The Earth in the Land: Internationalism, Regional Culturalism, and Cosmopolitanism in 1960s Films from Soviet Ukraine

Abstract In the film history of the Ukrainian ssr , the Thaw is regarded as the era of the rebirth of a national Ukrainian cinema. Both films celebrating regional diversity and films merely drawing on local crews and infrastructure are said to have contributed to a national film culture. I look at three distinct approaches to the Soviet concept of multinationality to show that the rebirth of a national cinema was characterized by approaches that did not claim a distinct national identity for Ukraine. Instead, directors facing regional diversity either transcended Ukraine’s cultural environment (through internationalism), undercut it (through what I call regional culturalism), or ignored it altogether (through cosmopolitanism). With the help of this typology, I point to the complex cultural politics of the time. The Soviet Ukrainian films I discuss exemplarily were not part of a common national project at the time, though they may have contributed to it as time passed.