The violence of antiquated forms: Aleksei Fedorchenko's Angels of Revolution. (2nd September 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Roberts, Tom
• Is Part Of: Studies in Russian and Soviet cinema. Volume 13:Number 3(2019)
• Page Start: 247
• Page End: 254
• Publication Date: 2019-09-02
• Subjects: Aleksei Fedorchenko -- Soviet avant-garde -- socialist realism -- collectivization -- Kazym Rebellion -- Stalinism; Motion pictures -- Soviet Union -- Periodicals; Motion pictures -- Russia (Federation) -- Periodicals; Motion pictures; Russia (Federation); Soviet Union; Periodicals; 791.430947
• DOI: 10.1080/17503132.2019.1644783
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1750-3140

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article traces the relationship between Soviet aesthetic and political projects in Aleksei Fedorchenko's Angels of Revolution ( Angely revoliutsii, 2014), which centers on two groups victimized by Stalinist culture of the 1930s: the indigenous peoples of Western Siberia, whose resistance to collectivization culminated in the Kazym Rebellion (1934); and Russia's revolutionary avant-garde, representatives of which are dispatched to Kazym to facilitate the assimilation of the native Khanty and Nenets in the film. While Fedorchenko illustrates the instrumentalization of cultural producers in the service of Soviet state priorities, and even coercion, the film also exposes a more fundamental relationship between aesthetic form and political violence. Reading the film's action and imagery against the historical evolution of Soviet aesthetic practices, and the clash between modernist and representational methodologies that eventually generated Socialist Realism, the author explicates Fedorchenko's wide-ranging ambivalence toward the avant-garde project. In ceding its aesthetic mandate to the state, the avant-garde is left to merely execute and reflect the totalitarian violence of Soviet modernity.