(If you'd like to read Part I of this article, click here.)

THE MOST BRILLIANT RUSSIAN DIRECTOR since Sergei Eisenstein continued to lead his culture back to their roots in a thousand-year-old visual tradition. The young Andrei Tarkovsky combined an eye for realistic detail with a resistance to linear narrative, seeing in elemental images of nature and human experience mediators of transcendent spiritual reality. Indeed, in Orthodox tradition, the icon is more than just an illustration of a Bible story, but a vehicle for Divine Reality itself. Tarkovsky thought Eisenstein had misunderstood, and ultimately abused, the very nature of cinema by shoving ideas down the throat of a medium clearly designed to communicate via the image.

The subject of Tarkovsky's second major film, Andrei Rublev, was the most celebrated icon-painter of all time. Ironic for a system which attacked religion as the opiate of the masses, the Soviet regime is made metaphor here in the stifling domination and dead orthodoxy of the Medieval Russian Church. It was a target the authorities could hardly object to, especially after the film won acclaim at international film festivals (though the authorities did delay the film's release for years).

At the start of this three-hour epic, Rublev is famous, but is criticized for not painting from his soul, nor grasping the essence of his subjects. Thus begins the monk's long journey to deeper truths in himself and his surroundings. After a period of disillusionment when he gives up painting and takes a vow of silence, Rublev embarks on his mature work -- and the film concludes with loving pans across examples of this: employing color cinematography for the first time. The point of this extended sequence is obviously to let the images speak for themselves -- but only, of course, for those who care to listen. As Andrei Rublev chides an oafish student early in film, "... only by prayer can the soul reach the unseen." And in rejecting a half-century of barren materialism, Tarkovsky led the metaphysically starving Soviet artists to grasp for the spiritual.

Tarkovsky's way of seeing certainly transformed the vision of another Soviet director, Sergei Paradjanov. Influenced by the notion of cinema-as-poetry (and mindful of the authorities' rather blunt and prosaic sensibilities), Paradjanov produced a handful of colorful rhapsodies to Ukrainian and Armenian folk cultures, bursting with song, dance, rich ethnic traditions and the simple piety of common people. These films will seem jumpy, even incomprehensible, to those who insist on logical, not poetic, order; Paradjanov puts the surreal in the service of, not absurdity, but a quixotic spirituality. It might be argued that such a personal vision touches less objective than subjective truths, but there is no question it comes from the heart.

In Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors (1964), a man's beloved is killed and he marries a wicked woman he does not love -- perhaps an attack on the Soviets' "shotgun wedding" of ethnic republics? In any case, the authorities interpreted such poetry in ways that meant Paradjanov's vision was refined by fifteen years in a maximum security labor camp (officially for homosexuality and trafficking in icons (!), though some say the charges were trumped up). The director made more films on his release until his death in 1990. The last, Ashik Kerib (1988), is from a story by Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov, a fairy tale noir: a childlike minstrel is enriched by suffering, protected by children, and finally saved by art. Prison aggravated a tendency to view the artist-as-martyr in Paradjanov, who frequently depicted himself in his work as Christ figure, suffering for the sake of mankind.

One finds similar themes at work in Pirosmani (1971), director Georgi Shengelaya's artful biography of a pioneer Georgian folk artist who sought to capture the soul of his own people in a primitive style. This ongoing quest for "essence" over surface "realism" is behind Sergei Paradjanov's famous comment that the best films would be those geared to the deaf and dumb. "Say nothing. Ask nothing," says a character in a Tarkovsky film. In our class, we had a chance to test all these claims made on behalf of the power of images alone when our print of Pirosmani arrived minus English subtitles. And we were delighted to find our visual-only experience seemed to prove most adequate indeed.

