War: The Soviet Eye

IT'S VERY DIFFICULT for anyone who did not live through it, even to attempt to perceive the effect of the Second World War on Soviet society. The U.S.S.R. lost twenty-million of its citizens, mostly civilians, and saw its cities and towns burned and pillaged by the German Army, before the tide of the war turned in the Winter of 1942. World War II has always been referred to in the Soviet Union as "The Great Patriotic War," which perhaps gives some indication of the enormity of its importance in the U.S.S.R., both historically and even in contemporary life.

Ballad of a Soldier was produced in 1960, well into the Kruschev period, and not surprisingly, it is totally non-ideological. It is a simple, at times overly sentimental, but extremely successful demonstration of the disruptive effect of the war on the lives of individuals, and on the fabric of society at large.

Alyosha, a nineteen-year-old soldier away from home for the first time, is rewarded for an act of bravery at the front by being granted six days leave to travel home and see his mother. The war is going very badly--apparently this takes place in the Fall of 1941--and the film is the story of Alyosha's odyssey, journeying from the collapsing front lines back into the heartland of Russia. He is sidetracked during the trip by several isolated episodes. He comes to the aid of a soldier who, having lost a leg in combat, is afraid to return home to his wife; he goes out of his way to bring greetings to the wife of a fellow soldier, and deliver her two bars of soap, only to discover that she is living with another man. And most importantly, he meets and falls in love with a girl of about his 'own age, from whom he is then separated forever in the hectic confusion of a railway station. By the time he arrives home, his leave is almost over, and he has only a few minutes to see his mother before returning to his regiment. A narrator informs the audience, both at the beginning and the end of the movie, that Alyosha was killed in action.

Gregori Chukhrai, who directed the film, emphasizes the individual suffering of all the characters, gives a tragic portrait of a whole people whose lives are disrupted by war. Alyosha, whose naive heroism and perpetual optimism are particularly pathetic in light of his impending death, is an example of wasted potential. He is a man who is only beginning to realize his capacity for friendship, and for love.

His fleeting contact with Shura, the young woman apparently uprooted and travelling aimlessly, with whom he falls in love, is his first deep emotional involvement. Her sense of the hopelessness of their situation, perhaps of their entire country, is contrasted with his seeming self-confidence in a poignant way.

Chukhrai does not hesitate to create sentimental scenes: Shura and Alyosha waving to each other as his train pulls away, Alyosha's mother running breathless and perspiring from her work in the fields to greet him. But somehow, in this context, anything less than sentimentality would be unsatisfactory. War has torn a society apart, and for a few brief moments its victims are struggling to recapture a past forever lost, or discover experiences never known. Absent is the business-as-usual optimism of most American films about the Second World War. There is a sense in Ballad of a Soldier that nothing will ever be the same.

Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky is historically a fitting complement to Ballad of a Soldier. Made in 1938, it represents Eisenstein's effort to re-integrate himself with the Stalin regime after a long period of disfavor. Alexander Nevsky is in every sense a one-dimensional film. Its theme is patriotism, and its message, directed in no uncertain terms at Nazi Germany, is that Russia will ward off any attempt at conquest. The film takes place in 1242, when combined Russian armies under the leadership of Prince Alexander Nevsky, defeated the invading German force. Eisenstein uses these events in a less than subtle allegory about what would happen in the event of an attack by Hitler on the Soviet Union. Although the characters are pure stereotypes--Nevsky is a traditional military-hero figure and all the Germans are portrayed in a demonic light--one can gauge the depth of fear present in the U.S.S.R. of 1938 by watching Eisenstein flexing Russia's muscles.

The shallowness of the movie notwithstanding, there is no denying Eisenstein's cinematic talent. His camera re-creates battle scenes, mass meetings, and torch-lit parades with a realism unusual in "cast of thousands" films.

A striking side element of Alexander Nevsky is the hostile depiction of Catholicism, which Eisenstein accomplishes by integrating Catholic ceremony with German preparations for battle. It would seem that this is a fair reflection of Stalin's strong anti-Catholic Church line, which terminated in 1941 with the Anglo-American-Soviet alliance.

At the end of the movie, Nevsky speaks in triumph to a mass of Russians who have assembled to celebrate their victory and pay him tribute. In his address he makes a plea for preparedness, a plea which Stalin and the Soviet leadership found themselves unable or unwilling to heed. In the context of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, which took place less than a year after the film was released, Alexander Nevsky must have seemed, to those who originally saw it, a meaningless film. To our good fortune, later historical events have made the movie, for all its flaws, anything but meaningless.