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72 THE ORIGINS OF SOVIET CINEMA: A STUDY IN INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT
Figure 6 Konstantin Eggert, co-director (with Gardin) and star of The Bear’s Wedding
[1926], one of the most popular Soviet productions of the 1920s.
making on their limited means. Later celebrated as the ‘Leninist film proportion’, this
second article of the importation decree not only assuaged official concern about
the possible ideological damage of showing capitalist films to Soviet audiences, it
helped to assure an audience for the Soviet-produced shorts. Lenin and
Lunacharsky correctly anticipated that foreign, especially American, films would
attract sizeable audiences, and they recommended that political speakers be placed
on the programmes. Soviet propaganda would rise on the coattails of Hollywood
entertainments. ‘If you have a good newsreel, serious and educational pictures,’
Lenin asserted, ‘then it doesn’t matter if, to attract the public, you have some kind
of useless picture of the more or less usual type.’ 32