Yet Pirosmani clearly included a certain narrative content to be decoded. It seemed to involve the old view of art as salvation and artist as Messiah, as suggested in the shot of the drunken Pirosmani who has fallen down behind a beautiful painting -- a hint that behind the production of beauty is deep suffering. The point is driven home at the climax as the story ends with Easter: the miserable Pirosmani is "dead" and "buried" in a hovel beneath some stairs. "Christ has risen, so can you," someone says. But there is no real resurrection: immortality is granted only to the art that lives on beyond the artist's own miserable life. To me, Pirosmani wore the martyr's garb as his other clothes -- a little baggy. Since his suffering derived less from moral courage than personal dysfunctionality, the Messiah role seemed forced. One sympathizes with the easy identification of art and truth, or the use of art as a symbol for universal truths that transcend ideology -- something worthy, perhaps, of the ultimate sacrifice. Yet the abandonment of the individual artist to such misery and degradation seems dangerously close to the Leninist view that "the end justifies the means". Moreover, Pirosmani, as with the now-hated Socialist realism, appears to press an appeal to transcendent values into the service of a specific point of view.

And if anybody should be dubious of "messages" in movies by this time, it should have been the Soviet people. Given the key role of Soviet artists in perpetuating Marxist and especially Stalinist idolatry, it was no surprise to find that Soviet cinema, given half a chance, found a special interest in exploring the topic of collaborators with a totalitarian regime.

In The Ascent (1977) directed by Larissa Shepitko, two Soviet soldiers are captured by the invading Germans. One turns traitor to save his skin. The other refuses to sell his soul, but loses his life in a manner intentionally invoking the religious martyr. The film is shot in minimalist black and white, with conventional narrative and realism. In class, the instructor expressed some disappointment that the film seemed to have been done in moral black and white as well -- there was no question who was the "bad" guy (the collaborator) and who was the "good" guy (the soldier who refused to cooperate with the Nazis.) Yet, from my perspective, moral ambiguity is always difficult whenever Nazis are involved. And so I found myself lost in the mythic tale of the hero who dies for what he believes in, and I scorned with him his pragmatic partner who exchanges his honor for his life. Then I got a wake-up call from one of the students, an ex-Soviet, who reminded the class that any betrayal of the Soviet cause was not necessarily evil, since it meant rejection of a Stalinist state. And so here was reason for ambiguity after all, I realized. Personal "authenticity" -- "to thine own self be true" -- isn't enough in this particular situation: otherwise we must yield any objective ground upon which to judge loyalty to an evil cause.

The question of finding an objective place from which to judge "evil" causes, along with the issue of parsing responsibility for Stalinist-era crimes, would soon come to obsess Soviet cinema.

Meanwhile, beneath the stagnation of the Brezhnev neo-Stalinist period that followed the brief Khrushchev "thaw", we see artists seeking some kind of "truth" beyond the Soviet regime's official "reality": these filmmakers found ways to engage with the regime within metaphor. Such imaginary landscapes for such engagement include Soviet history, in the plight of the artist, in Russian literary classics -- even the garb of Hollywood "schlock".

In Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears (1978, directed by Vladimir Menshov), what began as an attempt at Hollywoodesque diversion became the all-time U. S. S. R. box-office champ, generating a national discussion and bringing about a cathartic experience for many. If this winner of the 1980 Oscar for Best Foreign Film had gone beyond art-house circuit in West, it might have helped undermine Reagan's casting of Soviet Russia as an "Evil Empire" (or at least made it plain that the Soviet people themselves were as much victims of the evil of Communism as anyone else). "Schlock" or not, this film made it clear that the Russian people were human beings, with universal hopes and fears, strengths and weaknesses. Three provincial girls come to Moscow to seek their destinies, each involving relationships with different kinds of men: common silliness and sadness, the ups and downs of boy-meets-girl.

With the screening of this film was launched another circular and unresolved class debate. As we had tried (unsuccessfully) to get our instructor to produce some definition for "propaganda," we were unable to give any shape to his vague (and typical artschool scorn) of "Hollywood." Was he objecting to the conventional Hollywood film form? (But if strict form is objectionable, one might equally scorn the Haiku.) Was the problem Hollywood's often non-realistic style? (But if fantasy is bad per se we must also dismiss Homer, Sophocles, Spenser, Swift and all the honorable history of myth.) Perhaps the problem was pricey production values -- reverse snobbery or an aesthetic bias against clean images, smooth moves, seamless editing. Yet insisting a certain "naturalism" is more "real" is to give in to the same sort of ideological fantasy as Socialist Realism. More legitimate criticisms of Hollywood (and they are many) would zero in on a propensity for pat answers and false endings, the obligatory sex and violence, manipulative plots, mechanical execution, or unfair stereotyping. But even if the worst is the rule, there are enough worthy exceptions to redeem the town from such fire and brimstone ruin.

