Spring Thaw Breakthroughs in Soviet Cinema

Patrycja Włodek

Abstract

A book review of Joanna Wojnicka’s Dzieci XX Zjazdu. Film w kulturze sowieckiej lat 1956-1968 (The Children of the Twentieth Congress. Film in Soviet Culture During the Period of 1956-1968, 2012). This is an extensive and erudite, and first after 1989, publication dealing with the thaw period in Soviet cinema. Wojnicka, introducing her own categorisation into two generations of artists (who debuted in the 1950s and 1960s), examines the thaw in a manner that reaches beyond the cliche. She does not focus on blockbusters and the themes commonly associated with the thaw (e.g. the melodrama, The Great Patriotic War), but on the lesser known elements, that are defining for the cinema and culture of the time (e.g. the myth of America, the myth of revolution, the myth of scientific discovery). At the same time Wojnicka notes, that the thaw was not truly a break- through or a radical break from earlier formation (as it is commonly perceived), but an element of continuity in the Russian and Soviet cultures. This conclusion is based on an analysis of themes ever present in these cultures, however these themes gained a new dimension during the thaw.