Page 84 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY 65
operated through the world war, it ate into a finite quantity of resources and left the
post-Revolutionary industry with diminished reserves. 9
Efforts by the Bolsheviks to use cinema in some official way began within
months of the October Revolution, but they followed no grand design. In the ad
hoc nature of War Communism, most steps were taken at the local level by
different agencies acting unilaterally, and the measures were often limited in their
effect to Moscow and Petrograd, the only sites of genuine Bolshevik authority. In
January 1918 the Bolsheviks established a Division of Photography and Cinema
which was attached to the Commissariat of Enlightenment. Although the measure
seemed to clear the way for the making and showing of educational films on a
national scale, in those early uncertain days of Revolution, the Commissariat’s
influence barely extended beyond the Petrograd city limits, and its Photo-Cinema
Division remained largely a paper institution. Its first significant action was the
expropriation of the assets of the Skobelev Committee, an organisation surviving
from the World War which had done some film work at the behest of the tsarist
and provisional governments. This provided the Commissariat with the assets to
begin producing a few short newsreels. Such low-budget films seemed the most
appropriate use of scarce resources during this period of privation. 10
Meanwhile the local Soviets of Deputies in both Moscow and Petrograd made
independent moves into cinema activity in the spring of 1918. The Moscow Soviet
of Deputies took its initiative in response to reports of sabotage by the heads of the
private production companies centred in that city. It encouraged film workers to
monitor the activities of their bosses with particular attention to the hoarding of
materials, and it followed with orders for a full inventory of the assets of Moscow
companies and for an end to the transfer of assets. The measures came in
response to reports that private producers would remove their headquarters to
areas outside Bolshevik control since Moscow cinema entrepreneurs openly
acknowledged their opposition to the Bolshevik regime and spoke of defying official
directives. The Petrograd Soviet of Deputies, by contrast, inherited a much smaller
capitalist cinema establishment within its jurisdiction and, hence, much less
resistance to its initiatives. It established its own Photo-Cinema Committee and
used such public funds as it could spare to make short newsreels and to maintain a
few exhibition facilities in and around the city. 11
In the haphazard manner of early War Communism, then, three separate public
institutions, acting without mutual consent, established whatever control they could
in the private sector. Only retroactively, in late 1918 and early 1919, did they make
any effort at co-ordination; that effort remained limited to the Moscow-Petrograd
axis. The film-related activities of the Moscow Soviet of Deputies, which consisted
mostly of monitoring private production, reverted to the Commissariat of
Enlightenment when the national government moved the capital to Moscow in
1918, and the Commissariat assigned agents to oversee local film companies. 12
The shortage of resources became the primary concern of the Commissariat
when it expanded its responsibilities, and it set about locating new stocks for both
the private firms and the public agencies involved in cinema. The Commissariat