What Did We Fight For? The Revolutionary Narrative of Soviet and Post-Soviet Films About the Civil War

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Notes

1. E. Dobrenko, “Vse, chto vy khoteli znat’ o Revoliutsii, no boialis’ sprosit’ u Iuriia Trifonova,” Novyi Mir, 2017, no. 12, p. 184.

2. I. Kalinin, “The Spectre of the Revolution,” The Times Literary Supplement, February 15, 2017 (available at http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/private/spectre-russian-revolution). See also the expanded Russian version of this article, I. Kalinin, “Prizrak iubileia,” Neprikosnovennyi zapas, 2017, no. 1(111), pp. 11–20.

3. Boris Dubin and Lev Gudkov have written frequently about this, and political scientist Mariia Snegovaia has recently noted it, as well. See M. Snegovaia, “Kuda i pochemu ischezla Oktiabr’skaia revoliutsiia iz pamiati naroda,” Colta.ru, November 11, 2017 (available at http://www.colta.ru/articles/society/16626).

4. K. Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), pp. 68–89.

5. D.J. Youngblood, Russian War Films: On the Cinema Front, 1914–2005 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2007), p. 115.

6. The view toward the civil war that took shape in His Excellency’s Adjutant was precisely reproduced in Boris Akunin’s recent novel Not Saying Goodbye … (2018), where the key aspect directly employs plot points and characters from the series. Erast Fandorin explains this approach thus: “Erast interrupted the prince. He said that his enemies were not red, nor green, nor purple, but any type of scoundrel regardless of color, and enemies of the fatherland. Who he considered enemies of the fatherland in the current circumstances was not obvious. It seemed to him personally that it meant everyone participating in this cursed massacre.”

7. On this, see M. Lipovetskii, “Iskusstvo alibi: ‘Semnadtsat’ mgnovenii vesny’ v svete nashego opyta,” Neprikosnovennyi zapas, 2007, no. 3(53), pp. 131–146.

8. “Bar fairy” is a self-description by the narrator of the popular song “Institutka” (or “Chernaia Mol’”), a young woman living in Paris whose father “did a lot for the Whites” before he was captured and executed.—Trans.

9. See A.M. Etkind, Vnutrenniaia kolonizatsiia. Imperskii opyt Rossii (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2014), pp. 354–372; A.M. Etkind, “Fuko i tezis vnutrennei kolonizatsii,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2001, no. 49, pp. 50–74; A.M. Etkind, “Bremia britogo cheloveka, ili Vnutrenniaia kolonizatsiia Rossii,” Ab Imperio, 2002, no. 1, pp. 265–299.

10. P. Arsen’ev and I. Gulin, “Tragediia i fars sovetskogo iazyka (o lingvogrammatike fil’mov Gleba Panfilova),” Translit, 2014, no. 12 (available at http://www.trans-lit.info/materialy/12-materialy/tragediya-i-fars-sovetskogo-yazyka-o-lingvopragmatike-filmov-gleba-panfilova).

11. A similar conceptualization of Bolshevism takes place both in Aleksandr Etkin’s book The Whip (A. Etkind, Khlyst. Sekty, literatura i revoliutsiia (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 1998)) and in Yuri Slezkine’s aforementioned The House of Government. Also see Vladimir Sharov’s quasi-historical novels dedicated to the revolution.

12. Sergei Lazo was a young Red commander captured and executed by the Whites. “The Eaglet” was a popular Komsomol song by Iakov Shvedov and Viktor Belyi about a teenage Red Army soldier.—Trans.

13. Vsevelod Emilievich Meyerhold, the famous director and theorist.—Trans.

14. For an analysis of this film, see I. Kukulin, Mashiny zashumevshego vremeni. Kak sovetskii montazh stal metodom neofitsial’noi kul’tury (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2015), pp. 415–418.

15. Kinematograf Ottepeli: dokumenty i svidetel’stva, ed. V.I. Fomin (Moscow, 1998), p. 169.

16. The “Red Count” was Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoy, author of The Road to Calvary, the trilogy of novels on which the television shows were based.—Trans.

17. “Anton Dolin o ‘Solnechnom udare’” (available at https://kuzmaabrikosov.wordpress.com/2014/10/15/dolin-udar).