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Tsarist Russia, Lubok style: Nikita mikhalkov's barber of siberia (1999) and Post-Soviet National Identity

2005; Routledge; Volume: 25; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01439680500065337

1465-3451

Stephen M. Norris,

Eastern European Communism and Reforms

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments Stephen M. Norris is Assistant Professor of History at Miami University. His dissertation was entitled Russian Images of War: The Lubok and Wartime Culture, 1812–1917. His recent publications include ‘Depicting the Holy War: images of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878’ in Ab Imperio, and ‘Images of 1812: the Patriotic War in Russian culture,’ forthcoming in National Identities. Notes Yuri Gladil'shchikov, Pervyi blokbaster Rossiiskoi imperii, Itogi, 145/10 (9 March 1999), pp. 42–47; the quote also appears in Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York, 2001), pp. 365, n. 15. See Diane Farrell, Popular Prints in the Cultural History of Eighteenth-Century Russia, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 1980. For more on the lubok's history, see Jeffrey Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read: literacy and popular literature, 1861–1917 (Princeton, NJ, 1985); Hubertus Jahn, Patriotic Culture in Russia During World War I (Ithaca, NY, 1995). In Russian, see E. I. Itkina, Russkii risovannyi lubok kontsa XVIII-nachala XX veka (Moscow, 1992); and the unrivaled collection of D. A. Rovinskii, Russkie narodnye kartinki, 5 vols. (St Petersburg, 1881). A one-volume edition of Rovinskii was published in 2002. This history is the subject of my work, A War of Images: Russian popular prints, wartime culture, and national identity, 1812–1945 (ms. in progress). Quoted in Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read, pp. 322–23. A. P. Chekhov, Poprygun’ia, in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii I pisem v tridtsati tomakh, Vol. 8 (Moscow, 1977), pp. 7–9. Richard Stites, Russian Popular Culture: entertainment and society since 1900 (Cambridge, UK, 1992), p. 26. For more on early Russian cinema, see Yuri Tsivian, Early Cinema in Russia and its Cultural Reception (Chicago, 1998); and Denise Youngblood, The Magic Mirror: moviemaking in Russia, 1908–1918 (Madison, WI, 1999). For the connections between the images and the cinema, see Neia Zorkaia, Folklor, lubok, ekran (Moscow, 1994). Birgit Beumers makes this point in the only scholarly article that deals exclusively with the film, Sibirskii tsiriul’nik (Barber of Siberia), in Jill Forbes and Sarah Street (ed.), European Cinema: an introduction (Basingstoke, UK, 2000), pp. 195–206. Beumers's excellent commentary of the film has shaped my own readings and her article places the film within the context of the times. She discusses the use of Mozart and the theme of hair present in the film, among other readings. She does not, however, pay much attention to the reception of the film and to the various ways in which films such as Mikhalkov's can be ‘read’, which is the focus of this article. For a nice summary of the attempt to ‘redesign history’ in post-Soviet Russia (although one that does not include film's role), see Catherine Merridale, Redesigning History in Contemporary Russia, Journal of Contemporary History, 38/1 (2003), pp. 13–28. Nikita Mikhalkov, The Function of a National Cinema, in Birgit Beumers (ed.), Russia on Reels: the Russian idea in post-Soviet cinema (London, 1999), pp. 50–53. Denise Youngblood, The Cosmopolitan and the Patriot: the brothers Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky and Russian cinema, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 23/1 (2003), p. 30. For films with this topic, see in particular the Brother series: Brat’ (A. Balabanov, Russia, 1999), Brat’ 2 (A. Balabanov, Russia, 2000). For more on Russian film in the 1990s, see Beumers (ed.), Russia on Reels (which focuses more on critically acclaimed directors such as Alexander Sokurov and Kira Muratova but contains several thematic articles about the state of Russian cinema); David Gillespie, Identity and the Past in Recent Russian Cinema, in Catherine Fowler (ed.), The European Cinema Reader (London, 2002), pp. 143–152; Vida Johnson, The Search for a New Russia in an ‘Era of Few Films’, Slavic Review, 56/2 (April 1997), pp. 281–285; and Jane Knox-Voina, ‘Everything Will Be OK’: a new trend in Russian film, Slavic Review, 56/2 (April 1997), pp. 286–290. Quoted in Andrew Meier, Riding to the Rescue: can Nikita Mikhalkov take the reigns of Russia?, Time, 8 March 1999, available online at: . One of the critics to the film has published an article that details historical