How Moscow tried to make Soviet cinema popular in Cold War India
· Scroll
In the spring of 1968, when Kerala was given the opportunity to inaugurate a retrospective of Soviet films, the communist government led by EMS Namboodiripad seized it unreservedly. At a time when India was being courted by the Cold War superpowers, Kerala was one state that overwhelmingly leaned towards Moscow rather than Washington DC.
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Nine Russian films were screened in Trivandrum and other parts of the state, beginning with Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 silent epic Battleship Potemkin. For Kerala, the retrospective was an opportunity to showcase a cinema that was closely associated with the state’s political culture. For Moscow, it was part of a much longer effort to make Soviet cinema – and the system it represented – more attractive to Indian audiences.
The staging of the retrospective, which commemorated 50 years of Soviet cinema, was the result of years of Soviet efforts to popularise Russian films in a country where the post-colonial elite could watch and easily comprehend English films.
The Soviets were acutely aware that the Americans could reach a significant section of Indians through Hollywood since there was no language barrier, giving them an advantage in promoting Western capitalism over Russian communism.
“The USSR tried its best to convince Indians that a socialist country could be a superpower...