Page 82 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY 63
itself. By virtue of climate, landscape, and cultural tradition, Russia represented a
comparatively inefficient producer of industrial goods and a comparatively efficient
producer of agricultural goods. In the late tsarist period, for example, Russia was a
leading exporter of grain. The new Bolshevik regime, however, determined to defy
the apparent dictates of nature and geography by transforming an age-old
agricultural system into a world industrial leader. They undertook this formidable
task despite external political threats from hostile capitalist nations and internal
disorder culminating in the Russian Civil War.
The first phase of the Bolshevik economic system encompassed the period of
War Communism (1918—21) in which the government effected a series of
emergency measures to cope with the economic damage wrought by the Civil War
and foreign blockade. With the eventual passing of these political crises, the regime
initiated its New Economic Policy (NEP, 1921—9) to encourage economic recovery.
This ‘transitional mixed economy’, as Lenin described it, involved returning much
of the economy to a market system while leaving in place a large measure of
government control in the hope that recovery could be facilitated by the forces of
private initiative. The NEP period fell into two phases, an early interval of rapid
capitalisation (1921—5) followed by successful production (1925—9). These trends
and the previously discussed developmental principles define a clear periodisation:
War Communism represented an interval of net capital consumption deriving from
political and social dislocation while the first half of NEP was characterised by
capital accumulation as industries geared up for the productivity that was
eventually realised in the late 1920s. The first tactic of capital accumulation, forced
savings, proved rather infeasible in the early Soviet economy given the limited
private surpluses of the population; it would only be fully effected under Stalin’s
rapid industrialisation plans of the 1930s, and then at great cost to the population.
Instead, various combinations of credit, investment, foreign concessions, and
overseas trade were used to accumulate capital under NEP.
The film industry’s pattern of early development conforms to that of the larger
economy. The industry’s shift from net capital consumption to capital
accumulation conforms to the transition from War Communism to NEP, and the
industry’s new capital derived from foreign trade, foreign and domestic investment,
and, to a lesser extent, credit. The early history of the Soviet film industry entails a
record of hard-headed management of scarce resources and judicious use of
various sources of capital. Whatever Lenin’s nationalisation decree represented, it
did not render the Soviet film industry productive. It only helped set in motion a
complex developmental process, the’ details of which are the subject of this study.

WAR COMMUNISM AND THE PERIOD OF NET
CAPITAL CONSUMPTION
The combined effects of civil war, foreign intervention and international trade
embargoes resulted in a near collapse of the Russian economy in the late 1910s.
The British Royal Navy severed the major sea routes to Russia, precluding the