mistakes made by Mikhalkov's idealization of the past in his film. See Nikita Sokolov, Slav'sia, great Russia …, Itogi, 10 (9 March 1999), pp. 48–49. Denise Youngblood also comments on Mikhalkov's tendency to decry western influences in Russia while he co-produces his films with European companies. See Youngblood, The Cosmopolitan and the Patriot, pp. 37–38. For more on the connections between ideas about the ‘Russian soul’ and post-Soviet culture, see the ever-reliable Svetlana Boym, From the Russian Soul to Post-Communist Nostalgia, Representations, 49 (1995), pp. 133–166. Beumers, Sibirskii, p. 201. Ibid., p. 197. Quoted in ibid., p. 201. Quoted in Meier, Riding to the Rescue. Youngblood, The Cosmopolitan and the Patriot, p. 37. Mikhalkov's depiction of family life as a model for Russian national identity mirrors many trends of nineteenth-century Russia. For more on this subject see, Alexander Martin, The Family Model of Society and Russian National Identity in Sergei N. Glinka's Russian Messenger, Slavic Review, 57/1 (Spring 1998), pp. 28–49. See the articles in Iskusstvo kino cited below for examples of this approach. Birgit Beumers also concludes: ‘in Mikhalkov's vision the whole of Russian society is transformed into one large family with a patriarch at its head’ (p. 200). In fact, Mikhalkov ran and won a seat in the Russian Duma as a member of the ‘Our Home is Russia’ party, a centrist party that supported Boris Yeltsin. For more on the importance of Christ the Savior Cathedral to Russian post-Soviet identity, see Andrew Genets, The Life, Death, and Resurrection of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, Moscow, History Workshop Journal, 46 (1998), pp. 63–95. Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power: myth and ceremony in Russian monarchy, Vol. II (Princeton, NJ, 2000), pp. 204–206. See James Cracraft, The Revolution of Peter the Great (Cambridge, MA, 2003). The term comes from Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (ed.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, UK, 1983). See, among other sources, the most recent book by Orlando Figes that examines how these trends developed over the course of the nineteenth century; Natasha's Dance: a cultural history of Russia (New York, 2002). In fact, in February 1999 I attended a Maslenitsa fair that was not nearly as much fun as the one in the film in front of the restored Christ the Savior Cathedral and right next to a giant poster advertising the film. See in particular the articles from Iskusstvo Kino, Russia's leading film journal as well as Julia Solovyova, ‘Barber’ Defends Russia's Honor, Moscow Times, 23 February 1999. Solovyova's is the only positive review of the film written by a Russian that I have read; she calls the epic ‘emotionally intense, touching, and beautiful’. However, she comments that the Maslenitsa scene ‘spoiled the movie for many viewers’. Tat’iana Moskvina, Ne govori, chto molodost’ slubila, Iskusstvo Kino, 6 (1999), online version available at: . Beumers, Sibirskii, pp. 195–197. For more on this context, see Kathleen Smith, Mythmaking in the New Russia: politics and memory in the Yeltsin era (Ithaca, NY, 2002), Ch. 6. One of the colognes made for the film was said to ‘contain the essence of Mikhalkov's moustache’, and some television programs carried footage of perfume testers sniffing Mikhalkov's facial hair to get the smell right. Beumers, Sibirskii, p. 197. Kevin O’Flynn, ‘Barber of Siberia’ Captures Kremlin, Moscow Times, 23 February 1999, p. 1. Mikhalkov claimed the government gave him the money in return for the morale boost his film would provide. See the story by Patricia Daganskaia, Two Brothers, at War and in Peace, Los Angeles Times, 20 June 1999, which focuses on Mikhalkov and his brother, the director Andrei Konchalovsky. The incident was caught on camera (as was everything having to do with Mikhalkov and Barber) and broadcast on all the news channels in 1999. The ‘national idea’ search is discussed in Smith, Mythmaking in the New Russia, pp. 158–172; see also the collection of responses to the debate in G. Satarov, A. V. Rubtsov and A. N. Baranov (ed.), Rossiia v poiskakh idei: analiz pressy (Moscow, 1997). The most extensive discussion of this debate can be found in Michael Urban, Remythologising the Russian State, Europe–Asia Studies, 50/6 (1998), pp. 969–992. Figures as of July 2003, available at Moskvina, Ne govori. For more on the ‘Siberian myth’ and the role of Siberia in Russian cultural conceptions, see Galya Diment and Yuri Slezkine (ed.), Between Heaven and Hell: the myth of Siberia in Russian culture (New York, 1993). Mikhalkov's vision of Siberia is remarkably similar to that of his brother's, Andrei Konchalovsky's, in his