Clearly, then, the disparagement of "Hollywood" had nothing to do with a careful criticism of American films, but a blanket (and unthinking) condemnation analogous to the traditional Marxist scorn for bourgeois morality, i.e. "middle-class values". To get a sense for what has typically been meant by the term bourgeois, you might begin by picturing what sophisticated urbans might deride as the "suburban lifestyle" -- a phrase which, I must admit, for me conjures a wasteland of shopping malls, populated by wandering teenagers who absorb prepackaged identities from television, whose parents are too busy paying bills to notice or care: a zombie-like mindset not too much different than Soviet culture at its worst. Indeed, it represents a style Vaclav Havel criticizes as "the aesthetics of banality": unthinking reaction, a clinging to safe, overdigested symbols and forms. Apparently a common trap for humanity, such "values" may be seen in both communist or capitalist societies. The real irony of Marxist condemnation of "bourgeois" values is that Marxist ideological criticism would seem to be the most classic example of that which it seeks to attack: a dogmatic dismissal of opponents' ideas by a litany of predigested slogans.

Such smothering of meaningful discussion with ideological platitudes was one of the causes of the malaise which came to settle across the Soviet Empire -- a malaise of both spirit and economy. The KGB, with its monopoly of information, was the first government agency to recognize that the very basis of Soviet power -- information control -- was ultimately fatal for a nation trying to compete in a world economy now exploding into information hyper-space. For this reason, ex-KGB head Yuri Andropov took charge of his country in 1982. But it was his designated heir, Mikhail Gorbachev, who became leader in 1985, who was to set in motion perestroika, or restructuring, whose prerequisite was glasnost, openness: free information.

The changes that would transform Soviet cinema were also powered by that cinema, and the result was, ultimately, the end of any "Soviet" cinema.

IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY, ORTHODOX ICONS were condemned as idols in what became known as the "Iconoclast Controversy." Thousands of the religious paintings were destroyed in an episode of church history that prefigured both the Bolshevik looting of churches depicted in Mother, but also the sudden destruction of Communist icons during the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. That final expose and rejection of the idol originally cast by Lenin himself was hastened and even driven by the art Lenin had considered "the most important." For with Gorbechev's lifting of information control, the cinema shined a light in all the dark places. Among the secrets revealed: the immense tragedy of forced collectivization, the political killings and mass-murders, the ecological disasters, the rampant crime and government corruption, a myriad of social and family problems, the admission of the shoddiness of Soviet manufacture and, behind it all, the utter failure of Communism.

While the rest of the world was still trying to understand what was happening, the Soviet cinema blazed a trail ahead. Soviet filmmakers leapt to the forefront of the tradition of anti-war cinema, making films opposed to the Afghan conflict while the war was still being fought. Young Soviet documentary artists re-edited old Bolshevik propaganda films to subvert and parody their meaning, mixing in interviews with actual witnesses of events. Others exposed the catastrophe at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, including a daring filmmaker who died of exposure to radiation. Merely broadcasting the proceedings of the fledgling Soviet parliament was enough to glue millions of Soviet citizens to their radios and televisions and provoke a political revolution.

The people's great hunger for truths so long kept from them was fed not just by documentary and live television, but also by cinematic examination and interpretations of their shared past.

Repentance (1984), by director Tengiz Abuladze, was "the bridge to the recovery of historical memory" (Remnick, 42). Made on the cusp of glasnost, this film was a very early and allegorical cinematic debunking of Stalinism, in a style that has been compared to 'magical realism' (Horton and Brashinsky, 43). Thanks to the special patronage and wheel-greasing of Georgian champion of perestroika Eduard Shevardnadze, Repentence was made and finally screened in the mid-to-late 1980s, helping build up and unleash a groundswell of popular response that pryed glasnost from the well-meaning but small-minded Gorbechev's own control.

