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Happy Glasnost
| Article
# : |
15487 |
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Section : |
SPECIAL SECTION
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1989 |
6,069 Words |
| Author
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Anna Lawton
Anna Lawton teaches history of Soviet cinema at Georgetown
University. She specializes in Soviet cultural politics and
has published numerous articles and books. |
During the past four years, the words glasnost and perestroika have gradually become part of the international vocabulary. Most journalists no longer bother to put them into quotation marks. The public knows what they mean in general terms, for the USSR and the world at large. But not so many are familiar with the implications of these two concepts for the Soviet art world. The film industry, in particular, has been deeply affected and today finds itself in a state of turmoil.
Glasnost has shattered old taboos; has dethroned cultural czars; has unlocked the vaults of secret archives, releasing captive masterpieces of cinematic art; has opened the Pandora's box of classified information, regaling the filmmakers with a bonanza of long-awaited but troublesome subjects; and has freed the artists' creativity and unleashed their imagination. In this respect, the film industry is undergoing an extraordinary renaissance, comparable in many ways to the revolutionary renewal of the early 1920s and the cultural "thaw" of the 1960s, although the summits are still unmatched. No new Eisensteins or Tarkovskys have yet emerged.
As in those early periods, cinema has anticipated and forecast the events that were to take place in the political arena. And once again, the creative ferment is accompanied by economic restructuring. But in this area today's filmmakers are confronted with the harsh reality of a system on the brink of collapse and with an uncertain future. While feasting at the glasnost banquet, they are struggling with an unmanageable perestroika. "It's now or never," everybody says. And the "never" looms like a gloomy menace over the feast.
This summer, while the XVI Moscow International Film Festival was unfolding on the premises of the Hotel Rossiya, across Red Square, beyond the Kremlin's walls, Gorbachev's government was wrestling with ethnic unrest and the miners’ strike, juggling an ever-dwindling supply of consumer goods, purging the party ranks of unpopular bosses, firing inefficient managers, and fending off the attacks of the conservative ideologues. One prominent film director characterized the present time as "being on the brink of a civil war."
His statement may be too pessimistic, but the situation is critical. Empty shelves are attributed to speculation and political sabotage. The value of the ruble on the black market has plunged to an unprecedented low--10 to 1 vis-à-vis the dollar. Even though the official exchange rate and most prices are kept artificially stable, inflation is rampant throughout the country. The
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