film, Siberiade (Siberiada), released in 1978. The two brothers famously do not get along—see Youngblood, The Cosmopolitan and the Patriot. Igor’ Zolotusskii, Istoricheskii zhivopisets Mikhalkov, Iskusstvo kino, 7 (1999), online version available at: ; for more on Ivanov's painting and the initial reaction to it (which was indifferent), see James Billington, The Icon and the Axe: an interpretative history of Russian culture (New York, 1966), pp. 341–346. Zolotusskii, Istoricheskii. Prugavin also claimed that the lubok stirred ‘blood-stained action’ among uneducated Russians, particularly during wartime, and thus contributed to peasant support for the regime (which, as a Populist, was a bad thing according to Prugavin). A. S. Prugavin, Knigonoshi i ofeni (n.d.), Vol. 1, p. 96. See the responses printed in Iurii Gladil'shchikov, Pervyi blokbaster Rossiisskoi imperii, Itogi, 10 (9 March 1999), pp. 42–47. Anatolii Goluboevskii and Aleksandr Dmitrievskoi, Mikhalkov kak narodnyi liubomets, Itogi, 10 (9 March 1999), p. 46. For more on the role of nostalgia and identity, particularly in post-Soviet Russia, see Boym, The Future of Nostalgia. David Lowenthal discusses the relationship between nostalgia and history in his The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge, UK, 1986). For an example of parallel trends in German cinema over a film that provoked disparate reactions between critics, who viewed it in contemporary terms, and viewers, who focused on its nostalgia, see Alon Confino's examination of Edgar Reitz's 1984 film, Heimat (Germany): Alon Confino, Edgar Reitz's Heimat and German Nationhood: film, memory, and understandings of the past, German History, 16/2 (1998), pp. 185–208. Svetlana Boym views nostalgia as an important element in post-Soviet life and sees it as part of what she terms ‘restorative nostalgia’, which ‘manifests itself in total reconstructions of the past’. She dwells more in her work on ‘reflective nostalgia’, which she views as a more personal (and thus more sympathetic) form. See Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, pp. 41–45. Peter Fritzsche also sees nostalgia as a ‘double of modernity’, ‘a familiar symptom of unease in the face of political and economic transformation, plain evidence also for the persistent inability to acknowledge the destruction of tradition or to work with the materials of the present’. For more, see Peter Fritzsche, How Nostalgia Narrates Modernity, in Alon Confino and Peter Fritzsche, The Work of Memory: new directions in the study of German society and culture (Champaign, IL, 2002), p. 62. Katherine Verdery argues that post-socialism ‘is a problem of reorganization on a cosmic scale, and it involves the redefinition of virtually everything, including morality, social relations, and basic meanings’. One could include national identity among her list, particularly its nostalgic turn toward a usable past. See Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: reburial and postsocialist change (New York, 1999), p. 35. For a discussion of post-Soviet national identity that focuses on the intellectual debates about how to forge a Russian nation, see Vera Tolz, Forging the Nation: national identity and nation building in post-communist Russia, Europe–Asia Studies, 50/6 (1998), pp. 993–1022. Although Tolz cites some fascinating responses to 1990s opinion polls about what it means to be Russian, she views the construction of national identity solely as a process forged by intellectuals and politicians. Jay Winter notes that ‘no film is strictly didactic, since images have a power to convey messages of many kinds, some intentional, some not’. See Jay Winter, Film and the Matrix of Memory, American Historical Review, 106/3 (June 2001), pp. 857–858. Dmitrii Rovinskii, the collector of popular prints and Moscow jurist, finally determined decisively that the print was an Old Believer one. See his Russkie narodnye kartinki. Smith, Mythmaking in the New Russia. The ideas promoted in Mikhalkov's film correspond to the definitions of Russianness produced after a 1995 opinion poll conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation. When asked what characteristics are necessary for being a Russian, the four most important features were: ‘to love Russia and view it as a homeland (87% of respondents picked this)’; ‘to know and love Russian culture (84%)’; ‘to have Russian as a native language (80%)’; and ‘to regard oneself as Russian (79%)’. Far lower on the list were having Russian citizenship and having Russian listed in your internal passport. The poll suggests the subjective elements of nationhood, characteristics celebrated in Mikhalkov's film. For the poll results, see Tolz, Forging the Nation, p. 1015.