With Little Vera (1988) we are already light-years beyond the tentative allegory of Repentence. Directed by Vasily Pichul, this Soviet Rebel Without A Cause was immensely popular at home and abroad. Here, an aimless teenager struggles to find a reason to live in a world where Marxist orthodoxy has created an emotional wasteland. There's a great scene where twin bureaucrats simultaneously counsel two "troubled youths" at double desks stuffed into tiny government office. The question is clear: how can we make harsh judgments of a people caught in such a pigheaded and stultifying system? Vera's jaded boyfriend asks her "What is our common goal" and she answers by rote (with matching cynicism), "Communism". The kids try to escape this netherworld by plunging into Western "decadence": fashion, music, dances, gang-fighting, casual sex (and with glasnost comes explicit sex scenes in Soviet films). Yet despite these things, there is no redemption: no romance, no hope. The "Little" in the title points to the sense of stolen innocence: there is a heartrending moment when rebel Vera seeks shelter from a storm beneath an overturned boat on the beach, sobbing into the arms of her alcoholic father, who rocks her and whispers "My little daughter." This need for shelter and sheltering arms is a poignant reminder that (as in the case of the director who filmed Chernobyl) not every sort of exposure is of a type to be desired.

And yet a certain amount of exposure of hidden truths -- however painful -- remained key for the Soviet people in coming to terms with their past: just as lancing a boil would be a necessary prerequisite to healing. Still, there's the question of how much oozing pus one can stand to watch. It turns out that glasnost actually gave birth to an entire genre of chernukha (the Russian slang for "darkness") films -- some of which are said to make Little Vera seem tame.

In Freeze-Die-Come to Life (1989), directed by Vitaly Kanevski, we continue to face the terrible facts of a fatally diseased Russia, once again contrasted against the ideal of childhood innocence. Twelve-year-old Velerka is an Artful Dodger in a Siberian mining town that makes Dickens' dreariest slums look like Disneyland. He hawks tea in the flea-market, trying to steal business from his competitor and only friend, the girl Galiya, who sticks by him as the fragile remains of childhood comes painfully to its end. The film is reminiscent of Truffaut's wistful "coming of age in an ugly, despair-filled adult world" movies -- in this case, an insane world. Freeze-Die dissolves into madness at the climax: childhood ends abruptly indeed with senseless violence, unwarned and unexplained. We're left with a dancing naked madwoman, singing in Russian -- til the soundtrack is replaced by the director's voice orchestrating the mad scene.

It is a disturbing climax, indeed -- though I wasn't sure I was disturbed because it was so effective, or because the effect seemed to rely on hackneyed "self-reflexion". On the one hand, after seventy-five years of an "official" reality, it is perhaps refreshing to see a Soviet filmmaker admit to the artificiality of his point of view. On the other hand, such reality-questioning underscores the problem of embarking on glasnost at this particular moment in the history of the West. There was a time when history and individual actions might have been be judged by what was commonly held to be an objective moral reality, of a transcultural yardstick for measuring good and evil. At this moment of history, however, we seem to be living in the Age of Suspended Judgment -- a time of extreme reluctance to make moral judgements, for that would presume such things as "good" and "evil" have meaning that transcends personal opinion and taste. "Justice", according to the new skepticism, becomes only one more bourgeois value to debunk as propaganda. The authors of The Zero Hour: Glasnost and Soviet Cinema in Transition note that some of the post-glasnost directors have flirted with -- and yet also evince a certain resistance to -- such cultural and moral relativism. This is understandable, given that the "postmodern" approach would mean giving up any ground upon which to criticize the crimes of Stalin as "evil". Postmodern nihilism is a bourgeois luxury ex-Soviet cinema can ill afford.

In any case, any "coming to terms" with the Communist past will be a longtime project; former Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn has said he believes it may take up to two-hundred years for the people of his country to recover from the damage inflicted by Karl Marx.

Meanwhile, one thing that has become already clear is the fact that no one can subsist on chernukha alone. If the Russian people have to hear about the gory details of one more gulag, complained a bookseller recently, they'll just die. (Remnick, 539). Accordingly, along with the continuing stream of cinematic revelations of their past, the now ex-Soviets have enjoyed a stream of "Hollywood" films: both "schlock" and a share of the better and worse of American imports. Filmmakers in Russia are making their own "schlock" (and worse), including movies that turn Eisenstein upside-down in their idealizing of the Czar and demonizing of Lenin.

