the service of the Soviet political expediencies of the early 1940s, as well as to define Khmelnitsky as a virtuous leader of an ethnically specific common people.

The epic film was used quite effectively by Soviet directors in the late 1930s and early 1940s to further the sanctioned nationalisms of the Soviet state. The success of Alexander Nevsky as a nationalist epic and as an early Soviet sound film was recreated in Bogdan Khmelnitsky for the Ukrainian nationality, rather than the Russian. This underscores the transposable nature of this genre to the culture heroes of any Soviet nation. That being said, the epic films of the 1930s and 1940s mainly portrayed historical figures of the Great Russian nationalities. In general, the directors of these films were ready to interpret and doctor historical events in order to build allegories for international conflicts, approved nationalisms, and socialist cultural imagery.

Bogdan Khmelnitsky film poster: 1941

 

Works Cited