„Войниците на Дзержински“: Съветското кино срещу икономическата контрареволюция
Dzerzhinsky's Soldiers: Soviet Cinema against the Economic Counterrevolution.

Summary/Abstract: Cinema in Soviet Russia follows the Party directive to reflect “reality”. It is an order that both theoretical explorations of cinematography and filmmakers have to obey, at all stages of work – from shooting and cutting to editing. Filmmaking allows for a carefully scripted show of life in the Soviet state. Indeed, this is literally a process of assembling, constructing “reality”. Simultaneously, however, a reverse effect of re-construction is taking place in films: through the sequences of edited reality, the camera eye reveals the dark side of life in Soviet society. The viewer is pointed to the heroes of a shady world, the antagonists, who remain outside the official statistics and the evening news. The camera becomes a “spyhole”; though in the hands of cinematographers and directors. Nevertheless, its focus is also often set by screenwriters from the law enforcement, by investigators and consultants from the police, who work in the same genre of crime movies. To tell a colonel from a poet in the credits is difficult, they all are, in the words of Mayakovski, “soldiers of Dzerzhinsky” (the father of the Soviet secret service Cheka). The article explores the shared creative effort of filmmakers and state officers to reinstate order in a deviant reality. First, it examines the importance of the film industry in the governance of the Soviet state. Next, it analyzes the reasons used to legitimate cinema as a credible view of the world/picture of the world. The last part provides examples of how the film stories of the Soviet crime detective lift the veil of secrecy over one segment in the criminal underground - the “second” or black economy of the socialist state – in order to show and to punish the criminals.

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