Page 219 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

200 INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY
and it was only under pressure from Vesenkha, the Supreme Council for the
National Economy, that they agreed to a revised target of 400 projectors by the
end of 1931. In April a further reduction to 275—95 projectors and a unit price
increase from 9,000 roubles to 27,000 roubles were announced. Given Soyuzkino’s
budgetary limits, this threefold price increase meant that the cinema organisation
had funds only for 100 projectors, a tenth of the target six months earlier. By May
1931 only one projector instead of the projected 47 had been delivered so that
there was only one cinema in the entire Soviet Union equipped to show the
emerging queue of sound films: in six months the original target figure had been
reduced a thousandfold. This in turn meant that, because there was nowhere to
show the sound films, silent versions of these sound films had also to be released,
diverting funds that could more profitably have been deployed in the making of new
films. During this period of transition Soyuzkino was therefore simultaneously
producing: (1) silent films; (2) sound versions of silent films; (3) sound films; (4)
silent versions of sound films. This clear duplication of resources and effort led
Shumyatsky to introduce more stringent overall planning controls. The nucleus of
Party and Komsomol members in the film industry was to be strengthened and
better management techniques introduced but the linchpin of the reforms was to be
the further development of the annual ‘thematic plan’ [templan] for film production
26
to overcome the ‘backwardness’ that so many of its critics lamented. Annual
thematic plans had been introduced by Sovkino in the mid-1920s but these plans
were drawn up in vacuo by the administrative heads of studios. Under Shumyatsky
the impetus for discussion was to come from the film-makers themselves who
were to be consulted and represented at annual thematic planning conferences,
such as that held in December 1933. 27
But Shumyatsky’s problems were not always internal to the industry: in June
1932, while he was on extended leave in Sochi, the People’s Commissariat of Light
Industry, Narkomlegprom, tried to take over Soyuzkino, apparently without any
Party or government orders and allegedly without even the knowledge, not just of
Shumyatsky but also of the People’s Commissar for Light Industry, Lyubimov,
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himself. In an impassioned speech on 2 July 1932 Shumyatsky attacked what he
called ‘a sad misunderstanding’ and argued that a ‘People’s Commissariat’ was an
inappropriate form of organisation for an industry like cinema that was also an art
form. Shumyatsky was particularly appalled at the way in which his subordinates
had meekly accepted the proposed reorganisation:

Where have they been in the last month and a half while the storm of
liquidation has been raging about Soyuzkino? Why did they remain silent
and not protest? Surely even a blind man could have seen that the proposed
reorganisation was wrong and that it was being carried out in the absence of
the responsible authority. They remained silent and were passive. Their
behaviour is a cause for regret. 29