The Village in Soviet Cinema: From Socialist Realist Paradise to Non-Soviet Space

The article examines the evolution of the on-screen village in Soviet cinema. Two key periods have been chosen for comparison: the heyday of socialist realism in the 1930s and the peak of the Brezhnev era in the 1970s. One of the key factors in the creative reconsideration of the concept of village is urbanization, the beginning of which in the Soviet Union coincided with the emerging of socialist realism, and the peak — with the end of the Khrushchev ‘‘thaw’’. Examples of films from both periods show that from a relevant place of action, the on-screen village turns into a hopelessly lost utopia, deprived of the Soviet ideological context.