Page 166 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY 147
his Birobizhaner, an idealised account of Jewish settlers who transform the taiga
as well as themselves–ex-luftmenshn chopping down the primeval forest to build
schools and homes. Birobidzhan offered the most radical transformation yet: Ben-
Zion Goldberg, an important American Jewish fellow-traveller (as well as the son-
in-law of Sholom Aleichem), visited the autonomous oblast in 1934 and reported
back that ‘instead of being built up by Jews in what we call a typical Jewish
manner, Birobidzhan is being reclaimed with that Soviet efficiency which came into
play in the construction of Dneprostroi and Magnitogorsk’. 48
Far more than an extension of the Five Year Plan or a replacement for the
Yevsektsiya, the Birobidzhan project was a counter-Zionism (and, in some cases, a
crypto-Zionism). The prospects for peaceful settlement, the friendliness of the
indigenous population, and the existence of government support were favourably
contrasted to the difficult lot of the Jewish settlers in Palestine, caught between
Arab hostility on one hand and British imperialism on the other. In April 1935, the
Acme Theatre in New York opened Birobidjan, a Yiddish-language ‘documentary
featurette’ written and directed by M.Slunsky for Soyuzkino News, with a musical
score by Lev Pulver. Introduced by the chairman of the pro-Soviet Association for
Jewish Colonization in Russia (IKOR), this half-hour film played on a bill with
another Soviet ethnic item, A Song of Happiness [Pesnya o schast’e, 1934],
directed by Mark Donskoi and Vladimir Legoshin for Vostokkino in the Mari
Autonomous Region. (As a follow-up, Donskoi was reportedly ‘looking for a
49
scenario on Jewish life’. )
As the Nazis consolidated power in Germany, the propaganda offensive
gathered momentum. In May 1936, the Soviet ambassador to the United States
told a gathering in New York that Birobidzhan was ‘the symbol of the struggle
50
against anti-Semitism and against the entire medieval darkness’.
That summer, the Soviet Central Committee announced that, ‘for the first time
in the history of the Jewish people, its burning desire for the creation of a
homeland of its own, for the achievement of its own national statehood, has found
51
fulfilment’. This fulfilment was illustrated by Belgoskino’s Seekers of Happiness
[Iskateli schast’ya] which, well in advance of its appearance, was cited by Boris
Shumyatsky as one of the best Soviet movies of 1936 (along with We from
Kronstadt [My iz Kronshtadta, 1936] and A Son of Mongolia [Syn Mongolii,
1936]). 52
Released in the USA as A Greater Promise, Seekers of Happiness was co-
directed by Vladimir Korsh-Sablin and I.Shapiro, from a script by Johann Seltzer
and G.Kobets. Although made in Russian, the film featured a number of Yiddish
songs arranged by the enormously popular director of the Leningrad Music Hall,
Isaak Dunayevsky, and a star turn by Venyamin Zuskin. As an appeal to Jewish
nationalism and a criticism of Jewish life in the Diaspora, the film went well beyond
Nathan Becker. A poor family of foreign, most likely Polish, Jews–the incorrigible
luftmensh Pinya Kopman (Zuskin), his long-suffering wife Dvoira (the popular
character actress and People’s Artist, Mariya Blumenthal-Tamarina), and their
daughter Rosa–immigrate to the promised land of Birobidzhan, where Dvoira’s