The ex-Soviet film establishment is no longer state-subsidized. Like their old capitalist enemies, the industry finds itself in the position of having to cater to the preferences of a mass audience. But, just like in Hollywood, making "popular" films which are at the same time meaningful is not impossible, it just requires ingenuity. Adam's Rib (1992, directed by Vyacheslav Krishtofovich), for example, explores the same themes as Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears -- without being as "over the top". Here, three generations of women share an apartment, along with common (and, again, universal) problems of dealing with different sorts of men.

With history having clearly exiled the USSR. in its dustbin, the task of filmmakers in all the former Soviet Republics has moved beyond mere exposure of Soviet crimes to helping people learn to live with their past and move on into a better future.

Burnt By The Sun (1994), starring and directed by Nikita Mikhalkov, was the most shattering and profound film of the Soviet and ex-Soviet films I saw in class, and it was the last. It was also a prize-winner at Cannes and won the 1995 Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Burnt is very "Hollywood" in story structure and production values, yet it is much more subtle than the term "Hollywood" suggests when it is used as a negative label. The Stalinist nightmare forms the background of the film; the foreground is given over to ordinary human experience at its most universal, and it is sketched with a rich and winsome realism. The setting is a slice of rural family life: several generations, individuals all, eat, drink, sing, dance and enjoy one another's company. Woven into the action are glimpses of timeless family truths -- of age and childhood, family secrets, tragedies, and jokes. The scenario is genuine, but it is also part of the filmmaker's strategy to win us over to this group as a family before raising disturbing questions about them as individuals. And then, as with the Godfather films, we realize we must deal with the confusing emotions that come of being captivated by a loving family whose members have been involved in terrible brutality.

And we understand -- and this was the filmmaker's point -- that we could have easily been captivated by the beauty and affection of Stalin's own family and home life. It is a picture that Stalinist propaganda always sought to convey. Of course, at some level, for some people, history's greatest genocidist really was "Papa". And so, following this very effective gameplan, Burnt by the Sun successfully provokes a most maddening argument over which character is a "good" guy, and which one is "bad". Indeed, they come to have this argument among themselves. What it comes down to, one of them decides, is personal motivation. Who acted from fear. Who acted from duty. Love of self? Or love of country? Even if that country happened to be Stalinist Russia? One character insists he was trapped by an oppressive system. Another argues just as passionately "there were always choices."

This debate can, I'm sure, apply equally well to all circles of ex-Soviet society: including among the artists, the filmmakers. The true believers, the Eisensteins, may -- unlike the later "party hacks" perhaps be excused at some level for being "true believers" -- or can they? Surely the lies and violence were there right from the beginning. Solzhenitsyn was vilified by the Western Liberal press for making just that linkage between Leninist "idealism" and Stalinist totalitarian dehumanization.

None of the characters in Burnt are held to be entirely innocent or guilty. Yet, paradoxically, all are responsible. For if the "system" is entirely at fault, how can Stalin himself be responsible for his crimes? Joseph Stalin may have been evil, said director Mikhalkov in an interview, but he was created by man's hands. "The Scriptures say that man must not create idols to worship. People did not listen, and they created an idol, and they in turn became its victims." Somewhere between collective guilt and individual responsibility the truth must lie, though parceling it out precisely will probably never be possible in a way that satisfies everyone. Russia must remain, in the effort to come to terms with her tragic past, a mystery to herself.

MY SURVEY IN CLASS OF RUSSIAN AND SOVIET FILMS led me, when it was over, to ransack our local libraries for more -- and for books on the films, and filmmakers, along with histories and biographies. Ultimately, this new interest led me to this article, and it will, I'm sure, lead me beyond: I'm looking forward to the Chicago International Film Festival this Fall, where no doubt might be seen samplings of the most recent work from the developing ex-Soviet cinemas -- which includes that of Georgia, the Ukraine, and the rest. I must confess this is a lot more territory to attempt to cover than I anticipated when I started -- though I'm not the first to presume to invade the vast expanse of Mother Russia who's reached that conclusion.

Regarding any other conclusions about Russian and Soviet and ex-Soviet film, however, I'm somewhat hesitant -- trying to bear in mind my pose of humility at the start of this piece. I will hopefully be permitted, as a way of summing up, to confess a few tendencies of thought toward which my experiences has led.

