Jewish Identity in the Russian Cinema of early 1990s

Abstract

Interest in all topics previously forbidden in the Soviet Union soared in the decade between 1988 and 1999. New films about Stalinism, purges, ethnic conflicts, youth subcultures, crime and corruption, often filled with sex and violence, flooded movie theaters. Soviet filmmakers rushed to use freedom of expression. Among films produced at this time, many were dedicated to Jewish subjects. Public interest surged, and enthusiasts started working on the revival of Jewish culture forming a wide range of public organizations. Filmmakers turned to Jewish classics, began addressing the topic of Jewry in Soviet society, and engaged in a discussion about themes, such as the Holocaust, and the Stalinist anti-Semitic campaign of 1948-1953 (Gershenson 206). Together with feature films, a number of documentaries and animated films were produced. Some gained popularity and have been well researched, others remained relatively obscure due to the collapse of the Soviet film industry. While several Russian and American scholars, like Miron Chernenko and Olga Gershenson wrote about select films, the Jewish presence in the Russian cinema of 1990s-2000s has not been discussed extensively. This paper addresses revisiting the Jewish past and envisioning the place of Jews in Soviet life in two award-winning films produced in the early 1990s, Get Thee Out! (Awards: the Nika award, the main national Russian cinema award, and the main prize of Open Sochi Russian Film Festival 1991) and To See Paris and Die (The Nika award, 1992), and works towards answering the question: How did