Spring 2025: May 7 — June 5 (5 weeks)
Subject: FILM
Course Level: 200
Number of Credits: 1 U.S. / 2 ECTS
Max Enrollment: 22
Schedule: Wed, Thu 17:00 – 18:20 CET (Berlin) | 9:00 – 10:20 AM EDT (New York)
Language of Instruction: Russian
Course Prerequisites: Russian B2 / Equivalent or higher

Researchers agree that the Western is a key film genre not only for the United States. The Western Films implement the model of the colonization myth. The male hero explores a supposedly ‘wild’land, imposes his own norms, uses violence, oppresses locals and fights for dominance with other conquerors. The hero has an antagonist and sidekicks, including the object of his love, or at least sexual attraction. The hero either triumphs in a simple plot or is being redesigned in a deeper and a more complex story.

Due to media and film distribution in the twentieth century, this universal plot was widely disseminated in other cinemas, including the Soviet one. For the USSR, the Western (or rather the Eastern, since it was mostly set in the Asian part of the former empire) was particularly relevant. The Bolsheviks continued the colonization that had begun in the imperial era (using the evasive term ‘exploration’. Various media were used to promote this process, but the cinema was the most important propaganda tool.

From 1923, when the first Soviet eastern, The Red Devils, was made by the Tbilisi studio, until the early 1990s, when the last film projects of the USSR were completed, about 300 titles of eastern films were made in various studios. This was complicated by the hypocrisy of Soviet mass culture, where entertainment was traditionally stigmatized. Therefore, the films we would watch and discuss in this course were usually called ‘historical-revolutionary’; or films about the Civil War of 1918-1922. They told the story of how Soviet power was asserted in different regions of the former Russian Empire.

The course may be considered as a history of the Soviet colonization of the periphery reflected in mass movies. Along the way, the films showed the own logic of evolution, depending on technology and new turns of political history. We will answer the questions of why Stalin so adored American Westerns, and why they fatally failed to work for Soviet filmmakers from the 1930s to the early 1950s. Why Khrushchev’s ‘thaw’ opened the way for Westerns on the Soviet screen, and why this success could not be consolidated. Why Soviet cinema of the 1970s and 1980s churned out films about the civil war, but the best titles are the hardest to call action films. The course material is organized chronologically. Each class will analyze a pair of opposite films made during the same period of Soviet history and deal with the ‘primary’ events of the new era – revolution and civil war. Special attention will be paid to films made in studios in Ukraine, Transcaucasia and Central Asia.

Guidelines for the Statement of Purpose:
Craft a reflective statement of purpose explaining your interest in the Smolny Beyond Borders online course. The file should be saved with your name and course title as the filename and uploaded accordingly. Your statement’s clarity and substance will significantly influence our selection. Convey your motivations and aspirations for this course succinctly but thoroughly. Kindly write your statement in the course’s Language of Instruction.

Application Portal Instructions:
1) Use the Latin alphabet for all entries on the portal, including your name. If the Language of Instruction is Russian, you may use Cyrillic only within the Statement of Purpose file, and the title of the file should still be in English.
2) Refrain from using email addresses associated with Russian or Belarusian educational institutions.
3) While completing the “Required Information” section, ensure you fill in the “Province” field for your address.
4) Provide an address outside Russia or Belarus in both the “Required Information” and “Geographic Location Confirmation” sections of the “Online Course Application”. This ensures we can send your transcript.
5) You must press the “Sign” button twice during the application.
6) If you hold a bachelor’s degree, select “4th+” in the “Academic Year (online)” section.
7) Applicants either unaffiliated or affiliated with educational institutions in Russia and Belarus should list ‘Smolny Beyond Borders’ as their educational institution.
8) In the student ID section, enter ‘SBB’.
9) Consider drafting your motivation letter ahead of time. Save it as a separate file with this format: LastName_FirstName_CourseTitle for a smoother application process.