One of these concerns the question that came early in the survey, that is, the task of distinguishing propaganda from art. Though not always easy or self-evident, this task seems harder than ever. My tendency here would first of all be distrust of either artists or critics or would-be definers of "propaganda" who seem blindered by ideological assumptions -- from those who dismiss a particular film for its "bourgeois" values, to someone who plants a flag and says "Film is thus, and anybody who thinks different is an enemy of the Revolution." That goes for both Eisenstein, with his ideological commitment to Marxist "message" movies, but also (and this will make me some enemies) to Tarkovsky, with his -- what seems to me at times -- ideological commitment to images at the expense of ideas. I may be wrong here, and perhaps I need to watch those Tarkovsky films a few more times and more patiently. Lord knows I have much to learn from Tarkovsky about what C.S. Lewis called "receiving" a work of art rather than "using" one.

At the same time, however, and in many ways thanks to C.S. Lewis, another tendency of my recent thought has been to take care not to make an "either/or" that which should more appropriately be "both/and" (taking equal care not to make the opposite mistake.) In this case, I'm reluctant to cast either eye or ear -- that is, image or idea -- as polar opposites of an "either/or" variety. The Eisenstein/Tarkovsky debate seems on at one level to refight what Lewis called "the quarrel between the rules and the pictures" -- the eternal tug-of-war between imagination and reason. Lewis believed either rules or pictures alone would lead to a half-truth; one needs both to achieve whole-brained vision.

It could be that those filmmakers working from within the rich visual tradition of the East and those who come from the more Word-based Western tradition may serve ultimately to balance one another.

Then again, to more precisely locate C.S. Lewis's position in this discussion, I must point out that he felt not just that the "rules and pictures" needed to be balanced, but that they needed to be integrated -- by a third element, which he believed was Christianity. Which is not to say Andrei Tarkovksy did not, in fact, believe the same thing. For that Russian director who was known for his spiritual perspective made it known that he, too, was a Christian -- at a time when such things were almost unheard of in the Soviet Union. Of course, such things were not always so well-received on this side of the Iron Curtain, either. Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn alienated what had until then been a sympathetic Western Press by making it clear his criticism of the Soviet regime was founded on his Christian faith, and that his hope for the future was based on his belief in the integrating power of that faith: "I myself see Christianity today as the only living spritual force capable of undertaking the spiritual healing of Russia" (Ericson, 241).

Indeed, from beneath the rubble of the post-Communism, amid the problems that have emerged from the ashes, has also risen from the grave where the Communists tried to bury it, Russian Christianity. The Marxist youth clubs and Museums of the People so gleefully converted from looted churches in Enthusiasm have been converted back into churches. And they've been filled not just with faithful babushkas, but young people, intellectuals. The word bogoiskatelstvo -- "the search for God" -- has been on Russian lips (Remnick, 360). Perhaps their experience with dead Marxist orthodoxy helped infuse their Orthodoxy with new life.

Meanwhile, the ex-Soviet filmmakers, likewise fresh from their dehumanizing experience with dialectical materialism, have made theirs a very spiritual quest. Not just in Tarkovsky and his disciples, but in many of the post-glasnost films beginning with Repentence we see Christian symbols everywhere, a spiritual reality contrasted against empty Marxist materialism. Whether or not the filmmakers employed these symbols because of their own personal Christian commitment seems almost irrelevant; the Christian "pictures" of sacrifice, of a cleansing of past sins, of a Resurrection from the dead, present truly compelling images of hope for a people starving for that particular quantity. Yet the message of Christianity -- the Word become Flesh, the spiritual clothed in human reality -- must be made manifest in life if such symbols are to function as icons, not more idols.

That there really is a transcendent reality "out there" that these or any other icons may become vehicles for seems to be the point on which everything turns. For without a transcendent moral or metaphysical reality to give meaning to, or enable us to judge actions, in the world in which we find ourselves, finding meaning and value in Russian and Soviet art and history becomes an entirely fruitless endeavor -- a "game", as the postmodernist would say. That ex-Soviet filmmakers have flirted with, but so far shown resistance to postmodernism's reluctance to judge seems only natural, given their recent history. Czech Republic president, and former anti-Communist dissident, Vaclav Havel, while no Christian -- but perhaps as close as one might be without taking the name -- is a great admirer of Solzhenitsyn and echoes the Russian in his insistence on the reality of a transcendent realm to which human beings are morally responsible.

And here also is a key to separating propaganda from art, according to yet another Russian artist, Leo Tolstoy. No matter what stories we tell, they will be true -- "if there is in them the truth of the kingdom of God. And if that truth is lacking, then everything described, however well attested, will be false, because it lacks the truth of the kingdom of God." True art, then, is not just a matter of an artist being true to his or her self; as we noted, films like Burnt by the Sun have also called into question the relative value of "to thine own self be true" as the final court of appeal. The artist must also be true to "what is." If one loses faith in an objective "is," as have the postmoderns, there is nothing left to create but propaganda.

None of this should be taken to suppose I suggest that the inclusion of certain facts about "reality" prevents a work from being bad art. No doubt, there are other factors involved, most of which have to do with the artist and his audience. What I would suggest, tentatively, is that even a film created as propaganda, if it is in tune with "what is", might rise to become something resembling art. The classic example is Casablanca, a film which reached above the particular circumstances of its creation to touch human universals: by functioning as a true icon, it has made what we call "pop culture icons" of all its stars. And so, in lesser ways, and in varied degrees, other "schlocky" films have their moments: we may have seen it a million times, but one has to ask -- just because boy meets girl, does that make "love" a cliché? Of course it's the same old story, but at some level, "the fundamental things apply".

Obviously, alot depends on what you consider fundamental. If human history is "merely" economics, or human beings "merely" matter, than the dogmatic application of such fundamentals will inevitably bring you a dehumanizing end. With the ex-Soviet film industry finally out of the hands of an ideological State, it will be driven, not by inhuman considerations, but by the people. To be sure, the ex-Soviet filmmakers will make their share of "schlock," for while the people have an instinctive desire for universal goods, they are too often suckers for the wrong ends (and for an example of this we may recall "Communism"). Nevertheless, honest and creative filmmakers will find ways to tell the truth and make art within the conventional forms.

Those filmmakers who made many of the important films at the brink of glasnost, including Tarkovsky, have passed on. A new generation is poised to take ex-Soviet cinema beyond its Communist past, beyond the novelty of exposing those crimes. From the depths of a millennium of suffering, self-inflicted or otherwise, the ex-Soviet cinema has much to offer the world. Whether, as posited in Pirosmani, the production of works of beauty and truth makes such deep pain is worthwhile is hardly our place to say -- and most of us would certainly trade the works of art to erase that millennium of suffering if that were possible.

Yet, despite what the Soviet information-controllers thought at the height of their monopoly, and despite Marx's insistence on the inevitability of history, the past has proven to be a lot less malleable than the future. In this context, one recalls -- with a somber irony -- the repeated refrain of Djiga Vertov's Three Songs of Lenin: if only Lenin were around to see the Soviet Union Today. See for himself the "inevitabilities" of history, along with the ironies and complexities. The Communist "Shining Future" broken down under it's own dead weight, thrown off in the end by genuine peoples' revolutions. The church not "opiate of the masses" but leader of the counter-revolution -- in Poland, Romania, and perhaps even some day soon in Cuba. And cinema -- "the most important art" -- playing a vital role in these counter-revolutions, waking the ex-Soviet peoples' spiritual hunger and providing now the means to share a unique and hard-won perspective with the workers (and moviegoers) of the world.


SOURCES

• Ericson, Jr., Edward E., Solzhenitsyn and the Modern World, (Washington DC: Regnery Gateway, 1993)
• Horton, Andrew and Brashinsky, Michael, The Zero Hour: Glasnost and Soviet Cinema in Transition, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992)
• Leyda, Jay, Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film, (New York: Collier Books, 1960)
• Prokhorov, Gleb, Art Under Socialist Realism: Soviet Painting 1930-1950, (Australia: Craftsman House, 1995)
• Remnick, David, Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire, (New York: Vintage Books, a Division of Random House, Inc., 1994)
• Shane, Scott, Dismantling Utopia: How Information Ended the Soviet Union, (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1994)
• Tarkovsky, Andrei, Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema, Hunter-Blair, Kitty, trans, (1989: NY, Faber & Faber)
• Zaczek, Iain, The Art of the Icon (1994: London, Studio Editions)